Kids Mother's Day gifts

In the April school holidays I thought I would get a bit organised with the kids (the 2 big ones, at least!) and make a head start on a couple of Mother's Day gifts. I wanted the kids to be able to do something a little crafty, but not something I had to do too much with, more that they were creating themselves.

And then as I was thinking what we could made for Nanna and Grandma for Mother's Day I thought we could make some flowers using cupcake wrappers and pop-sticks. They cut out and coloured in some leaves and stuck them on too.

 Love the concentration here!

Nice and colourful .... but what to do with them .... Aha! Because I have had to formula feed, yet again, I have an abundance of formula tins and this time I really refuse to put them in the recycling bin, so I have been on the hunt for ways to use them and get them out of the house without actually throwing them out! So I cut slits in the plastic lid of the tins and then we poked the pop-sticks through, then we baked some biscuits the day before Mother's Day and the kids decorated them (lots of sprinkles!) and we popped them into the tins.

Nanna and Grandma loved them, including the handwritten label by A1 ..... and I got rid of 2 more tins!

I used several at Christmas time by decorating the outside with scrapbooking paper and a 3D flower on the top, then filled them with my Christmas baking. Everyone commented on them, they couldn't believe that's what they were and several tried to give the tin back to me "for me to use again"! LOL! I also read about using them as a bin-bag dispenser, so out came my scalpel and I cut a cross in the lid to feed the bags through and our roll of bin bags is now easy to find in the cupboard under the sink and doesn't come unrolled through the cupboard all the time!

Road Trip

So, today we drove 3 hours to go to the christening of our nephew/cousin (on hubby's side) and then 3 hours home again! Sigh! I was not looking forward to that much time in the car as A1 doesn't really sleep int he car anymore (he's almost 7), A2 has never been a good car sleeper, usually falling asleep 5-10 minutes before reaching our destination and A3 looks to be following in his sisters footsteps. So, I packed snacks (fruit, crackers, water, sultana and seed mix, plain popcorn, and finally a couple of prepackaged snacks if we got desperate!) and I thought about what would keep them busy on the trip. Well A1 and A2 being 6 and 3 I decided to pack the MegaSketcher. I figured it was less messy than colouring in the car and we wouldn't need to sharpen anything! lol! And I also decided to pack a clipboard with some travel games. I printed them off on cardstock (some from the RACV website and various others) plus some blank A5 paper and I decorated an A5 clipboard for each of them. I also packed a few crayons (figured this was simpler than pencils re sharpening) for them to complete the bingo sheets or draw with.

I covered some cute wooden clipboards (from Officeworks) with some scrapbooking paper (love the Tombow multi-adhesive!) and just sanded the edges a little where the paper overhung. I will probably sponge them with some matching ink, but they were fine for the moment.
I wondered how long until they asked for Daddy's phone (they know he can play videos on there!) but I was pleasantly surprised!