Photo Treasure Hunt

Before my 8-week-old made his surprise entrance into the world, we were planning a week of activities inspired by the letter 'T'. This was one of them. Our treasure was easy to make with quite a visually effective result, not to mention that the 'treasure hunt' game is one that we will play again and again.

To make you own, you'll need cardboard, PVA glue, black paint, gold paint, paper towel and some photographs of places around your house and yard to use as clues for your treasure hunt.

I began by cutting circles which are 8cm in diamiter.  I made ten. Then I carefully drew some treasure like patterns onto our circles using PVA glue.

Once the glue dried, I got my two-year-old to paint the bumpy surface black. I filled in any patchy spots.

The black paint dried straight away and we began to dab the gold paint on roughly with paper towel, letting the black show through in the crevices to create an oxidised effect. This worked so well, I plan to use the same method to make some frames and perhaps a trophy.

My daughter then did a wonderful job of helping me glue the clues to the back of the 'coins'.

We were ready for our first treasure hunt! 

I hid all ten coins in a sequence around the house bar one, which we kept to use as the first clue. It took Priya a little while to get the hang of things but once she understood, she was on a roll, especially after she learned that I had hidden a tasty treat at the end.

Gift Idea - Building Block Puzzle

A little while ago I made this building block puzzle for my niece's first birthday. I planned to blog about it back then but my son's surprise arrival put a spanner in the works and I forgot all about it. This was really fun to make so I'm going to make some name puzzles with the left over blocks for my kids as soon as I get the chance.

To make the block puzzle I enlisted my husband's help who bought a square post from Bunnings and cut it into cubes. We sanded the corners back so there were no sharp edges. I drew six simple pictures that covered the surface of four blocks and rotated the same four blocks until all six sides displayed a part of each picture. I painted them in watered-down acrylic paint and finished with a varnish.

They were dry just in time for the birthday girl's big day.

My sister in-law created a spectacular rainbow themed birthday party for my niece's first birthday. She blogged about it at her lovely blog Just for Daisy and it was also featured recently at Bondville. If you have a party coming up soon, pop over and have a look. It was such a fun party theme and the photographs of the day are fantastic. Here are Priya and I enjoying the day.

Cardboard Play Land - Phase Two

       

Here it is as promised- phase two of our play scape, a beach! Now Priya's peg people live on a beach-front property. Yay for them!

Sometimes I leave Priya to explore toys on her own so she can develop her own play habits without interference but on occasion she loses interest quickly because she doesn't know what to do with them. When this happens, I find ten minutes of role playing together fixes the problem, giving her something to work with.

Family Hand Prints for Father's Day

Father's Day snuck up on me this year.  Without much time up my sleeve, I turned to Pinterest for gift ideas. I fell in love with the hand and foot print art for sale over at Milly Bee and decided we would create our own version.

I made prints of my own hand first and asked Dean to place his hand print next to mine.  I didn't realise his hands were that much bigger than my own. All the creative work done after this point was done in secret when he was out of the house. Priya's little hand prints went down next in the palm of her Mummy and Daddy's prints followed by six-week-old Digby's tiny hands.

I could only get partial prints of Digby's hands as it was too difficult to uncurl his newborn fingers. I'll enlist help next time.

Nothing excites my toddler more than presents. Giving delights her just as much as receiving so it was extra special this morning when she crawled into bed hauling something big and beautiful that she helped make for Daddy. He was very impressed and promptly displayed our prints on the wall for all to see. Priya liked that.

Torch Shadow Box

This was a fun one. The last couple of days, I have enjoyed sitting down at 3:30pm to watch Mister Maker on ABC 4 Kids. Mister Maker has fantastic crafty ideas, and today, I just had to try one of them out. We changed it up a bit but it's basically the same idea.

To make your own, you'll need a disposable container with a transparent lid, star stickers (you could use any shape really) and a torch. We began by cutting a hole in the bottom of the container and threading the handle of the torch through the hole. To finish we decorated the lid with star stickers and placed back on the container enclosing the torch inside. The best part is that we can make more lids with different shapes and keep them to play with another time.

It has just occurred to me that you could stick your shapes directly onto the torch if you wanted to. This would never fly at our house. Priya's dad is very protective of his torch.

Now for the exciting part! We closed the blinds and the door to darken the room. On went the torch and there they were - star shadows!