MERRY....

It's been a while since I posted anything, but I promise I've had good reason... study! Well it's finally over and Christmas has hit me (I think the day study was over was when the whole MERRY arrived), so I am happy to report I have started the crafts. First on the list are cards for the kids classmates. We usually do candy canes, but last year my boy had way too many candy canes in one day so I thought I'd try something else... crayons! and yes, I do know that kids like the candy canes better :) 

I'd been through the crayon box earlier in the year and saved some crayons for future crafts so decided we would test out the 'recycling' and mold them into stars for our cards. 

Find some old crayons

Chop them up into small pieces

Place pieces into OVENPROOF mold and bake at 150 degrees celcius for 5-10mins. I turned the light on and watched until the crayons were just melted so the colours didn't all run together to form an icky brown. Remove from over and set aside to cool completely before turning out of mold. 

 *we filled our mold with multi  coloured bits of crayon but you could do them in layers by colour if you wanted a different effect

Design your card and attach crayon as desired (I had to use sticky tape)... and DONE :)

 Hope preschoolers and year 2 kids like these :)

Mango Meringues.... super easy!

While everyone else is watching Kate and Will's big day, I decided to occupy myself with some experimental baking. *I love weddings but the media coverage over the last few weeks killed it for me so in protest I REFUSE to watch it!*


I had left over egg whites from our dinner of Cannelloni tonight and instantly thought I'd make some meringues, but with a twist. I found this recipe for MERINGUE KISSES COOKIES and adapted it a little to make some mango flavoured meringues as was voted by the rest of the family, even though I wanted strawberry or lemon AND I'd like to add that I think MY flavour choices would have been even yummier!


INGREDIENTS:
4 egg whites
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 packet flavoured jelly of your choice
pinch of salt
pinch of Cream of tartar

METHOD
preheat over to 130 DEGREES CELSIUS
line baking tray with greaseproof paper
in a clean, dry bowl, mix eggs whites and pinch of salt and cream of tartar. Once eggs whites have become glossy and form peaks, start adding sugar and jelly crystals SLOWLY (about a tablespoon at a time). Continue to mix on highest speed, until all the sugar and jelly crytals have dissolved. You can check this by placing a small amount of mix on your fingers and rubbing them together to make sure it is smooth and you cant feel any grains of sugar. Continue to mix until the egg whites and sugar form stiff peaks.

Fill a piping bag with the mixture and pipe 12 small circles onto your baking paper. I chose to pipe into small cup cake patties for something pretty, but the little piped 'kisses' were cute too. If you want, add sprinkles. Put into oven and bake for 25-30mins (less time will result in a chewier meringue as opposed to the longer baked that are crispy).

Serve with some cream and fresh fruit, or scoff down by itself... YUMMMMMMM!

Shiny Eggs

At Spotlight today I decided to grab a few things for an Easter craft I thought of. They came out prettier than I expected :). Be warned though, this activity does take some patience, but if you want to keep the kids busy for a while it's a good one! They will require supervision as there are sharp objects involved, but Miss almost 4 managed to do it without getting hurt - great for fine motor skills.

MATERIALS: styrofoam eggs, sequins, pins (we used Birch- Sequin & Bead Pins). 

INSTRUCTIONS: simply pin the sequins onto the styrofoam eggs until completely covered, or make a pattern... you may want to take a break in between (like my kids did lol).

sequins and pins in our paint tray

Mr 7- starting his pattern

trying to claim mummy's work!

Miss 3 and her efforts :)

our 3 completed eggs- they look prettier in person

EASTER rehatched

I know, I'm slack with my blogging. Parties, invites, felt food, study and my little family keep me so busy these days! BUT I can't NOT post something for Easter... so a re-hashing (rehatching) of our previous years Easter crafts/activities is what we have for you :)

An Easter tree!

Made from twigs we spray painted and stuck into an easter pail then covered in wool. The eggs were bought but you could make them by covering styrofoam eggs with tissue paper.

Easter Cupcakes

My son, who was 3, decoarted these (the icing looks odd I know!) but all you need are a packet of small hard shell easter eggs to decoarte some cupcakes with.

Bunny Ears

Window Decorations

Blank piece of paper, draw patterns onto it using wax candle. Paint over using diluted food colouring and then cut into egg shapes. The are so pretty with the light shining behind them and so simple to make.

String Easter Eggs

This is my favourite and they are on our table again this year, we just revamped them by adding some colourful ribbon bows :)

Blow up a water balloon. Cut lengths of string and place into a bowl of PVA glue. Coat string in glue and wrap around water balloon. Keep wrapping around balloon until you have a complete egg. Leave to dry in the sun and then pop the balloon and you have a lovely string egg to decorate with. We dyed our white string using food colur to get our coloured eggs, but you could purchase coloured string instead.

Egg Biscuits

Kids favourite this tiime. Arnotts Arrowroot biscuits, some icing (we love Betty Crocker Vanilla) and some more icing or tubes of food gels to decorate. Easy, fast, and yummy... and kids go crazy with excitement decorating their easter eggs.

Face-washer Bunnies

Lay face-washer out in a diamond, roll up starting from one corner. Fold in half, then half again and wrap a rubber band around a samll section to create the face. Pull top so that 'ears' stick out. Glue on some googly eyes and a pom pom for a nose, you can also glue a pom pom to the back for a tail. Place a chocolate egg in the back of your bunny and give to a friend HAPPY EASTER!

TECHNO ZOMBIES

Yup, that's who I live with, 2 little Techno Zombies well the husband makes a 3rd but I won't include him here. Santa decided to bring Mr7 as DSiXL for Christmas and I want to slap him now, and ever since I have struggled to control the time spent on it, and time spent fighting over it between my two kids. I swore when school started I would enforce more strict rules, but then we got some new games and it all went out the window!! SO, today I'd had enough when the fighting started again this morning and FINALLY made a "earn it" system. Here it is... and yes, it's very plain and simple this time because I am pressed for time :) It is meant to resemble a DS (made from cardboard and cellophane) and the kids have to earn "techno chips" to earn their time on any technology they'd like to use (for us this includes the DS, PC and ipod). Gold techno chips = 10mins
Silver techno chips= 5mins

RULES: Techno chips can only be given/taken by mum and dad. Cheaters will have ALL chips removed and not be able to earn any until further notice. Techno chips may be used daily or saved for later. Techno chips may be 'purchased' using flowers from the good behaviour chart (1flower=10cents=1min techno time). Any arguing when you are told your time is up will cost you in chips the next day. Chips CAN NOT be cashed before 4pm on school days or before 8am on weekends.

MONSTER PARTY

Mr 7 asked for a monster themed party this year and I happily agreed thinking "great, monster will be easy right?"... hmmm, not so much! I am lucky enough to own a Cricut and he chose 2 designs from it for his invitations so I based everything on that :)

then I decided a matching bunting, cupcake picks and shirt would work well too... I was happy with how they turned out... particularly the matching cupcake picks! The great thing about creating your own party supplies is that you can match all the colours exactly how you want to and the end result is great :) I made a streamer curtain to hide the view of our kitchen, but it added alot of colour too!

our party food consisted of:

monster body parts (marinated chicken pieces), monster boogers (caramel popcorn), monster eyeballs (gumballs), baby monsters (rice crispies), monster pops (cake pops), monster tongues (Fizzers), monster cupcakes, monster bits (fruit kebabs), monster slime (jelly), monster fingers with blood (hotdogs with sauce

I was going to leave our cake as this cupcake tower but OH NO! Mr 7 would not have that... "muuuum, I KNOW you can make a cool monster cake". Yeah, little did he know that for weeks I was searching and trying to think of what to make and was just coming up blank!! I was kind of getting stressed the night before as I started baking, but Mr7 inspired me with "How about a monster with his mouth open and lollies inside?". I'm not sure it was what he pictured, but it was the best I could do with a lack of inspiration and talent in the cake department... and he seemed happy in the morning when he saw it :)

our drinks were held in monster cups that guests had to design themselves... we just pre-stuck the googly eyes on

How about what to do with 15+ little monster guests??! Our house isn't big, but we have a pool, so a swim was a must (and Mr7's birthday falls always on a HOT summer day), and of course we had to have some craft in there so we ordered these great DIY monster magnets and foam beads from Oriental Trading which kept the kids busy for a while.

and we made this pinata *TIP* dont do more than 2 layers of paper mache... our pinata required surgery to help bust him after 10+ minutes of the kids trying LOL

our pass the parcel contained this cute plush toy I found at Target

and we had a stationary set prize for our 'pin the eye on the monster' game

using our beloved Cricut, we made our own party bags, and again found great monster party favours for them at Oriental Trading, plus the usual lollies and stickers

I HAD to use the Cricut to make his birthday card too of course

Mr 7 had a great time and I have to say, so did I... MONSTERS were more fun than I thought ;)

Paper Pinwheel

So here's another thing I keep meaning to try making and finally got to it PAPER PINWHEELS

Start with two bits of paper the same size

next concertina fold them both at even intervals (I did mine at 0.5cm but it requires some patience and I have a paper scorer to help me!)

Join them together securing at the ends with glue or double sided tape, to form a ring

gather the top together like a teepee and press the centre downwards gently, until it 'pops' open to create a wheel

secure by gluing an embellishment in the centre (I chose a large circle) and place a weight in top to hold down while drying- this is important to help the wheel stay flat

once dry add you can use or add more embellishment and then glue to a stick (skewer) and there you go :)

Oh, and see how my pinwheel looks a little odd?? Well I should'nt have tried it out using striped paper... I didn't think the cut it so when folded the lines would match correctly... maybe you can remember because I made the mistake for you first :)

I plan on making mini ones to use as cupcake picks... imagine how cute they'd be!! They'd also look great strung together or on walls for party decorations and the embellishments you could place in the middle are endless... names, words, numbers, letters, pictues, symbols etc... have fun creating!