Upcycling wallpaper roll ends for childrens craft projects

Meet the upcycled wallpaper people !!!

  A really simple fun children's craft project using  wallpaper roll ends, magazines buttons all things we keep thinking they may come in handy someday. Well my someday came today when faced with a toddler who was needing entertaining and fast!

The back of wall paper is great if you need large pieces of sturdy paper as i did for this project and is a great way of saving money  and upcycling.

Then all you need to do is using a crayon draw round your little one in various funny poses. While your cutting round the outline get them tearing up various wallpaper roll ends and old magazines. E loved this as for once was getting praise for ripping things to shreds and making a mess.


We then used children's scissors and craft glue to make clothing for our new friends. My button box was raided for eyes but E loved the buttons so much most friends have eyes in their knees top of their heads and all sorts.

 I often wish i had eyes in the back of my head and ten more pairs of hands but that's a whole different story.


 The upcycled wallpaper friends are now life size people walking up our stairs and brought a smile to our faces, and the strangest look from the postman when he dropped off a parcel.

Free children's craft project a great way to recycle those i will keep it just in case items.

Another use for wallpaper roll ends is pass the parcel wrapping paper as i found while party planning continued and i realised i had forgotten to stock up on gift wrap. Well there can only so many brain cells remaining after childbirth and so much multitasking a  women can do !!
                                                

Thought of the day.................  Re purposing items is so much fun and saves the day in party planning!!


  

Ben and Holly's Little kingdom, Gaston birthday cake and little kingdom cupcakes

My little Elliott turns 3 this weekend and loves  Ben and Holly's little kingdom, he wanted a Ben and Holly party to celebrate with his friends.  I put on my thinking cap  and we had a fun afternoon designing and making cakes.

 We finally agreed on a Gaston the ladybird birthday cake surrounded by  Elf and fairy cakes.  Although baking is not my usual type of creativity here's how we got on..........

 Once again  my trusty multi purpose shower curtain got an outing, this time as a table cloth to make clean up a bit easier ! E loved helping out and being involved in his party preparations, first of all we made cupcakes for the fairy's and elves. While the cup cakes were cooking we set to work on making Gaston the ladybird.

How to make Gaston.......

         We used two oval baking trays and filled with basic sponge cake mixture to make an oval ladybird shape.

          Once the cakes had cooled  we made butter icing and jam filling and put the two cakes together one on top the other.

          Using pre packed  red icing Elliott rolled out enough icing to cover the whole cake. I then put the icing on the cake and trimmed off  the excess leaving an uncovered area of cake for Gaston's head.

 

      

E then helped to roll out the black icing for Gastons head which joined next to the red icing to cove the whole cake. I covered the join and neatened up the edges using strips of rolled icing. Every ladybird needs spots so using a play doh cutter we cut out circles of black icing and dotted them all over and gently used the rolloing pin over the whole cake the smooth out the joins.

 Gastons face was made using 2 small balls of icing with white chocolate buttons inside for the eyes and a little red icing for his mouth and cheeks and licorice for his antennas.

     We then decorated the cupcakes using ricepaper cake toppers of all the Ben and hollys little kingdom charactors and put them round the edge of gaston.

   There were 2 fairy cakes that would not fit on the board so we did a little bit of quality control tasting and were really pleased with our efforts.

I love to hear from you, comments make my day so feel free to link up below with your comments and ideas.xx

   Thought of the day.............   Try something new everyday you may suprise yourself !

   

  

Free fun outside in the sun

I'm a real fan of finding new uses for items and finding new things to do with the children. So this was a great afternoon as it checked all those boxes and a bonus of  enjoying the last few rays of summer at the same time.

Toddler painting in doors usually results in a weeks worth of clearing up and  walls being re painted usually brown my little ones favorite mix it all up colour!

 So it was great to get out doors and create some really big messy art.  I however am quite fond of my decking remaining brown so we brought out the trusty old shower curtain as a large painting mat. Keeping in the re purposing theme we used left over wall paper as big sheets of paper.

Stones to holding the paper down also got painted s so i ended up with a lovely little paper weight as an added bonus.

Being outside E could be really free and messy, we did a large tree and he finger painted leaves. I helped him with masking tape to make a star he painted all over and then we peeled away to make a flag. We did splash paint,  potatoe printing and then finally foot printing .

We had a lovely afternoon

Easy clean up free craft fun, yes really!!

Washing line art gallery looked so pretty.

We let the pictures dry while E enjoyed a nice bath and the trusty shower curtain had a spin in the washing machine ready for its next non shower related use.

A lovely afternoon spending quality time with my little one  and spending no money doing something different.

Thought of the day .............The best things in life really are free.

Easy trustfund top up

  My little boy is obsessed with 1p and 2p coins he finds them everywhere like a little magpie and he usually has around 10p in his pocket everyday.

He has money money boxes   everywhere and we just keep adding to his collecting by putting in the annoying coins that fill your purse and pockets.

 Soon my mum started helping then my husband put a pot on his desk at work and others started to
add to it as it appears everyone hates these little coins in their purses and pockets.

                                                              Buckets of money!

 Finally today got round to counting up his stash today and was amazed to find £48 for under a years collecting a nice amount to add to his trust fund.

 We also manage to get him 12% interest a year by putting it in a high interest Halifax child account that pays out once a year, i then move it once interest added into his trust fund and get the interest again from this account by adding it just before his birthday.

 It really is money you wont miss and  will be a nice amount extra in the trust fund for university or something.

Thought of the day.......... So it really is true the pennies do add up x

lucky dip list!

I have just found the best way to work through the to do list.
 Sadly i still dont have the answer to finding more hours in the day but i have found a fun way of getting jobs off the list. The to do list was huge and many of the jobs were equally impotant and equally been put off for far too long and i did not know where to start literally so............

i wrote the long long long list which in its self was a relief  i then cut the list up added a few nice things to it such as long bath and pedicure!! Put all the little strips in a bag and did a lucky dip

could not believe my luck to pull out pedicure but feeling guilty i picked again and promised that if i did the next pick i would then treat myself to pedicure. I am now very pleased to report i have finally got a buisness facebook page set up and very lovely toes. Both things have been to off far to long and really did not take long when looked at on their own instead of  as a mountain of jobs.

 I nearly wavered when i was not 100% happy with photos then remembered the 80% rule and reminded myself that 80% happy was a great start and was better than not starting at all.

A recommended fun way to work through the id rather not  do list if like mine its got tooooooooooo long .


Thought of the day ................ One little baby step is a step in the right direction and one step leads to another.


Photo by flickr http://www.flickr.com/people/thinkpublic/