Holidays are coming, holidays are coming

Even thinking about that advert makes me smile.  I am a complete diet coke and Christmas addict, so its my idea of heaven.  Clearly its June so no coke truck is heading my way and instead we're off on our first family seaside holiday.  Milly is almost falling over herself with excitement and the idea of having her own pool so getting her to do anything other than talk about swimming has been a task and a half.  Unfortunately for fish girl its fathers day and my mums birthday when we are away so she's had to do something not related to water.  For me, the problem was finding something that wasn't baking and wasn't bulky, so we went with the card that doubles as a gift by creating a fridge magnet...

Smile please

You will need:

1 willing child

1 sheet of magnetic paper

1 card blank

A camera

A pc and printer

Assorted embellishments

A way of attaching the magnet to the card - we went for a mini peg

Ask your child what they want to say in their card.  Ideally you're looking for 3 or 4 words that aren't can we go swimming, are we going swimming now or I can swim with one armband.  Clearly that's far too many words.  We settled on I love you daddy.

For each word decide on a picture that represents that word.  You can go for the easy option of holding signs, go for YMCA style cheerleader letters (Give me an I), act out the word or use props.  When I told the small one that I would be taking a picture of her making an I, she grabbed her magnifying glass.  Kids will often think of something much more interesting than us mere parents.

Once you have your pictures, shrink them to about 25% (or they will probably be too big to do anything with unless you have a super duper uber amount of memory), and line them on top of each other photobooth style

Print on to your magnetic paper and cut to size. 

Then you just need to attach to the front of your card and decorate as you wish.  I had some star beads so wrote daddy on the front with a sharpie.  Mill is very excited about reading at the moment so this appealed to her.  

We've also gone for a useful home made gift.  The hippy in me is rather in to upcycling as those who follow me on pinterest will know.  Unfortunately the things I find that look great would require me actually buying the products brand new to upcycle, which probably defeats the point of this exercise (hanging monkeys bowl I'm looking at you).  Since I have zero ability to let go of the small ones baby clothes I decided to do something useful with those.

When is a dress not a dress?

Now, I made a bit of a faff of this I admit, so there will be a round two with real instructions.  But here is the theory...

You will need:

2 / 3 different fabrics - I used a pair of the small ones jeans and her old dress

A sewing machine and cotton

Fabric paint (I used dylon 3D)

Dressmakers carbon paper

Snap fastening or velcro

Fabric 1 (outside main colour) : 6 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2), 3 inch x 2 1/2 inch square 

Fabric 2 (outside border colour ) : 2 1/4 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2), 3 inch x 2 1/2 inch square

Fabric 2 or 3 (lining) : 8 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2)

hem width : 1/4 inch

 

Sew together the two small squares of fabric.  Trim the bottom corners and turn the correct way around.  This will form our fastening.

Sew each of the three types of fabric together.  The fastening should be sewn in place so it sits on the outside of the case and flaps down.

If you want to make a padded case, you will need a piece of fusible bonding or lining fabric and place behind the lining fabric.

Once you have two long pieces of the case place face together and sew around 3 edges, leaving the top lining edge open.  Iron the hemmed edges and turn the right way around . Sew the lining edge. 

Iron the top edge of the case so the lining sits correctly and add the fastening to the edge of the fastening square so the glasses are secure.

Once you have all of that you can decorate it (or not - the next one I make will be for me and wont have kiddy pictures on it).  I asked the small one to draw a picture of daddy which I then transferred on to the fabric with the carbon paper and painted over.

Holidays really are coming!!!

The daddy gift array part 3

This is my favourite one, the one that brought a tear.

Milly has not always known everything.  There was a time that we would spend many a wet morning holding our very own question time in the living room.  Why is daddy going to work?  Why isnt daddy a lady? Why hasn't that man got any clothes on (yes strange man in the allotments behind our house, we can see you).  From this came the idea of writing down some of the Millyfacts she developed and turning them in to some sort of gift for his lordship.

Of course this bizarre turnaround where I asked the questions led to a complete breakdown in communications so I had to do a bit of reverse psychology and slowly it happened.

"Milly, I don't think you know what daddys favourite colour is"

Ask your child to talk about your partner and write everything down.  You might need to prompt a little bit but its good language practice - what does daddy look like?  What do you like to do with daddy?  You know the drill.

After you have enough dirt on your partner ask your child to draw a picture of them in any setting that takes their fancy.  Obviously the detailing of this is entirely dependent on their age, but simple line drawings work just as well as stunning works of art.

Scan or take a picture of the drawing - anything that gets it on a computer and open in GIMP (you will notice that I use this rather a lot).  Decide on 3 or 4 colours that you want to use and then type out each of the phrases and position them around the drawing.

Print on to photo paper and frame.

We left out the bit about daddy not being a lady.

The daddy gift array part 2

There are things that Milly knows to be FACT, and then there are things I know to be FACT:

1. his lordship likes beer;
2. he adores the small one.

So, it follows that I should combine the two in some way for fathers day and the idea of the milford brewery was born.

Its time for the mums to get crafty, or how to make a gift for dads for under a tenner. 

For this, you will need a good picture of your child (head shots are good), some image manipulation software (I use GIMP - its excellent and available to download) and a vistaprint account.

Remove the background of the image using whatever software you have.  If you're unsure of how to do this there are likely to be tutorials if you google.  Otherwise, try getting your child to stand in front of a white wall and take the picture.

Scurry over to vistaprint (or any printing company you wish you use that happen to like to email free offers) and select the wine label with photo upload option.  There will be a multitude of backgrounds and text you can use so have a bit of a play until you have something you're happy with.  Ours came in a packet of 4.

If you're over 18 buy large bottles of beer or a bottle of wine.  Under 18, and you get to buy something without alcohol.  If its in a bottle then it should be fine (daddys sauce perhaps). If you have time, soak off the labels or if you're lazy like me, simply replace the beer label with your own and taaa-daaaaaa one gift for daddy. 

Lets bring in the children

Card time.  Children and finger painting - its like cheese and onion, David and Victoria, lego and bare feet.  But this is no ordinary finger painting, this is xTremE finger painting (I'm so down with the kids).  Ok, its just finger prints made to look like stuff.

For each family member print a single finger on to the paper.  If you want to turn this in to a learning experience discuss heights, who is the tallest, who is next and so on and then translate that to the size of their fingers.  In our case Daddy was her thumb, I was her ring finger, Milly was her little finger and the dog was a bit of a splodge.  In practice it doesnt work as well as the theory since kids fingers arent massively different in size, but its something for them to think about instead of running hand first on to the fabric sofa.

Then all you need to do is add some features with a black pen and turn the fingers in to people, and you have your card topper ready to go.

2 years in college and this could be my best work.

The daddy gift array part 1

In my head I see that programmatically.  In three languages.  Geek.

One of the benefits of Mummy and Milly day is the ability to make home made gifts for his lordship (thats not an insult incidentally, I bought him one of those title in an envelope gift packs several years back).  Unfortunately one of the downsides to having a threenager is their apparent inability to keep anything a secret as our recent make daddy an easter card craft day went.  I think that secret lasted a good ten minutes.

"Daddy, we have made you a card".
"Milly, its a secret"
"BUT I WANT TO TELL DADDY"
*sigh*

His birthday is in a couple of weeks so its thinking cap on time only with the added pressure of him not finding out in less time than it takes the glue to dry.  Of course, he's reading this so no hints on here darling.


This time last year, we made this...

The container is from John Lewis, but anything airtight would do.  Then we had great fun sticking on foam letters and sticky gems from hobbycraft.  Of course, this makes it completely impractical since you can't wash it but a good wipe out will do the trick.  Ours is still going strong a year later.

Daddys its good to share biscuits

175g plain flour 

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

100g sugar

1 tsp unsweetened cocoa 

125g butter (or whatever fat you want to use)

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Family sized bag of m&ms 

Hide the m&m's.  This could be the most important stage of the entire process.  Then preheat the oven.  Again this is going to be for a fan oven, but I went for 160.

Sift together all the dry ingredients.  We have a set of digital scales and its great for learning numbers and the concept of greater than and less than.

Hand your child the egg and a whisk.  Depending on their age they might need a bit of help with cracking it, and you on stand by to fish out all the bits of shell.  Let them get on with whisking whilst you cream together the butter and sugar.  Pour in the egg and vanilla, and mix.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Beat the dry ingredients in to the wet a little at a time.  If you find its too runny add a little more flour.  You dont want something in between a frijj shake and playdoh.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Discuss what makes something a half and roughly divide the mix in to two bowls.  Add the cocoa powder in to one and mix through.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Spoon a little of the mixture on to a baking sheet.  These things expand more than you expect so leave some room if you're in charge or accept that you're going to have a giant mutated cookie explosion if you aren't.  Each bowl should make about 8 cookies.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Squash the cookie down a little bit and introduce the m&ms.  Yes, you can eat the brown ones.  Add 4 or 5 sweets in to each cookie and press down firmly.  For younger children its nice to have them count everything out.

Bake for about 15 minutes. 

It is now ok to lick the spoon.

And not a square bracket to be seen.  Geek out.