Our Weekend Box - what was inside

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to get a code for a free Weekend Box!

 Weekend Box is a new fortnightly creative activity box for young children aged 4 - 6 years old. My little girl is only 3 but she still had fun doing the various activities with mummy's help.

There are 4 weekend box club characters, which you can see in the photo above - Wooster, Hattie, Oswald and Sammy. Each of them have different themed activities.


Here's what was inside our free weekend box:

It was an exciting thing for G to receive through the post and upon opening it there were exciting little parcels to be unwrapped. A different colour for each themed activity/character.

• Green for Hattie 
• Red for Wooster 
• Yellow for Oswald 
• Blue for Sammy

 Underneath the parcels there was a piece of A4 red card, a kite template, a board game board drawn out on a piece of A5 card, four instruction cards, colour coded to go with the little parcels, a small envelope with a strip of 4 small stickers and one larger sticker and a poster.


There was also a brochure in the weekend box advertising natural clothing.


There are four activities for your child to do and you can obviously spread these out during the weekend or do over a couple of weekends, or during the holidays.


Here are the activities we received:



Kite Project 

This was the green packet, Hattie the Hedgehogs activity, containing the thread, a wooden peg and 2 straws.
The Kite Template obviously was also for this activity!

All you needed to provide yourself for this was a plastic bag and sellotape. A brightly coloured one is a preferable choice to make it look nicer.

G was able to help cut out the template, help draw round it and help cut out the kite. She also helped position and stick on the straws (one of which i had to replace as she cut one of them up into pieces :) ) and then mummy had to take over and do the fiddly bit with the thread.
 Once finished G loved playing with this and spent ages running round with it just inside the house!






Popcorn 'Cupcakes'

This was the red packet, Wooster the rabbits activity. It contained a little bag of spice mix and a bag of popcorn kernels. We needed to provide a little bit of icing sugar and honey and optional dried fruit.

G doesn't like popcorn herself but really enjoyed seeing the popcorn pop. It's something she's never witnessed before and she found it funny and exciting.

Besides needing an adults help with the popcorn because of the danger of a cooker, this activity was straight forward.

Peg Butterflies

This was the blue packet and Sammy the Squirrels activity. It contained 2 wooden pegs, 2 sparkly pipe cleaners and some sticky tabs. The red card was to use in this activity.

You had to draw out the shape of two butterflies on the card, cut them out, decorate and stick on & decorate the pegs for bodies and attach the pipe cleaners for antennae.

This is another simple activity and good to do mostly by themselves if older than G. She did really well with cutting and was able to stick the pegs by herself. She did all the decorating and had a go at trying to attach the pipe cleaners herself. She curled them up by herself on one of the butterflies.








Boardgame

This was the yellow parcel, Oswalds activity and contained a tiny dice and 4 tiny buttons for counters.
 I thought this was ok for just 2 children or a parent and child to play but considering the small piece of card and tiny dice and tiny buttons it would have been much too fiddly in my opinion for 4 people, especially children to play.

There was the option to flip the paper board over and add your own board game options to the board on the other side which left blank spaces to be written in.
Although I though this wasn't the best out of the four parcels I thought it was great for inspiration to think up and create your own board game. It reminded me of when I was younger and made and amazing rain forest game with my best friend at the time.


The poster included in the box was to collect your stickers from each weekend box. There is one included in each box you receive and after collecting 5 you send in your poster and get a special surprise in your next weekend box.
The strip of smaller stickers included were to place on the instruction cards after completing each activity which was a nice touch, especially as all young children love stickers. Well I know mine does! Your child can also colour in the back of the box when they've finished all their activities, to keep as a certificate.

Weekend boxes come at a usual price of £7.50 a fortnight and there is an option to pause your boxes for one or two months. If you'd like to try one out for FREE you can use my code: ADELE17286
Or you can use my link here. You can then invite your friends and get 50% off your next box!

I think weekend box is a brilliant idea if you are on a comfortable income and need some inspiration on what to do with your children in your spare time together. I think they would be particularly useful during wet weather or long holidays. If you don't get stuck for ideas they could also just be a helping hand with some fun activities and saving you time sending the materials you need straight to your door.
It's also great to give your child a surprise through the post every now and then!


Let me know what you think if you try them out and what activities you receive!

What was in our Free Toucan Craft Box

A couple of weeks ago we were lucky enough to get a code from a friend to enable us to receive a free petite craft box from Toucan Box! Toucan box send out the required materials for a craft project to do with your child to save you the time of finding and getting the materials yourself and having to come up with idea's.
They are suitable for ages 3-8, have age appropriate projects and follow different themes. The boxes come in three sizes, petite, grande and Super.
Your free box will be a petite box which usually cost £3.95 (plus approx 82p postage) but you can upgrade to Grande for an extra £6. Grande are £9.95 a box (not inc postage) and you can add extra materials for a sibling for £4.95. Super are £16.95 (not inc postage) and again you can add materials for a sibling which is £9.95 for this box.

We received our box towards the end of October so appropriately it was Halloween themed and the project was a Halloween Lantern. The box was addressed to G personally which was a nice touch.

Here is what was inside our box:

• sheet of orange tissue paper
• sheet of green card
• sheet of orange card
• square of black craft foam
• a small glue stick
• a green pipe cleaner
• a purple glow stick
• a lolly
• a Sticker for a chart*

G was especially pleased with the lolly and intrigued by the glow stick!

The Lantern was straight forward to make but obviously with G only being 3 I had to assist her. She loves a bit of gluing and sticking so she had no problem with those parts and she did some of the cutting and then mummy took over.
She also decided what shapes to have for the face so our face was our own original design by G.

Here is the finished lantern below:

We enjoyed our Toucan box project and had some left over materials but put in G's craft supplies. It was something exciting to get in the post and I think these boxes are great for busy parents who might not have the time to sort out a craft project but would still love to do one with their child and for those with older children they could let them get on with it themselves. We will be getting a second box due to a discount and I would consider keeping on with the petite boxes once on a better income. It is great they have different options to suit different budgets. 

If you would like to try a Toucan Box for free you can type in my name (Adele Baxter) at the check out or follow this link. If you sign up you can then refer your own friends to receive 50% off your next Toucan box.

Let me know if any of you do and what project you receive!

A Halloween Scene and My Top 5 Spooky Crafts 2014

I love Halloween and I love crafts, especially one's that G can join in with, so after having a little look around a few blogs and being inspired I thought we'd try a few out. I've listed my top 5 simple Halloween activities that you can do with your child.
I also am sharing my own crafting activity of making a Halloween scene.



Mini Glitter Pumpkins

I found this great simple Halloween craft idea from the brilliant Hodgepodgecraft blog. Great to do with even really young children and you only need a couple of things to do it. I found the mini pumpkins in a large Sainsburys store and a couple of tubes of acrylic paint in the pound shop. Gude who writes the blog got hers from The Works which I'll be checking out as our paint didn't coat the pumpkin so well.
G had a quick go at doing one whilst nana was round at the weekend. I think she'll be giving it a second coat and doing the second one next week







Hanging Spiders

These are from Life As We Know It and look like a fun make. I know G would love playing with them after. I've struggled getting hold of the polystyrene balls and black pipe cleaners but I figure if I manage to get hold of the balls I can substitute for sparkly silver pipe cleaners instead.


Jack Skeleton Apples

These are from Wonkywonderful blog (click the link) and look AMAZING! I can't wait to try them out. I'll be getting myself a couple of clocks of white chocolate, some fresh apples and some black icing next week!


Hobbycraft Foam Clay Cat Set:

This little kit is no longer on their site anymore but you can probably find it in your local store like I did. It's a lovely little set and cost me £1. It makes 2 small cats. I've never used foam clay before, it's odd stuff! G enjoyed this but it was more fiddly than I had anticipated so I had to help more than I would have liked to. I love to make things but obviously this activity was intended for her and therefore more she does the more enjoyable it is for both of us.

They have a few other little Halloween craft kids at the £1 to £2 price range. I also love their papier mache pumpkin for decopatching/decorating - great as a decoration/center piece and/or a great place to hide Halloween goodies. I'd love to get their scrape away Halloween decorations kit, these are easy and fun for 3 years plus, perfect for G to do single handedly (I will be sat watching of course) and they are only £2.


Pumpkin Carving:

A wonderfully (or in my case averagely) carved pumpkin....isn't this the best bit about Halloween? Well along side the dressing up! I think I'll be attempting a Jack Skeleton one as I'm not sure how I'd go with any more complicated unless I was on my own for a few hours, which is not going to happen. I love looking at designs on Google images.


Our Halloween Scene: 


For our Halloween scene we used:

• A large sheet of black card from Hobbycraft
• A few sheets of craft foam in white, black, purple and white - depending on the shop the pound shop sometimes do packs of craft foam.
• A packet of googlie eyes
• PVA glue
• A couple of pipe cleaners
• A black marker pen
• Some black fabric (or could just use craft foam)
• Glitter
• Some coloured paper (we used brown to do the tree)
• Scissors

It depends on the age of the child how much you'll need to help with this. G is only 3 so I made most of the characters and she put the glue on and stuck them (apart from the tree which was a bit fiddly) wherever she liked. She made her own bat almost completely by herself which she was very happy with and even gave it a dress out of some scraps of paper we had left. She did the glittery bits and some of the cutting out, taking the big edges off and I did the more intricate bits. I'll be using the left over scraps of paper and foam with G next week along with some googlie eyes so she can come up with some more of her own creations.

My annual cake decorating

So above are some photo's of some recent cake making and decorating attempts over the past couple of years. Cake decorating is something I have a big interest in and if I had more money and time I would love to practice and get good at it! As it stands I usually only ever attempt it once a year for G's or occasionally other people's birthdays. I'd love to go to classes,watch lots of youtube video's, build up a collection of tools, to learn and practice different skills! I can only hope that it will become possible at some point in the future.

For G's birthday cake this year I took inspiration off a wonderful local cake decorator the princess and the cupcake. Of course mine turned out nothing like hers and I designed it slightly differently as well. The making of it ended up a bit of a disaster....the wrong size cake tins, one of the layers not coming out of the tin right meaning it was so bumpy and uneven and rolling the icing too thin when stressed. 

I was making it in extremely limited time whilst almost single handedly trying to organise G's 3rd birthday party. G got so tired the day before the party she ended up napping during the day for a short while, which she's not done since she was 2 and then waking up after and screaming for an hour. The icing being too thin meant it broke open in several places when fitting it on. Nightmare! Everything went wrong and it didn't turn out quite like I wanted! However it could have been worse G liked it which is the main thing. She kept asking for another one for week's afterwards.

The above mentioned cake was a Frozen cake and I used the Craft company for most of my supplies. Luckily for me they were offering free delivery at the time. I brought my first set of plunge cutters off eBay to do the snowflakes and the cake toppers off Amazon. E Bay and Amazon have great deals of cutters and plunge cutters so I suggest always checking there first if you need/want any.

My cake for G's second birthday went quite well except for the difficulty of doing rainbow like layers when you only have one cake tin of the same size! I also didn't have a cake leveller yet that year, but besides that it still turned out quite smooth and was the least stressful out of the three.

The first time I attempted decorating a cake using fondant icing was for her first birthday. There was a lot I had no idea about and on top of that I was in the middle of an awful time in my life and still that day whilst making I had her father causing me trouble and a huge amount of emotional trauma. The fact I got a cake and a party done was a miracle! 

Despite how stressful I found it this year I'd still do it again. It would be much easier if I could afford enough ingredients and time to have a practice run through and have someone to mind G for a bit whilst I actually did the fondant icing parts! A normal/good sized kitchen would be nice too! That add's on to my massive wish list that includes having a craft room and a playroom. I really should start playing the lottery!

Despite the stress I still enjoy it. I like to create things and I have loads of idea's and different tools I'd like to try out.

Have you tried your hand at sugar craft? Or have you had any cake disasters?

Bad angle - there were more than 3 people at her party!!

No cook vanilla scented purple glitter playdough

If like me you sometimes get the playdough out and find it's gone a bit hard or you fancy making the world of playdough a bit more exciting you can try and make your own. Whilst I can't pretend I enjoy the messy side of baking and being crafty with a baby/toddler/prechooler, I do love being creative and finding new things for G to discover and do. (You know you're a mum when you find yourself unintentionally quoting CBeebies)!

There are loads of simple recipes out there on the web but like my salt dough recipe I thought I'd do this one in grams. I'm always a bit frustrated at having to convert to grams, ml's if I follow one on the internet with not having cup measure's for the kitchen. The amounts never turn out quite right and I end up with the dough being too wet. One day I'll remember to get myself a set when I actually have some spare pennies!


Recipe:

• 250g plain flour
• 1 tsp glycerin*
• 1 tbsp oil
• 300g Salt
• 200 ml boiling water
• 1 tbsp cream of tartar
• Glitter*
• Vanilla essence*
• Sugarflair Gel Colour of choice*

* These are optional ingredients and can be varied.

1. We mixed the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. 
2. We then added our chosen colour of glitter to the mix.
3. We then added the oil and the vanilla essence.
4. After that I took over from my little girl. I added a small amount of gel colour to the hot water and mixed until dispersed. I then added the hot water to the dry ingredients, stirring in bit by bit.
5. I then with careful supervision let my little girl start stirring again when the dough had begun to form. We then added the glycerin. 

If your playdough seems a bit wet/too sticky just add more flour until you feel it's right.
You can choose to add the gel colours afterwards and kneed them into the dough. This makes it much easier if you want to make multiple colours of dough.

What is great about making your own dough is that you can vary the additions to it to suit you.
I add glycerin now when I make dough after reading a great tip online about it making the dough shiny. We added glitter as we love glitter! My little girl chose which gel to use and we used vanilla as that's what we had in. It would have been nice to do a lavender scented one this time to match the colour she chose. You could use almond, lemon, rose, orange, lavender, herbs, spices, the list goes on.

There are many ways to play with dough. We usually use a big box of cutters, some playdoh tools and mummy's silicone cupcake cases. This time we got out some candles and other bits for a different sensory experience. G loved sticking things in the dough instead of rolling out and cutting or rolling into balls.

I've heard of people making dough using conditioner or bubble bath. We've got some cornflour in now so that will most likely feature in our next messy kitchen experience!

My top picks from the shops for Halloween

I love Halloween and although I don't always get to dress up and do something special for it I still love seeing all the Halloween themed stock come out in the shops and having a browse.
Here are some of my favourite buy's I've spotted this year. If I'd had the money I'd buy them all.




Aldi - Signs £1.49. As I mentioned in my autumn post, I thought I'd update my very small Halloween stock and get one of these fab signs. We have the 'turn back' sign pictured above.

Also in Aldi were these amazing doorbells. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it gave me a shock when I pressed it and a nasty spider or other design of tongue shot out their mouths.
The shopkeeper couldn't confirm the price of these for me at the time. I might be tempted back next week to get one. I think they'd be great for giving trick or treaters a scare. Does it make me evil finding it funny to give them a scare? That's what they're coming for right?!

PoundLand have some great bits and bobs for Halloween. I got a pack of green and black balloons (as G loves her balloons - what toddler/preschooler doesn't!), a green halloween bowl, this fab bunting
and a tacky looking light up green spider which I knew G would love.

Looking on their online site I've also spotted this fab door mat which they didn't seem to have instore. They might well do in a store near you though.

I am quite a fan, of what others probably would find annoying, halloween novelty musical toys - I do have a little collection of my own. In Sainsburys earlier in the week I found this impressive musical 'rising witch' which retails at £15. Sadly I don't have that amount of money to spend on a novelty item otherwise I would have snapped it up.
I also loved the candy bowl with a snapping skeleton, which I think was £12 in Sainsburys but also found by looking online that B&M have it too for £9.99. Again great for scaring kids ha!
Sainsburys are also selling MONSTER pumpkins....they really are huge!!
 B&M also have a variety of halloween goblets on sale for 4 for £3. The designs I liked aren't on their website so I'll update this post when I've managed to get a snapshot.*







After a brief browse in H&B today (actually looking for hairdye so I'm not the one scaring the kids with how bad my hair looks) I spotted some great flat tinsel like hanging pumpkin decorations, I think for about 69p which I'd like a couple of. I also like their cute little ghost outfit. Their website doesn't seem to have any of this years halloween stock on currently so I'll have to try and get some photo's and update this post over the weekend.

I found this gorgeous little top in the girls clothing section at Asda for £4. I'd actually love this in adult size. I'll probably have G in this for the rest of October.

Morrisons also has some great Peppa Pig long sleeved tops in, a pink one with Peppa &Suzy as witches with plenty of bats and an orange one with George dressed as a Mummy. These are £5 each.

I also love Tesco's baby halloween clothing range, particularly the orange and black selection including a lovely orange 'Happy Little Pumpkin' bib and lovely little pumpkin booties!
Tesco also have some great little Halloween craft packs starting from £1, including a pompom spider.
Also for once a supermarkets claims for selling huge pumpkins are true. I hauled one back today for £2 and I'm looking forward to searching for some great carving inspriation.

£6

Finally Hobbycraft is worth a visit, especially if you're not on a tight budget. They have some lovely bits and bobs and craft sets, all quite good prices but you could get really carried away! We chose the foam clay cat set pictured below. I loved the papier mache witches hat and pumpkin, they would be great to do in some fab decopatch papers or whatever decoration you or your little one choose. I also loved their little witch and pumpkin lanterns at £3 each. I was disappointed however to find their pack of 3 little polystyrene balls, which I went in for (for spider making) was the same price as their big variety pack in the Christmas section.
I also found the most amazing Christmas project in there of which i did spend a good deal of time staring at, dreaming away......but that's another season and another post!

*The hardship of not having a working smartphone! To be updated.

Autumn's Here

Yesterday* I felt it was the right day to post this. The first cold day, the first day I'd properly noticed the leaves falling down from the tree's, the first day it properly felt like Autumn.....but then I was knackered, kept myself away from the internet and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow!

Today it was warm and sunny again. So bizarre in October but the crisp cold weather came back this evening. Although I hate to be cold and it makes it so much harder to get out of bed, this time of year doesn't feel right without it. It's a novelty at the moment and you can't get that festive feeling without the dropping temperature and the dark evenings for the up coming celebrations of Halloween, Bonfire night and then of course Christmas which is creeping up at an alarming rate!

not inc yesterdays leaf collection

We've been digging out the hats, gloves and scarfs today (to see what still fits G) and yesterday collected some fallen leaves (they're finally changing colour!) to add to our little Autumn collection of conkers and fir cones. Last year we made a picture with G's leaf collection (with mummy's help) which you can see at the top of the page. (As you can see I've been having a bit of a play with pic monkey...this one's turned out a bit like a 3 year old's effort...I got a bit carried away with the effects).

This evening we started threading some conkers as G decided she wanted to make a necklace out of them. Mummy did not find this autumn activity as enjoyable as she'd anticipated ....why is string so hard to thread through them?! I actually gave up after 3 and postponed the conker necklace making until tomorrow when I'll hopefully have renewed patience. Surely threading some string through a conker is a skill all mum's naturally possess? I don't remember my mum getting frustrated about it. There must be a trick I'm missing. A giant needle would help!
Tomorrow we'll hopefully be seeing friends and later I'll get the glue out for G to get creative with her leaves. I'm going to leave her to it this time to see what she comes up with.




After watching one of Brummymummyof2's youtube clips I trekked up to Aldi to have a look at their Halloween stock whilst out on the weekly dreaded grocery shop. We came back with this ->
I'm not sure if it will encourage trick or treaters or put them off! :)



I can't wait to carve a pumpkin with G, make some halloween gingerbread biscuits and get her all dressed up. We got all mummy's old musical Halloween toys out of the cupboard yesterday. One she's still scared of, a couple she's entertained by, one broken one that was one of the only things that settled her as a baby and another, a skeleton that dances to Ricky Martin's Livin La Vida Loca with flashing lights, that she loves! I came back in the room to find her singing and dancing to it. Too cute!
This year I'd love to try out some fancy Pumpkin carvings that you see online, or these days on Pinterest, but realistically it will just be the usual scary face.

I'm also looking forward to digging out G's bright pink ear defenders for Bonfire night and making some chocolate apples! I love fireworks, although the night would be best if spent with a lot of friends or family which we haven't had the chance to do for a while.


I love all these things about Autumn. The frenzied build up to Christmas and increasing energy bills can be stressful when funds are so tight but there is still a lot to look foward too.

What do you enjoy most about Autumn? Or are you not a fan?

*Written 5/10/14

Salt Dough - not just for Christmas

Suffering from exhaustion today* and needing to opt for a day in I decided it would be good to do some simple crafty activities with G.
After breakfast we finished off one of her birthday presents - a glitter by numbers if you can call it that. Like sand art where you peel off paper with numbers on which correspond to a certain colour of glitter. The underlying surface is adhesive allowing the glitter to stick and create the picture.

That didn't take long as we'd already done the majority so I needed something else entertaining but simple so opted for doing some salt dough.

Mixing with uncle Matt

The first time I ever made salt dough with G was the festive season. I made a batch to make Christmas decorations with before her second Christmas when she was just 16 months.
She had great fun getting stuck in!





We made it a family thing and my brother, sister and niece came round and all made some salt dough and cut it into festive shapes. I pre coloured some of our dough and a couple of days later we painted them together. G had fun splodging the paint on and I finished the uncovered areas and we added extra decorations of glitter, decorative balls (again from my cake decorating supplies) and baby pasta left over from a sensory session. I added the glue on some of them as you can tell and let G then sprinkle (read chuck) the glitter on.

Most people would probably only think to do it at Christmas time but there's really no reason why you can't do it anytime of year.











I've made it a with her a couple more times since then and with being older she was able to sit and decorate them by herself.
If painting though I would recommend not using watery paints as it can make the shapes soggy and result in all the hard (but fun) work being chucked in the bin!











Today we used some of mummy's special gel colours that I normally use for cake decorating.

Here is the recipe that we followed:

225g Plain flour
250g Salt
100ml Water

 Gel colour of choice (optional)

I've given the measurements in grams as unlike the majority of baking lovers I don't have cup measurements and it annoys me I can never find recipes for these kind of things in grams! So for anyone else who has that awful dilemma ha, I hope this helps.




Only a very small amount of the gel colours are needed as they are very strong. We added them to the water before it was added to the rest of the mixture.
You can also use liquid food colouring if you prefer but you'll need a lot more and the colours won't come out as strong.


You can use whatever cutters you like. This time we used a mixture of G's playdoh cutters, some cookie cutters, one of my sugar craft plunge cutters and we also just rolled up shapes by hand.
When finished with the fun part we placed all the shapes onto a baking tray and baked for 2 -3 hours at 100oc.

Here is the batch we made today, we've yet to decorate them.

When baked and fully cooled down you can decorate however you/your children like or just leave plain and thread wool/ribbon/thread through pre-made holes and use where ever you see fit.
We like to paint ours and add bits and bobs as shown above. It's a fun crafty activity and can also be a thoughtful and cheap option for a gift or you could perhaps use them for gift tags.


What would you and your children create with salt dough?

*written on 29/09/2014