Hearty Valentine's crafts

Heart-shaped activities are something that my kids absolutely adore, and they start making them as soon as we undecorate the Christmas tree. In one of the previous posts you  have already seen some of our hearty crafts, and this year we have a few completely new ones:

1. Simple Valentine's garland

This cheerful heart-shaped garland was made ​​in the same way as the one with Easter eggs. We cut out the cardboard hearts, and glued colorful pieces of collage paper on them:

 When everything was dry, it looked like this:

In the end we hung the hearts on a decorative ribbon and had a colorful decoration for The Hearty  day, as my girls call the Valentine's day:

2. Pen decorations

In a post about pipe cleaners' crafts, you have already seen how easily they are shaped into a heart, so we put them on different pens as a decoration:

3. Heart-shaped wax crayons

I won't pretend this is my idea, since it's been spreading along Pinterest way back before I joined it.

We have collected the remains of wax crayons and sorted them in a silicone mold which we then heated in a microwave oven, at the strongest temperature for about 8 minutes.

It was quite hot when it was over, so we left it to cool before removing from the mold:

This is how they looked like on the bottom side:

The Older quickly noticed that the hearts lined up in this way really remind her of trefoil, which can be a great St. Patrick's Day craft:

4. Hearts with bottle caps and buttons

These hearts were made ​​in the same way as our bottle caps Christmas tree. We sorted them in a heart shape and then used a glue gun:

5. Heart shaped cookies

We also made some heart-shaped biscuits, but they quickly disappeared and we only have this picture from an early phase of their preparation:

If you need more inspiration, see our Valentine's board on our Pinterest profile.


I wish all of you to have a lot of hearty crafts and warms hugs in each of the next 365 days, not only on February the 14th ;)

 

DIY Christmas ornaments

Happy New year everyone! I know Christmas was last week, so I am definitely late with this post, but it can be a great craft with kids on this lazy day....

I was planning to have our Christmas tree set on the floor, unlike past few years, which it spent high on the shelf. That's why I wanted to have some decorations made from paper and plastics, so it wouldn't be easy to break them.

We played again with bottle caps. This is something very simple - just connect two caps using washi tape and then attach some decorative ribbon:

This craft is great because kids can easily make them, eventually they will need some help with binding ribbons, which can be a great fine-motor activity:

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Our mailbox these days is literally cluttered with advertising leaflets, so we turned them into something more appealing. 

With the help of the round cover, we draw circles around nice photos:

We also used one of our old workbooks, with popular cartoon characters:

After it, we made small cones and attached them to each other:

About halfway over, we've inserted a decorative ribbon (I forgot to take photos of this step) and so, cone after cone, we created this beautiful ornament, which really reminds me of those old-fashioned Christmas tree ornaments:

However, we didn't set our tree on the floor, it was on the shelf again, just to be on the safe side. We used these paper ornaments as decorations all over the house, since we made a whole bunch of them. 

What kind of ornaments you had this year? I'd like to see the photos of your tree and Christmas decorations! 

I wish you all a pleasant and a peaceful holiday season with lots of crafts and play!

Bottle caps Christmas tree

While lightning the first Advent candle, we have started a new series of activities from our Advent calendar. It's the same one we made ​​two years ago and still serves us well.

Originally I saw the idea with paper plates, but as I don't usually buy paper plates for our birthday parties, I knew that it will not work for us in exactly that way, but I immediately remembered on all those bottle caps we passionately collect. Since the kids don't play with our bottle caps memory game any more, it was time to upcycle them.

The girls really liked this activity, and again we have learned a lot. I gave them a box with caps in various colors and let them choose only those in green colour. Here is when my Older had a great idea of putting a yellow cap on top which would be a star. After it, they were forming the caps by adding one more cap comparing to the previous row, and in that way they could practice their counting skills. I used hot glue for each cap (and fairly well burned my fingers).

We were still practicing with the first, so it didn't turned very neat and fancy:

 But the second one was so much better: 

 Never mind that not all stickers had a Christmas theme, the little hands were having so much fun:

If you need more ideas for Christmas activities, take a look at our "Christmas fun for kids" Pinterest board. We are planning to try out most of the ideas during this year's Advent.

Baloon yo-yo

Yes, the weather is awful these days and we mostly spend our free time in the house, but what can we do? Apart from grumbling how everything is ugly and gray, we can have fun. And that's exactly what we do.

For a last few days we are having fun with this yo-yo made out of a plain balloon:

It was super easy to make them.  We poured some water in the balloon, as much as it was possible, then we inflated them and tied a knot. We've added several rubber bands and the fun started immediately. Girls were so delighted with the new toy that I barely managed to take any photos.

I found a tutorial in which a balloon can be filled with rice or beans, but somehow I do not want to teach kids to play with food, so that's why we decided to fill it with water.

How do you have fun in this rainy weather? Do you make some toys with your kids? Or are you more fond of cartoons, apps and video games?

Welcome to Propwash Junction

Both of my girls really aren't into princesses and all that other girly stuff. Especially the Older, she will always choose a toy car rather than a doll. Since lately she is obsessed with flying, and was pretty much impressed by the both Disney Planes movies, it was really easy to choose a theme for her 5th birthday:

She was thrilled to be included in the preparations: 

The girls were happy and really engaged, they insisted for these muffin baskets to become crowns (ok, we do have to have some girlish stuff after all, but in their special way):

We used popsicle sticks to make these little toy planes:

Because of bad weather we had to change the venue and the celebration was held at our place, so these signs may not be effective as planned:

The gifts for our little guests were coloring pages with the Planes motives and some crayons:

The food also had aeroplane motives: 

The cake was made by my sister. Pretty impressing, ha? She made blue fondant representing sky and white clouds on it and we've put two Dusty figurines on the top of  the cake:

And the party lasted until late in the evening......