The cardboard drums

I hope you all had a good time for the New Year's Eve!

We continue having fun with recycled materials - we've celebrated the New Years Eve in this way as well.

I've mentioned in the previous post that I have prepared a surprise for our little guests on New Year's Eve celebration.

Ta-Dam, here it is: the cardboard drums!

The original idea comes from Spoonful.com but I've simplified it and adapted to the materials we already had. 

I've wrapped cardboard boxes in a nice decorative paper (this step is not necessary, but it certainly contributes to the aesthetic aspect) and pasted them one to another, in the desired shape. I also filled balloons with oatmeal flakes (really gives a great, rustling sound) and tied them with a decorative bow at small toy brooms, which I then fastened to the box by adhesive tape. And that's it! It was really not hard at all, my biggest problem was to find a piece of decorative paper large enough to wrap the entire box, as you can see from the photos.

Instead of the brooms, I originally intended to use cardboard rolls, but the girls tore them, while I was wrapping the boxes. In the meantime they began fencing with these small brooms quite near TV set, so I quickly found a replacement for the cardboard rolls.

Try it, it 's really not hard, I would like you to write in the comments how you've done it.

This year for our New Year's celebration, I also tried some new recipes and I intend to make them available as a mini e-book, so feel free to stop by again these days.

List of the parties I'm participating in:

 

 

Advent Calendar made of tea bags

Today, when it's all about copying someone else's ideas, I can proudly say that we did something that was originally my idea. I've thought of it back in September and I could hardly wait time before Christmas so we can start to make it, so I was collecting tea bags the entire fall season.

Tutorial for making the Advent Calendar out of tea bags

You'll need scissors, a cardboard box and some glue (this time I used UHU Glue Pen, by now it's doing well, we'll see when the kids start to open the bags on the calendar).

I cut the box into the desired shape and arranged tea bags , before pasting, just  to see which way would be the best. I've turned the bags inside out, so that they would be white and then wrote the dates on them. My initial plan was to fill the bags wiht mini candy bars, but I think kids today eat too much candy anyway and that finding candies would not be anything special to them, so that's why I've inserted a piece of paper with the activities for each day in each bag. Sometimes it's one, sometimes I plan more activities, depending on whether it's a weekend or a weekday, or whether we have anything else planned for the day, like going to a birthday party, etc. In any case, in the next few weeks I will be writing about these activities.

I know that it is not common to include December 25th in the Advent calendars, but we plan something special for the day as well, therefore, it's in the calendar.

I've used  fancy paper scraps to wrap it in. Besides cardboard boxes, you can use some old registers, or a softer cardboard, but in this case, the calendar can not stand alone as in the picture below.

This is how it looks like after The Big Girl decorated it the way she likes it. The thumbnails are cut from catalogues, and a special pleasure for her were the stickers, used for closing the bags.

 Need more good ideas for making an advent calendar? Look here.

And here's where I am linking this time:

More homemade toys

Following the post about How to entertain toddlers for a while , here's another nice idea, which I originally found here .

Educational toy for learning colors and developing fine motor skills

This toy can easily be created by making a hole in the lid of a box (we used a shoe box) and the area around the hole gets colored by markers. To me, it was the easiest to pierce a small hole with scissors and then plug a marker cap, to expand a hole in order to match them exactly. The intention is that the child inserts a cap into a hole with a matching color, and in this way the child learns colors as well as develops fine motor skills. The Big Sister wanted to make a toy for The Little one, so I've let her to paint the area around the holes. Here's the result:

 

It's great to use a box for this game, and not just its lid, because the kids are also amused by putting caps into the box and taking them out. I can confirm that The Little often plays with this and I definitely recommend you to try something like this.

 

Cardboard garage for toy cars

I also made a toy garage for our cars collection, because The Older's obsession with toy cars continues. 

 A little glue (I used Patafix), cardboard and cardboard roll ...

and here's a roof over their head: 

She especially liked the "corridor" in the middle:

Let the game begin!

P.S. Need more ideas? Check this great linky party - just click on the button bellow!