Barbie stuff

So my brain has been a little preoccupied with Barbie dolls lately. How very frustrating when I am trying to get ideas on how to finish the stitching project that I started after the moustache's. It would seem that I am having a break from my projects at the moment because the kids are on school holidays.

Anyway, as you can see from the above photo, I made a home for the Barbie's to live in. Actually, it's more of a room. I bought a box for storing glassware in from the hardware shop to use for this. It is two layers of box instead of one and I thought it would stand up better to the wear and tear the kids would throw at it. It's covered in wood grain contact to make it pretty and give it even more strength. I also put some of that on the 'floor'. I found Barbie contact at Target the other week which they were clearing at 56 cents a roll so I bought a few. That's where the stickers are from. And I used scraps of photo mat board for the walls to make them nice (except for the joins... gotta think up a way to hide that).

See that thing Barbie is sitting on? Couch. Hmm... yep had to have a go at making one didn't I. Silly, silly me. Trying to make small furniture when children are around asking if its finished and trying to make it something special when it didn't need to be... Let's just say I spent a very frustrating afternoon on it!

It started like this. Scrap photo mat board again. And a dodgy hot glue gun.

Before I glued the back on, I stuffed the box section with scrunched up newspaper to stop it from getting squashed should somebody stand on it.

I covered it with a couple of layers of an old polar fleece baby blanket to give it a little padding and then tried my best to get the fabric on. The fabric is actually a tea towel I found in my fabric stash. It's all hot glued. Blerk. I had so much glue stuck on my fingers when I finished this! This is what I was thinking about doing when I started out. I made the cushions the same way. As you can see, I didn't really follow the picture at all. Except for the cushions, of course. Note to self: If you are going to make small furniture for your children to play with again, either go with the simple recycling boxes and containers idea or make it at night after all the kids are ASLEEP!

When I googled furniture for Barbie, I also found this. I might study this a bit more and see if inspiration hits. I should probably add at this time that all three kids ended up playing with other things after I made the stuff for them. I am glad we haven't spent any extra money on the Barbie's just yet. Probably those Barbie's just need more stuff to cosy up the room to get the kids interested.  You know like a bit more furniture, some pictures for the walls - that sort of thing!

After the kids crafting...

This was yesterday. That says it all really. Happy Wednesday.

Frosty day

Monday morning was frosty. It was minus 3 degrees Celsius. That's pretty cold people! Can you tell we don't get it this cold here very often? Something I love to do when we manage a frost is to rug up and go out to take random photos. Especially using the macro and super macro settings on my camera. I pretend to know something and sometimes my photos turn out cool. (Pardon that pun!)

I love to take photos of spider webs.

Flowers are good posers too.

Did I mention spider webs? I uploaded about 13 spider web photos to flickr and thought it might be a bit much to put them all on here. I was tempted though.

Our car window. I love the frosty patterns.

It was very wintery here yesterday again. I hope today will be more inviting to go outside. Then I will be able to kick the kids out to play for a while. (HOORAY!) Yesterday they did a whole lot of making and managed to cover the whole floor with stuff. I like them to be making things but when there is not a clear path through the house... that's a bit much! I have pretty much given up on having a tidy house for the school holidays. The three girls together are like the Tassie Devil on the cartoons!

More paper shoes

The three girls decided they wanted to have their own paper shoes like I made for their Aunty's birthday. It was a bit hard for Esther and Ellamay to work out how to fold the paper so I ended up doing it all for them. I made 3 paper shoes in different colours. We got out some stickers and they decorated them. Amelia really wanted her photo taken with her shoe. Okay Amelia, but I will have to put it on the blog now :-)

She also really liked that it fit on her foot. She spent some time carefully walking around the house on tip toes just so she could wear it. Esther and Ellamay really wanted to make bigger ones so they could wear them too. Our girls do like shoes! I might have to make some of these for more school holiday fun.

Teacup bickies

Have you ever made teacup bickies for a party? It is cute and easy food. They were very popular at Esther and Ellamay's party.

There will be other recipes and instructions for these on the internet somewhere and I certainly did not come up with this idea myself.

You need:

Arnott's Tic Toc biscuits

Marshmallows

Life savers (cut into halves)

Chocolate freckles (or chocolate buds)

Icing sugar

Water

Just mix up a paste of icing sugar and water (or use leftover icing from something else) and use it to glue it all together like in the picture. Easy. They look impressive and aren't hard to make. Great for a party.

Birthday girls

If you have been reading this month, you would already know that it was Esther and Ellamay's birthday's at the start of June. And you would already know that I am trying to catch up on the Crisis here. So, better late than never, here are some birthday pictures.

Esther opening her first present of the morning.

Ellamay with her new princess basket. I think that is an impressed face, don't you?

They didn't spend the day in their pj's - this is at dinner time with their birthday cupcakes.

I have visions of making glorious cakes for their birthday's each year, but time is never on my side. Probably by the time I have the time to make cakes as glorious as I want to, it will be very uncool.

Ellamay was quite sick during the whole week of her birthday which is why everything was delayed. I am happy to say that after that week she improved and is nice and healthy again.

The drawing sets and baskets were very successful and have been getting a lot of use. I found another basket at the Reject Shop in their clearance bins marked down to $1 so I will be saving that one up to remake too. I will have to keep the drawing sets in mind for other kids birthday's too. Their friends at school really liked them. 

Easy decorated book for kids

We had a last minute birthday party for Esther and Ellamay this week. It was really just a play and party food. Anyway, I was trying to come up with something for them to do to keep them entertained at the last minute. Having decided only two days before hand I didn't really have much time to do anything really amazing.

I have a pile of exercise books in the cupboard that I buy up on in January at back to school sale time. I got five books for 5 cents! Can't go wrong there. I covered the books in some plain white paper the night before. I gave the kids some of my special scrapbook stickers, bling, flowers and paper cutouts. I also gave them some permanent markers which they love to use but only get to use at special times.

It was a big hit! The five little girls loved making their own special books. When they had finished decorating them, I gave them all a plastic cover to put over their special books. I got the plastic exercise covers in a packet of five from Big W. Their books looked really special then. They were so excited about them. What a relief! I never really know if kids are going to like what I have in mind.

One of the little girls decided she really needed a pen holder in her book. Using a piece of felt and elastic we made a band that stretched around the cover. I just cut some slits for the elastic to slide through and a bigger slit for the pen. Not sure how long they will last but the little girl was really impressed. She said I was really good at making things. Which, of course, made me feel like a pretty clever person. The photo above is Amelia's book. I didn't manage to get photo's of the others because the older girls have been busy using them.

A very successful crafting time really. We will be doing this again. I bought a lot of those books so we will be set for a long time!