The racing car party for my Little man

Last month my little man turned the BIG 4! It was no surprise that he had chosen a racing car themed party this year and with much excitement helped me organise his party.
We had a few weeks of sickness leading up to his party but we got there in the end and Declan was rather chuffed with the results.

Here are few things that we made leading up to the party, getting the kids excited and involved in the party planning....

Traffic lights collage craft, good decoration for a car party

but a great opportunity to teach the munchkins about road signs and safety.

Race car track collage

The birthday boy really wanted to make his own race track art so with a large piece of blue cardboard (his fave colour) we went to work with black paint, scissors and glue.

He picked racing cars and monster trucks from wrapping paper for us to cut out and picked people to watch the race from magazines.

For some odd reason he had to have all girls and women watching, go figure.

Then to top it off dirt, leaves and wood chips from the garden were collected to make extra details.

Racing car and Construction vehicle mobiles to hang at the party.

These racing car project can be found HERE and the Construction vehicle mobile HERE

both from DLTK's Crafts for Kids.

This next project is not racing car themed but both the munchkins got so excited when they saw it as we were searching for crafts that we did it anyway :)

I guess the party moved on to be a transportation theme in the end...lol

We found this craft HERE and turned it into a collage for the wall.

Again this proved to be a good opportunity to talk about fire safety and how fire fighters help people as we crafted away.

The birthday boy came up with idea's such as bubble wrap for the water coming from the fire hose and Cotton balls for smoke.

Then due to Mummy loving buntings and now able to sew, I thought I'd have a crack at sewing him up a personalised name bunting with racing checkers.

It now hangs in his bedroom.

We also had this grand plan of making part of our unused garden space out the back of the house into a mini race track for match box cars.

Although the garden was cleared, a concrete slab went down thanks to hubby and a friend, used car tires were used and a new garden put in around it......it didn't get finished :(

When we got to buying the paint for the concrete and gluing the fake grass down, the nice man at the hardware shop told us we had to wait!

Apparently we would have to let the concrete age at least 8 weeks before we could paint and glue onto
the surface or deal with it all peeling off and be a waist of money.

So we sucked it up and did the best we could and the kids still loved it.

In the coming months we will finish it properly but it's being loved all the same.

The munchkins have fun filling up the backs of the construction trucks with rocks from the garden and exploring the space.

Here are a few pics of the space during the party...

I will do a follow up post when the track is finished :D

Last of all is the Birthday cake!!! A design with inspiration from the woman's weekly book, then changed, added to and personalised by the birthday boy, hubby and myself.

Due to multiple allergies we made our butter cake dairy, egg and nut free with frosting and marsh mellow icing for the roads and Declan sign.

We cheated a tad by using the toy cars and the plastic road accessories but it was easy and it seemed to work, not to mention Declan's joy when seeing the completed version.

A fun party had by all and as usual enjoyable to plan and create for.

Bird Crafts

The munchkins and I had a fabulous time making lots of different bird crafts for Miss 2's Bird birthday party.


 So I thought it would be nice to share these crafts with you and the "how to do's" along with them.


These crafts are cheap and easy to make..... don't be afraid to have a try.


Hopefully someone else can have the fun we had while making some of these crafts.

Proud Peacock paper plate craft
For a simple bird craft or a crafty peek into India's animals (The peacock is native to India) all you need is:

*dinner size paper plate
*glitter
*pens, markers, pencils or crayons
*paint fingerprints or stickers for peacock feather spots (we used stickers)
*peacock feathers (we googled 'peacock feather' into images and printed out some paper feathers to cut out and stick on)
*glue
*blue paper for body

Allow children to decorate plate, draw lines with blue, green and purple shades of markers, the lines should all cross in the center of the plate. Have the children dip their index finger into a selected color of paint (we used colourful stickers) and make fingerprints here and there on the plate.

Let children apply glue and glitter and your choice of feather (real feathers, paper feathers found of Google etc) and put aside to dry.
While the plate is drying draw a ten pin bowling shape out of blue paper for the body. A beak can be either drawn on or cut out of paper as well as eyes. To finish glue all you bits together !





Hand print Rosie tree with doves
This birdie tree was a project that came together over the space of a couple of days.

First of all we made the adorable paper doves over at DLTK's craft for kid's.
They are easy to make and a fun craft using the technique of tracing the child's hand. All the doves body parts except for the hand print wings are found on the above link with instructions, simply print cut and paste. :) my munchkins enjoyed colouring on their birds too.



Stage two of our tree was involved Mummy drawing a branch shape on brown cardboard for cutting.
If you need some inspiration simply look outside into nature, do a sketch at the park or look up tree pictures on the Internet. I used roughly 3 lengths of big cardboard sheets to make this tree branch.
Make sure you leave enough space on the branch for the dove(s) to sit.

The third stage of our tree was a printing craft.
We got creative with paint and made some roses and leaves for the tree.
The rose print was made but cutting off the end of a celery bunch (something we almost always have in the fridge), it makes the perfect flower/rose print.....add pink paint a ta daaaa!
We also cut out a leaf shape from a common potato and with green paint made leaves for the tree.
This was a opportunity to get messy and learn to mix paints and make colours (yellow and blue make green, red and white make pink).

The forth stage to our tree was yet another hand print craft, since the munchkins enjoyed tracing hands so much. This time we used two shades of green cardboard for tracing our hands to make hand print leaves.
We spoke about the different sizes of our hands and how big our hands have grown and how our body grows bigger as we get older.

The last stage of our tree was gluing, stapling and blue tacking all the bits and pieces together to make a perfect home for our doves.

This tree made a great wall art feature for Thalia's bird party and is still on our wall today for the children to enjoy....one of these days Mummy will take all the bit down and put away what we can reuse and keep.

Bird tree table decoration

This table decoration is attractive, cheap and fun to make!

• The birthday girl and I went for a few walks in the park together to find some nice tree twigs and small branches to assemble together for the perfect tree.
• Once the tree twigs and branches were selected, they were painted white and when dry were put together in a vase from the cupboard.
• To decorate our tree we already has picked up some sweet little glitter birdie clips (decorations found with all the Christmas ones from a cheap shop).

For our tree to be just right for the party it needed a little something else and then we found what we needed to do.

Kelly at Be a fun Mum posted how to make a hanging Christmas peace dove decoration, so we simply changed our paper colours and patterns to suit the party colours and we had some lovely doves ready to hang on our tree :)

Tissue paper pom pom flowers

Okay, so these are not birds but birds like flowers don't they? :)

and they were simply too cute and girly not to make.

Thankfully I was able to find a very helpful and easy instructions to follow to make these.....while the kids were in bed. I wanted these hanging flowers to be a surprise for he birthday girl on her party day.

Here is the link for Martha Stewart's tissue paper pom poms that I used. They look stunning, easy to make and quite inexpensive.

My little man still has a blue one hanging in his room :P

Birdie's and their nests

Birds nests can be made from all sorts of things and what better decoration for a bird party than a bird and it's nest!

Pictured are two nests we put together for decorations using twigs from the park, bright feather amongst the twigs, leaves and topped off with bird ornaments found and brought at cheap stores for under $5 each. We choose mummy's ornamental bird cage and a big wooden bowl to put our nests in.

Thalia's bird themed Paper bunting

Paper bunting are easy to make and can be made to suit any theme, we laminated our paper flags so that they could be kept as a keepsake and a room decoration for Thalia.

Each triangle was cut out so as to fit inside a A4 size laminater sheet.

The photo is not very clear but each triangle is a different patterned pink scrap booking paper, we then stuck white paper doily's in the centre of each one. Paper doily's can be found very cheaply at shops such as crazy Clark's, reject shop, Sam's warehouse and so on.

We cut out pink letters to spell Thalia's name and found pictures of blue birds to stick on each flag on the letter.

To finish it of the flags were individually laminated, 2 holes were punched in the top of each one and pink ribbon was used to attach them all together to hang.

Bird feeder

We found this nifty fun design here, the munchkins enjoyed making it with me and the birds love it too.

It was also a way to attempt to lure and invite birds to the bird party :)

Loot bags

These we so inexpensive compared to the ones you buy and I think homemade is almost always nicer and more environmentally friendly!

I purchased the pink and blue paper bags (pink for girls, blue for boys) and glued on white paper doily's to the centre of each bag. The munchkins helped me to choose a birdie sticker from our sticker stash to suit each special little friend to stick on the doily. Then the names were written in pink or blue pen next to their personalised birdie :)

Paper plate owls

We made these paper plate owls with some friends after finding the project on the Internet.

You can find the instructions here, we added the lovely button eyes, scrapbook paper collage and feathers to make it such a hoot ;)

I hope you have enjoyed looking at our bird crafts, maybe you can put some time aside to share some bird craft love with your child :)

Miss 2's Bird party

Most of you probably already know that I'm a sucker for Children's party's..
I love the decorating, the organising, the fun, the laughter and the food :P

I make fairy bread, not because my kids are all that fond of it...but because I loooove it and it brings fond memories back of my childhood.

Last year for Thalia's birthday we had a ladybug cake but due to her being so young we didn't get too carried away with the theme apart from the cake and loot bags.

This year that she has blossomed in her personality, knows exactly what a birthday and birthday party is... a big smile appeared on my face and the planning begun.

With Thalia's help the theme was picked ...BIRDS


As the planning and decorations progressed, it turned into a theme of blue birds and pink blossoms
- a colour and picture combination that seemed just perfect for our little girl.

In preparation to my munchkins birthday parties in the last 2 years or so, we seem to have developed a bit of a unplanned tradition. A month or weeks prior to the party my munchkins and I dabble in crafty creations based on the party theme to decorate our house.

This both creates art/craft activities for us to do leading to the excitement of a party, saves us on party costs for decorations/loot bags, makes a nice homemade personal touch to the party and adds to the fun.

I love baking the cake and party foods and attempting to make them fit the theme....thank goodness I enjoy baking, as it can often be a challenge to come up with new and exciting cakes/party foods that are allergy friends and suit my children's requirements as well as tasting good for our guests.

below are some photo's from Thalia's bird party- a lovely afternoon/night with many friends


a cute caged birdie to
join in on the celebration!



out the back

handmade my mummy - Thalia's own  paper bunting
laminated for a keepsake or room decoration.

birdie tree tables decoration

birthday girl checking out her new kitchen before most of the guests arrive

a very precious photo of Thalia and her great Grandma

 

party bags and blue bird nest

some of the party food

The Craft table- compete with lots of chunky glitter,
foam stickers, crayons, bird pictures and glue
for lots of crafty fun.

The birthday girl playing with play dough
a must for a little person's party...
pssst and big people like it too

water play

 

Our very full pool on a very hot day

Cake time!! sadly I didn't remember to get a close up photo of the cake
but it's a chocolate nest made from Chocolate Aero bars
and homemade honeycomb covered in chocolate.
Inside the nest are 3 cupcake birds with eyes and beaks,
Thalia's cupcake had a lolly worm in it's mouth :)

3 good friends enjoying cake

pass the parcel

birthday girl wearing her new much loved Dorothy tail.
a very big wiggles fan.

Her new kitchen and homemade birdie wall art

All the wonderful pressies, thanks to all her beautiful friends ox

There will be a later post focused on all our homemade bird art and how we did it. :)

hope you enjoyed looking through our party pics

The Dino-mite party!

I loooooove planning party's for my munchkins, creating a theme based on a obsession or subject of interest to my children...okay okay I confess I'm a children's party addict! lol

This post is a quick look into Declan's 3rd Birthday party last month....after much commiserating with Mr 3 and leafing several times through the much loved cake books he picked his theme...

It should be no surprise that our Dino loving Declan decided on a roaring dinosaur party.

So the planning commenced, invites made, loot bags put together, sparkly play dough made for the dino's to stomp through, the munchkins loved creating dino art and crafts for party decorations, mummy found some dino print outs for colouring, dino footprints cut out for following, balloon's blown up, party treats baked.....and lastly the Mr Stegosaurus cake was completed!! phew

all in time for our friends to come on over for a roaring good time in dino land :)

Here are some pic's of the day

If you look through the screen door you will see a very excited little man waiting for his friends to arrive

footprints left by the dinosaurs for little feet to follow :)

the lovely wall art that my munchkins and I had great delight in creating

the play dough that sparkled! can't really see the sparkles in the photo but the green play dough was riddled in green sparkles and the blue play dough in blue sparkles...the children thought it was a bit special :P

our little man and his good friend Mr Brachiosaurus

Thalia queen of the food table

play dough fun

a thorn between 2 roses opening the present of the day in Declan's eyes.....his special T-Rex dinosaur...very much loved!

Great grandma helping at the drawing table

opening his puff the magic dragon book and CD

cake time!!!

Mr stegosaurus cake before he got butchered