I love making gifts, it’s my way of saying “I thought of you”. This Mother’s Day I made sewing kits and foot/body soak in glass jars for my mom and mil, I thought I’d share the DIY with you guys as these also make awesome birthday gifts 🙂

Will do the sewing kit next week, this week we tackle the oh so easy but oh so lovely foot/body soak

What I used: 

1 cup of  slightly coarse salt 6 ginger flavoured rooibos tea bags 50g of epsom salts

Open up teabags and add to salts

Mix well

decant

Decorate jar, and there you have it 🙂

So my friend Robyn passed on a awesome recipe for me to try, we both have major sweet tooth problems and are always looking for something sweet that doesn’t pile on the pounds.

Here it is with a few alterations

what you need:

2 cups of fine desiccated coconut 4 tablespoons of honey 4 tablespoons of coconut oil vanilla essence 100g melting chocolate for after

What you do

Just mix it all together (minus the chocolate)

Make sure it’s mixed real good

flatten into a container then stick in fridge for 40min

melt chocolate and smear over the top

TA DAH!!!

I bought these awesome Mellisa and Doug crayons (Exclusive books) which you can use on a dry erase board! seriously how cool is that! there were no age appropriate learning mats in the shop at the time(that’s what the are for really), but I figured Aidan could use it with the dry erase board I bought him at Macro a while ago…he has been using it with magnets (I was scared to let him use the marker as he has already spoilt so many of his good clothes by sneaking markers) but hey crayons are different…

The size of the board was a bit of a problem for taking along (you guys know I LOOOOVE take along toys)

So I came up with this mini board using a DVD cover (we have tons of them because we tend to save our dvd’s by putting them in holders before someone uses the covers as building blocks) so I could make this with just a cover and a few printed pages…like so

What I used:

A DVD cover

Print outs: For colouring in I got Disney colouring pages off www. HappyKids.com For the second I drew shapes using paint, those could be used with play dough as well (make dough into shapes) The third page is blank on one side for drawing and a gingerbread man on the other for fun decorating

 What you do

Cut pictures to size and slide in DVD holder, where cover art would go – I have all three in there and just alternate

TA DAH!

It’s really this easy and you can easily wipe with a cloth

or use a dry erase marker

I needed to make hand puppets the other day and did not want to buy any additional supplies so I came up with this…  A quick easy puppet DIY using what you probably already have:

What you need:

My hand looks weird here, anyway’s fold a piece of paper in half and trace like above

When you open it up you have the template for your puppet, trace around your template (You would want to turn t-shirt inside out, I only thought of this after, oops)

Sew where you traced, it kinda looks like ghosts

cut outside your sewing

Now turn them inside out

Draw on the puzzle and start decorating, you might want to get kids involved for this step

Look I made a little girly 🙂 I glued on some buttons and bows…the possibilities are endless

So last week I showed you how to make a book case out of nappy boxes as part of my independent play corner for Aidan, this week I show you what I stocked it with 🙂 I did not buy anything extra, just sort of went through his toy boxes

Took this picture the day I set it up, have since learnt that lighter things go on top 🙂

I raided the book shelf in his room for all the books her could “read himself” numbers, colours that sort of thing. Anything he can page through and name things without mommy’s help (minimal help) The story book ones are still in his room for bedtime

I put in all his activity books… Colouring book, water painting book (awesome inventions this) and sticker books. He loves those and thanks to an awesome aunt 🙂 he got a few for his birthday,

Okay these I will say clockwise from cat puzzle, a word game we lost some parts to but he loves to imagine he can play with, a peg board (loved these as a kid and got him one at Crazy store) chalk because doors and floor in my office space double as chalk boards also there is a courtyard area he can do pavement drawings, letter magnets which he insists are number, monster magnets I made AGES ago and a magnetic dry erase board

These are actually take along toys , mostly home made…  flash cards, minion lacing toy, beads and pipe cleaners,  playdough with playdough mat, velcro sticks and legos in small container

crayons and craft set are a must 🙂

He loves it and I will take out a few things at a time for him buying me as much as 45 minutes, light years in mom of a toddler time 🙂