Corralling crayons

Last year I purchased a few of these plastic containers from Lindsay's shop. They have proved to be the perfect little containers for crayons, as inevitably those cardboard boxes break. The OCD side of me likes the way these ones stack, and how pretty the coloured crayons look through the clear plastic (until my daughtered covered them with Dora stickers!).

I take these containers with us when we travel, but it is also a nice way of giving each kid their own little set of crayons if you have multiple kids coming over (read: battle royale averted!). 

Beach glass

Yesterday we headed to Locarno beach in Vancouver and collected some beach glass and driftwood. For our post-nap craft we glue gunned the soft pieces of glass onto the cedar. It is now sitting on a plate stand on a shelf in Grandpa's office. Perfect...except for when my daughter's fingers got caught in the hot glue.

Kid's art display

I have long been trying to figure out a fun way to display some of my daugher's art.

Today we took two cool knobs that I bought at a Zara Home store (in Barcelona - it was amazzzzzzing), afixed them to the wall (with special plugs for screws) with a satin ribbon in between, and hung some art using colourful clothes pins from Dollarama.

Colourful, cheap, personal, and easy. I love it!!

Block party

We have awesome neighbors, and so this year we're organizing a summer block party....a chance for all the neighbors to hang out and for the kids to blow bubbles and decorate the sidewalk with colourful chalk. We are going to set up BBQs in our neighbor's driveway and hang out on a stretch of front lawns since we all have small back yards.

Since I don't have email addresses for all our neighbors, I did a paper invitation in addition to my email invite. For the paper invitation, the girls across the street designed this invite which I colour photocopied and dropped in everyone's mail box. Isn't it great? I love kid-art!

Good from far, but far from good

For my daughter's birthday party we have rented a multipurpose room at the park clubhouse near our house. It's a great facility, but lacks personality. Last night I whipped up this simple construction paper bunting to add a bit of colour to the room. I think it will go well with our 'sports' theme. I have no patience, so the flags are not all the same size and many of the edges are jagged....I'll just have to hang it extra high so no one notices!

Cards from the heart

For occassions like Mother's Day, I have my daughter make cards. I buy blank cards at Michaels or Staples, and we personalize them for birthdays, Christmas, or whatever the occassion may be. This way I am never scrambling for a card at the last minute! Who doesn't like receiving a homemade card decorated with colourful scribbles, right??

Preserving perfect moments in time

Every day the weather is getting nicer and the kids are getting a bit more independant. My job as their Mom feels easier. Freezies, bubbles, and sidewalk chalk are all we seem to need in the summer. Bliss.

This afternoon we wandered out for a coffee and ended up perusing the toy store. I was feeling particularly nostalgic, so I picked up some blocks of colourful clay to preserve the little hands and feet that keep me company all day.

These ornaments will be finished off with some brightly coloured ribbon from Mokuba and will adorn doors in our house, always reminding me of my little munchkins.

PS: The clay I bought is called Sculpey and is similar to one I had as a kid called FIMO. It bakes in the oven in 15 mins. Easy peasy. These make cheap and cheerful Christmas ornaments - great gifts for Grandparents!

inch by inch and row by row, I'm going make my garden grow...

Do you remember doing this when you were a kid?

It is an 'asset-light' activity:
- an egg carton
- some seeds (peas, parsley, basil)
- potting soil
- Japanese washi tape (from Omiyage, blogged about here) and bamboo skewers (optional, obviously!)

What a fun way to learn about how things grow...and it's always good to get your hands a little dirty!

An egg-stra special Easter craft

I recently signed up for Martha Stewart's 'craft of the day' email. So far, the ideas have been far more elaborate than I can manage with my 2 year old. But yesterday's idea (here's the link) was simple, fun, and festive. Just crack an egg near the top, rinse it out, and fill it with some water and your favourite spring blooms. If you're not into flowers, you could fill each egg with some jelly bean treats as a table favour for each of your Easter dinner guests.

I love this craft for a few reasons. First, it's perfect for toddlers (as long as you can get them to be gentle with the egg shells!). Second, it fits well with my table dressing approach. I love a series of small arrangements on my dinner party tables instead of one large one, as they don't obstuct anyone's view. I often do a flight of small flower arrangements in small cups scattered around the table, or down a line in the middle. It's also a great way to get a lot of milage out of a cheap groceria bouquet.

We decided to one-up Martha and dip our eggs in various bowls of water dyed with food colouring. This increases the mess factor, but my daugther loved watching the egg absorb the various colours, and it was a fun way to learn about how mixing different colours create new ones.

Would you believe that the glass egg cups belonged to my Great Grandmother Smith?

Beads beautiful

This morning we went to Granville Island in Vancouver, which is a wonderful place for children. We fed ducks, saw doughnuts being made (of course we had to try one!), and bought beads to make a necklace at the bead store. Beading was one of my childhood passions, so it was fun to introduce my daugther to this creative craft.

Since my daughter is only 2, she doesn't appreciate exquisite beads just yet....and anyone who has been to a bead store knows that costs can quickly add up! So I let her pick three beads at the bead store (the centre ones on the necklace in the photos) and we filled the rest of the necklace with plastic beads from home after my daughter's nap this afternoon. We strung the beads on regular household twine, but I rolled masking tape over the ends to make it stiff to compensate for a toddler's dexterity. The masking tape, combined with big-holed beads - allowed her to string all the beads without needing help. I knotted the beads onto the string here and there so they won't fall off by mistake.

What did you do this afternoon?

A Jackson Pollock for Grandma and Grandpa

I have been away from the blog for a few days now, and it feels like forever! My husband has been away for work (in Vegas...don't have pitty!!) and yesterday I travelled out to Vancouver alone with my two kids to visit with my parents. Trying to pack two kids for a five hour flight that left at 8am without my partner in crime around was no small feat! I am running on minimal sleep, needless to say.

In advance of our trip to Vancouver, my daughter made a piece of art for each of Grandma and Grandpa. I started with a wooden block 'canvas', which I purchased for under $5 each at Deserres. The beauty of these is that because they are made of wood, they stand on their own and do not need to be framed or hung on the wall, but are more formal and permanent than a drawing on a tattered piece of paper. They are perfect for a ledge, shelf, or table vignette.

I started by applying gesso (an artist's primer; this is not necessary. You could instead just use white paint, or you could just paint/colour directly on the wood. I just wanted a white background) to each block. Once it was dry, my plan was to have my daughter paint each block with coloured acrylic paints....but I just couldn't muster the energy for the prep and clean up. So instead, I just handed my daughter crayons with which to create her masterpiece.

I don't think she is ready for a gallery showing yet, but nonetheless Grandma and Grandpa were very touched to have special pieces of 'art'.

Gallery wall

My vision for the art work that I gave my husband for Valentine's Day (blogged about here) was that it would be one of the central pieces of a gallery wall in our bedroom. I have long admired gallery walls with a mish mash of art and photos that all somehow work together, but I've always been too timid to try.

Instead I have typically gone for simple and balanced repititon, as in these photos:

In the nursery



In the living room



In the nursery



In the office


But I figured that the wall along this cosy reading nook at the back end of our bedroom would be the perfect place to take the plunge with a gallery wall of family photos.

I have my first pieces all ready to hang....I think we're going to do it on Monday...Family day! I'll let you know how it goes...in the meantime let me know if you think my plan has any fatal flaws!

Valentine's gifts for a foodie father

My husband and I tend not to buy expensive Valentine's gifts. Instead, we like to give gifts that are personal and sentimental. So here is what we gave my husband:

1) A framed piece of art: kids' handprint/footprint.

To make this, I used a piece of canvas paper (available at any art store, like Deserres on the Danforth), and two different colours of acrylic paints. To finish it off, I wrote each of the kids' names and age with a silver pen. I still need to take a picture of the final product in the frame...it turned out quite well. The kids loved doing this, though it was obviously a bit messy!

Note- I initialy tried using finger paints since I thought the clean-up would be easier, but they don't have enough pigment to make the prints stand out.

2) My husband is an avid cook. He had admired this cookbook in the window of Circus books (a great used bookstore at Jones and Danforth) so my daughter and I snuck back and got it for him. The cheese cloth is to age his own beef...apparently you can buy unaged beef and age it yourself in the fridge quite easily with a zip lock container and some cheese cloth. Who knew?...I'll let you know how it turns out!

What did you give your sweetheart? Did you receive anything special?