Making juggling balls

  Remember these? Surely you had these as a kid?

  You need-round balloons, rice or millet (millet works better, buy it from feed stores), plastic bags and small rubber bands.

   I worked out around 100g of rice made a nicely sized ball for us. You can go quite a bit bigger, but not too much smaller-you need to keep the balloons taut. Unless you buy smaller balloons.

  Get your plastic bag in one had like below, pour the rice in…….

……..tie up firmly with a rubber band (these ones are horse ones, which incidentally work really well for small plaits in hair and making dreadlocks), and trim bag. But not too short-best off to make it longer and turn it back over the bag of rice. Make sure it’s very secure, unless you like rice strewn through every crevice of your house.

   Cut the neck from your first balloon……………

………..and stuff the bag of rice in, rubber band end first.

Time for the next layers-cut holes in your next balloon so your original balloon will show through in places. Just one or two, and cut a couple more in each layer so it progressively shows more of the colours underneath. Cut the neck off too-I nearly forgot that it was so obvious.

  Stuff it in, making sure the hole in the first one is covered, and voila! Keep making as many layers as you like. I generally keep to three as a minimum as they stay together better.

  

  Make lots! Don’t limit them to juggling either, they make excellent eggs for your lawn clippings nest.

Then when you’ve finished with them feed the rice to the chooks-you don’t have chooks? Get some!

Tie-dyeing for little ones

While I let my kids tie-dye with real dyes occasionally, it’s a bit of a nightmare. This is much easier, and a good activity for a group of young kids.

Needed-food dyes and paper towel. You can get recycled, biodegradable paper towel now, which can be composted when you’re done with it.

Mix up the food dyes with water in bowls. Make the colours fairly strong, you want them to pop.

Give the kids a sheet of towel and explain that how you fold the paper affects the pattern of the dye. Suggest they try squares, triangles, crumpled balls and any other origami they can think of. When they’re happy with their fold get them to dip one corner/edge in their chosen colour-it will wick up the paper towel reasonably fast, so emphasise that they’ll only need to hold it there for a few seconds. Then remove, shake, and put another corner/edge in a different colour, as many times as you can-usually only three.

Unfold and see what pattern has appeared! Repeat until you run out of towel, most likely. Once dry use for other crafts and play-wrapping small presents, cutting and pasting shapes, mosaics, over-drawing pictures based on dye shapes etc etc.

 

You can also try ‘dyeing’ paper. This is blank newsprint our neighbour gave us, and the result of using straws to add then blow the dye around. It was used as wrapping paper for birthday presents.

  

Best of all? It all washes off straightaway. No blue cheek like my Frosty has at present.

Christmas 2010

And i’ve managed to get these up by February-that’s excellent for me!
First up, a tie-dyed t-shirt for each of the kids. It looks a bit ‘crazy homeschooled family’ when they all decide to wear them at once and are sort of matching, but meh.
 

For Oods, a book bag. She is a total bookworm, so now has her very own bag with pockets for her library card and other treasures. Instead of adding her books to the family pile and having us do it all, she does it all herself. And doesn’t she just love it?
I’ve got all the pics for a tutorial for this-i’ll get around to writing it sometime.

I made the boys a backpack each, using the pattern and tute from Indietutes. If I did it again I would line them, but overall it’s pretty good pattern for beginners. All from stash fabric, i’m still attempting to use it all up-I swear, it BREEDS.

The husband gets the credit for these beauties-he’s completely onboard with the handmade now, and made these for the clones. Five is probably a bit old in mainstream terms for hobby horses, but no-one has told them that so they’ve been thoroughly enjoying them.


For the husband, the Bastard Shorts. He didn’t actually get these on the day-he received a parcel of the pieces cut out because he didn’t get out of the house enough for me to finish them. They’re bastards because he made me make them properly-waistband, facing, fly etc ad nauseum. I was just going to elastic waistband them-he told me that he is not a toddler and wears real clothes. Ahem. The Spotlight pattern was terrible and I swore a lot-BUT I DID THEM. Now I can erase them from memory.

The kids made presents for each other too, but I don’t have photos of much without them in it. However, Oods made this patchwork cushion for the husband all by herself, having never done patchwork before. I was pretty impressed.
 
Then churned out a small bag for each of her siblings.

Santa brought a set of Derwents, a box of craft supplies and the Planet Earth/Life boxed set, which we’re still working through. Plus a few little things that we never get them otherwise, like hairclips. We’re not good at frippery, so we’re lucky Santa is.
Then, the food. Oh, the food! Unconventional, but proof you can have a delicious feast without killing anything or putting on 5kgs.

Grissini and crudites with tzatziki and spinach, garlic and feta dips. Lentil balls with relish and vegies baked in cheese sauce. Chocolate pudding and blueberry cheesecake. And lots of fresh fruit. All made from scratch, including the yogurt for the tzatziki, and some of it homegrown. It took us two days to finish it all up, and I was sad when we did.

Christmas craft, day 24-Crackers

These are the last thing to be done, ready for us to stick a little something in them tonight. The kids hoard toilet rolls for them, but if you’re some weird germ freak you can buy them. Idiocy. Then twist wrapping paper around. We normally make a paper crown and pop something small like stickers inside, then tie the other end up. They don’t crack, but they don’t care.

Christmas craft, day 18-Countdown

Countdowns are big in this house. They are created for every occasion, and Christmas is certainly not excepted.

Christmas craft, day 17-lacy decorations

We didn’t actually do these today. As the husband was born on this rather inconvenient day 28 years ago (and he wasn’t even SUPPOSED to be born until March, he just likes to be difficult) we went out for the day.

But if you’re desperate for yet another Christmas related craft, try these. Easy-peasy, pipe cleaner through eyelet lace. Hang on tree. Done.

Christmas craft, day 15-mice

Outsourced again, library I love you!

I assume these are because ‘not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse’.

Christmas craft, day 14-colouring competitions

I didn’t photograph these-but we dropped five advertising-filled colouring competition entries off to the supermarket today. Ever since Nanna left a That’s Life! magazine here and I explained the concept they’ve had a keen eye for entering competitions. They have my genes-something for nothing!

But I hope no-one wins. The prizes are all branded, electronic rubbish. I’d have to sneakily break it as a good excuse to throw it out.

Christmas craft, day 8–angels again

Outsourced again to the library-I sent them off with the husband and got some uninterrupted work time. Only to be told the like the library’s version of angels better than mine! Ingrates. They can’t hairdress these ones.

Christmas craft, day 5-reindeer

Hands and feet reindeer, always a hit. Especially good for tracking growth-but very sad when I realise my nearly two year olds hands really don’t qualify as ‘small’ anymore.

Yes, there’s one missing-Sparkles hadn’t finished hers to her exacting standards. Shorty, however, gets the prize for biggest buck going by the points.

Christmas craft time-Day 1

Two years back we decided to use Christmas to ‘out-craft’ the kids. Considering they usually craft everyday it was a bit of a challenge. The goal was a craft a day from the first to 24th of December-they made it to the 19th before they started complaining. I didn’t mention it on the 20th and neither did they. Success, we beat them!

Anyway, it’s turned into a yearly tradition. I start collecting all the Christmas books from the library in November, before they all disappear, and write down a big list of crafts with their book and page number, as well as a list of stuff I need to buy.

Day One is always putting up the tree. This must be done solely by the children with the assistance of a ladder-hence it looking as if it’s been through a cyclone.

It’s much better than it has been previous years though, when they’d stick all the decorations on one square foot and leave the rest naked. It’s also a work in progress-they often move things around on their way past.

Today.

  Mother's Day. Last year, it did not happen. We'd just moved here, we were putting in huge days trying to settle in and fix everything and it all seemed too hard. So we just ignored it. The kids are rather confused, because they know there should have been another one, but they haven't yet twigged on to the fact that we just skipped it last year.

 

And for them, every occasion is an excuse to craft. Stuff the cards this year, they decided a banner would be better. Each letter is decorated with something different from the property, from bark to fluffy grass seeds to garlic chives. It's so gorgeous. It's hanging in the lounge room. I also got the requisite brekky in bed, now they're older i've been upgraded from burnt toast with massive wodges of unspread butter to quite passable scrambled eggs-the first one I haven't had to choke down with the husband sniggering at me in sadistic pleasure.

 

 My posy of flowers, grown by them in their very own fairy garden.

It was also an excuse to get some gardening done-well, I pottered around doing not much but the husband was busy. I did totally reorganise the seed collection, which is shamefully huge. We can't stop buying them-the potential! Now just to grow a reasonable number of them..............

 We also broke our record for frogs found in the trees' watering pipes, nine swam to the top in this one next to the lilly pilly

.

 

And while there was a craft day had by all the children (is there any other sort of day to be had?) G outdid herself with her fairy tipi. I love older kids. She spent over an hour on this, working out how to assemble it and putting it all together. I'm going to have to point her in the direction of fairy furniture making materials and ideas tomorrow. Note the fluffy grass seeds on the ground.

The sign she created for it-it's hung on the top using some knotted grass. 

I also altered some boring jeans for myself to make them super-funky, but i'd lost the camera by that stage so they'll have to wait to be shown off. I'm getting my groove back now I know i'm not going to be changing sizes every week!

Hope everyone had a day as fantastic, idyllic and full of love as I did.

Mastered!

Fingerknitting with multiple fingers, by myself and Miss G.

But not quite mastered by Master R.........teehee!

December

And what a hectic month it was-first up there was lots and lots of work to do, hence the totally shameful table.

But I managed to squeeze in finalising the OSFM swim nappy pattern, in amongst the market busyness and custom orders-now just to make some for the site!

 

We had our Land for Wildlife assessment and got our really cool sign, woohoo! Lots of lantana clearing and reading has been a result, with our planning visit due in a few days time.

A goat appeared one day, it's not every day i'm sitting there feeding Frosty and look out the window to see one of them ambling past. He was duly returned to his home a few properties down after overnighting here on a run, luckily before he reached the food forest. Or he would have been chevon.

 We had a broody chook comedy occur (more about that later) and have nine chicks as a result. So cute!

Which necessitated the building of a mini chook dome, much more successful result than the Linda Woodrow one (more about that later too).

 Bella and Daisy the geese joined the family.

The food forest area has been pimped and is loving the rain that finally arrived-the resident brush turkey is a fan of the renos too.

The fairy garden was also pimped after the chooks turned it into a wasteland-it is now fenced as we try to come up with the final housing solution for them. The solar lanterns automatically turn on at dusk, which has been taken as concrete proof that fairies are there.

Christmas crafts and baking, with much camera slackery.

 

 

And sewing presents-five stocking to replace their ratty old bought things they had.

 

A Chickummyjig for F, which he ignores and the other kids adore.

 

Plus aprons and a pair of shorts each for the older four, more camera slackery.

Lots of playing with presents, but I only do it because the kids love it. You wouldn't catch my by myself. Never. *snort*

 

My babe turned one, and i'm still thinking it's all up from here :P

 Plus a few trips to the beach, a pile of tie-dyeing, renovating the kids room and half the kitchen and lots more gardening and general tidying of the property, it's finally starting to look like a home.

And this is why the blogging is sloooow-looking at the above i'm surprised at how much we've managed to cram into one short month!