crafts – Mediocre Mum

Christmas Garland Made from Recycled Cards

How to Recycle your Christmas Cards

I have mixed feelings about Christmas Cards. On one hand I love hearing from old friends, but they quickly begin to take over all the surfaces in the house. This year with a bit of blue tac I managed to keep on top of them.

Shortly after Christmas, that urge to de-Christmas my house set in, but what do you do with all the old cards? There are local schemes that recycle them for you, but as we had a few more days off school, I was looking for an activity to entertain my 7 year old.

Over the years we have made Mosaic Placemats with them, Thank you cards and Christmas tags. I had a quick look on Pinterest and came across an idea from Party Planning Center for creating Christmas Garland with them. I have a personal hatred of the store bought shiny garland so this was a perfect solution and it was relatively easy.

The most difficult part was locating a 2″ Circular Craft Punch, like any other time we decide to craft it always results in a trip to the shops as we aren’t well stocked in the craft department. I managed to find one at Hobbycraft.

I think they’re fairly self explanatory but the full instructions can be found at the link below.

How to Make Christmas Decorations with Recycle Paper

Now that we have the circular punch, we thought we’d do a few Thank you cards while we were at it.

What do you do with all your old Christmas Cards? Do you have any other craft activities I can use my punch for?

How to Train Your Dragon 2 – Tears and laughter!

At what age do children show empathy?

To give myself a bit of a break on the weekend, I’d checked the weather report and it looked grim, so I booked my daughter and hubby into the Cinema to see How to Train Your Dragon 2. She’d watched the first one and has also watched How to Train Your Dragon Legends on Netflix along with countless other kids films on there.

Textbook lesson in ‘How to Do A Sequel.’

My husband came home and raved about it, saying it was just as good if not better than the first. He said she was sitting on the edge of her seat most of the time smiling, totally taken by the story. However, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there was a part that made her cry, apparently someone dies but I’m not going to tell you who. It sounds like the writers have taken it to a deeper darker level, maybe they realise the children who watched the original in 2010 have grown up a bit. As I haven’t seen it, do you think it’s too dark for littlies?

Personally, I think it’s a sign of a good movie if it can make you laugh, cry or think.

With School Holidays looming, I’m doing my usual panic of things to do, especially if it rains. I’ve been trolling the net looking for Dragon Activities and was inspired by the movie How to Train a Dragon 2 and it’s characters.

All Things Dragon – How to Survive Summer Holidays

How to Get Rid of Hiccups

Teach her how to get rid of hiccups by drinking a glass of water upside down. I’ve done this for years and it really does work.

Create a Joke Book

How to Train Your Dragon Jokes – my daughter is really into jokes at the moment. We may sit down and create our own Joke Books and see if we can make Toothless Laugh.

Shadow Puppets

Shadow Puppet Template from British Museum

We hope to do a fair amount of camping this summer and shadow puppets are genius at night in the tent with a torch. You can find instructions and a template for making your own at the British Museum.

Play a Game of Tag

If we can get a few of her friends around I love the idea of playing Dragon Tag. It requires to teams, children form a human chain, with a scarf as a tail and try to steal each other’s tails. Chains can’t become separated.

Learn a New Song

I may take the opportunity to introduce her to one of my all time favourites ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ by Peter, Paul and Mary.

Bake a Cake

How to Make a Dragon Cake

Personally I think this one would push me over the edge, but if we’re really desperate we could have a go at making this Dragon Cake.

Dragon Boat Festival

I’ve never been to one but I’d love to check out a Dragon Boat Festival.

I really have gone off on a tangent but now have a few more things in my arsenal to survive the school holidays. :-)

Easy Christmas Decorations to make with kids

Fimo Candy Cane Christmas Decorations

Don’t laugh but I’ve been doing a bit of ‘pseudo’ Christmas crafting so I thought I’d share. Growing up in Canada we always added edible Candy Canes to our Christmas trees when decorating. I know you can get them here in the UK, but on occasion I’ve got caught out leaving it too late or when I retrieved them from the loft they were broken.

Plus, I was also looking for something to entertain my daughter on a Sunday afternoon.

They really are as easy as they look

Directions:

Use 2 or 3 different colours (red, white or green) of Fimo. Soften the Fimo in your hands then roll out a long snake of each colour. Try to keep them the same diamter. Then simple twist them together. Once you have twisted them into one multi-coloured snake, roll them gently on a flat surface like a table or cutting board to smooth them out a bit. You could trim the ends if you like.

Bend them into a candy cane shape, place on a baking tray and cook in a pre-heated oven (120 C) for 30 minutes. Let cool.

If I get time I hope to varnish them.

What do you reckon???

Fimo Craft Ideas for Younger Children

‘Sh*t! Are you supposed to bake Fimo????’ ‘Er, yes petal!’

How the h*ll was I supposed to know, I’ve never used the stuff before and crafting is not my strong point. I was sent a box of it to play with from Cost Cutters Education Supplies. So, as a good mother and my daughter is studying minibeasts at school, I set her and my husband to making one of these.

I thought it was rather impressive.

But, over the coming weeks a large grease spot has developed around the Dragonfly. This is when it donned on me that you are supposed to bake it. Well it’s modelling clay I really should have thought of it.

Anyhow, now that I’ve worked out what it’s for, I’ve spent the evening searching the net for ideas of what to do with the plethora I have left over.

Click on the images to visit the sites for more information/instructions.

Do you have any other suggestions of what we can do with it? Bearing in mind my daughter is only 5.

9 Fun Things to do with Strawberries

Did you know that there are 35 varieties of British Strawberries and that the average strawberry has 200 seeds on them? Fascinating stuff. My daughter likes nothing better than eating strawberries straight out of the punnet. Now that they are coming into season here in the UK, I found myself this afternoon, instead of catching up on work, searching for ‘Fun Things to do with Strawberries’. I’m the world’s worst procrastinator.

There are some very talented and creative folks out there! So, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite ideas that I came across. If you want more information or instructions do click on the image and it will take you to the original site.

It’s okay to play with your food, right???

Disclosure: This post was inspired by a recent visit to Tesco, to try a selection of their new seasonal fruits. A tasty selection of Strawberry Recipes can be found on their Real Food Site.

If you happen to try any of the above ideas do come back and let me know how you get on.