School holiday fun...

We're nearing the end of our winter school holidays (2 weeks). We had a bit of rain last week which wasn't so nice for getting outside and playing, and as it would have it, the kids have spent more time playing inside this week even though there is sunshine! Last Wednesday we had Lani's 5th birthday on Wednesday (the 27th). Daddy had to work in the morning, so we started the day early with some yummy pancakes for breakfast and some gifts for Lani girl. And of course cuddles and photos with Daddy.

Lani received so many beautiful gifts - lots of new dresses and leggings (she didn't have a lot of winter clothes!), some new books, crafting things (which she just loves at the moment!) and some Lego Friends packs (awesome that there's girly Lego available now). Combined with gifts from friends at her party, she was very very blessed!!

After lunch, Daddy was able to come home and we took the kids to a local Playcentre for the afternoon. Afternoon seems to be the right time to go, because although it was holidays and raining, it wasn't too busy! I guess everyone had taken their little ones home for naps.

Lani chose Pumpkin Soup for her birthday dinner, with ice-cream, jelly and custard for dessert. Yum! We didn't have another birthday cake as we had one at her party. 

Our little girl is growing up so fast. She has a beautiful spirit and loves her Mummy and Daddy so so much, and shows us all the time with cuddles. As with many little girls, she has a very special place in her heart for her Daddy. They do lots of things together. And she has him wrapped around her little finger. She can be fiesty though, and is sure of what she wants, and its hard to change her mind! I think she gets that stubbornness from her Mumma. She loves to play with her brothers, but is also super girly so is often playing in her room with her dolls, or asking Mum and Dad to do girly puzzles with her.

The kids went off to Nana and Poppy's house on Thursday for 2 nights sleep over! Fun for them, and kid-free time for Greg and I. Woohoo! It was so strange - but so nice to have quiet and lazy nights and mornings. Greg and I took the opportunity to go out for dinner to Hogs Breath Cafe on Thursday night for a yummy steak, and then ice-cream too. There's something special (although crazy!) about eating ice-cream when its cold. We did the same when we were in NZ two years ago! I was also fighting off a minor cold, so slept in the afternoons - much later than I would have. The luxury of waking up from a nap at 6pm was so strange, but so cool too. We really appreciated the time off! We spend Saturday morning driving around the northern suburbs of Brisbane looking at furniture, for a new desk for Greg, so we can shuffle those we have at home and set up a computer desk that the kids can use - particularly Jaidyn who will be in high school next year (my goodness!).

The kids had fun fishing and making wind chimes (and bazookas!) from bamboo with Poppy. Nana apparently got bored of fishing early on. They also were very excited to tell us that they'd bought some pet fish for Nana & Poppy's pond!

We enjoyed a nice quiet weekend after that, and Daddy is now on holidays, so we're enjoying doing some things together.

The boys have been REALLY busy and REALLY quiet (yay!) the last couple of days building Lego. Particularly Jai - we've hardly seen him!

Eli bought this awesome Lego book a while ago with his birthday money. It's been so good for giving them ideas of what they can make with the many many Lego pieces they have!! Jai's become quite the master builder!

Eli busy building a Lego 'base'...

Jai's Castle masterpiece. It is since even bigger with a drawbridge now too! 

Jai even made a photoframe out of Lego to put his photo with his Lego castle...

Lani and Daddy building 'Olivia's Treehouse' - one of Lani's b'day presents...

Mummy doing what I do - being pregnant and preparing lunch for the family...

Yesterday, when Jai decided he wanted to make a Lego photo frame, Lani and Eli decided they wanted to make a photo frame too, so we got out the craft stuff. While Daddy was out at the dentist, we decided to make him some photo frames so printed out a pic of Eli & Daddy and Lani & Daddy and made some gorgeous little pieces of art! Daddy will need to get a pin-board to put them on! The kids were very proud. I think they look awesome!!

Lani also got out her Plaster Mould set she got for her birthday and her and Daddy made the plaster of paris to set in the moulds, to hopefully paint today or tomorrow. Daddy had to be quick because it started to set quickly for some reason!!

And who can go past a game of Twister!! They are well aware Mummy has to sit out of this one though!!

It's nice having Daddy home for the holidays! While the kids have been busy building Lego, Mummy has had some time to do a little sewing... I'm pile high in quilting patches and sprocket pillow wedges at the moment! But loving it and can't wait to get them all finished for Lani and Rainby's shared room.

Here's what Lani's quilt will look somewhat like...

Arranging the disappearing 9 patch blocks for Lani's single size quilt... only the floor is big enough!

We are going to go to the movies to see BRAVE on Thursday and maybe have a little walk around SouthBank - we might even take the train in! And on Saturday, we are going with some friends as well as Uncle Jeremy up to the Medieval Festival - that will be lots of fun! We took the kids about 3 years ago but with two toddlers it wasn't as good - they'll all be at a good age to enjoy the festivities and we hope to see the jousting this time! I'm sure there'll be many more photos to follow from then!

Hope everyone else in Australia is enjoying their school holidays, and those of you in the US are enjoying summer break too! Hope its not too hot for you!!

{Get Creative} Kids' Job Charts

I seem to spend a lot of my time on repeat, telling the kids over and over (and over) to do their (daily) chores. Even just the daily routine that enables us to get to school on time (or as it often is, late).

My eldest, Jaidyn (11) has often asked me to make some job charts to help him remember. From time to time, he's done something basic up on Word, added some pictures and printed it out. It then seems to live in his room - somewhere - but never really worked for its intended purpose.

I have intended to do something like this therefore, about forever. I've seen a few friends' charts, and thought 'yeah, that might work', but then not been motivated *enough* to get off my lazy butt.

I'm an all or nothing kinda person, perfectionist you may call it. I have to do it 'properly' or just not do it.

And so, fueled by a little inspiration from my friend Sarah from The Sewing Sisterhood who, with 4 small children at home got organised and made herself a Menu Planner, I thought "Well hey, she's got 4 kids at home, so surely I can pull my finger out and do this too!?" And that was it. I was off on a mission.

I'm sure many of you also have the same love affair that I have with Pinterest... for those of you living under rocks, (and if you're a crafty type particularly, what kinda rock have you been under!!??), its this fabulous site which basically works as a 'inspiration board', allowing you to find tutorials, pictures etc that you 'want to do one day' and *pin* them so that you can go back and find them later. A much easier way than clogging up my bookmarks bar. {Go and sign up to Pinterest and get pinning!!} I don't use it daily, but depending what I have planned in the next few months - parties for one I spend hours pinning ideas for - I pin and pin and pin, and plan and plan and plan. It's great for a little sew-jo or crafty inspiration!!

Aaaaanyway..... I spent some time on Pinterest, looking at everyone else's ideas (really, what's original these days?) for chore charts and menu planners (the next on the list), and found a few that I thought would work for me. And I settled on this one here... I liked that my kids could interact with it, and being a  SAHM (stay at home Mum) with the big three at school each day, I knew I could change them over during the day sometime ready for afternoon routines and chores again.
* For those working Mums, this might not work as well - as it only holds 6 job cards at a time (but depending what things you wish to put up), but you could always do the same sort of thing with a bigger frame, or smaller cards to fit more in. Or you might only want to use it for 'chores'; I've included all the little routines I need my kids to do to make our mornings run well - brushing teeth, making beds, packing school bags etc.

So I followed the basic tutorial posted by Amy but decided I would like to make my own tutorial too with some more photos and the variations and measurements that I used for mine. But original credit goes to Amy.

Firstly, gather your supplies...

Here's what I used for mine. (I am making 3 for my 3 kids)

* 8 x 10 inch frame - to hold 6 cards

* Letter stickers 

* A packet of clear removable hooks

* Scrapbooking papers

* Paper cutter or scissors

* A glue stick

* A hole punch (forgot to add that to the pic)

* A laminator & laminating pouches 

* A computer, printer and MS Word or similar program with clipart.

and as it turned out, some Superglue too!

Grab your pretty letter stickers - we used pink Miss Lani, blue for Jaidyn and red for Eli - and stick them onto your frame. (for this purpose, I bought a flat frame). I estimated where the middle was, and made that my 'space' and tried to place them fairly evenly either side of that (if your child has a long name, you might need to accommodate to suit that - you want your title centred when you're done).

Then, I cut my job cards out of pretty scrapbooking papers. I chose to do a set for each of my kids so picked three different colour combinations. I played around with the sizes for a bit, but they ended up being about 2.5" x 3" or 65mm x 75mm. You can place them onto the glass of your frame to see how you like the sizes, and adjust from there.

I then made the text part using MS Word and added cute clipart pics so that my almost-5 year old (who's still only learning to read) knew what her cards were. Mr 11 decided he would like pictures too though! Having pictures and words will help my two little ones with reading anyway! If you would like a copy of this Word document that I used, please pop me an email at nat_mardon@hotmail.com and I can send it to you. It was fairly quick and easy to do though.

   

Print it out and cut it up, then glue the jobs/chores onto the pretty cards you made earlier. Punch a hole in the top with your hole punch, then pop them into laminating pouches and through your laminator. 

Don't they look awesome! I kinda wanted to go and laminate EVERYTHING after doing this!!!

Cut them up leaving a little clear around the edges, then use your hole punch again and put holes into the plastic where your holes are in the cards. Or this is a good job to get the husband to do because it hurts a bit - especially if you're doing about 75 cards like I did!! My hole punch didn't cut through the plastic all the way around the circle/hole, so I just used scissors to get the last bit off.

Your cards are ready to go!! 

{For the moment, mine are living in an envelope for each child on our kitchen bench, but I do plan to eventually put them into pockets or something with a magnet on the back to pop them onto our freezer that sits in the laundry directly opposite where the job charts now hang...}

Back to finishing the frames!

I started by attempting to use my removable hooks, as they're intended, by sticking the removable sticky bits onto the glass. I left them there overnight, but they didn't stick, so we scrapped that idea. And I was then glad that I'd only bought cheap hooks - but then again, that might be why they didn't stick properly. But I truly didn't fancy spending $12.50 on 3M brand, so we went to Plan B, and my husband got out the trusty Super Glue!!

Clean your glass. I used my trusty Norwex glass cleaning cloth. 

{Have you used Norwex before? It's fabulous!! Cleaning with no chemicals! One of my friends is a consultant, and I've received most of my Norwex stash - probably at least $350 worth - for free just for hosting a demonstration in my home... and the best part - SHE CLEANED MY OVEN AND WINDOWS FOR ME!! Let me know if you're in Brisbane and am interested in hosting your own demo and I'll hook you up with Amy!} 

Next, grab 6 of your job cards - or whatever fills your frame - and place them as you would like them to be, on the glass. Then use a Nikko/Sharpie marker and make a small dot in the hole of each of your cards. This will help you to work out where to place them with the superglue - because I'm sure we all know why superglue is called super!! You won't be able to move them once stuck! 

(Funnily enough, I only thought of this brilliant step after guestimating the first frame, and consequently stuffing it up.... still waiting for husband to try to pry the hooks off so that I can fit them up!) So yeah, use your cards to do this...

                     

Then CAREFULLY use your Super Glue to place your clear hooks - oh, with the sticky parts pulled off because they didn't work! - over the dots you placed on the glass. To make sure you know exactly where your dot will be on the hook, place a hook onto the glass with your card to see where it lines up with the hole of your card.

{I mentioned I got the hubby do this part. Well, that's because I've been banned from using Super Glue after sticking my fingers together trying to rescue my fondant '30' topper I made for my b'day cake/party - right before my party. So husband said no more am I allowed to use it! Funny story really. And it was funny at the time too. But thankfully they weren't stuck too bad and I did manage to pry them apart after about 5 minutes without the aid of nail polish remover.}

YOU'RE DONE!! 

Hang them on your wall and let the kids get excited about doing their chores - at least for a few days!!

See that nice blank space above the charts and next to the calendar? That's where my Menu Planner will go. I'm planning to do it in the same style, but it's a bit more in depth - with including ingredients and a reference to where the recipe is on the backs of the cards (in the hope that hubby can help with dinner more when bub comes along and I might be off feeding/nursing at dinnertime!)... so its still in the pipeline. Stay tuned for that one. Hopefully coming soon.

I know that was a super long and super photo loaded post, but hopefully it will make it easy to make your own, if you so choose to! Please send me your links if you do make one yourself, I'd love to see it!