Watermelon Kids Party

May is a good month in our home as it’s our daughters birthday. May is also a good month for folk in East Dublin, Georgia, as they have their Annual Redneck games! Festive delights include armpit serenading, pig feet bobbing, the mud pit belly flop, toilet seat tossin’ and watermelon pip spittin’.

Turning to the games for inspiration (minus the fartin’, bobbin’, tossin’ and spittin’), this year my daughters birthday was a watermelon coloured high tea.

HOW TO MAKE A WATERMELON TENT WITH STREAMERS & ROSES

Using a Bryne net tent from Ikea, threaded streamers over the outside string. Added foam roses and a green crepe top.

I hanged the watermelon tent over the kids food serving table before loading it up with watermelon coloured party foods.

WATERMELON COLOURED PARTY FOODS

1) Green Jelly, White chocolate mousse and strawberry syrup cups.

2) Decorated marshmellows with edible marker pens and weaved onto bamboo skewers with red licorice and watermelon sour sweets.

3) Pink Vanilla cupcakes with green icing and pink sprinkles.

WATERMELON BUNTING

Made with foam packaging & acrylic paints.

For a small dose of Hill Billy fun… The Three legged race!
Old school and loads of fun!

Happy 6th Birthday to my Beautiful girl!

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Thumbs up for Star Wars

If fantasy were to become reality, would it ever be just as good?

For me it would be the day I could have a satisfying three course chewing gum meal, think Willy Wonka minus the side effects of when you get to blueberry pie! For Star Wars fans, Princess Leia style holograms projected from a mobile device is apparently a soon to be reality. Happy you must be!

Drawing inspiration from Star Wars Thumb Doodles, I made Star Wars wrapping paper using thumbprints, paint and a marker pen.

With a clean thumb and acrylic paints I set to printing. Here are the fingerprint doodles before and after…

Here’s the Star Wars fingerprint gift wrapped Birthday present…

Say it with Stamps…

More Star Wars fingerprintspiration…

Everything tastes better with Butter!

From udder to butter! Isn’t it amazing that what starts off as a cow lazily masticating grass results in a froth of milky goodness. This milk is then churned until it separates, the fat being the butter that is then salted and stacked in neat little packs to tempt their way into our cooking.

My mum is a big fan of Chilli and Garlic so thought this year for Mothers Day to make her a Chilli Garlic Baba butter jar. I slowly melted 1 block of butter with 2tbsp of chilli and garlic. Poured it into a tray lined with baking paper, spreading spices evenly with a spoon before putting in fridge to set.

Once cooled and set I cut the butter out with cookie cutters.

Then I cleaned out a Taco sauce jar and decorated it with a paper collage interior and personalised paper lid using paint, stamps and glitter.

Now whenever mum wants to add a little extra heat to her meat all she has to do is start off with one piece of Chilli Garlic butter in the pan and sizzle her way to a yummy meal!

Hope you had a good Mother’s Day too!

Cowboy Craft table

I looked down at La Mesa disapprovingly. It looked back up at me, all doe eyed and floral flanked.

Its’ beetles, bugs and butterflies sparkled silver in the afternoon light…

Hmm. You do not do, you do not do, anymore black shoe (aptly put Sylvia Plath), however I am not talking about a black shoe, but a mesa…a table… specifically my daughter’s craft table. Appropriately whimsical when she was a toddler, her daily reminders of what a big girl she is, made me soon realize that it was time for a craft table makeover. I refurbished this table about a year ago. As she will be sharing it with a brother within weeks, it manned up in the nick of time! Out with the reindeer and in with the raw hide.

HOW TO REFURBISH A KIDS CRAFT TABLE

This was originally a plain pine table that I refurbished into a girls craft table: see Oct 2012 post ‘Doe a Deer.’

Firstly I painted the table top with left over house paint (Kosciusko Pebble) and rubbed it back to a light white colour before spraying with one coat of copper coloured spray paint. Randomly rested horse shoes on table surface. In the absence of real horse shoes, cardboard stencils would suffice.

With thick brush strokes, painted dark blue oil paint round the horse shoes, diluting the paint with linseed oil for quicker and thinner coverage.

Dabbed a cloth in methylated spirits and randomly rubbed back dark blue paint on table top here and there to reveal light blue and copper colours underneath.

With a stencil knife and book covering contact, drew and cut out Yee-ha boots. Peeled paper backing off and placed sticky side down onto clean and dry table surface before painting stencil in with lime green oil paint.

Just add children and chairs. H-yah!

Where’s my Robot?

According to the Jetsons, the future is filled with robot maids…  where’s mine?

I see them disarm bombs in war torn countries, they traverse the surface of Mars and manufacture cars. All very impressive but where’s my robot? Is it too much to ask for a comforting robo-maid who talks like a pack a day wise cracking waitress as she whips up my bacon and eggs, packs school lunches and waves husband out the door? Instead I live in a present where all domestic drear housework and child rearing is done by me, without the slightest whiff of robotic assistance! About a year ago, my daughter got hooked on the idea that she needed a dress up robot outfit. I hurriedly made her one from an old whipper snipper box and marker pens. It kept her happy for days. This year I wanted to attempt upgrading my robot making skills.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN ROBOT OUTFIT

Insert child and Voila!