Let it gooooo.....

Frozen is still a favourite with our youngest daughter, so there wasn't really any question as to what her party would be!

Pinterest is full of great ideas for parties especially frozen parties - the mistake is to let your 5 year old get involved! As often is the case I forgot till after the event to take photos! At most of the girls parties the camera makes it's appearance with the cake! This party was no exception, but most of the ideas are to be found on Pinterest posted by people who remember to take pictures!
Annie's party consisted of a mixture of jumping around games, quiet games, individual and team games.
Each of the children was given a named plastic cup placed on a window ledge and any prizes they collected went in the cup!
We started with some old favourites played with a frozen twist!
Musical statues - when the music stops you freeze like Anna!
Musical bumps - when the music stops act like a troll and roll (roll into a ball rather than doing a forward roll!)
We then put the children into teams for some of the games:
The Snowball Game
Teams of children got to throw white pom-poms into numbered buckets, scoring the number of points on the bucket.

Snowball Skittles
Polystyrene cups were decorated to look like snowmen, stacked into a pyramid, the teams then took turns to throw snowball Pom poms at them scoring 1 point for every cup knocked down.
We played these at the same time, two teams on each then swopped over so that the time spent waiting was limited.
Pin the Nose on Olaf
Each team had a picture of Olaf and a carrot nose each which they attempted to blu tack in the right place.
Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

These were printed from Pinterest then laminated for durability and were a good quieter game, each team had a set and a dice and the teams raced each other.
Pairs

Each team had a set of frozen pairs, printed from Disneys activity pack, they took turns to play pairs with the first team to find all the pairs winning
We then moved to Some individual games :
Each corner of the room had a character, Elsa, Anna, Svenn and Christoff, when instructed the children had to choose a character, a card was then drawn from a set if cards containing the four characters if your character was chosen you were out.
Frozen heart

Basically hot potato with a heart!
Pass the parcel
This was regular pass the parcel, but at the end while sitting in their circle each child was given one of the Pom Pom snowballs from the earlier games, a felt nose attatched to an elastic band, two adhesive google eyes and a mouth cut from sticky felt. With help the children transformed their snowball into a snowman.

The goody bags were the take home present in themselves, exercising my sewing machine skills somewhat!

Inside was a roll of frozen activity sheets, a deconstructed Olaf and only because mr Tesco reduced them to 10p a pack of frozen stickers!
It was fun to organise and run and she loved it!

Sophie's art project

For Sophie's school project she had to choose a material and create a piece of art.

Sophie chose paper.

She spent weeks quilling her circles, and ignored my suggestion that she try to make them the same size.
It was only when she glued them on I could see that she was using the different sizes to create her design and it worked really well. She finished it the morning that it was due in which is so Sophie but was thrilled with the result.

Sweet Potato Casserole ..... With a twist!

Well quite a big twist!
We first made Sweet potato casserole as our contribution to an American thanksgiving meal and it was ....well sweet, really sweet which was kind of ok but slightly odd for a savoury dish!

Left with surplus mini marshmallows and pecans I toyed with making it again but to be fair there are better uses for sweet potato, but what if I switched the potato for Apple, nice tart cooking apples?

So stew cooking apples and place in a casserole dish with no extra sugar

- there is plenty of that on top! I used about 6 for this dish.

Then mix 1 1/2 cups of crushed cornflakes with 1/2 cup of chopped pecans and 1tablespoon of brown sugar.
Melt 50g of butter and mix into cornflake mixture.
Place the cornflake mixture on the apple in diagonal lines with approximately 4cm gap in between.
Place in a preheated oven, 180c for about 15 min, till cornflakes are browned but not burnt ( you need to watch it they turn quickly!)
Allow to cool for 5 min then fill the gaps with marshmallows and bake until mallows are golden brown.

Delicious wth ice cream!

Just for fun : Baby bag

The disadvantage of being the youngest sibling is that sometimes you don't get stuff because it is presumed that you play with your older siblings toys.
Two things struck me this year, first I had forgotten that baths were fun - not functional. Having moved to a house with a working shower we have moved away from baths, washing the girls in the shower is just so much quicker and easier. Then after a cold muddy walk on New Years Eve Annie asked to have a bath, thinking it would warm her up I agreed and filled a bubble bath for her, she had a great time with her plastic tea set playing for ages. So I guess baths are going to feature a bit more often now!

The second was that we had never bought her a working baby doll, we had meant too, when she got older but somehow had never got round to it. So with her birthday coming so soon after Christmas we thought this was the opportunity to put that right. After some discussion as to how old is too old when it came to dolls we ordered an Annabel at a reasonable price. The accesories were so pricey that I looked at buying second hand, but fell fowl to not checking before I bought and ended up with something shabby and too small for Annabel. So plan b was to make some which to be honest is what I should have done in the first place.
I didn't have a pattern but had an idea of what I wanted to create, so I used a paper template to cut out the pieces, pinned it together to check it worked then hit the sewing machine!

Change bag
The letter were attached using a permanent iron on adhesive, and the base included a pocket for a piece of card to give shape to the bag.

The pocket was made by sewing together two pieces, turning them right side out, pressing them then attaching the piece to the back of the bag using a decorative stitch.
Change mat

I also chatted to Rebecca about giving some of her stash of dolls clothes as a birthday present to Annie, she was happy to do that and in the processof getting all the dolls stuff out she and Sophie's dolls suddenly became the toy of choice! Dolls are back in vogue! To be fair Rebecca's doll has always been in the picture but hers and Sophie's are now dressed and actively being played with so Annie is now desperate for one! And the selected items have been washed and ironed ready to be wrapped.

Just for fun - Christmas present for a frozen fan!

This gift was inspired by the fabric! I saw this material on-line and knew Annie would love it, so I ordered a metre then had to come up with a project to use it!
Pinterest is a great source of ideas and I found a tutorial for a lovely full skirted apron, which would be perfect.

http://www.annkelle.com/tutorial-childrens-apron/

The tutorial is straight forward and easy to follow, and there was enough fabric to make two so I was able to make one for my niece as well as one for Annie.

She loved it, and it helped to keep her dressing up clothes (which needed to be worn all day!) clean.
She folded the bib down on Christmas Day and wore it over her jeans as a skirt, which does make me wonder if that might be a potential project for the summer! Though what's the betting if I make her a skirt she won't wear it!

Just for fun : Bean bug toss...

I'm not sure what prompted this present, but it began as an idea of making a bean bag game, where you would throw the bean bags on to a numbered mat.

As I pondered on it, probably at a rediculous time in the morning I wondered if I could adapt it to be a bee on a beehive.

This progressed to a bee on a flower, so I ordered some felt and fabric. But decided to go step further - how about doing bugs on a flower, and so the idea was now formulated.

I always think about recording patterns, measurements and step by step photos after I finish a project so apologies! But essentially the flower was created with fat quarters. I used a dinner plate so make the pattern and sewed them with a sheet of wadding in the middle.

The numbers were attached using a permenant iron on adhesive. I combined fabric to make the centre rather than use another pattern, and edged it with giant ric rac as I felt it needed something to finish it off. I also backed it with a circle of green felt to strengthen it and this helped give it more structure when folded up, the buttons were added to secure it with a piece of elastic as the fastener.

The bugs were cut freehand and the body pieces sewn by machine to ensure the filling was secure and then edged with blanket stitch as a decorative finish.

I tested it out on my 5 year old who loved throwing the bugs and adding up the numbers, so it is definatly a game that can evolve as the child develops.

It's been a while ...

Well after a lovely Christmas it's back to 'normal ' life ....

it's been a bit quiet on the blogging front lately...
The last 3 months have mostly been taken up with adjusting to life back at work with new routines and settling into the new role.
I am now working as a TA in a local school, and loving it. Being involved in education has been a long held ambition so when it came to looking for work once Annie started school it seemed a good time to try to make the switch!
I am enjoying using my creativity in my job as well as continuing to craft for fun ... mostly during lunchtimes!
I am hoping to post some Christmas crafts over the next few days beforeI get stuck in to preparations for Annie's Frozen party!