Stuff With Thing

Smiley Saturday time again. If you want to join in then click on the Smiley Saturday link above and head over to Lightenings to enter your Smiley Saturday link.

With Ralph and both the girls sick with some virus and my Crohns flaring up again I thought I’d struggle to find things to smile about but seems that is not the case.

1. I got some stitching done this week.

2. Because the girls are sick I got to use my jelly / jello hack for the first time.

When my girls are sick they get really dehydrated very quickly, so I like to keep a track of their fluid intake. So being that jelly / jello is a sort of fluid I wanted to track how much they eat because it is one of their fav. foods when ill. I’ve been collecting my empty yogurt cups, washing them out and storing them.

Friday I got out 15 of those cups and filled each one with jelly. One standard packet of jelly fills 5 cups which = 100ml of jelly per cup. Now I can easily track their fluid, plus I can throw the cups out later which means no washing up, thus one less chore when I’m busy looking after sick kids.

I also served their ice-cream in the little yogurt cups, calculating roughly 100ml of ice cream per cup.

3. My Mum sent the girls a “Design Girls Fashion Studio” which arrived in the mail on Thursday.

I will admit my heart sank when I saw it - so many little pieces and for ages 7+, how much of a pain in the rear is this going to be to do with a 5yo and 3yo.

Friday morning the girls were getting pretty bored, they’d been up most of the night and I was rather tired and not feeling so great myself. Annie pulled out the design studio and asked if they could play with it. I distracted Heidi with the TV, figuring that this was going to be easier one child at a time.

Then Annie and I opened the box, she picked the blond paper doll, we chose what she was going to wear from the cardboard pattern sheets. Then Annie picked which fabric we would use and I traced out the pattern and cut the fabric. Annie decorated the skirt and top she had chosen whilst I cut out a pair of clogs and a handbag which she then also decorated. We used the magnets provided to attached the clothing to her paper doll.

My opinion of this Design Studio has changed radically, this is a great little kit, you could use fabrics and bits of crafty stuff you have at home to make the clothing - heck you could even make the doll yourself using a bit of sturdy cardboard and then the kiddies would have all the fun of making hair, eyes etc themselves.

Annie was entranced for almost a full hour which is impressive considering she was sick and very tired.

Here is a picture of our decorated clothing while it is waiting for the glue to dry.

Then while Annie had a rest in the lounge room I tried to make clothing for the other doll with Heidi. She was interested enough to pick out the patterns, jeans and a shirt. But then she discovered the pipe cleaners and buttons and proceeded to make a necklace. Which resulted in some fantastic language / communication from her. I even got a little video of it.

So I’m pleased as punch that Mum sent us this kit, which just goes to show that sometimes things are not as difficult as you think they are going to be.

4. The final reason I’m smiling is that after my humiliation on Tuesday I’ve managed to get on the treadmill for at least 30 minutes each day (except Thursday). I’m not doing much of a diet change due to my current Crohns flare up but after my first two coffees in the morning I’m alternating each cup of coffee with drinking a bottle of water. Thus reducing my caffeine intake and increasing my water intake.

I hope you’ve got your smile on this weekend also.