Category: Crafts

Posted in recipes

Feeding kids …. speeding cars with Spotty Frog lunch punch

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I reviewed the Spotty Frog lunch punches a while back and we use them regularly.

See review here

The other day I decided to spruce up Hamishs normal peanut butter sandwich and turn it into a car.

Using my Spotty Frog car lunch punch ( you can use any cookie cutter) I cut out the car shape after making his sandwich and then dipped an ear bud into some food colouring to highlight the detail.

The food colouring does not change the flavour of the food at all.

But a car needs somewhere to travel so I made a berry road using Safari berry bites.

You could of course substitute this for any of the following:

  • Nuts
  • Raisins
  • Dried fruit pieces
  • Sliced vegetables
  • Cucumber rings
  • Lettuce

Hamish gobbled this one down faster than you could say VROOM VROOM!

Posted in recipes

Feeding kids … Orange snails

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I’ve often seen images on Pintrest and Facebook where people have creatively peeled oranges to form people shapes or animals.

I thought I would give it a try and make Hamish an orange snail.


It wasn’t as hard as I first anticipated and now that I’ve created this mini orange masterpiece I’m tempted to try a harder animal.

To make your own you need:

  • An orange
  • Knife
  • Marker
  • Lavender
  • Tape

Instructions


I first started by drawing the snails head with marker.

Then cutting the skin away to reveal the flesh, which would become the shell.

Lastly I drew on a face.

To decorate I taped two pieces of lavender on a feelers and placed the snail on a plate surounded by lavender “grass”


Hamish was super impressed with his slithery snail

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Feeding Kids … banana dolphins

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We all know how much I absolutely love to whip up a cute or fun plate of ordinary snacks for Hamish, but this was my favourite to date.

While sick, he really struggled with his appetite and I made a banana dolphin jumping in a wave of berry bites.

Here’s how you can make your own:

You will need :

  • Bananas x 2
  • Marker
  • Safari berry bites x2 packets
  • Knife

Method

Peel and cut a small piece of banana from the first banana

Cut this in half and set aside

At the stem of your second banana using a knife, cut open to form the dolphins mouth.

Draw on an eye

Place the now dolphin banana onto a plate and position the two cut pieces as tail fins.

Decorate with the two packets if berry bites to form an ocean .

Eat and enjoy

Posted in Christmas, Crafts, Family Time, Giving back

The kindness advent calendar

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I love everything about Christmas. I love the old traditions that mark the day, the holiday keepsakes, the cheap tacky decor that some shops sell and the lavish gifts all through the stores.

But more than that I love that Christmas is a time where families remember to include everyone, where neighbours greet and the malls are full of people smiling at each other. It’s a time where secret Santas are endulged in just to make someone else happy.

It is a time of magic and belief …

But it also fast becomes a commercial humdrum of wish lists and debit cards. Of us spoiling our children with expensive toys that to be honest may never be played with after Christmas day or are broken and discardead.

So, as we fill our homes with chocolate advents and cheap toys for bright red Christmas stockings, as we hunt down expensive wrapping and buy gifts that we have just paid off when Christmas rolls around again, how do we teach our Children the true essence of Christmas?

Kindness Advent

This year in our home I’ve started a kindness advent to do just that.

To teach Hamish, and remind ourselves, that Christmas is about our love and kindness for others.

It was incredibly easy to set up and you can use any little advent calendar that will hold 24 slips of paper.

We bought an Advent Calendar DIY kit from Busybean which Kerri stitched together one night a few weeks ago with her friend.

This little felt kit is much bigger than I first thought and each little pocket is big enough to hold a small sweet or toy.

Everything is precut and the numbers stick on with a little sticky tape. At a later stage I want to secure the numbers a bit better,by removing them carefully and gluing them on using bostick to make them more permanent .

This little kit cost R30 and was well worth the buy.

To personalise his tree, I added a few little Christmas pegs and each little advent pocket will hold a little slip of paper encouraging an act of kindness that we will help Hamish to complete each day.

My hope is that this becomes an annual family project and a reminder of the Christmas spirit.

Gifts of Kindness

The acts of kindness that I’ve included are:

  1. Feed the birds
  2. Donate 3 old books to a library
  3. Make Christmas cards for your friends
  4. Bake biscuits for your neighbours
  5. Take a treat to the police station, fire station , hospital or ambulance service.
  6. Phone your grandparents
  7. Make a special ” I love you gift” for your sibling(s)
  8. Smile all day
  9. Donate 3 old toys to a Children’s home
  10. Hug a friend
  11. Hide a happy rock that you paint for someone to find in a park.
  12. Do a chore for mom or dad
  13. Leave a Thank you note and candy cane for the mail man
  14. Gift 3 old pieces of clothing to a charity or homeless shelter
  15. Make a new friend
  16. Pick up litter or join a beach clean up
  17. Tell your family you love them
  18. Pick flowers for someone
  19. Make someone laugh
  20. Share your sweets
  21. Ask mom and dad to help you take treats to an old age home
  22. Help mom and dad prepare dinner
  23. Tell shop assistants to have a nice day
  24. Plant a tree

This is our list but you could write your own adjusting it to suit your family, child’s age and to acts of kindness that you are comfortable with.

Because the greatest gifts we can ever offer anyone are our time and kindness.

Posted in Crafts

Make a nature inspired Summer time hedgehog

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Summer is finally here and Cape Town is boasting the most gloriously sunny days.

We took advantage of the good weather today and went on a small nature walk to collect leaves and flowers to decorate our card hedgehog.

To make your own you will need :

🦔 Card

🦔Scissors

🦔clear packaging tape

🦔marker

🦔glue

🦔Google eyes

🦔 some flowers and leaves you collect

Instructions

On the card draw a hedgehog shaped and cut it out.

Cut a square out the centre of your hedgehog.

Place packaging tape on the back, sticky side up.

Glue on the eyes and add details with a marker.

Go for a wall and collect pretty leaves and flowers to decorate the sticky tape area.

The leaves and flowers will dry over time, but this is a nice activity to celebrate Garden day with little ones this Sunday.

Posted in Brands we love, Health & Wellness, recipes

Do Good and Save Food This World food day

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World Food Day 2019
Do good, save food with GLAD

Every year people from around the world come together to declare their commitment to tackle global hunger on 16 October, World Food Day.

World Food day provides an opportunity to shine a light on food waste, our environmental footprint and most importantly the 870 million undernourished people across the planet – and to reaffirm one’s commitment to ‘save good food, from going bad’ exactly like the GLAD slogan.

It is estimated that as much as a third of all food produced goes to waste, in South Africa this is equivalent to a staggering 201kg per person annually!

A portion of this happens during the production cycle and is why ‘odd-shaped’ fruit and veggies are being reintroduced by some grocery stores.

With these figures alone, it is clear, that we need to act in our daily lives to make a difference in any way we can to reduce this number.

Let GLAD help you be the hero to stop good food from going bad:

  • Begin by planning your meals ahead of time and shop accordingly. If you buy in bulk, portion and then store in GLAD Zip Seal Bags or wrap using GLAD Wrap or Press ‘n Seal and freeze, defrost as needed. For example, if three meals require broccoli, separate the large pack into three portions to store. Do the same with your fresh herbs, nuts, meat, chicken, fish and other perishables.
  • Organise your fridge, keeping items with the earlier expiration date in the front and the longest behind. Naturally use in this order too.
  • Love your leftovers! Instead of scraping leftovers into the bin, keep them for another meal, by storing in a GLAD Zip Seal Bag in the freezer. They are transparent, allowing you to see immediately what’s inside and they have a printed white strip already on them, to write the contents and date stored.
  • If you don’t eat your leftovers, share them!
  • Understand the dates on your food. After the “use-by” date food is not safe to eat, and you need to dispose of it. Add fruit and veggies to your compost heap. “Best Before” dates only indicate when the item is at its best, if it has been properly stored it can still be consumed after this date.
For GLAD, every gram counts, and we’d like to invite you to join us in being more aware this World Food Day (and beyond), to save good food from going bad. As all GLAD products are made for your convenience with the purpose of keeping your food fresh for longer.

Please visit www.glad.co.za for more information and follow ‘GLAD SOUTH AFRICA’ on Facebook; All products are available in the GLAD aisle of most supermarkets

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Posted in Crafts, Events, Family Time, Parenting, preschool, recipes

World egg day …. 4 fun family egg activities

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Eggs are not just a great source of protein, they also feature quite a bit in our activities throughout the year.

I thought I’d share a few of our favourite ways to play with eggs today on World egg day.

1. Marbled eggs

Breakfast is the perfect way to introduce eggs , whether you like your eggs fried, poached, scrambled or boiled….there’s an egg for everyone.

One of my favourite ways to serve eggs to the kids, as I had some fussy eaters, was to give them dinosaur eggs.

Our dinosaur eggs are actually just boiled eggs that have been given a marble look using food colouring.

You can read how we make them here

You could also use the boiled or fried eggs to create pretty food pictures like we did with this egg-stra special breakfast

2. Egg and spoon races

When my eldest, now 27, was about 3 years old we did our first egg and spoon race. Just her and I and a dozen eggs that cracked very quickly. 🤣

There was a lot of mess, a lot of giggles, a lot of fun and the biggest lesson to a little girl that it’s ok to make a mess ….we can clean it.

Over the years we’ve had countless races with friends and families.

3.Blow eggs and paint them

Blowing eggs is a lot of fun and my boys always enjoyed the part as the egg sploshed and slithered out the little hole.

We wash the egg in soapy water, dry and paint using craft paints or undiluted food colouring.

You can also draw on them with markers. One of the easiest ways to work with your egg as you try decorate it is to place it on an empty toilet tube. You can also leave it on here to dry.

We once attended a holiday camp where the eggs were painted with icing sugar coloured in food colouring.

4. Egg rolling

For this you give each child an egg outside and let them roll it to an end point without breaking it.

We once gave the kids wooden spoons and fly sweaters to see which worked better when moving the eggs with gentle taps to the end.

( it’s a good idea to keep extra eggs for tuse little hands that may be a bit too excited)

How ever you choose to celebrate eggs today we hope you enjoy an Excellent day

Posted in recipes

Happy banana faces

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Thursdays are for smiling and what could better to make you smile than a healthy fruit dessert?

I made Hamish this happy face today as desert for after lunch.

Turning his meals into crazy creative creations is at least encouraging him to be a bit more excited about food, try new foods and eat better.

I’m also involving him in the cooking process which has him really excited about being a chef.

To make your own banana face you will need :

  • Half a banana
  • 3 jelly tots or dried fruit bites
  • Lavender sprigs
  • A quarter of an orange sliced up

To make up your face :

Cut the banana in half

Place jelly tots or dried fruit bites as nose and eyes. (I prefer to use dried fruit.)

Place a piece if fresh lavender as a mouth.

Position orange quarters as hair.

Add on a sprinkled lavender crown.

Enjoy

Posted in recipes

Ocean inspired sausage octopus

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When I first started Fun mamma SA I remember seeing this cute receipe online somewhere and excitedly tried it out.

Kerri and Ronan loved them.

It’s been many years since I last made a few and Hamish, has been really fussy lately so I decided to make a few for supper tonight

The receipe makes 4 sausage octopus.

You need :

2 Vienna sausages

16 sticks of spaghetti

Mayonnaise

Tomato sauce

To make up

Cut the sausages in half so you now have 4 pieces

Break the spaghetti sticks in have.

Into the end of 1 piece of sausage stick 8 pieces of dry spaghetti

Do this for all 4 pieces

Boil until the spaghetti is soft

Decorate with tomatoes sauces mouths and mayonnaise eyes.

Posted in recipes

Orange and lavender infused water

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One of the things I often miss about a more rural farm type life is how close we were to nature and how we relied more on the things around us for food.

It’s become normal for me to just buy a flavoured water but at one stage we were just too far from a shop.

Today I decided to get into the summer spirit and make a jar of infused water.

You can make your own with any single fruit or fruit combinations.

I like :

  • Strawberry
  • Strawberry and mint
  • Litchi
  • Lavender and lime
  • Orange and lavender
  • Cucumber and mint
  • Watermelon
  • Mixed berry
  • Blueberry
  • Apple and mint
  • Apple and mixed berry
  • Mango and melon

To make your own you need :

Jar or large jug

Fruit , sliced or diced. I usually use 1 cup of fruit per 2l of water.

Instructions

Into your jar or jug place water to the top.

Add fruit.

Leave in fridge to chill and infuse overnight.

Enjoy