crafting


Big Nose Monster Bookmarks 17

Super easy DIY monster bookmarks. We share a step by step tutorial to make colourful big nose monster bookmarks for your readers. Mini is an avid reader. He devours books in no time and also reads before bed, so we decided to have a go at making some of our own bookmarks. We have seen the corner monster bookmarks everywhere and we wanted to try something different, so we decided to make Big Nose Monster Bookmarks, inspired by the “Wot no” Kilroy drawings I used to doodle as a youth!


My two weeks with the Cricut Explore – An interim review and thoughts 34

The Cricut Explore was released in the UK today and I have been lucky enough to have had one to play with for the last two weeks, so I wanted to share with you my thoughts from this first two weeks with this revolutionary machine. First off I am going to admit that it has been Easter Holidays here and my number one priority is my boys, so it remained unboxed for three days and has only been played with in small chunks oe with them with me. Secondly, I am going to admit that cutting is my kryptonite.  I hate cutting things, I do not have mad cutting skills and I […]


Add personal touches to your Christmas tree

There is nothing quite like putting up a Christmas tree in your home to get the kids excited for the festive season. Instead of just decorating a tree with baubles and tinsel this year though, why not get the children really enthusiastic for Santa Claus by dressing the centrepiece of your winter wonderland with decorations made from their own hands? Here’s how: 1.       Creating…a colourful garland decoration What you need A collection of beads Wire A small bauble How to create it Measure out the wire and twist it into a small circle, making sure it is a nice enough size to stand out on a Christmas tree. Next, thread the […]


Encouraging writing in Boys – Scrapbooking holiday memories 6

We are really focussing on trying to encourage our boys to move away from the electronic and take up more tactile pursuits! I gave you some ideas for encouraging writing earlier in the week, but I wanted to concentrate on recording holiday memories this time. When I was younger one of the most exciting aspects of any family holiday was receiving the developed film back from the chemist and putting together an album of the photographs and writing the name of the holiday in the inside page.

In todays digital world I find that my images stay on my PC, phone and on the digital photo frame we have and that made me sad, so I decided to encourage Maxi to make a scrapbook of our recent Orlando visit. This was made even easier as we were gifted a whole host of scrapbooking things in a travel theme from

Whilst we were in Orlando Maxi made sure that he took maps, leaflets and keep all his tickets in to the theme parks, so in addition to any pictures I printed out he could also keep all this memorabilia and have a wonderful physical memory of our holiday.

Firstly we sat at the PC and decided which images to print. In future I think that I would send them off to an online provider to print, that way we could have a better quality print.

Then we cut all the photographs out using the guillotine and then I let Maxi lose with the glue and a pen!

As much as I wanted everything to be neat and in a certain way, I knew that it was best that I just stayed on the sideline and let him fill the scrapbook in how he wanted it to be. Afterall this is his holiday memories we are recording.