Top 10 Posts of 2012

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Making Boys Men began in April 2012 with my very first post Fun with Jelly.  Nearly 100 posts later and it's 2013!  I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing with you the fun that the boys and I get up to so here's a reminder of our most popular posts in 2012 in reverse order.....

 

 

 

10 - Things to do with acorns and kids.  Some very cute and colourful ideas in this post and lots of glitter!

 

9 - Magnetic advent Christmas tree.  A lot of cutting in front of the TV to make this magnetic advent tree for the kids, but I had fun!

 

8 - Things to do with pinecones and kids.  A little bit of craft, a bit of learning, quite a bit of outdoors and a bit nature - that's quite a lot for a few pinecones!

 

7 - Spaghetti painting.  A personal fave, but very messy and the reason this posts has a three splat rating - be warned!!

 

6 - Using Kids Art for Christmas Cards.  I venture into the adult world of craft and manage to find a use for all those splatty paintings that only a mother can love!

 

5 - Outdoor number hunt.  A great get outside activity and a way to learn your numbers at the same time.

 

4 - 3 Craft stick busy bags.  Oh how we love busy bags!  I just cleared some out today so expect some new ideas in 2013.

 

3 - Things to do with foil and kids.  Obviously I'm biased, but there's 11 things to do with foil in this post, which I think means there's something for every kid whatever their interests!

 

2 - 3 busy bags with clothes pegs (pins).  Some fun learning ones in this set of busy bag ideas.

 

And finally the post that out runs them all thanks to A LOT of repins on Pinterest...... Bashing baked cotton balls!

 

 

 

I hope you've enjoyed reading Making Boys Men in 2012 and are looking forward to more fun in 2013, expect lots more crafts, outdoor play, busy bags and more 'things to do with' ideas! 

 

Make sure you don't miss a thing by subscribing or checking us out on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and of course Pinterest.

 

Happy New Year!



Outdoor Tree Decorating & Outdoor Play Party

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Welcome!  This is the final Outdoor Play Party of the year so I thought we'd make our outdoor post a festive one!  Having seen a bit of outdoor tree decorating on Learning for Life and Go Explore Nature we thought we'd give it a go.

 

I bought some very cheap baubles and the boys enjoyed decorating the tree outside the front of our house.

 

They did need a little help, fortunately Grandparents were on hand!

 

Here is Bud very proud of our outdoor tree!  (Unfortunately he's stood in front of most of them!).

 

This was a good bit of quick outdoor fun and you could definitely make more of it with more time and decorations.  But, not to be out done, here's Little Dude as the perfect Angel on top of our tree!

 

And so to the Outdoor Play Party Blog Hop.  My favourite from last time has to be The Enchanted Woodland Garden from Out2Play in the Garden.  We recently had some outdoor play in the dark and it's definitely inspired me to try some more - especially the shadow puppets, go check it out.

 

 

 

 And so to the linky.....

 

 

Hammering and Weaving Christmas Shapes

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With family visiting we took advantage of my Dad's building skills by teaching the boys a bit of hammering and to make it Christmassy a little festive weaving too.

I started by stacking up six pieces of squarish cardboard.

 

 

To keep the cardboard in place I wrapped it up with brown paper and marked out a Christmas tree on one stack and a star on the other.  Then I added a bowl of nails, a toy hammer and some yarn.

 

Then we hammered the nails into place with a bit of practice with the real hammer too.

 

Once all the nails were hammered in we set about winding the yarn around the nails to create the festive shapes.

 

This is what the Christmas tree looked like.

 

And, here's the star.

I hope you've enjoyed this post, if you have why not check out our Pinterest board. Or, keep up to date with posts by subscribing, liking facebook or hooking up on Google+ or Twitter.  Hope to see you again soon!

Things to do with wrapping paper and kids

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If your house is anything like ours there is an abundance of wrapping paper about at the moment!  Once all the present wrapping is done this is a great crafting resource, here are a few ideas of things to do with kids and wrapping paper....

1 - Collage

I snipped up a small piece of wrapping paper and gave Champ a sheet of paper and glue stick and this is what he came up with.

2 - Create Patterns

Our wrapping paper had large and small snowflakes on it so I snipped a few up and created some simple patterns with blanks at the end.  Champ finished off the patterns with some more snowflakes.

3 - Giant Paper Drawings

This time we turned the paper over and got out the crayons for some drawing.  Aided now by Little Dude who's just starting to scribble.

Things then went a little crazy as when they got bored they tag teamed me and tore up the paper!

4 - Counting

Again using the patterns on the wrapping paper I cut out the paper in groups so that Champ could identify how many snowflakes there were on the different pieces and match them to the number.

5 - Paper Chains

A classic!  Looping strips of paper together we made paper chains, not very many as Champ got a bit bored as he found this a bit tricky doing it on his own, one to try again next year!

6 - Laminate

I laminated some different wrapping paper and we used it for a playdough mat.  You could also use this with dry erase pens.

7 - Contact Paper Collage

We used cut up cards for this contact paper collage, but you could use wrapping paper bits instead.

8 - Free Creation!

Champ has a bit of a thing for scissors and junk creations so why not add wrapping paper into the mix!  I gave him scissors, pens, scellotape, yarn, junk and let him get on with it.  This is what he created a kind of crane thing that he wound backwards and forwards to get the wrapping paper to go up and down - pretty clever I thought! 

9 - Wrap presents

If stuck for more things to do, you could always get the kids to work and wrap some presents!

I hope you've enjoyed this post, still looking for more things to do then check out my wrapping paper and baubles Pinterest board.  Or, keep up to date with posts by subscribing, liking facebook or hooking up on Google+ or Twitter.

Christmas Cookies

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Spoiler alert!  Spoiler alert!  If you are female and related to me do not read on or you might find out what you're getting for Christmas!  Anybody else?  Welcome!

 

This week on Counting down to Christmas it's Christmas recipes - yum!  This may be my favourite week!  If you've done any cooking for Christmas feel free to link up below!

 

 

 

For some members of my family I will be giving them a jar with all the ingredients for these cookies from Bakerella.  The idea being they can bake them themselves adding just a few more ingredients (egg, vanilla extract and butter).  But, of course I couldn't give away a cookie recipe that I hadn't tried could I - noooooo!  So the boys and I had a trial run!

 

First, we put all the ingredients into the jar I planned to use for the gift.  The recipe is in cups as opposed to the British way of cooking in grams, which did make it nice and easy for the boys.

 

Notice the abundance of flour - everywhere!

 

The recipe also contains pecan nuts which the boys chopped using dinner knives.

 

All done to discover the jar was twice the size we needed - argh!  But, that's why we test these things out right?

 

Obviously testing the jar size was not enough we needed to actually taste these things!  So whilst Bud had lost interest my personal sous-chef (Champ) helped me add the wet ingredients and mix.

 

Then we rolled them into balls.

 

Cooked them and ate so many they were gone in 24hrs!  Opps!  They were delicious! 

 

Admittedly there's not really anything Christmassy except that they are FULL of very decadent ingredients - lots of chocolate and I added fudge bits instead of chocolate chips - mmmmmmm!

 

If you fancy making these I can whole heartily recommend the recipe from Bakerella.

 

And, so to the blog hop.  Don't forget to check out my co-hosts:

 

Rainy Day Mum and The Boy and Me

 

And you can add your other Christmassy links to the previous weeks:

Week One: Advent

Week Two: Christmas Cards

Week Three:Tree Decorations

Week Four:Homemade Gifts

Week Five: Nativity

 

Come back next week to link up your home decorations.

 

 

 

 

Nativity Peg Dolls

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I'm pretty excited about this post as I think I've made a awesome nativity set for my kids to play with - yey!! 

 

These are utterly inspired by two posts one from Just what I squeeze in and the other from Lil Blue Boo.  Both have made fantastic peg doll nativities and if you fancy doing this yourself you must check them out.

 

This nativity post is also part of a blog hop counting down to Christmas, so if you have a nativity post please link up below (also still open are advent, christmas cards, tree decorations and homemade gifts)

 

My peg dolls are made from wooden clothes pegs (78p in Wilkos!).  If you're super crafty you can buy wooden peg dolls without the clothes peg part so they'll stand on their own, but as I didn't know how these would turn out or if they'll be played with much I thought I'd go for cheap and cheerful.

 

I started painting the heads.

 

Then did the bodies, this took two coats of paint (I used acrylic paint)

 

Then I painted hair, added faces with Sharpie permanent pens and added details such as headress for Mary, gifts for the wise men etc with paint.

 

Here's Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.

 

 

Two shepherds and an angel.  The angel has wings painted on her back in gold.

 

And my three wise men complete with their gifts, and harder to see in this photo, but they all have crowns.

 

And here's the finished set.

 

I intend to give the boys the full set at the start of December by reading them the Christmas story and introducing each character as I read about them.  Then I'll just let them play freely with them - kinda hoping baby Jesus doesn't have to hang out with the aliens and robots straight away, but that there might be a bit of nativity play going on first!

 

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out other great nativity posts at my co-hosts:

 

Rainy Day Mum

Mummy, Mummy, Mum

The frog and the fairy

 

Please link up your nativity posts and don't forget to come back next week for Christmas food ideas.