Aren’t these great? This image is from an old copy of Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion (August / September 2004). Vintage or new plastic buttons twisted on to strands of florist’s wire make a quirky and easy to construct boquet. We managed to pick up a couple of jars of old buttons cheaply in an antique store, though I know you can buy bags of cheap colourful buttons at most habedashery or craft stores (or try ebay) — these don’t have to be anything special, just various colours and various sizes. Here are the basic instructions at PBS Kid’s site. Here are some of my basic instructions for multi-tiered stems with very dodgey photos on a grey day:

You will need:
Buttons
Pliers (optional – depending on the thickness of your wire)
Mid weight florist wire in 30cm+ lengths (I had to buy several different thicknesses before I found the right kind)
A small glass bottle or vase

1. Thread the first button onto the wire, then twist the wire back through a second hole in the button.

2. Thread another button on and then twist the wire underneath so that they stay in place.

3. Add more groupings of buttons and twist underneath each.

4. Place stems in a vase and arrange!

A good dish to feed adults, kids, toddlers and even babies is this dahl recipe on rice. Leave out the garlic and ginger for babies if you like but I was amazed at how quickly Amelia downed this stuff when she was less than a year old, even with a little garlic included. Actually, now that I remember back — leave out the turmeric for babies as it is almost impossible to wash the yellow stains out of clothes.

Download and print off the PDF version here

serves 4-6 (depending on appetites and accompaniments; rice, bread, pappadams etc).

Ingredients:
Olive oil for frying
1 clove of garlic finely chopped or crushed
a thumb-sized Knob of ginger peeled and grated
1 onion finely chopped
1 cup of red lentils, washed well and drained
3 cups of hot water
1 400g tin of diced tomatoes
1 sweet potato (yam) cut into small cubes
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
1/2 teaspoon of garam masala
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil and then fry the onion, garlic and ginger until the onion is a golden brown. Add the turmeric and fry for a minute. Add lentils and fry for another couple of minutes. Add three cups of hot water, tinned tomatoes, sweet potato and cinnamon. Bring to boil and then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Add garam masala, salt and pepper after about 10-15 minutes. Cook until soft and mushy. If the dahl seems too wet, let it cook for a while without the lid on.

Serve on rice with pappadams (which seem to be the big seller in our house), natural yogurt and for the adults lashings of lime pickle.

Banjo is the gorgeous creation of Lynn Roberts who blogs over at Molly Chicken. He comes with his own teddy, blanky, shrinky dink charms, quilt and carry cot.

He is up for auction on Ebay – the auction ends on the 2nd of June. AJ is luck enough to be the owner of one of Lynn’s toys which arrived last Christmas and we can’t recommend her work enough – her attention to detail, craftsmanship and quirky characters are almost perfect.

Download and print off the free pattern to make this simple, super-cute Mini-Moopy soft toy rabbit for your kids by Australian artist and craftswoman Carly Schwerdt.

Dorling Kindersley, publishers of fine educational children’s books, have an amazing online bank of free clip art for kids to download and use in school projects (or just for fun). There are 50 great categories including history, maps, various holidays, dinosaurs, sharks, pirates, skeletons, medieval life and insects. Each category is loaded with wonderful, high quality photos from their range of publications.

We love Choice Magazine, the official publication of The Australian Consumers’ Association. Very rarely do we make a large purchase without consulting our back catalogue of print copies… this month’s print issue has a great guide to layback strollers which has saved us a lot of heartache as we go to buy our fourth stroller (all our others are just plain annoying or dangerous for various reasons). This report is available online for a fee but there are oodles of other reviews, ratings and recommendations for baby and children’s products available for free (marked with a friendly F graphic ). This is an Australian focused publication but will have some products and reviews which will be just as relevant to overseas shoppers.

Kiddley visitor Jen from Semantically Driven submitted her tips for dressing your kids a tight budget. We have decided to turn her ideas into topics for a series which will run over a number of weeks.

This week we are looking at Hand-me-downs and next week it’s all about buying second hand clothes at thrift stores and consignment stores. After that it’s about looking for clothing on sale in regular stores, followed by buying and selling kids clothing on Ebay and finally making clothes for your kids… If you are interested in submitting your own tips on these topics please do so.

But now, back to this week… Hand-me-downs.

Jen says:

“Spread the word that you’re in the market for hand-me-downs. Most parents are glad to off-load the clothes their child has grown out of so you will be doing them a favour. As a child gets older they might get more fashion conscious and they wear out their clothes as the level of activity increases, so hand-me-downs are easier to obtain for younger children.”

Kiddley says:

I have a small group of friends who share kids’ clothing. Because our kids are all different ages and all born in different seasons things cycle around the group depending on need. Obviously we don’t share anything we aren’t prepared to lose to permanent staining, under the bed clothes-eating monsters or the kinder lost property box but it means there are good amounts of basic gear on hand for each new child.

Each family has stitched a small number of stitches in a bright coloured thread inside the back of the collars which indicates which family the clothing needs to be returned to. Our family is green, another is pink, another is purple and so on. Some of us do just write our initials on the label in the pen — but sometimes labels need to be cut off for comfort’s sake.

Drawbacks are that if you grow particularly attached to an item (as I did with one set of pajamas that didn’t belong to us but became synonymous with Amelia’s babyhood in my mind) you need to either let it go or lean on your friendship a little to keep it. Also things do start to get rather worn and stained so the pile needs replenishing from time to time and favourite pieces hit the rag bag sooner than otherwise.

I make sure I always buy nice new clothes to give to one particular family’s kids for birthdays who happen to be the oldest and the front of the queue, not so that we will end up inheriting them, but as a kind of thank you for their trail-blazing kindness.

Jen’s quite right about hand-me-downs being more common for babies and toddlers. Not only do the clothes of older children wear out more quickly, they also stop growing so quickly and tend to wear their clothes over a longer period of time so the supply starts to dry up!

Justine Clarke is one of the regular presenters of Playschool here in Australia, and she’s released a great music CD for kids aged 2-6 called I Like to Sing.

Unlike plenty of collections of children’s music, this album won’t wear thin after you’ve heard it a couple of times. Various songs reveal country, pop, and jazz influences, and the musical arrangements are excellent.

The CD is available at the ABC Shop (linked above), and they’ll even ship orders overseas.

Here are some 30 second samples of 3 of our favorites. Enjoy!

04 Watermelon:

05 Hop Hippity Hop:

06 It’s Starting To Rain:

Kiddley visitor Kathryn sent us her brilliant ideas for ways to entertain a toddler who can’t get enough of trucks, tractors, cars, trains and earth moving machines that go beyond singing “The wheels on the bus go round and round” time and again.

“1. Visit a train station

If you and your child travel most of the time by car, there’s very little opportunity for him or her to see a train close up. See if you can get to a train station that is out in the open; then it’s more likely you can walk to the front and see the engine cars and the driver, and more likely you will be able to see those wonderful wheels under the carriages!!! A local bound train, of course, won’t stay at the station long enough for much of a look, so try to find a long distance train which will be at the station loading and unloading for some time before taking off.
I took Jack to Cairns central station recently to see the Kuranda Train. We walked all the way up to see the drivers’ carriage. The drivers were very sweet to him and allowed Jack to sit in one of the driving seats, which I’m sure is not generally possible, but it is certainly worth it for you to at least see the head carriage. If finances permit, buy a ticket and go for a local train ride, even just to the next station and back. (or walk back).

2. Catch a bus to town!

Buses may seem duller than dishwater to us ‘jaded’ adults but to children buses are a rich source of vitamin fun. Make sure you let your son or daughter get to press the buzzer for the stop you want to get off at! Big thrills when they realise they can control when the bus will stop.

3. Find a construction site

Somewhere close to you in this age of the building boom, there is a construction site just begging for a toddler to marvel over it. There may be cement trucks, diggers, forklifts, graders, dump trucks, bob cats……it’s all happening, it’s all fabulous.

4. Go watch the planes land, load and take off

This one may not be for every toddler’s parent, especially if you live in a city where the airport parking costs are extreme, but much, much fun-apalooza can be had sitting in a domestic airport that affords you a good view of the main tarmac events. Never mind you don’t have a ticket to fly, your wheely-mad child will have a hoot watching not only the planes moving about, taking off and landing, but also watching the little airport buses, tractors, fuel trucks, catering trucks and luggage wagons whizz around. It’s wheel mania.

5. Pay a visit to your local car yard/ tractor dealership/ ride-on mower vendor

Sure, you might have to let on a bit like you’re interested in purchasing a car/tractor/ride-on mower, but most outlets are happy enough to have you look around.

There are other wheel-associated games and activities you might not have thought of yet: playing Spot the Transport… make up a simple card listing or illustrate all the different types of trucks, emergency vehicles, transport haulers, etc, you know the stuff. Go for a walk to the closest main highway and tick off each as you see them. Good to have this same game going in the car for just driving around. If your child is old enough he or she can tick them off for themselves, or if they are a bit too young for knowing how to use the list, make a mental list of the ones you see, ticking them off together when you get home.”

Thank you Kathryn! We love it!

Tuxpaint is a popular free drawing program designed especially for kids. It features quirky sound effects and a simplified interface that is ideal for younger children. All the basics that you’d expect in a drawing package are available, including brushes of various sizes and styles, shape tools, and a collection of ‘magic’ effects that can be applied to a drawing.

The best feature is a great set of stamps that lets kids plonk down fully formed cut-outs (animals, coins, hats, spacemen, food, symbols etc) into their work of art. Here’s one that AJ prepared earlier:

I think that’s Air Force One cruising past a meat pie.

Tuxpaint is available for most operating systems including Windows and OSX, and it’s also well suited to being run on older computers. If you download it, be sure to also download any additional stamp packs that have been made for your operating system’s version.

Thomas, who lives in the Yarnstorm household, spent some time over the weekend making packaging for some delicious looking ginger biscuits. I’m not completely sure if the ginger biscuits are homemade, but knowing Jans’s extensive baking category, I would guess so. We love the idea so much we made a quick tutorial as we think this could be a great gift idea:

You will need:
Delicious homemade or store bought biscuits/cookies
A cardboard box
Paper to cover the box surfaces
Pencils or watercolours
Felt tip pen
Scissors
Glue

Carefully trace the surfaces of the box onto the paper and cut out. Find some ideas from a conventional biscuit box but then, like Thomas, give it an imaginative and personal twist. Develop your own name for the biscuits, logo, list of ingredients, attractive top to the box, and tempting copy. Glue paper to the box sides and package up you biscuits. Easy!

Thanks Jane and Thomas for some inspiration this morning.

Did you know that Kiddley has a Flickr group? Phil started it up last week after publishing his tips on “Introducing your kids to digital photography” and encouraged people to share photos their kids had taken. We had some great contributions linked to that article.

But we also really love is that others are starting to use the group to share their own projects:

Annagone posted images of the sponge family that she and her little cousin made together. And just_anj put up a photo and instructions on how to make your very own shape sorter for a toddler:

So please feel free to join the group, post some photos your kids have taken, share a project or start a discussion.