Ben's Birthday Card: Broken China & Peeled Paint

My oldest friend's little boy turns 3 this weekend - I've known her since we were 4 in the naughty corner at Kindergartern in Germany! I don't get to see her as often as I'd like and wanted to send a nice handmade card for Benjamin. Plus, I've been dying to use some of the more colourful inks in my slowly growing collection of Tim Holz Distress Inks, not to mention more experiments with flatterned bottle caps ;)

Using distress inks: Brushed Cororoy, Broken China & Peeled Paint.

What's in your Filofax Friday?

OK, probably not going to become a regular feature, lol, but I have finally resorected my filofax ... my 2005 'Popi' pocket sized organiser - which to be honest has seen some better days (see below right for the massive fissure in the vinyl) - but fingers crossed if it gets used religiously I may get a replacement for Christmas this year .... and Mr S if you're reading this the Malden Pocket Organiser in Vintage Pink is really rather nice ;)

After throwing away the old very outdated diary pages and buying the 2012-2013 academic refill I started adding all important dates and appointments along with the usual colour coded dots from my family organiser/calender at home (blue for birthdays, red for holidays/bank holidays, yellow for doctors, orange for dentists, green for clubs, pink for parties etc). I hole punched a sheet of stickers for the back too so I always have them handy (below, top). And I added some sticky tabs to mark important dates like the kids birthdays and the next hospital appointment to make them easy to flip to.

Then I started to print my own customised pages using a plain template I found at Philofaxy - a great resource for free filofax printable whatever size organiser you use.
.
I made an inside cover (1st photo, top right), breakdown information sheet, emergency information sheet (2nd photo, middle right).
.
I also discovered that I could print any PDF file in filofax size by changing the page size selected on page setup, so for my pocket sized organiser I selected 3.5 x 5inch and (assuming there wasn't much information near the left margin) this printed out perfectly proportioned. So I've been on the lookout for useful PDF resources like conversion tables, my son's school term dates and local pool swimming times (2nd image, middle left).
.
To mark weeks of school holidays I used a blending tool and some red distress ink and stained the inside of each holiday week red (2nd photo, bottom right) and used some themed stamps to mark some important dates like Valentines day and Christmas.



Play to Write-Write to Read Wednesday (week 1)

I found Mackenzie's blog last night and have decided to get involved in her "Play to Write-Write to Read" Wednesday playgroup sessions with Josh. He can write his own name most of the time, knows the phonics song and can recognise most letters so this sounded like a great next step - the lessons are really well thought out and not something I would have tried on my own.

We started today with the 'Partner Journaling' part of the week 1 challenge, where you encourage your child to talk about an activity or trip you've done together recently and help them to write sentences about the experience and then draw a picture.

Not only is this a great keepsake for the future, but shows that spoken words can be written words, helps them access short term memory, improves vocabulary and is a great all around bonding exercises.

Sadly we didn't have chance to go shopping for a journal to write in, but after my spate of printable creations i ended up making worksheets we can hole punch and add to a binder. On sheet I also made sure I had gaps for 'title' and 'date' (for my own reference) and I left room at the bottom for him to write his own name. If anyone wants to download these to use at home,the links are below :)

Download in: [BLUE] [GREEN] [PINK] [RED] [PURPLE] [ORANGE]

[Font credit: Janda Manatee Soild]

 

We choose to write about our trip to Longleat Safari park on Friday. It did make me very paranoid about my own handwriting and spelling considering my own childhood Dyslexia, but it was great to get him talking animatedly and having a proper discussion with him. We decided on what each sentence should say and I enunciated each word as I wrote it. I love the fact he choose to describe the Lions we saw as being 'quiet' and he ended up drawing a lovely picture of a green Lion laying on grass and leaves. 

I love this idea, and will be adding more sheets to the collection as he does them - he's already looking forward to writing a page about the car rally he's going to on Saturday.

Looking forward to trying the lines and mazes part of last week's task in the morning and then on to lesson 2. 


Boys will be boys: Simple printable target

At the shop today, after much debating my Son finally picked a magazine: Spiderman - and came with one of those freebie plastic guns that fire styrofoam 'darts'. The second we got home he tore it open and with some help loading was firing it all around the house -followed by missing darts, tears and long conversations on the subject of why you mustn't fire these things at people, cats and decorative objects.

Potty training : Free printable chart

Well, it's potty train time again in our household. Little Lady has been randomly choosing to do wees on the potty since Christmas but has resisted any attempt at serious potty training, with a month till Josh starts nursery and warm enough weather for Lowie to wander around the house in pants and a t-shirt I decided to take the plunge.

With Josh I stayed away from sweets/stickers and other reward style potty training techniques as I was worried he would always expect a reward for doing it - and it worked OK but he wasn't really ready till he was almost 3. This time I was thinking about using  a reward chart I saw some in shops and a few free downloadable ones from companies and blogs alike but didn't see anything with the format I was looking for, so I ended up making my own.

.

It's might not be perfect for everyone - I made this for my daughter but hopefully someone else will find it useful. It has the 7 days of the week, 3 weeks per sheet (or possibly 3 kids per sheet for childminders or triplets) and space for lots of small circle or star stickers each day. I'm going to get mine laminated but currently have it mounted in a clear pocket file - so that the sheet is re-usable, but you could just print a new sheet every 3 weeks.

Download girls potty training sheet

Download boys potty training sheet

To download your own sheets simply click on the appropriate sheet above and either choose to save for later or print. When printing make sure to check the paper size and print preview. I hope this resource helps!

We've just started using it today, and she's got 2 stars and had one little accident.

Handmade card: Happy Birthday Martin

Another Birthday, a new card! Today's I'm wishing my good friend Martin a Very Happy Birthday!!! Figured he'd be celebrating in London this weekend so was inspired by this Paper Cellar background featuring beer tankards and embellished with bottle caps. Again quite a Grungey card - getting the most out of my slowly growning collection of Distress Inks :)

This card might soon be available in my Etsy shop - I'm just setting it up and shortlisting card designs :D

Handmade Card: Happy Birthday Father-in-Law

It's my father-in-law's Birthday today :D Happy Birthday John! One of his great loves in classic cars, so what a great theme for a card. I went for a matching vintage style using papers from 'paper cellar', Distress inks (Brushed corduroy, Peeled Paint), cork letters and various stampers.