LEGO Gift Wrapping DIY!

Do you have a little LEGO fan in your house? or maybe a friend of one of your kids? a niece, nephew, grandchild? Who, like my little guy, LOVES LEGO?? If so, how about this little idea for the next time you are wrapping a gift for the LEGO fan...
LEGO Gift Wrapping!

Master Giggleberry turned 5 just last week so a few days before I was thinking I needed to get his presents wrapped. I like to have a bit of fun with gift wrapping but bows, ribbons and 'pretty' things would not be quite right for my little Superhero, Ninja, Star wars loving boy. Then **DING** I had a light bulb moment. I would wrap his gifts (that were mainly boxes of LEGO) to look like blocks of LEGO!

What You Need:
Plain coloured wrapping paper (I went with traditional LEGO colours of red, yellow, green and blue)
Single pieces of single coloured cardboard (make sure they match the wrapping paper colour)
Sticky Tape
Scissors
A Round Circle Punch (mine is a 2 inch punch)
1) Wrap your gift in the wrapping paper trying to keep it as tight to the square or rectangular shape as possible (maybe even pop the gift inside an empty box if it is not quite the right shape top wrap alone)
2) Take a piece of the coloured cardboard and punch a set of circles. Depending on the size of your gift will determine how many dots you will need. I had some with 6, some with 3, some with 4 and some with 12 to suit the different gifts.
3) With a loop of sticky tape (just a small piece of sticky tape looped around on itself) stick the coloured spots to the gift evenly to look like the bumps on a LEGO piece. (You could also use double sided foam tape)

You are done. Write in a card or gift tag and hand it to the receiver - I bet it gets a great response!!

You could easily do this in pinks and purple for any little LEGO Friends lover too! Have fun xx

Maple Bacon Birthday Cake!!

Birthday are kinda a big deal around here! There is early morning wake ups to rip opens gifts in PJs, there are breakfasts of birthday persons choice, there is our birthday chair cover, there are birthday badges to wear all day long and of course there is a birthday cake to suit the birthday boy or girl.
Today is Mister Giggleberry's birthday. Mister Giggleberry is not too much of a 'sweet tooth' and just recently we have started to try a paleo diet at home, stepping up from just clean eating & to match our new love of CrossFit. With all these factors to consider I went cake hunting for inspiration on Pinterest and struck gold with a few ideas rolled into one EPIC cake!
One 3 Layered Paleo Spice Cake with Cashew Maple Frosting wrapped in Candied Bacon!!

The recipe for the cake and frosting can be found HERE thanks to The Paleo Mum. The recipe I followed for the candied bacon is HERE by Recipe Girl

This flavour combo is just like the Candian favourite of pancakes with bacon and maple syrup... something hubby LOVES!!

This is gluten free and dairy free but not strictly paleo due to the sugar on the bacon but it's a birthday cake after all... maybe I need to find a more paleo way to make candied bacon. Any ideas?? If you leave the candied bacon off OR found a paleo way to make it then this recipe would also be refined sugar free!!
Happy birthday hubster!!!

Christmas Lights Hair Do!

2nd last day of school today for Little Miss Giggleberry - woohoo!!!! (I can. not. wait. for Thursday mornings lazy start!!)
Anyway today is Christmas Party day at her school so all the kids were allowed to wear mufti clothing and were also asked to bring a plate of food to share with their class mates. In the festive fun I thought why not do something fun with her hair too...

With a small battery operated pack of christmas lights I made a braid down each side of her hair while weaving in the lights. Any extra cord between the lights I pinned under the hair as best I could to keep it out of sight. The end of the cord is then fed down the back of her shirt and the battery pack is in her pocket so she is able to turn it off and on as she likes.

This is really easy to do and got lots of giggles and gasps from the kids and teachers this morning when I dropped her at school. It would be the perfect hair style to do if you were heading to a night time Christmas party or Carlos by Candlelight.

Lollipop Class Christmas Card!

Spotted over HERE on Makerland, this is such a simple but fun way for your kiddies to hand out a Christmas card/class gift this year. I had this all done in such a short space of time so even with 20 days now till Christmas day you will have plenty of time to get these done.

How To:
(1) Take a photo of your child (have them stand with their hand in a gentle fist out to the side but infront of them). These can be as fancy/dressed up/set up with a particular background etc as you want. I honestly snapped these of my kids on a school morning after breakfast with my iPhone.

(2) Upload the pics to Picmonkey (or photo editing site of your choice). I cropped the pics a bit making sure the side I planned to have the lollipop go in the hand had more space. Picmonkey is also where I added the text to the photos - my kids chose the colours and fonts with me.

(3) Print! I don't have a printer at the moment so we went to Officeworks to print ours off. I did them in a smaller square size rather than a regular 4x6 photo size but this is completely up to you.
(4) Grab some lollipops. I happen to spot a bucket of mini Chupa Chups while we were in Officeworks - Perfect!!
(5) With a sharp box cutter/craft scalpel slice a small slit in the photo just above the childs fist and just below too.
(6) Feed the stick of a lollipop thought the two slits to make it seem like the child is holding it.

Told you it was simple! Now sit back and watch your kiddies have a ball handing these goodies out!

Crazy Hair Day - Mr Potato Head!!

Today was Crazy Hair Day at little Miss Gigglebrry's school. Most schools and preschools hold a day like this yearly and most kids come with teased up and colour sprayed hair.... I wanted to do something a little different.
Inspired by a pic I spotted on Pinterest we pulled out our mini Mr Potato Head toys and hairspray and started to play!!

This was really fun and different hair style that, let me tell you, got sooooooo many compliments, "wow's", "oh my's" and "how did you do that's" - it needed it's own blog post!!

A basic how to:
* I did an upside-down braid from the base of the head just to half way up the head and secured with an elastic. Then brushed the end of the braid and the rest of the hair into one ponytail right ontop of the head. Secured with lots of hair spray and a tight hair tie.

* Open the ponytail out to find the middle of it and so a little but of hair is hanging down all around the head. Lightly spray the toy potato with hair spray and place it ontop of the opened hair. Close/wrap the hair up and around the potato so you can not see any of the toy. Secure with another hair tie tightly and a bit more hairspray.
* Poke your choice of Mr Potato Head face pieces into the potato.... we decide to not do arms but you absolutely could add arms in the side too.
* Split the hair right ontop of the potato in two and secure with two hair ties.

We then added a little glitter hairspray just for fun too.

Have fun!!

Bridesmaid Dress to Baby Blanket!

Just two short years ago one my sisters married the man of her dreams and I was lucky enough to be one of the three bridesmaids who walked down the aisle before the gorgeous bride.

(That's me and 'the dress' on the far right)

Fast forward two years to current day and more exciting news can now be shared. The 'newly weds' are now expecting their first bubby - YAY!!!

Of course, as 'Aunty Amy' to be, I had to create some sort of unique gift to give the excited parents. So into the depths of my cupboard I went and dug out the very bridesmaid dress I wore for their wedding (and haven't worn once since) and I attacked it with my sewing scissors....

With a few other coordinating and super cute fabrics I pieced together a piece of their wedding day into a quilt for their bubby!!

Happy Friday Find!

We are going to pretend it hasn't been FOREVER and a day since my last Friday Find post and move right along here....
How could I not share these fabulous handmade Bunting Earrings from Mujoyas? They have gone straight to the top of my wish list!!

I reckon they would go with almost any outfit!!
Happy Friday xx

Happy 60th Smurfday Party!

My gorgeous dad is about to turn 60!! That's a pretty good milestone and a great excuse to celebrate don't ya think?
What would he LOVE to do for his 60th birthday? hang out with and be surrounded by his family. So just last weekend my parents, sisters, brother and all of our families headed away for a weekend at Bilpin Springs Lodge in the NSW Blue Mountains. It was stunning and the perfect winter escape for us all to catch up, laugh, eat, play and celebrate!
Between petting the horse, pony & alpaca, collecting the eggs from the chooks, bushwalking, paddling in kayaks & playing in the games room we managed to come up with the excuse of no milk left to get my dad to head to the shop so we could set up his little party.
For a little bit of background here, my dad is called Papa by his 11 grandchildren so when mum asked me to "put a little something together for his birthday" I had the idea of a Papa Smurf theme and ran with it....
Quickly we set up one of the rooms at the lodge with balloons, bunting, food, decorations, drinks, cake and games. Then when dad returned from the shop with more milk he was sent to his room with a mysterious bag of clothes and given the instructions to put it on and wait for a knock on his door.

I had put together a Papa Smurf outfit from some red ski pants I found on sale a few weeks ago, a long sleeved blue top and a red Papa Smurf hat I had made from felt. I also made the rest of the family (that's 9 adults, 9 kids and 2 babies) a white Smurf hat and the girls each a Smurfette dress. Everyone else was to wear all blue with white shorts/pants/skirt.

Once everyone was dressed two of the kids went and collected Papa Smurf from his room and bought him to the party to be Smurfprised!!

Party time!! Most of the blue and red party supplies including the balloons, cupcake cases (I used for the popcorn), serviettes, straws, wooden cutlery etc were from Occasion By Design. The striped milk bottles, blue cupcake stand, cake platter stand, table cloth, trays, buckets etc I had in my collection already.

For food I made mushroom shaped butter cookies and some gluten and dairy free snicker doodles, blue jelly, popcorn, strawberries, juice, the birthday boy's fav dessert banana caramel pie and the cake which I had made blue and red to tie in. The little Papa Smurf ontop of the cake I found on eBay and I made the mini bunting.
The amazing macarons need a mention all on their own! I emailed the ever so lovely Sherelyn from Her Macarons to ask if she would maybe, just maybe, attempt some Smurf shaped macarons for me. I thought I was dreaming, but when I popped past to pick up my order I nearly screamed - Sherelyn had created to coolest and most perfect set of Papa Smurf yummies!

Seriously how cool are they?!? I almost didn't want to eat them but not only did they look fantastic on our table they were delicious too!!

Now, what is a party without a few games? (especially with all of Papa Smurf's grandchildren to entertain!) I made a Pin the Tail on Papa game with cardboard and a blue pompom, Pass the parcel with the final gift inside (A Papa Smurf Jibbet) marked so it was given to Papa Smurf himself and we also had a Piñata! The piñata wasn't Smurf themed (who could whack a Smurf until lollies fell out anyway LOL) but the custom made ambulance from The Helium House was perfect none the less as my dad is a Paramedic.

Notice the 'Papa 60' number plate

After we all had a bash of the piñata it was time to sing happy birthday and cut the cake. It's safe to say we all had a laugh and made a few more memories but most importantly celebrated the birthday of one amazing man. Happy birthday Dad xxx