peg dolls

I got the idea for these from here: http://beafunmum.com/2015/06/peg-mermaid-dolls/

We just spent the weekend at our family bach. I knew it would be cold so I took a bag full of things to keep the kids (all of us) busy in the afternoons.

M was all about the sequins, gold nailpolish and ribbons and T decided to make a boat with a crows nest and a plank for badies to walk. When we next went to the beach we took them with is to get some photos.

 

ice block stick puppets

This is a great way to use fabric offcuts. I stuck two white round stickers on the top of the ice cream stick for the kids to draw faces. We ended up with a king, a queen, a snowman and a very special little puppet stage. 

Dad is in for a treat tonight when they put on their show for him x

she looks surprised!

 

puppet love

My dad is really clever. As a kid he made us lots of things, one of my favourites was a puppet, he hand carved and painted it. It wore a satin suit with green buttons and had pink stripy socks. I've had him all my life. About 6 months ago...in the middle of the night... I wondered where he was.

In the morning I got up into our attic and found him tucked in a box. His suit had been eaten by silverfish, his buttons were loose and he looked a bit sad.

For a bit of fun I had the idea to send him to dad to see if he could fix him up for the kids for their birthdays. Dad lives in Perth so I took a bit of a risk sending him NZ post!

He arrived back to us today (with a sock puppet friend). I love him from the silver bell on the top of his new hat down to the red bells on his boots!

I'm sure the kids will too.

Thanks heaps Pop xo

What should we call him?

Have you kept any toys from your childhood?

puppets

This idea came from this picture I found, and I can't find the source now sorry.

I thought it was a fun and easy way for the kids to make puppets. I cut out some rectangles of card and cut circles out for their wee fingers. I told them to draw a picture of something that has legs or arms and after much discussion they came up with these, they didn't quite 'get it' as they may be a bit young yet but we had fun with it anyway:

a monster bird

2 girls dancing

envelope puppets

It's so cold today I swear it's going to snow. I decided it would be nice to sit on the floor in front of the fire and make something together. We've just bought a new mat for the lounge so I used our trusty giant plastic tablecloth to protect it- a bargain from Gala I went to with mum last year. These puppets are really simple to make. We have a whole drawer of envelopes- I don't know where we got them from.

1. seal the envelope
2. cut it to size
3. decorate
4. put on a show!

M's cat

a monster

Spongebob square pants!

another Spongebob- note the nice new mat mum : )

the boy took this I like the girl's stripy legs : )

Spongebob taking Gary for a walk lol

felt finger puppets

It's not a nice so I thought I'd set the kids up for a day of being mostly inside ( plan is to bike to the park after lunch too as inside ALL day doesn't really work for us!). I used my bag of off felt off cuts,  I cut the 'bodies' and lots of little shapes and bits. I gave them some scissors, buttons, pipe cleaners and glue on eyes to see what they'd come up with. When they had decided how they wanted them to look I glued them together with my glue gun. We ended up with 8 little monsters. I used a tv box and cut out a little space to make a puppet theatre- fun times!