Upcycled Hanging Wooden Aeroplanes

How sweet is my friend! She truly is my Soul Sister, the best girlfriend anyone could ask for. Love!

As a gift idea Natalie used her creative flare and thoughtful love to turn a wooden coat hanger into two Aeroplanes for my Sons!
I was amazed at how they had turned out and at the originality of creativity in looking at a coat hanger and thinking “that’s an aeroplane”!

I absolutely love the idea of reusing and upcycling and would rather this be the eco friendly ethics behind any toy gifted to my children and she knows it so I was overjoyed when I saw how much effort herself (and partner) put into making her idea a reality.

To make these beauties Nat used:

* 1x wooden coat hanger
* A couple of pens
* Sticky tape
* Glue
* Cutting device
* Hanging wire

Her method was somewhere along the lines of:

* See it
* Believe it
* Create it!

Super frugal friendly love 🙂

I just had to blog this idea albeit not my own! I am also keen to try this out with the boys as the satisfaction in the upcycle seems very rewarding, the kids will love it!

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Decorate a Living Tree this Year

The perfect way to enjoy the Trees, to decorate and thank them for their love whilst supporting the eco system.

Instead of cutting down a tree or using a faux one in your celebrations this year why not enhance one already living near you! What better way to appreciate the life they give us.

Luckily for us we have just had a tree planted outside our family home and we thought it would be a wonderful idea (as he was starting to look chilly) if we gave him a bit of sparkle to see him through the winter until he gets his new leaves 🙂

My Sons and I reused waterproof items from around our home to create decorations for our tree.

It is so simple and yields great results.

What you will require to create decorations like ours:

– Used plastic milk bottles
– Used fruit and veg tubs
– Tin serving trays
– Used biscuit tins
– A marker pen
– Scissors
– Hemp Cord
– Ribbon

You can adapt your item list to suit what you can reuse from your home.

How to make:

1) Draw your shapes / pictures with the marker pen
2) Cut out all the shapes from all the materials
3) Make small incisions at the top of each decoration for the cord
4) Cut the required length of hemp cord for each then thread it through the holes made tying in a knot
5) Carefully tie your decorations to the branches a Tree
6) Wrap the Tree up in ribbon to keep him warm and for a lovely look!

Tips:

– Choose images, patterns and shapes that mean something to You. You are the one looking at the work after all.
– Use a marker pens and plastic or metal incase it rains (or snows)!
– For these decorations we have used the simplest version without adding, glue, glitter or sequins for effect etc. We used tin which was a fantastic idea as it naturally glimmers. Be very careful when cutting the tin as it is extremely sharp!
– Use Hemp cord as it is strong, biodegradable and is highly sustainable.

– Please Collect any fallen decorations as milk cartons and plastics are not designed to biodegrade. Thank You

From the Boys and I, we hope you enjoy crafting and getting closer to nature and that you have a love filled Winter full of laughter and joy.

Homemade Play Birds Nests – Children’s Activity

This day the boys and I were gifted an absolutely adorable sight, I felt very blessed to be able to teach my children an active lesson from nature instead of using our usual whiteboard drawings, books, photos or videos for visual impact.

As we strolled down the sun lit road a rustling sound caught my ear and I turned to discover a beautiful black bird tossing the dried leaves about beneath a tree. It was a wonderful sight and a new one for my boys. I just had to stop, breathe, appreciate and gaze for a while at this characterful bird, encouraging the boys to do so also. It was a fascinating sight to watch this little chap swiftly sifting through these leaves moving them to the side discovering what lay beneath them. We had a friendly giggle at the scene as the bird moved in a peculiar way, dig dig, shift shift, bob bob, foraging away. We loved it and the bird knew we were watching and I am happy to say it didn’t seem to mind 😊
We let him be and continued on our journey finding magical stones along the way.
It tied in with my post wonderfully.

For this activity we learned a few basics about birds and tree nests and what some are made of and how they are constructed. Many species of bird build a nest as their home for their family in trees, be it a temporary or long term place to raise their young. When it comes to bird’s nests no two are the same and there is a range of building styles from simple stone building to intricate weaving and mud cementing. They will often use a Y shaped branch for the simplest of locations or pretty much any branch going and the way they are built is a reminder to man’s nature. The birds will use plant material and often mud to plaster the structure with. They use items such as sticks, feathers, grass, straw, hair, saliva, stones, mud, moss, leaves, rotten wood and flowers to construct their nest, weaved structures are often created and a padding of feathers or moss is regularly used for comfortable bedding. Sometimes there will be just one platform to the nest and others there will be several, all depending on the bird.

We kept it simple for the age group of the children. All items we used were recycled and yes we know Mum isn’t the best artist!
I started by drawing a tree for our nest and then we proceeded in cutting it out, this lead to my eldest Son for some reason asking me to draw a city! I did as he wished and they both enjoyed the cutting.

We then created some birds, eggs and a nest to add to the tree.

To make a nest just like ours you will require:
* Sticks
* Feathers
* Cardboard
* Scissors
* Shredded Paper / Straw /
* Colouring Pens / Pencils / Crayons

After the equipment has been gathered. Draw and colour or paint all the additional items for the activity, the trees, (buildings), birds and eggs. Cut them out and place accordingly. Next take the shredded paper and build a nest in the style of whichever bird you like adding the feathers and sticks etc. Once you are happy with your nest fill it with the birds of choice and their eggs and place it in the tree to complete your scene.

There are many different outcomes available from this activity, have fun finding what works best for you and remember children love the detailed explanation that comes with each stage of tree-nest building.

We hope you have great fun and let us know in the comments how you got on, please do link us to your photos too 🙂

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Get Creative – Reusing Boxes for Children’s Fun

Getting creative and getting ethical, the perfect combination for a joyful activity (life), the kids love it and by reusing materials nothing new needs to be produced, we get to specifically design it to our requirements and it can literally be used for anything your mind can think of.

I am in love with the reduce, reuse and recycle scheme! It has become like a third child to me 😊 The ethics behind it are surely the ones most likely to change the sorry state the Earth is in.

Cardboard boxes, are not one of the main contributors to landfill (unlike plastic pots etc), they do bio-degrade and although this is the case it still needs upmost respect when their desired use comes to an end as it was once a tree.
In my eyes, trees are vital to the human life cycle as they give us oxygen to breathe and clear many bad toxins from the air, they are far too important to be used as paper or boxes especially when they are such plants which do a grand and if not finer job such as hemp which grows at over double the rate.
The longer we can make use out of the material the less it was cut down fruitlessly.

It is such a simple method to reuse things that it can be applied almost everywhere and the kids have heaps of fun. If you like, you could paint your box first to give yourself a brand new canvas to work with.
A quick drawing does wonders for a Child’s mind and heck even the box as it comes is full of wonders to my kids 😁

This time around we used the Animal Castle theme and created a great home for out animal toys. It was a spontaneous activity and was quickly created in about 15 minutes.
We cut out a drawbridge and some windows and doors, created a musical merry-go-round playground and added a backyard full of trees bringing fruits and serenity.

The boys absolutely adored the game, so much so that they just had to dive right in and become part of it.

There are so many different types of scenes to create, for something similar to this game all you require are a few colours, some scissors and an active imagination.

Happy re-using!