SPOILER ALERT - To my family and to the children’s “special” friends, please do not read on as you may see your Christmas Gift for this year!

Last week I showed the handmade books that I have set aside for Christmas Gifts this year. Today is a very simple activity which can be done with the children and be given to those special people in the children’s lives. Ours will be going to godparents, nanas and aunties.

If you are anything like me and find it difficult to part with the beautiful creations that your children come home with, then you will plenty of material to use for this activity.

To make today’s gift you will need:

- Art work from your child.

- A frame

- Guillotine (or scissors if you can cut straight!)

(for these ones, I actually chose to fold the edges)

As with all these gifts, I am trying to make them high on the thought and love factor and low on the cost factor. The art work coming home from kinder and school is priceless, but already paid for by fees!

For the frames though, to keep costs and consumption low, I hunted through a few op shops (thrift stores), to find old frames. I was looking for ones that had removable backs so I could insert the children’s art work. I managed to pick up two different types of frames, at two different stores.

These ones cost $3.75 each, which I thought was pretty good, and other than being a little dusty and finger marked they were in good condition. The first job was to clean up the frames and remove the price written in texta.

I then let each child search through their art collection (which are very much in need of organisation) and choose what pieces that they would like to frame for their special person. In the end we all agreed on the collages they made during January.

The children made these at an Art Session after seeing the Yvonne Audette exhibition. We will probably keep them as a set to give to someone!

We then decided that to keep the edges nice and not risk scrunching the tissue paper, that we would fold the edges of the collages. I then let the children place them into the frame.

The children felt incredibly proud of their work being framed and saved for a Christmas gift and I think they have come up beautifully.

I have entered the costs into my Christmas Budget Spreadsheet (see this post on Christmas Planning for more info) and am pretty happy with the small collection of home made gifts that I am building up so far.

Christmas Presents Excel Tracking Spreadsheet .

Technorati Tags: children's art, christmas gifts, hand made, op shops

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Photo by Cayman Girl

This is the first guest post on Planning With Kids and I am very proud that it comes from my gorgeous husband! Here is his experience from trading roles with me last week (completely unedited!!!).

Back in 2003, Anika Sorenson (world #1 female golfer) addressed the media after her final round in a men’s tour event. She said,

“It was a great week but I’ve got to go back to my tour, where I belong. I’m glad I did it, but this is way over my head”.

While I feel this quote in some way aligns to my recent experience, I can confidently say its not a perfect reflection.

You will recall from last week’s Role Reversal Experience post, last week I traded my office desk and chair for 5 days in the role as a stay at home parent. I performed all the tasks Planning Queen normally would, from making the lunches to walking the kids to school, taking Possum to dance class to making 5 evening meals in succession. Apart from only very minor, but much needed assistance, PQ did very well to refrain herself getting involved. I was thrown in the deep-end, and had some very interesting learning’s:

1. The role of the primary carer is fundamental to teaching the kids good habits in preparation and timeliness. My attitude and approach becomes a beacon for how the kids react to obstacles and issues.

2. Hey, I can cook an evening meal! I love a good process which is what PQ gave me with her simple recipes.

3. Don’t put butter on sandwiches when the kids have told you three times already….…it can get nasty!

4. It takes time to re-wire your everyday activities. Day 1 and 2 were murder however by Friday I was on the ball with routine, process and maneuvering through roadblocks (see point 3).

5. It also takes time to re-wire the kids view of the “goto parent”. PQ normally gets afternoon tea, except for last week. PQ normally organizes lunches, except for last week. In some way, last week may have altered their perception of my role. Ongoing involvement could now re-enforce it.

6. It’s OK to forget someone’s name if you haven’t seen them in months. It’s not OK if it’s only a matter of days. (Apologies to some of the kinder and school mum’s.)

7. Playing games with the kids is most enjoyable when there are no outside distractions or time pressures. Unfortunately busy weekends, pre-sleep periods and a mind half on the office are not conducive to increasing fun. I need to change this!

8. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Attempting too many tasks, just like at the office, results in a sub-optimised outcome, anxiety and frustration.

9. Chose a better week to conduct a Role Reversal than the final mountain week of the Tour de France. Late nights wear you down.

10. As apron-culture states, “Kiss the Cook” for the wider home-role they perform. Life without it would be messy, undisciplined, lethargic and average.

This week I used a different skill set to conduct a role for a sustained period which fortunately isn’t “way over my head”. While I did struggle earlier in the week, I was well and truly in the groove and enjoying what it gave me by the end of the week. In fact, this observation was made by a mum who recently changed from full-time employment to full-time stay-at-home mum.

While I definitely could get used to it, I’m conscious that “I’ve got to go back to my tour, where I belong”. Like so many others, other pressures and objectives dictate this.

Cheers
Mr Infrastructure

Technorati Tags: children, dad, mum, organisation, parenting, swap

• The Role Reversal Experiment
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• Preparing School Lunches
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Here is a look at 10 posts that I have really enjoyed in the month of July. Normally I try to categorise them into headings, but it is too diverse this month, with the posts being to hard to define into 3 or 4 neat little sections, so here they are in no particular order:

(1). A Space of My Own: 8 Instant Tent Ideas for PreSchoolers
I am not sure how Preschool Mama constantly comes up with her nifty little ideas, but this is another great post from her.

(2). Teaching Kindness
PsychMama reviews a book titled - Above All Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times - by Zoe Weil. Sounds like a great read.

(3). Ten things I’ve learnt about China
On a blog from the UK newspaper The Guardian. Some interesting facts that I certainly didn’t know about China.

(4). nanna’s and biddy bags
I just loved the photo of these nannas posted by three buttons and these biddy bags are so very cool. three buttons is a craft blogger from Melbourne.

(5). Sunday Supper
Kirsty at kootoyoo is a fellow Melbourne blogger who is also very crafty and creative. This recipe for kids rice paper rolls is fab.

(6). Worth Musing Over
Gypsy at Domestically Blissed takes a very thoughtful approach to her parenting and this post has a list of great open ended questions for children.

(7). Love Sick
A very sweet anecdote from Tiff at Three Ring Circus who has to watch her little girl suffer through so much illness.

(8). Hypnobirth was “really Zen” for Jessica Alba, rewarding for others
Another excellent post from the Crunchy Domestic Goddess. I have never used hypnobirthing, so was interested in reading a little more about it.

(9). Crayon Nibbles
Candance at Crafty Daisies show us a very cute and simple way to recycle old crayons.

(10). Maximise your staycation with preschoolers
Simplemom gives some great tips on how to manage and enjoy the stay at home holiday.

Grab a coffee/diet coke/cup of tea/juice/water and have a read of some wonderful blogs!

Technorati Tags: 10 Things, blogs, highlights, posts

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When I sat down to plan the meals for this week, I realised that this week would see the start of August. For me, this year August has particular significance as I am doing the 30 Day Challenge in this month. I won’t bore you with the details, other than to say that it is an Internet Marketing Course that will require a chunk of my time every day for the entire month.

It is going to be a lot of work, so to prevent myself from meltdown because of overload, last week and for the remaining time until the challenge starts, I am trying to get as organised as possible.

A major part of this was to menu plan for all of August and the first week of September (will probably be exhausted by them!). I also used a slightly different style of planning because it was for such a long period of time. I was reminded of this process by Small Town Blessings.

Basically you allocate a style of meal to each day and then make your selections from this criteria. For the month of August, I am keeping it very simple, no new recipes, just tried and tested home favourites.

The plan I used was:
Monday - Prepare ahead meal
Tuesday - Pasta based meal
Wednesday - Rice based meal
Thursday - Big dish (has left over potential like soups, casseroles etc)
Friday - Left Overs (by the end of the week, I will need a night off.)
Saturday - Mexican
Sunday - Meat and Veg

So for this week, this means:

Monday - Shepherd’s Pie

Baking - Chocolate Balls

Tuesday - Fettuccine Carbonara

Wednesday - Chicken Korma

Thursday - Tuna Rice

Friday - Left Overs

Saturday - Mexibake

Sunday - Sausages and Vegetables

Again, I have included the shopping list for this week’s menu plan as an excel file. The below paragraphs explain what is in the attached excel file below.

0728 Menu Plan and Shopping List

It contains three separate spreadsheets. The first is named “Complete Grocery’ and it lists by supermarket aisle all the ingredients that are needed to cook the family meals for this week.

The second spreadsheet is named “Ingredient By Meal’ and it lists the ingredients that are required for the family by each individual meal this week. I have also left on the aisle and aisle subsection in this spreadsheet for reference, but if you want to print that out you will need to alter the print area.

The third spreadsheet is named “Menu Plan” and is a modified version of the menu plan that I print and place on the fridge. I have a notes section, that I like to populate with any activities that are likely to impact the evening meal routine.

Want to see what we are having next week? Subscribe to my free email updates via the “subscribe page” or from the RSS Feed icon at the top of the page.

For more menu planning ideas head on over to Laura’s place at “I’m an Organizing Junkie“.

Technorati Tags: child friendly, family food, Menu Planning, Recipes

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I had the opportunity to get out of the house a couple of nights this week and see some interesting stuff. I love having the chance to see new things and I do make an effort to book Mr Infrastructure and myself to attend some things, to make sure that we have some time on our own together.

It is very easy with four children for our world to become completely child centric. I love my children dearly, but I think for me to be at my best I also need the reinvigoration from adult company and mature events!

Mr I and myself also support each other in having some separate interests as well. This also relieves the need for baby sitters all the time if we were to attend everything together. My mother in law and my sisters are very generous with their time, but I am conscious that it a lot to ask people to look after four children.

So what did I do? On Wednesday night my partner in craft and I decided that we were a bit too tired for crafting, but still wanted to hang out together, so we went to Art After Dark at the National gallery of Victoria.

The Art Deco Exhibition is the major showpiece at the moment. Going to the After Dark session means that there is very different vibe, than during the day - music, wine and dancing! Due to timing with kids etc we missed the Roaring 20s Flappers dance The Charleston, but after checking out the exhibition itself we did catch the end of Frankie Wants Out (Prohibition era Swing).

We then had a drink at Curve Bar and then strolled through the Seamless Exhibition at the Arts Centre. I spoke a little about this yesterday, when I was posting about Dance.

Last night Mr I went off to a black tie ball for his football club. He might talk about this next week!

On Friday night I went with Mr I to the opening night of the International Melbourne Film Festival. The film was Not Quite Hollywood. If you are going to check out this trailer, be sure to do so with no little people around, as it is a little bit rude!)

It is a documentary about Australian genre cinema of the ’70s and early ’80s. And as the promotional material says, an era “unashamedly packed full of pubes, boobs, tubes and kung fu.” The fun thing about going to the opening night, was it allowed for a little star spotting in the theater before the doors opened. Mr I and me are not really up with the latest films, so probably missed any new young stars, but we recognised some stalwarts of the Australian film industry.

How has your week end been? Have you manged to get out and see something new?

Technorati Tags: art deco, not quite hollywood, parenting, time out

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1. strike a pose, 2. Untitled, 3. Fantastic Foto Friday 06.08.07, 4. En Pointe, 5. Fine Art - Ballet, 6. En Pointe, 7. arabesque, 8. Shinta, 9. little legs

Creative Kate at Picklebums features Flickr Friday each week. This week the theme is Dance.

And on the subject of dance, I had the opportunity this week to see the gorgeous Seamless Exhibition. It is free exhibition at The Arts Centre in Melbourne:

Seamless showcases costumes from some of the most memorable moments in Australian dance history and reveals the fascinating stories behind their design through the designers and choreographers who created them.

There are some stunning costumes on display and it is definitely worth a visit if you are in the city.

• Getting Out And About
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(Photo source: flickr - szeretlek)

I came across a number of articles regarding a new study, published in the July/August issue of Child Development. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Massachusetts. They looked at group of 50 children, who were aged from 1 to 3 years.

In this research, children came to a laboratory playroom with a parent. Each child was invited to play with toys for an hour. During half of that time a television was turned on remotely in the room, playing an episode of Jeopardy! that included commercials.

Dr. Daniel Bronfin, a pediatrician with the Ochsner Health System in New Orleans and senior author of th study concluded that:

“All of the concerns we have with children watching programming for children still apply to secondhand viewing. It distracts from the work of childhood, from play,”

The Washington Post was one of the news agencies reporting on the study and HealthDay Reporter Serena Gordon reported the following findings:

Even if young children aren’t watching the TV, it may be distracting them from their play and depriving them of developing critical attention skills

Children’s play episodes were shorter — about half as long — if the TV was on, compared to when it wasn’t, [and] children were more likely to move from toy to toy during the time TV was on

WebMD also reported on the study and noted the following about it:

In background information published alongside the findings, researchers write that child development experts contend that imaginative play is crucial to healthy cognitive and social skills development.

Researchers from this study speculate that constant background TV sound and fleeting images may interrupt that healthy development.

While obviously I did not know any of this research information, we made a decision when our first child was only a baby, not to have the television on in the background and later on to have set TV times. It was for the adults as much as the children. I felt that the children deserved to have my whole attention, not a small fraction that I could spare away from the TV. This is the same reasoning that I avoid where possible working on the computer around the children as well, utilising, sleep times and time when dad is around so they have an available adult.

How do you manage the TV in your home? Or have you gone completely cold turkey and don’t have a TV? Part of me would really like to do this, but even though I don’t watch a lot of TV, I can’t seem to let go! I would love to hear what you do.

Technorati Tags: brain development, Child Development, play, tv

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This week Mr Infrastructure kindly took a week’s holiday leave, so he could stay home and allow me time on projects that I needed to work on. The Role Reversal Experiment has been an interesting insight for both of us.

We agreed that I would work a similar schedule to Mr I’s hours. We have an upstairs study and that was to be my “office” for the week. I would come up at the same time Mr I would usually leave for the train (approx 7.15am) and work until after 6pm. On a good day, Mr I is home by 6.45pm, but there are many late nights that go significantly past that - but 6pm was enough for me!

Naturally there was flexibility through out my day and assistance given as required, but on the whole MR I was running the show.

This is what I have learned so far:

I miss doing the daily stuff with the kids. Things like the walks to school, the pick ups, helping them with their reading or homework and hearing about their days. They are not so interested in repeating the news of their day a second time around much later in their day.

The children can cope without me! When both mum and dad are both around the children still come to me and as such I tend to do the majority of the primary care. I probably need to let go a bit and empower dad to deal with these daily issues.

When Mr I puts his mind to it, he can actually cook.

Due to my behaviour, the children expect an ordered and routined life. For some of the children, if dad did things slightly different to me, they were not always happy about it.

I love being home full time with the children.

Mr I will guest post next week to share what he learned from the experience. Sometimes it is good to see if the grass is really greener on the other side!

Technorati Tags: children, dad, mum, organisation, parenting, swap

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Earlier this month I got together with a talented and craft friend to make the first batch of hand made Christmas Presents for the year.

Our first get together in July was a planning meeting. For my crafty friend, this was very kind of her to indulge by planning nerdiness as she is a far more a go with the flow type of gal - so thanks for your patience! We decided to make a couple of items that would use similar materials and would not only make a nice gift set, but would also reduce waste and cost.

The first item for us to make was fabric covered notebooks. Now a big nod needs to go to Rachel from Booked Into Art who taught us how to make these books at the launch of Mixtape Zine Issue 3 at Sticky Institute.

If you would like to make a fabric covered notebook, you will need the following items:

- fabric of your choice

- a thick cardboard for the outer cover

- thin white cardboard for the inner cover

- recycled paper for the pages

- thin ribbon to bind the book

- a small bead for the ribbon

- craft glue

- hammer and nail (for making holes in spine)

- thick needle for threading ribbon

(1). The first step was to cut the thick cardboard to half the size of an A4 piece of paper. Using a scrap of cardboard, cover the cardboard with glue and then place on fabric.

It is a good idea to put old magazine paper or catalogue pages underneath the area that you are working. You just remove these if glue gets on them, so the fabric does not get glue on the outside.

(2). Cut the corners at an angle, so when the edges are folded, there are neatly covered corners.

(3). Glue the edges down to the thick cardboard. Glue the white cardboard on top of the thick cardboard, so as to make a nice inner cover. Store under a heavy book between magazine sheets, while you get paper ready.

(4). The recycled paper which will make the pages needs to be approx 0.5cm smaller in all dimensions, so that it will fit nicely into the book.

(5). Fit the cover and the pages together and mark halfway. Fold at the halfway mark.

(6). Using a nail and hammer (wooden block underneath) make two small holes on the fold mark of the book.

(7). With the thick needle, thread the ribbon through the holes, so the additional lengths of ribbon is on the outside. Close book and tie a not on the outside of the spine to keep the tightly in place. Thread a small bead on the end of the ribbon and tie a not to secure it.

(8). Wrap ribbon around book and weave ribbon on itself so it keeps the notebook closed tightly. And that’s it. It is a good idea to keep the book flat under a heavy item until it is dry.

Using a production line approach, we managed to come out of the evening (a long evening) with 10 fabric covered notebooks each. I do love to give a handmade gift at Christmas to teachers etc, so it will be great to have them ready when the festive season comes along.

I will show you our second creation which we made to match up with the notebooks in a separate post. Are you making anything already for Christmas? If so leave a link so I can come and take a peak!

Technorati Tags: christmas presents, gift ideas, handmade, Planning

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Have you ever been to Aussie Bloggers? You don’t have to be an Aussie to enjoy this place. This week is a very exciting week at Aussie Bloggers as it turns six months old and to celebrate they have given a present to the blogosphere - A Lazy Blogger Blog Post Generator.

It is a nifty little tool that you can play with to give you a reason as to why you haven’t updated the blog recently. This is what I came up with when I had a little play with the generator:

Darling I just discovered I have not updated this since the sun was actually shining in Melbourne. You would not believe my anguish at my misdoings. I hope you still love me!

I am overwhelmed with responding to fan mail spending, my husband’s money and just generally being a Darling to society in general. My day is dreadfully busy from midday to early afternoon. I am convinced that I absolutely deserve a break after all my hard work. I wish you could be here to share it.

I absolutely, positively promise to send a missive out on the wire, post-haste. I promise! This is for my ever faithful, devoted public.

Head on over to Aussie Bloggers and have yourself some fun. And if you haven’t joined up at the forums yet, be sure to do so. It is full of good folk who are very helpful and know how to have a good time.

Technorati Tags: aussie bloggers, post generator

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