Father's Day Printable : breakfast order + 10 things we love about you

Thank you for all your lovely comments on the Father's Day all about  my dad + a picture of my dad printable. I am really hoping you'll share some of your kiddos answers and pictures with me. I love their view on the world, and their logic and sense of humour! 

I'm sharing another printable today.

 It's a Father's Day breakfast order card as well as a Happy Father's Day tent card and a '10 things we love about you' note. I plan on using these in the morning for Father's Day breakfast. Noah is going to get a huge kick out of taking Daddy's 'order' in the morning. 

 {Now of course I won't have every single item on this 'menu' available for choosing in the morning. I've mentioned to my hubby that I'm making up an order card for him so Noah can ask him what he'd like for breakfast. As I already know what he'll be 'ordering' I can be prepared but still let Noah have all the fun}.

The little tent card I am going to use on the breakfast tray. It could also be used as a little bag topper or even a label on an envelope or wrapped gift :o}

And we will also include this '10 things we love about you' with his breakfast :o} I will use it as a little space to write something to him from not just the kids, but me too. I know he's not my dad, but he is the father to my children, and an amazing one at that.  

We'll be filling out these out for the grandfather's, too. 

You can download the set here.

Enjoy :o}

As always, these printables are free for personal use only. They are © 2011 Bianca - a little delightful. 

Please e-mail me with any queries regarding this {or other} printables. Thank you.

Father's Day Printable : all about my dad

Father's day is next Sunday! That crept up fast as we've been super busy and now have sick kiddos so I find it easy to lose track of time.

I was really loving a lot of the 'all about my dad' printables on Pinterest and wanted to make up my own for Noah to fill out with his answers for his dad. I wasn't keen on using ones that had pounds, feet, inches etc on it so made one that was more generic. I thought I'd share it with you :o}

 I love the answers Noah gave me to these questions and I just know this will make hubby smile when he sees it on Father's Day. Especially the answer to how old he is, 28 {haha} and how he is "up to the roof" tall. 

Download here.

 I so LOVE the picture he drew of him giving his Daddy a Father's day present. Apparently Daddy will love it very much and so that is why he has a big big smile on his face. 

We have gone from legs coming straight out of the bottom of heads to now having little round bellies. Too cute, I love his drawings!

Download here.

Also, you can download

a picture of my grandad here

a picture of my _____ here

I would like to apologise for all the annoying ads on the download site, and for the ones that pop up!!

I will probably laminate these so they don't get orange juice or the like splashed on them at our Father's day breakfast table. :o}

More Father's Day printables on their way! 

For what we did last year, have a look here.

As always, these printables are free for personal use only. They are © Bianca - a little delightful. Please e-mail me with any queries regarding this {or other} printables. Thank you.

Golden Book Challenge : vintage feel calico bags

The lovely Jackie of My Little Bookcase put out a call for others to join in her Golden Book Challenge. The idea was to find a way to use or recycle the cover or pages of a damaged Golden Book.

We love reading with our kids, and our kids love flipping through the pages of beautiful books. Although my husband and I both had Golden Books as children neither of us have our old collections with us, but we have a small collection belonging to our children. These are all new and luckily not damaged so I couldn't bring myself to tear any pages out.

Instead, I decided to scan two pages of Richard Scarry's Best Little Word Book Ever to make into a calico bag for each of my kiddos.

If you're worried that this is too complicated or that you need to use fancy software on your computer, don't be! I purposefully used Preview {on my Mac} only for this project and it was done in just a few steps. I have also included steps for Windows users.

Steps for Mac Users
1. Choose your image
2. Scan your image onto the computer. When preparing the image for scanning, I found it was important to make sure it is as straight as possible. Scan the double page if it makes it easier to lay the image flat, you can select the page you want in the next few steps.
3. Once you've scanned the image and saved it to your computer, open it in Preview
4. Click on the image and drag the dotted line box to include only what you want to use on your iron-on transfer. In my case I selected a whole page.
5. Go to Edit > Copy
6. Go to File > New from Clipboard {this should open your selection in a new window}
7. You might have to flip your image so it's the right side up. If you do, go to Tools > Rotate {left or right}
8. Once you have your image looking great, go to Tools > Flip Horizontal to change it to mirror image
9. Print! I did not scale mine down to original size and instead let it fill most of an A4 iron-on transfer. I found this was a great size and would fit most calico bags.

Steps for Windows Users {to the very best of my knowledge! I didn't have a Windows machine to try out}
1. Choose your image

2. Scan your image onto the computer. When preparing the image for scanning, I found it was important to make sure it is as straight as possible. Scan the double page if it makes it easier to lay the image flat, you can select the page you want in the next few steps.

3. Once you've scanned the image and saved it to your computer, open it in Paint

4. From the toolbar or "ribbon" in Paint, choose Image > Select and click on one corner of your selection and drag the box to the other corner. You should now have the page you use selected.

5. Go to Image > Crop and this will crop all the excess away leaving just your selection.

6. If your image isn't right side up, go to Rotate > and select the appropriate choice.

7. Now go to Rotate > Flip Horizontal to change it to mirror image.

8. Print! I did not scale mine down to original size and instead let it fill most of an A4 iron-on transfer. I found this was a great size and would fit most calico bags.

Then, iron your transfer onto your calico bag.

After allowing it to cool, I then peeled the iron on transfer backing off. And ... ta-dah!

I really love how these turned out, they're gorgeous and look like vintage-ish, well loved library bags.
Too cute!

Want to join in on the Golden Book Challenge or see what other fab ideas people have come up with? Find it all right here.

I want to disclose that I used our own, bought copy of Richard Scarry's Best Little Word Book Ever and I made these bags for our personal use only. I will not be selling or distributing these bags or any artwork from this or any other books.
Copyright info: 
Scarry, R. (1992). Best Little Word Book Ever! United States of America: Golden Books.

our new playroom : ikea expedit desk

Thank you all for such lovely lovely comments on our new playroom. We are still really loving the space and I'm also enjoying that I can close the door to pretend the mess is not there if need be. But honestly even though the room gets trashed multiple times per day, I have found that Noah is more inclined to tidy up properly because he is also proud of the space and likes it when he can see it's neat and tidy. :o} 

Today I am sharing with you how we did our Ikea hacked desk. We saw this done on the Ikea Hacker blog and I LOVED the idea of putting a table top onto the Expedit. 

We already had the 2x4 Ikea Expedit and I really wanted a desk in there, so this was really perfect.

All we had to buy for this project was the Vika Amon desk at $59 {from Ikea}, 2x $8 balustrade posts {from bunnings}, a plank of wood that was 9cm wide and about 2 cm thick that we cut to size and a few little metal brackets and screws. 

In the original hack brackets were only placed on the front of the unit when attaching the table top to the Expedit. Knowing my kiddos and how they lean on the edge of the table, this wasn't going to be safe or stable enough so we put brackets on the front and the back to secure the table top to the Expedit. It also really does need to have the legs, without them this is too unstable. 

Here is a photo of the brackets used on the front of the unit. We used 3 on the front, left, right and centre.

To attach the table top to the expedit at the back, my hubby bent the same brackets used at the front so that they were relatively 'flat'. We used one bracket on each side of the back. {btw the table will hang over by about .5cm on each side as you can see in this photo}. We felt it really needed this extra attachment as attaching just at the front meant the back of the table top would life up if you put any weight on the front of the table. Of course the addition of the legs would help solve that, but since this was for our kids to use we felt it's better to be safe than sorry.

This was before we got the legs on. I wouldn't let the kids play in here unsupervised while the legs weren't on yet because as I said, it was pretty unstable like this. One tug on the edge and it would have been quite easy for the whole thing to tip over.

Hubby screwed the balustrade post to the block of wood from the top. And then screwed the block + balustrade to underneath the Vika Amon desk top. {Ahem, we need another coat of paint!}

The end result is an awesome large desk surface with heaps of useful storage underneath. The only problem is that it's higher than your average table. We bought the Ikea Ingolf Junior chairs to help with height, and they are still a tad short but will be great in the long run! :o}

our new playroom

Well it feels like it took us months to do this, and in reality it took over a month simply because I'm impatient and started before I 'should' have. After much discussion we decided to change the playroom from the open plan living area 'games room' we had to the smallest bedroom in the house. So I lugged everything out of that room and started moving things in, 2 days before we were to fly out to see family. Needless to say, I didn't get very much done and lost inspiration very quickly!

After returning home I decided to have a good think about what we wanted and needed from a playroom. I considered what worked and what didn't in our previous playroom. I of course browsed Pinterest and found a lot of fabulous ideas, but I needed to be practical and budget conscious.

I made a list of what I wanted to incorporate into the Playroom:

1. Great storage. We already had a 4x4 Ikea Expedit and a 2x4 Ikea Expedit for the kids toys and buying a whole new storage system was out of the question. I needed to work with these.
2. A desk for the kids to use for crafts or playing on. But fitting a desk hutch with some storage meant losing the 2x4 Expedit in there, but for us and how we store toys the desk hutch storage really wasn't ideal. Also all the desk hutches I liked were not very budget friendly!
3. A way to display the kids art work.
4. A reading nook.

After working out how to make things work for our space, it was all systems go. We spent 2 whole Sundays drilling holes, sewing cushions and curtains, painting and glueing.

So here it is :o} I am proud of our kids new playspace and they are loving it! I had intended to go with a vintage school theme but it's not easy to source any of those things here in Australia (and shipping from Pottery Barn Kids is a bit much!!) and so the attention kind of navigated towards a little vintage school and lot of apples with hints of red and green :o}

This is what you see as you enter. The large frame is a project I am not finished with yet! Will share more on that when we are done.

The words "Read, Play, Create" are a take on "Eat, Pray, Love". I wanted something that reminds my husband and I of what this room is all about, especially when we walk in there and it's a bomb :o} But also for my  kids when they can read, to remind them of what good times are made of, reading, playing and creating {+ family, of course!} We can also display art work here which is a great way to fill up a pretty empty wall.

We store our toys in a mix of the baskets from Ikea {purchased pre-babies and probably aren't the best for toy storage but I wanted to get my moneys worth out of them haha!} and in the Trofast buckets with lids.

What better way to spend some time but reading a book underneath the apple tree ?  I sewed my pants to that curtain. I am not very good at sewing!

I will be sharing a ton of details on how we did the desk with storage from an Ikea hack, the reading nook and the Daddy-built kitchen {which we finally finished!!} soon! :o}

Travelling with children : part 2

Following on from my last post, I thought I'd share what I pack for the plane trip.

Noah is a great traveller and normally just enjoys looking at the flight safety card and inflight magazine and staring out the window but of course at some point gets bored of doing those things and so I have these to occupy him.

Tag reader, a few books and some earphones. I bought kids earphones specifically so the volume can't go up to high to protect young ears. To keep Noah's backpack manageable for the flight I put the Tag and it's case in my carry on.

Some cars. Keep them in a little bag of sorts so they are easy to find.

Books! My kids always love books so these are always good. I try to pack a selection, so I choose really thin ones so they're not too heavy or bulky.

Some paper, crayons, a pencil, activity book and flash cards. We used the paper and crayons while waiting for the plane and the activity book was used during the holiday and only the flash cards were used on the plane. So on the journey back I packed these in our suitcase instead, but the last time we travelled all he wanted to do was draw so I was going by what had been popular previously.

His favourite little stuffed animals. I am lucky in that his favourites are little, but he still has to have all of them! Double check you have these before leaving the plane!

Before the iPad, I used to load a couple of movies onto my iPod video or take out my laptop and let him watch a DVD on it. Now with the iPad though he can play a game or watch a short episode. The earphones come in handy here!

I didn't take a photo of what I packed for Chloe, but being a 1 year old I find she is a little easier to amuse on the plane in terms of 'stuff'. I packed her favourite doll and her gro-bag which I found she really needed to signal 'this is sleep time' in such a weird environment. I also packed a small book. I found that she isn't really interested in toys on the plane, and just wants to play with everything else (your cup, the inflight magazine or trying to whack the iPad) and that snacks are always a winner.

Snacks + food are definitely the best thing I packed for our trip. I pack all food items in their own largh-ish bag to keep them separate from everything else.
Particularly good to pack are little containers filled with small things like cheerios or sultanas as it took them a little while to eat. For Chloe these were also occupying as it takes time and concentration to pick up all those little pieces and put them in your mouth. I packed some home made muffins for the kids (and us) to eat on the plane or while waiting around in the airport in case you're delayed (as we were). Also make sure you pack your kids water bottles, it's much easier for them to drink out of what they're used to. Pack them empty if they're super strict about liquids.

I also pack spare clothes for each child (and when travelling with a newborn, at least a change of shirt for me + hubby!).

travelling with children : part 1

We recently returned from a trip overseas to visit with family.
It was a much needed holiday and it was beyond fabulous to spend some time with so many of the people I love.
I consider you super lucky if you have family that live near by. We don't have any and so it gets a bit tough sometimes. Needless to say, we travel fairly often to see our families. Noah has clocked up over 110,000 kms of air travel in his 4.5 years. Luckily he is a brilliant traveller! Chloe - well she is still learning! Haha.
I am one of 4, and we also travelled to visit family often when growing up, so I learnt a lot of these tricks from my Mum as she was fantastic at organising a family of 6.

1. Find a good travel wallet.
I used to have a snap closure wallet, and that was fine, for just me. When I married and then had children and the number of passports, boarding passes and other bits and pieces increased, my snap closure wouldn't close anymore. And often, everything would fall out. So I found this zippered travel wallet at Kikki-K. It's brilliant and does everything I want. Having a zipper also means that if we're in a slight hurry or your hands are just too full with kids and bags, you can just throw the passports and boarding passes back in and zip it up until you can tidy and organise all your papers.

2. Label you passports on the outside, and don't bother with passport covers. If you've got a good travel wallet, that will be enough to protect your passports enough. (haha, won't stop them from fraying a little bit though) They make you take the cover off at immigration anyway, and that's just added bulk and annoyance you'll have to think about. Labelling them makes it much easier to identify them and speeds things up for you so you'll always know which passport to grab for which boarding pass etc at a quick glance.

3. Fill out your immigration cards at home. This is my biggest and most favourite tip.
Trying to fill out those forms in a busy airport with cranky kids or on a tiny cramped airplane tray table while trying to entertain one child and keep the other one from continuously grabbing your pen is no fun at all. So next time you're travelling, grab a few extra outgoing passenger cards from the desks before immigration so you can fill those out from home next time you leave. And when you arrive back home in Australia, grab some extra incoming passenger cards for next time, too.

candlelit dinners .. with your kiddos

Although candlelit dinners with your partner might be lovely way to spend an evening - it's super special to have one with your kiddos, too. 

We would normally only have candles for special occasions - like a birthday or on Christmas Eve. But hey, life is special every day. So why not?

We did this on Friday and it was a lot of fun. We made our usual Friday night dinner at home a little more of an 'event' by lighting some candles and turning most of the lights off. I'm pretty sure they ate more than usual, too, because they were enjoying sitting at the table so much! 

This was one of the things on our winter fun list. We're still going strong and really enjoying having a list of things to enjoy and cross off during this wonderful wintery season. 

Some of my fondest memories as a kiddo are doing simple things like this with my parents and my brothers. I think we'll do this a little more often. 

What's one of your fondest memories? Is it something lovely yet simple like this, too?

x

lunch box planner printable

I like asking Noah what he would like for lunch at school as I find he is more likely to eat what I pack if he's had some input. I would normally ask him what he'd like in the afternoon, but by the evening when I often prepare his lunch for the next day ... I've forgotten something. And on the days where I am making his lunch in the morning - I am even more likely to forget what we agreed on! {I'm not a morning person and it takes a while for my brain to wake up!}.

So I made this up as a way to help as I can now write down his choices and refer to it when needed.

It makes it easy for me to make and pack his lunch quickly without having to ask him during the morning rush {or be left just guessing if he's already in bed} if he asked me for those crackers or these crackers.

It's designed so it doesn't matter how many kiddos you have and how often you find you need to use it. I don't use it every day because some days I don't ask him what he'd like, and some days I am making his lunch right then and there and so don't need to write it down for later.

By popular request, the Lunch Box Planner is now available to print in two sizes :o}

Download this one to print 2 per page
Download this one to print 1 per page

I hope it helps you in your lunch box packing adventures!

x

As always, these printables are free for personal and classroom use only. Please do not use for commercial purposes.

They are © 2012 - a little delightful.

No derivatives of this printable are permitted. Please do not alter these and share them as your own.

Freebie printables are offered 'as is' and cannot be changed without incurring a personalisation charge.

Please contact me with any queries regarding this {or other} printables.

I am more than happy for you to share these, but please link to my original post {this one} and not to the direct download file. Thank You.