Baby Arts and Crafts: Jesus in a footprint manger!

Today I have a Christmas craft project you can make with your little one!! And all you need is some card, poster paint, some tissue paper, a scrap of shiny gold paper and a metallic pen and you can make this Christmas card:

This card starts life by printing your little ones cutey footprint onto some card. Next using some brown tissue paper/card glue too strips to create the legs if the manger. Once you've done that glue some pieces of yellow tissue paper to create some straw. The baby Jesus was made from some scraps of card and brown tissue paper. Here's a close up:

Finally cut a large star out of gold paper and write a sentiment and draw some stars with a gold metallic pen.

A very inexpensive card with a lot if sentimental value!

Baby Arts and Crafts: Footprint Pears!

On a Friday we go to a baby group ran at our local SureStart centre called Sunbeams. It's absolutely fantastic!

Each of the babies get their own scrapbook and every week the staff organise a crafty project which involves printing their hands or feet! It's so cute and a lovely keepsake!

I'm going to try and take a pic of each project we do to share with you guys and give you some ideas of arts and crafts with your little one!

So the first project we did was 'A pair of pears':

Two baby footprints to make the pears. We cut out some leaves out of green paper and used some pens to draw on some stalks!

We accompanied these pears with this cute little poem:

Pears are green

Tasty and sweet,

Although not as nice

as this pair of feet!

My guest post: Our Baby Massage Experience

I've recently written a guest post over on Sarah's blog: Yummy Mummy in Training discussing our experiences of a baby massage course we completed at our local SureStart centre and the benefits of baby massage. Why not check it out: http://www.yummymummyintraining.co.uk/2012/11/our-baby-massage-experience-my-crafty.html?m=1

Xander's First Halloween!

I'm a big fan of all holidays and Halloween is no exception!! I couldn't let the day whizz by without getting Xander involved!

I couldn't resist buying him a Halloween costume and managed to purchase this super cute skeleton costume from the Next outlet in Portsmouth for the bargain price of £4!

On Tuesday we went to visit Joanne from Frazer Alexander Photography and whilst in the studio I could resist getting a spooky shot taken of little man:

(Doesn't the black background look cool!!)

On halloween itself Xander went to his baby group all dressed up:

So did several of the other babies. I love it when everyone gets involved!

We then went off into Basingstoke with my two sisters where we had a Pizza Hut lunch listening to lots of Halloween related songs! After lunch we visit the local library which had some Halloween related activities on including Halloween cookie making. Obviously Xander was too little to do this but we enjoyed watching my ten year old sister (dressed as a zombie Snow White!) make these!!

We finished off our spooky day by opening the door to all our Trick and Treaters and handing out popping candy! I loved seeing and hearing everyones reaction to my super cute skeleton!!

Hope you had a fun Halloween! Did your children dress up? Please feel free to leave a comment below!

Activities to do with a 0-3 month baby

The first few weeks of parenthood are a complete blur, they go by so fast and you find you barely leave the house apart from the occasional trip to the supermarket to stock up on supplies, the odd visit to the midwife or possible to see a relative or two. You have the company of your partner aswell whilst they're on paternity leave so you have adult company. But what do you do all day long after the dust has settled and your other half has gone back to work?

Well if i'm honest at first I drifted from day to day, watched a lot of daytime tv and ate alot of chocolate! But after a week or so I suffered cabin fever and craved adult company (there's only limited conversations you can have with a baby!)

So I researched baby groups in my area and made an effort to get out and about! It's been great for Xander to interact with other babies and I've met a few mummy's in the same situation as me!! I no longer feel alone!

So far we've attended:
• a baby massage course (run by our local sure start children's centre) See my blogposts on these sessions for more details!
• baby bounce and rhyme time (run by our local library)
• bumps and babies group (run by our local NCT division)
• baby stay and play/ baby scrapbooking session (run by our local sure start children's centre)
• baby sensory (run by our local sure start children's centre)

I plan to write some individual blogposts about these sessions, so make sure visit back to my blog real soon!!