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Dinosaur Birthday Party!

February 7, 2019 by danawyyc Leave a Comment

My youngest is currently obsessed with dinosaurs. I have learned so many new dinosaur names this year! Planning his dinosaur party was super fun. The kids were 3 and 4 year olds so I didn’t want to do anything too complicated or involving party games because I don’t really like them.

Decorations

We bought some dinosaurs for the wall from Party City and Open A Party.

We found these sparkly hats at the dollar store along with some foam sheets. I cut the foam into triangles and hot glued them onto the hats. We had more hats than we needed so the hats doubled as decorations.

“Loot Bag”

The kids also got a dinosaur tail (6 for $36 at Open A Party). These were adorable. Some of the kids loved them and others wanted nothing to do with them. They doubled as the loot bag.

The Cake

I am far from an expert cake decorator. My best looking cakes involve putting toys on the cake. Luckily, we have lots of little dinosaurs toys, making this cake pretty easy.

Activities

First each kid got to adopt a little toy dinosaur. My older kids helped fill out an adoption certificate and give each of the dinosaurs a check-up.

Next we rescued some dinosaurs that had gotten trapped in the ice. We mostly used warm water and eye droppers. If I was to do it again, I would make sure that the ice wasn’t quite as thick. I ended up running them the tap at the end to finish them up.

Finally, I had bought some dinosaur fossils and wrapped them in baking soda dough (which is just baking soda mixed with water). My plan was to have the kids get them out using vinegar droppers, but they were just too big. Instead we dropped them in a container of baking soda and watched them fizz. It was pretty entertaining.

Afterwards, each kid got a Jr Paleontologist certificate to celebrate their fossil find.

Happy Birthday Robbie!

My favourite amigurumi animal crochet patterns

April 2, 2018 by danawyyc Leave a Comment

I learned how to crochet a couple of years ago and have since made scarfs, hats, blankets and slippers. My favourite thing to make though has been amigurumi. Amigurumi is a technique for creating small stuffed toys. It has been popular in Japan for a while, and has started becoming popular now in North America too.

Here are some of my favourite projects with links to the patterns so you can try them out yourself.

Unicorns

Mimi the Friendly Unicorn – paid pattern

This pattern is easy to read and works well is a huge variety of colours (just be careful with light pink has it can look a little pig-like). My unicorns end up being about a foot tall!
Peachy Rose the Unicorn – paid pattern

This large baby unicorn could not be cuter. I modified the pattern a bit by giving it wavy hair instead of straight and leaving off the wings. The method they used for attaching the hair worked really well.

Pony – free pattern

This tiny unicorn fits into the palm of your hand. Again I modified the hair to make it loose instead of ‘molded’ pieces.

Horse Amigurumi Pattern – Paid pattern

This pattern comes with instructions for a saddle and bridle set which looks adorable but I had trouble making it look good myself. The horse, however is great. I made this horse to look like Ghost from the TV show Heartland.

Baby Groot – paid pattern

This pattern works up quickly and looks adorable. I also made it with lighter colour leaves which I think looks even better.

Porgs – free pattern

These were my most requested item this year. They work up pretty quickly, but the quick colour changes can take a while to get used to.

Labrador Puppy – free pattern

I’ve made a few dogs using this pattern and they have all turned out really well.

Tiny T-Rex – free pattern

I found this pattern really easy to follow, as long as you remember that it uses UK crochet terminology instead of US terms. It’s an easy switch and shouldn’t deter you from using it.

I also modified it to create this dragon by adding some wings and changing the arms.

Happy Hippo – free pattern

I made this hippo with scrap yarn and my kids adored it. Too bad it wasn’t for them!

Taking the Kids on a Food Adventure – Picky Eater Strategy

January 30, 2017 by danawyyc 3 Comments

One day I decided to try to sell my kids on the idea of being Food Adventurers. We weren’t going to a new restaurant, we were going on a Food Adventure! We weren’t trying trying new suspicious looking foods, we were having a food adventure!

I’ve found this to be very successful and we continue to use this concept all the time. My kids have not magically turned into little foodies, but I get a lot more buy in from them and using the process I’ve outlined below I have been able to get them to try just about anything. They’ve even found they’ve really liked some things they were pretty sure they weren’t going to like.

Trying New Foods as a Food Adventurer

As a parent, take the pressure off. Expect them to explore and discover the food not necessarily to eat it. We say the steps out loud and I will often do the steps with the kids too.

Touch it (pick it up, poke it)
Look at it
Smell it
Listen to it
Lick it
Bite it
Chew it

We don’t always get through all the steps but that’s okay. Particularly with foods that they are really resistant to, maybe even having it on their plate is a big deal. Don’t be afraid to try it again another day (again and again and again). Repeated stress-free exposure (and this can be 20 or more times) has been shown to increase acceptance over time.

But sometimes it works right away. Sometimes a food they were worried might be spicy, turns out to be something they love. It’s quick, easy and can be done anywhere.

One time we used this at a barbecue restaurant – we ordered a platter so there was lots of choices and the kids did a food adventure with many meats and sides and they each found a few things that they loved (and a few that they didn’t. It is now one of their favourite restaurants.