Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Happy new year - Chinese new year that is!

Today begins the year of the fire monkey and to respect the Spring Festival we have created an oriental cherry blossom tree.

Other than the usual materials, you will need an empty plastic bottle - the smaller the better!

I used pink, purple and white paint to give a variety of colours, and spread it thinly onto a plate so the picture didn't get lagged!

This is the tricky bit! Using a black marker draw a tree onto card. I drew lots of wiggly lines heading up and out, then made them thicker to look like branches.

Then it's over to the Zebra! Dip the bottom of the bottle into the paint and then stamp all acros the tree to give it the blossoms. She really enjoyed making the pink prints all over the page, in fact she was so engrossed there wasn't a single bit of paint on her toes!!

                     恭喜发财  恭喜發財 

Footprint Butterfly

We are slowly heading towards spring so time to make some bright, pretty crafts!

You can use any paints, but I love these pastel shades for a spring butterfly.

Squirt the paint into lines on a plate, then press their foot straight into it. I had some paper down to dab the excess paint off before printing onto the card. 

The Zebra just adores painting with her feet and had great fun stamping her mark!

Once he prints have dried, draw a butterfly wing shape around one foot. Cut it out and use it as a template for the other foot.

Draw and colour a black head and body on the scrap paper left over and cut it out. 

Glue the body and wings down and stick on some eyes. Twirl a pipe cleaner round a pencil to make the antenna and then stick to the head.

Ta-Dah! A beautiful butterfly waiting for the sunshine. 

Wintery Window

We haven't seen a single speck of snow out of the window this winter, so I guess we better make our own!

The blue card is for the sky and the brown is for the windows wooden frame.

I used PVA glue to trail a line of glue across the top of the card. I made it nice and thick so there was lots to flow down - this gives an icicle effect for the windows. The Zebra rather enjoyed watching it drip down!

Once it had reached the bottom, the Zebra used blue and silver glitter to cover the picture.

The Zebra though it was much more fun to cover me in glitter...

And make patterns on he table!!

While she played, I cut 4 rectangles out of the brown card, then fixed it onto of our glitter sky.

And here you have it - a wintry snow scene to watch out the window!

Warm Orange Nutty cake

For this weeks bake I am using my fab new cooking book! 

I've been eating healthy for over a year so thought it about time to treat myself to a new read. The recipe was a bit too healthy for me so we made a few substitutes!

Ingredients

1 large orange

125g dried apricots 

70g walnuts

70g almonds

70g Brazil nuts

4 eggs

200g caster sugar

125ml olive oil

85g wholemeal self raising flour

****preheat oven to 160degs

First up, cover the orange in water and boil for half an hour, then add in the apricots and boil for another 15 minutes.

We don't have a food processor, so had to make do with my smoothie maker! The Zebra loved putting all the nuts in the container one by one, and had even more fun pressing the button to whiz them up. 

Tip the nuts and flour into a big bowl and mix together. Pop the bowl to one side.

The Zebra greased up the cake tin with a little oil, she loves anything that resembles painting.

Once the orange and apricots are boiled, cut the orange open and take out any pips. The whole lot then goes in the processor/blender until smooth.

Add the fruit purée in with the oil, eggs and sugar. Mix together really well.

Finally, tip in the nuts and flour from earlier. If you have a processor you can blend it all together, but we did it by hand!

Spoon the mixture into the pre-greased tin and decorate the top with nuts. Remember to lick the spoon clean!

Pop in the oven for an hour to get the perfect, tasty, healthy cake!

It's not chocolate but the Zebra sure does love it!

Melted Snowman

Things have been rather quiet here at the Zoo as the the Zebra has been poorly and not felt like doing any crafts. She's luckily getting better so we did a quick make this afternoon!

For the melted snowman you obviously need white paint! This is best painted onto dark card or paper - we went for dark green grass. We used some pink ribbon and paper to make a hat and scarf, then some mini Pom-poms for buttons, orange triangle for nose, and of course, googley eyes! Oh, and don't forget the glitter...

 Really easy to paint this one - I let the zebra use a sponge brush to swish the white all over the card.

After that we used silver and blue glitter, because it's not a toddler craft without some glitter!

To help develop the fine motor skills, I got the Zebra to dip the snowman parts in glue and stick onto the card. It doesn't matter where they go as the snowman is now a puddle!

And here it is - a sparkly, glittery, melted snowman 

Arctic Fox

Brrrr!! It's some cold out there still!! We haven't been lucky enough to have snow down here in Cornwall, but that didn't stop us making a snowy fox...

Cotton wool and paper plates are the main materials, but, as always, we like to throw in some glitter and googley eyes! 

As this is a relatively clean craft, the Zebra was more than happy to wear her apron(!) She loves to 'dip-dip' and was content covering a whole plate in cotton wool.

The Zebra got a by confused with the glitter glue today and tried splatting her hand on to make handprints - however she just scraped the glue off and ended up with very silver glittery hands!!

Once dry, you need to cut the plates into the fox. The cotton wool needs to be cut into half to make the body, and then a quarter for the head.

From the glitter, cut 4 rectangles for legs, 2 triangles for ears, and a sausage shape for the tail.

Glue the parts together and add the eyes and nose and there you have it! One super sweet and sparkly Arctic Fox.

Hats off to Mummy

Today is national hat day - So obviously we had to make a hat!

I just pulled out some random bags from the cupboard today, including some party hats left over from the Zebras first birthday.

For some unknown reason, the Zebra made it very clear she did not want any feathers near her hat!

We soon got over the tantrum and got stuck into the glue! No matter how much pva we glooped, most the pom-poms fell off, so we used foam and glitter shapes instead

And the best bit of hat making? Trying it on! 

For our princess crown, we used some glitter glue tubes - it was going great onto the Zebra sat on it and wipe all the glitter into her bum... Time to tidy up!