When Gracen gets invited to a birthday party, she’s usually excited about two things – actually going to the party of course, and coming up with a fun gift to bring along! This gift was for a friend who was celebrating her 7th birthday this time around, so Miss G knew she wanted something ‘big girlish’. We brainstormed ideas throughout the week {a hair dressing kit and a card making kit were other options in the running – two of G’s favourite things}, but in the end we decided on a little chef’s baking kit since our friend enjoys baking with her mama just as Grae and I enjoy baking together.
I’m pretty sure Gracen’s obsession with Frozen has reached an all-time high recently. She’s always really enjoyed the movie, but since removing the YouTube app from her iPad a while back, I’m fairly certain she’s spent at least a portion of her allotted screen time watching it every single day. Of course, when your start your day with a dose of Frozen, it translates into into a whole lot of Elsa dress-up, many Anna hairdo requests, non-stop ‘Let It Go’, and daily reenactments of the ‘do you want to build a snowman?’ scene {accompanied by plenty of door knocking}. Welcome to our world.
Grae and I absolutely love putting together fun play kits as gifts, especially when they involve sensory play materials. While we’ve made a very simple homemade play dough kit previously, time around we decided to make the birthday boy a colourful kit filled with a rainbow of play dough and a bunch of fun tools and loose parts to up its play possibilities.
By now, I think it’s pretty obvious that Miss G and I love to make and give homemade gifts. I love giving something unique that can’t just be purchased at a store, and I think we both love the process of coming up with an idea, collecting the materials, and putting it all together in a fun way. Our gifts are never overly involved {okay, with the exception of the portable activity packs maybe}, but they’re fun and normally aim to inspire play and creativity, which is very much us.
Have I mentioned that Grae and I love putting together homemade gifts? Because we do. We love it so much in fact, that despite the fact that we had actually already purchased a gift for today’s party, we decided we would make something instead – just yesterday afternoon! Today’s birthday boy is a car lover through and through, so we used that for our inspiration. He also {like many of our international friends} is often on the go, so we decided to make him a portable car play kit so that he has a fun and easy way to take his beloved toys with him – whether it be to a restaurant, on an airplane, or over to a friend’s house.
Ever since attending their launch party for Fun, Miss G has absolutely loved visiting Lush, so there was no walking by when we spent a day on Robson Street a few weeks ago. The moment she got wind of the store’s signature scent, her eyes lit up and she was asking to go in {twist my rubber arm}. As always, the ladies working there were lovely and pampered us with all sorts of fun product demonstrations, our favourite of which was a luxurious lemony body scrub that left our hands feeling soft and smelling delicious.
It’s no secret that Miss G and I like to create and give little homemade gifts. I’ve always loved giving gifts and it’s important to me that Gracen sees that there’s just as much joy {if not more} in giving as there is in receiving, even if the gifts are tiny and made by hand. I think ‘happy summer’ gifts like these also help her prepare for significant transitions – in this case, saying goodbye to her friends and home here in Kuwait and heading back to Canada for the summer.
Gracen’s little weekly play date buddy turned 4 today, which called for another homemade gift. Like almost all of our expat friends here in Kuwait, he and his family will be headed home for the summer shortly, so we wanted to make him something he could easily take along and hopefully use during the journey back to Canada. Since he and Miss G play with LEGO pretty much every time they’re together, we figured a portable LEGO kit would make a great gift.
Is it just me, or is buying gifts for dads next to impossible?! I’ve never been good at buying gifts for my own dad, and when it comes to helping Miss G come up with fun gifts for her Papa, I’m not much better. Thus, we usually go with something simple, handmade, and from-the-heart. For last year’s Father’s Day, we put together a simple framed Papa interview and portrait, a super easy snack basket, and our annual Papa and Grae photo book {well now that I type that, I wonder whether or not I actually finished and printed it… ACK! Must look into that}. This year, Gracen and I have a few new ideas in mind, the first of which is this very simple ‘I love you’ pillowcase.
Another birthday party means another opportunity for Grae and I to come up with a fun, homemade gift {which we love doing}. This time around, we decided we’d put together a tinkle trunk filled with fun dress-up costumes and accessories similar to what Grae has in her dress-up station. We were really excited about the idea until we realized that the birthday girl is headed home to the States just a few days after her party. A tickle trunk simply wouldn’t do. After some brainstorming, we opted for something she could bring along on her travels – a portable activity kit! Our goal was to keep it as compact and lightweight as possible, while cramming in tons of fun {and quiet} things she could explore and play with during her travels. Here’s what we included…
There’s no doubt that Grae and I love putting together fun gifts for her friends’ birthdays. So far this year we’ve given several craft kits, a play dough kit, a sensory play kit, and a little artist’s drawing kit. This time around, we wanted to try something different – keeping in mind that the birthday girl is moving come the end of the school year.
With Mother’s Day only a few days away, I started thinking about some of the fun Mother’s / Father’s Day gifts kids tend to make in school year after year. The first project that came to mind? Clay pinch pots – a classic. I don’t know what exactly has made them the go-to gift for moms and dads, but my guess is that it’s their versatility. Dad needs a coin dish? Check. A safe spot to store his tie clip and cufflinks? Check. Mom needs a bowl to hold bobby pins and hair elastics? A special spot to store her rings at night? Check. Check. And that’s how this project came about. I {quite desperately} need a spot to keep my rings while not wearing them instead of my usual leaving them somewhere in our large apartment only misplace them and eventually find them a few days later. While we could have made just a regular pinch pot, we decided to try making a hand-shaped ring dish since I’m a little obsessed with handprint projects. Didn’t it turn out sweet?
There’s no doubt that we’ve been all about the ‘kit gifts’ this year… Since moving to Kuwait, we’ve brought craft kits, play dough kits, and sensory play kits to Grae’s little friends’ birthday parties, and today we added type of kit to our gift list… A drawing kit! As soon as the birthday girl’s mom told me that she loved to draw, I knew we could put together a fun and easy kit filled with items that any little artist would love.
With our last crafting class of the year coming up in just a few short days, Miss G and I wanted to prepare some simple gifts to share with the little friends she’s made at Bright Minds over the last few months. We adore play dough and had so much fun with our larger scale play dough snowman building activity that we decided to make miniature versions in easy to pack cases – everything needed to build play dough snowmen in small locking lid containers for some holiday fun on the go {or at home, really}.
First, we gathered up our materials… A double batch of our yummy-smelling vanilla mint play dough, awesome divided locking lid containers, beads, buttons, googly eyes, orange matchsticks, small twigs, and miniature scarves cut from inexpensive felt.
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We found our locking divided containers at City Star here in Kuwait, but these Sistema Klip It Split Food Containers on Amazon look similar. I love them because they’re small, easy for little ones to seal and unseal, and perfect for packing in a purse, diaper bag, or carry-on. Plus, they keep the play dough and the ‘building accessories’ {as Miss G calls them} separate, which I like too.
To get started, I added a big ball of vanilla mint play dough to one compartment of each container.
Then Gracen added the accessories to the other. To keep things uniform, we came up with a ‘recipe’ of what should be added to each container (2 googly eyes, 2 matchstick carrot noses, 2 twig arms, 5 beads, 5 buttons, and 1 felt scarf), which turned out to be great counting practice for Miss G.
This is how our kits looked when we were done with them.
Afterwards, Gracen matched up the lids, locked them on, and I used a regular glue stick to adhere some very basic labels I made and printed to fit our containers. And that was it – simple but cute gifts for our friends to enjoy over the holidays, be it at home, on an airplane, and while waiting in restaurants and doctors’ offices. I am so keeping one of these to bring along on our upcoming trip to Germany. In fact, I’m thinking I may create a couple of other little ‘play on-the-go’ kits too! ☺
Of course the one I tucked away for our trip didn’t remain a secret for long…
In fact, Grae’s already had several play dough snowman building sessions with her little kit.
Now let’s just hope the excitement continues until Christmas break rolls around and we board that plane!
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