LINK TO MY PINSPIRATION
MY OWN PINSPIRED CREATIONSadly I am finding School Holidays increasingly hard to deal with, even a short half term break reduces me to tears at least once :-( Both Little Prince and Princess Lollipop are strong characters with their own quirks and needs, and dealing with them during school holidays, especially in horrible weather when we are stuck in the house, has always been very difficult. That is not to say that I don't love spending time with them, and even the worst days are worth it, I just feel I need a "plan" for the next break!
The long Summer Holidays are looming on the horizon, and I need to bring a little more structure to our time. I found lots of "Summer Bucket Lists" on Pinterest, and I loved the idea, but it wasn't quite right for our family. Little Prince would probably pester to do all the activities he wants (expensive trips out most likely!) in the first week, and then get bored with the whole idea. Then I saw a Pin that gave themes for each day of the week, and again I loved the idea but again it just wasn't quite right for our unpredictable English weather! So I decided to make a combination of the "Bucket List" and "Themed Days" types of Pins. I used a large (noticeboard size), piece of heavy white card and covered it in sunny yellow fabric (hint hint weather!!).
I finally used my Cricut (I was a bit intimidated by it at first!) to cut out the letters for the board title "Summertime" and I used shaped buttons to spell out "fun." I also used different shaped and coloured buttons to decorate around the title.
I made six brightly coloured box pockets (by covering mini cereal boxes in bright coloured scrapbook paper) to hold the different themes of activities, and then made pretty labels for them. The "Day Out" and "Day at Home" were further split into "Sunny" and "Rainy" so that one each could be picked and the weather won't be able to spoil our week. I printed the activities and placed them in the right pockets. Each weekend the Littlies can take turns to pick out one activity from each box pocket, and peg it to the "This Week's Activities" section of the board.
The "This Week's Activities" section has 7 pegs (covered in matching paper to the box pockets) where the week's activities are placed until we have completed them. Once completed I will give them to Little Prince to use in his "Summer Fun Diary." If we have only used the "Rainy Day" Activities then the "Sunny Day" activities will be returned to their correct box pocket to give us a chance to do them in a week with sunnier weather (fingers crossed!!).
The seventh peg will hold the three different zones for "Clean Team" so that each week we will work together to keep the house tidy and clean. I will rotate the zones, so that we clean a different one each week, the zones are - Upstairs, Downstairs and Garden. I will still expect everyone to put their own clean washing, dirty dishes and clutter away each day, the zones are just for a big tidy up and clean, as when we are all at home all day the house tends to descend into chaos in no time at all!!!
MY VERDICT
From the construction part of this Pinspired Creativity, I wouldn't be so nervous about writing the titles in my own handwriting! I don't like my own writing and wanted to print the labels, but my printer ran out of ink, I emailed the labels I'd designed to Mr Messy, but the formatting got all messed up on the journey through the ether and didn't make any sense when he printed them. In the end I used my Cricut to cut label shapes, then glued a toning colour square (with rounded corners - so much nicer looking lol) with the words written on. I took my tme and wrote neatly and it doesn't look as bad as I feared!!
I'll let you know how using the "Summertime Fun" board went, when the Summer Holidays finish in September!!
WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME
I wouldn't faff so much about printing the labels and just write them out - quicker and easier than keep trying different printing methods!!
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