Toddler planner

My little one is a bit OCD. Like her Mum. Already. Eek!

She always wants to know what’s happening each day, what day it is, and gets quite irate if we change plans.

I was getting a bit sick of the repetitive conversation, so I decided to make her a planner, so we could easily talk about what was happening each day/week.

I searched pinterest and fell in love with this one from Mama.Papa.Bubba. So I used this as a guide to make my own.

The velcro sticky tags make it flexible and we can just print out more pictures if we need more activities. It’s a great way to initiate conversation and discussion, and will hopefully last a long time since we laminated it all!

What organisational activities have you done with your kiddies?

Recipe Organisation

I’ve gone a bit OCD on my recipe collection. I say ‘a bit’. Some may say ‘a lot’. I’ll let you decide.

I shop once a week. It’s so much better. If it’s all planned out I save money because I only buy what I need. Plus, I can go on the weekend without the kiddies. And shopping without children is like a holiday in itself. So amazing. 😉 So, once a week, I plan. I look through my big cookbook collection and choose 6 recipes and make my shopping list. I have a tick-what-I-need shopping list (inspired by my parents-in-law) that is organised aisle-by-aisle for my local supermarket so that I don’t have to back-track and can be super-dooper efficient.

A while back I found these awesome free printables and I started a post it note system. Basically, I planned out 6 meals for each week (1 night of leftovers) and wrote the name of the dish and where I could find the recipe. This was working great – until I ran out of wall space!!

I wanted to keep this reference system of recipes I wanted to repeat, so, I needed to go one step further. I watched this video about recipe planning and organisation. And I was blown away by this woman’s system. Wow. But, I decided I just couldn’t keep this one up… I figured I’d slack off and it would fall by the wayside. So, I compromised. I got myself a ring binder and laminated blank sheets of paper. Then hole-punched. And bought an AWESOME binder divider that sticks out past the pages (why are they not ALL like that????). So, all my pretty little post-its had a home.

Hint: Buy the “super-sticky” post-its. It’s totally worth it.

So, my kitchen corner looks like this. The orange and green binders have my post-its (one for parents, one for kids). The blue folder is my savoury recipe collection and the red is dessert. The cookbooks on the bench are the ones I need for the week. And loose recipes (from the blue and red binders) that I need for the week go in there. It’s also a good place for loose ones to wait until I get around to filing them.

And I printed one more planner for the kids since the little munchkin is just starting on baby-led weaning, and the big munchkin is needed more interesting food!

Recently, I also managed to buy a second-hand chest freezer online, so I’m trying to keep track of what is inside (this is just another white laminated page that I can draw on with whiteboard markers) so nothing gets forgotten.

And finally I have created an excel file for recipes I want to try based on this website’s ideas. As I read through a cookbook or magazine, I can file away the ideas, rather than having notes and scribbles floating around the kitchen.

And it’s all working well! But there’s always room for improvement – hit me up with any other cool ideas!!

Sewing tutorial: Car organiser

Grandma collected a GREAT set of mini books from an Advertiser promotion earlier in the year. There are a lot of favourites in there, like Hairy Maclary, and they are a perfect size to hold for little hands. We quickly adopted them as entertainment for long car journeys, as we did a few trips between Melbourne and Adelaide in quick succession. They came in a little bag which we hung over the passenger headrest, so she could help herself. Which was great, in theory. The books often got caught on the internal hem of the bag, so one of us had to stretch our arm around and pull out each one. And, of course, the bag itself soon fell apart, despite being reinforced by my sewing machine a couple of times!

So, since I well and truly had my sewing machine and sewing supplies unpacked from our China shipment (including gorgeous Chinese fabric), I decided it was time to fix this problem myself! I’ve set this up as a kind of tutorial, in case anyone is inspired and would like to follow suit. I, of course, started by scrounging on pinterest, and was particularly inspired by this Grab and Go Traveler. I followed some basic ideas from these, but designed it to suit the things that we play with in the car.

I measured our passenger seat and headrest and these were the measurements that I came up with. I have included a 1.5cm seam allowance for each side, so 3cm has been added to my original measurements.

• Main piece (cut 2) – 36cm x 53cm
• Strap (cut 2) – 36cm x 6cm

Then, I measured the items that I wanted to put in specific pockets. I wanted a pocket for the books, her sunnies, her toy phone and then a general pocket for snacks, clothing and extras. In the end, there was also space for an extra one, so I added another little pocket. I wanted all the pockets to be “seamless”, as in, I didn’t want any seams that could catch things as she pulled things out. So, every piece is doubled, so it can be folded over. W = width, H = height.

• Book pocket (cut 1) – 36cmW x 51cmH
• Phone pocket (cut 1) – 17cmW x 25cmH
• Sunnies pocket (cut 1) – 26cmH x 7cmW
• Large pocket (cut 1) – 41cmW x 45cmH
• Extra pocket (cut 1) – 19cmW x 25cmH

For each pocket I followed the same directions. I “crimped” the pockets to give them depth. For example, for the book pocket, I crimped it until it was only 17cm across, to allow 8cm depth for the pile of books.

For each pocket:

• fold in half, right sides together, and iron
• stitch the sides together (with about a 1cm seam)
• turn inside out (now the right way) and iron
• sew a top seam to look neat
• fold the bottom seam up and iron
• (I also folded in the corners like triangles and tacked them in place to make the sewing easier)
• pin to the right side of your main piece, and crimp to give each pocket depth
• sew in place (with about a 0.5cm seam)
• (I also did a double seam for strength)

Once you have attached all of your pockets, attach the strap at the top using a 1cm seam allowance. Then, sew your second main piece to your first using a 1.5 cm seam allowance, leaving a 10cm gap at the bottom for turning.

Turn it the right way out, hand sew up that gap and it’s done! Yay!

I had some other ideas that could definitely be incorporated:

• a specific pocket for a drink bottle – perhaps with elastic?
• a loop to attach snack cups
• elastic to put around the the whole chair to hold the organiser in place (I was worried with the shape of our seats that this would be uncomfy for the front passenger though)
• like the Grab and Go Traveler, having a way to close it up and transport it would be great for older kids, especially for taking art things around

Have you made something similar? Or do you have other fun car activities to share?