Crafts for Boys

Mille Sabords!

Don't worry, it's only mildly offensive! It's one of Captain Haddock's many insults and it translates as a thousand portholes; but I think in English he says blistering barnacles...

Having seen the film for Philippe's birthday, Tom is now hooked on Tintin and we're steadily working our way through the original books (in their original french...) Consequently when it came to chosing a theme for this year's party, it was our favourite Belgian reporter and his eccentric circle of friends who topped the poll. (Star Wars has already been chosen for next year!)

Tom drew a great picture of Professeur Tournesol (Prof Calculus) which we used for the inivitation and I decided to organise a treasure hunt (which thanks to the weather was in our garage) with each clue featuring one of the main characters.  Thanks to www.tintinmilou.free.fr for some great colouring sheets :o)  (Milou is Snowy)  

 As a craft activity we decorated treasure chests so they had somewhere to stash their bounty.

 

We decorated the table with gold plates and serviettes and I think the cake speaks for itself :o) (Fait maison, bien sûr!)

Thanks to my expert behind the scenes team for all their help :o)

Tom's Lego Box

posted by Cara

For Tom's birthday I wanted to make him something related to what he's interested in right now.  Basically, that's Tintin and Star Wars Lego.  Since, his party was Tintin themed and Helen had that covered, I went with Lego.  I bought a plain box at the craft store, painted each side a different colour and raided my boys' lego stash to write his name.  It won't hold very many legos, however, so maybe he can keep some other treasures in there.  :)

maxi figures

If there's one toy that ALL the boys I know love, it's LEGO. So when I was looking for an idea to use as the basis for several cards this summer it seemed an obvious choice. However, I'm not one to choose the easy option of making three identical cards, I wanted to personalise them to suit each recipient. Hence I came up with my version of the minifigure, each reflecting the current interest (obsession?!) of 'my' boys. So, first meet Anthony's favourite (ice)hockey star...

Dan's beaver scout....

And last but by no means least, Tom's Tintin and Snowy.

 Apologies to LEGO for borrowing their idea, but the characterization is entirely original and they've made three boys very happy!!

Pop the Stripey Dinosaur

posted by Cara

The kids' school end of the year show is this Sunday and another mom and I made a dinosaur costume for her little boy who is in Juliet's class.  Pop was a character than followed her class throughout the year and now he'll be in their show with them :)

Here's Juliet modeling it for me :D Sorry for the terrible photos but it's been pouring down rain all day. And FYI, mathcing stripes is a pain in the butt!

Mud, mud, glorious mud...

posted by Helen

Our garden has two states - hard as concrete, or a mud bath. With all the rain we've had over the last few months, it's been mainly the latter. However, this hasn't dampened Tom and Joe's appetite for playing outdoors, in anything it seems to have increased it. So much so that this last week when we've actually had some nice weather, they resorted to making their own mud. Tom asked to fill up his watering can, ostensibly to water some seeds that he had planted, but is soon became clear that is was mud pies on the agenda. It took three lots of bath water to get them clean, but my goodness how much fun they had!