Katie had surgery last Friday to fix an umbilical hernia she had been born with. The operation went really well and we were home by Friday afternoon.

Thankfully we had Ben for the evening, who was amazing at sitting with her – and has a MUCH higher threshold for Paw Patrol than me. But by Saturday she was insisting that ‘flying’ i.e. jumping from the coffee table was a good idea!

On Sunday thought that she would go camping.

Although this was obviously a great sign that she was healing, it caused me no end of worry that she would do herself harm! She’s still incredibly bruised and having regular doses of Calpol and Nurofen which seems to turn her into Superwoman. I just wish she was at an age of appreciating naps!

My usually smiley boy, decided to scream the street down on Friday night and by Saturday morning had reached banshee level. My appreciation for the NHS increased further still after getting an out of hours appointment an hour after calling NHS 24. Suspicions were confirmed and he’s now on antibiotics for a nasty inner ear infection – screaming quite understandable!

The last few days have involved a LOT of time at home indoors and I have had to work on getting Katie to take it slowly. After exhausting all patience with the offerings of Netflix and Disney, I turned to Pinterest and our small collection of craft books for some Spring craft ideas.

I’m not a huge fan of arts and crafts, as I don’t like a lot of mess and find it difficult when Katie does not want to follow instructions – but I would have done anything to not listen to anymore cartoon voices!

Whilst these selection of crafts may not be Pinterest perfect or Instagram worthy,  they all have the added bonus of needing no fancy materials beyond my usual art materials stash –  and being easy enough for a creative toddler and a very tired Mama:

Spring Craft Idea One: Egg box flowers

To begin, I fished an old egg box out of recycling and cut out some ‘flowers’ before letting Katie loose with a lot of poster paint!

craft with egg boxes

Once dried, these were then stuck down on to a large piece of paper and Katie stuck old buttons in each cup. I don’t have an exciting range of colourful buttons  – I’ve just kept the spares that come with shirts etc. over the years – but a nicer range would’ve made for a more joyful picture!

Katie then just had to add some stems to the flowers and voilà – a Spring Flower picture.

Spring Craft Idea Two: Papier mâché eggs

Had I been more organised I would’ve retained the shells of the eggs we used for breakfast, but as luck would have it – we had a few that were past best lurking in the fridge so I just blew these out and gave them a good rinse!

Katie was tasked with ripping up lots of bits of tissue paper and covering the eggs in gloopy glue.

craft with eggs

Half way through attaching the small bits of paper to the egg I realised the glue was WAY too thick, so the task was much easier once the glue was watered down a little.

These were left to dry overnight and I then painted white faces onto them using acrylics. I did offer to turn them into bunny rabbits – but Katie wanted monster eggs!

There’s a great guide to blowing out eggs on Live Oxfordshire so do check it out if you’ve not done this before!

Spring Craft Idea Three: Fork Flowers

Finally, no craft activity is complete without Katie’s hands getting covered in paint (and half my furniture). For this Spring craft, Katie’s green fingers made ‘grass’ prints along the bottom of the page and a kid’s fork was used to make flowers.

Katie loaded quite a lot of paint onto the fork so it splattered across the page (and Thomas) in places – but I thought this kind of looked like pollen and was pretty effective really!

craft with fork

Finally, I painted some stalks in place to finish our Spring Tulip picture.

Have you ever had to take it easy? What do you do to fill the time?

Why not pin this for later:

Top 3 Craft Ideas for Spring. Super easy crafts for kids. Edinburgh Life with Kids.

 

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