Foam party

A while back I came over a frugal tip on how to “stretch” your favorite liquid hand soaps, on Pintrest of course. This tip to be exact. The past year it has been a very helpful tip, with kids using hand soap like it was free…

The tip is very simple. A foaming soap dispenser, hand soap and warm water. I eyeball about 2-3cm of hand soap into the bottles and fill up with warm water. Leave a couple of centimeters so the bottle doesn’t overflow when screwing on the foaming pump. Swirl or shake the mixture until the soap has dissolved completely. I have so far only used clear liquid soaps, but I have read that the creamy soaps with leave you with a cloudy soap. With a toddler in house I added a dash of Dettol for the antiseptic features. Not too much though, or your soap will have a antiseptic sting to its smell.

no fancy bottles….but works for us

Well the other day the girls were playing in the shower with foam and I came to think of the above mentioned tip. Would this work with shower wash too? So I gave it a try….

Let the foam party being!

- do you have any smart frugal tips to share?

Kawaii and a Frozen birthday

Warning: Picture heavy post….

Summer means enjoying life outside. But before we can relax and enjoy life some prepwork needs to be done. So the past weeks inbetween Summer showers, we have been painting. Painting floor board left and right, lots of fence boards..the end is near. Just a few more boards left. Note to self: don’t do both front and back patio the same year…

Back patio

Still need some greenery, just not sure what we want yet. And I have big plans of “making” some kind of steps on the right side so that the girls can play on the small woods we have right behind our backgarden. But think I might have to push those plans to next Summer…we’ll see…

Now over to some kawaii. My plans for tonight is adding some new and refreshing the girls lunch boxes. Some of you might remember a post a while back about my pimping up some boring Biltema food containers. You can see that post here. As you can see, the boxes have been well used and are in need of some refurbish.

So last night I did some surfing after new designs and today I found my Sharpies and clear nail polish. ready to add some “kawaii” to the girls kindergarden lunch boxes.

I will be changing a few design, as I’m not happy with how they turned out the last time. Hopefully the new designs meets SweetieS and BabyLs approval.

Since I’m on a “blog roll”, I might as well post the part I mentioned in my previous post. SweetieS Frozen birthday with the girls from kindergarten. As always when researching…check out Pintrest. There I found inspiration and help for the birthday invites. Of course they were Frozen themed….

I can’t take credit for these. Eventhough I did make them myself, I had alot of help from Jenn Ericksons blog Jennuine. Spesifically this post about how to make your own Frozen invites. Jenn even shares the picture file needed to make this invites! Thank you Jenn I scored HUGH with SweetieS with these invites.

Of course I had to make a Frozen cake….after spending hours on a failed attempt, this was the result @1AM.

Though a failed attempt in my mind…I had sooo many ideas for this cake and wound up with none…the girls approved and had seconds. With my big plans came huge amounts of fondant. As the plans failed I was left with large amounts of marshmellow fondant…in comes SweetieS with an idea. Can all the girls also make an Olaf? She remembered Olaf being very tasty last year and wanted the other girls to be able to taste yummy Olaf. So that’s is what we did! All the girls were given a lump of MMF and some accessories…Toothpicks for stability and arms, dried mango bites for Olafs nose and cloves for eyes and buttons.

Some cool olafs were made…a huge hit with the girls when they found out how tasty he was…

All in all, successful birthday in the eyes of SweetieS.

If I am to finish the lunch box lids before bedtime I better get cracking…

- what are your weekend plans?
- what birthday themes have you had success with?

Summer is finally here

With last weeks several centimeters of snowfall I thought for sure that Summer was far, far away. But this week the Sun finally decided to make an appearance. With temperatures well above 20 degrees Celsius Summer has started early. Norways Constitution Day is next week, so perfect timing.

With Constitution Day around the corner, so is SweetieS and BabyLs birthday. So on with the party planner hat and start cracking out ideas. This year SweetieS will be hosting her first birthday celebration with kids from her kindergarten. On the last tally I counted 13 kids. Oh my what have I agreed to??

Yesterday SweetieS put in her theme request, what other than another Frozen theme. If you don’t know the Disney Pixar movie Frozen, it’s time to crawl out from the rock you have been hiding under the past few years. Here are a few videos to start you of…

Wonder if the fictional city of Arendell has any relation to the Norwegian city of Arendal?

Lately…

I haven’t been my usuall productive self. My head has been full of thoughts regarding my upcoming Singapore trip. With two toddlers and all of my extended family, there are lots of thing to remember and an equal amount of questions. Four weeks in wonderful Singapore…

This past weekend I started packing for the girls…I’m very happy with our decision to rent an apartment that has an in-house washer-dryer machine. This way I don’t have to pack four weeks worth of clothes. I look forward to spending four weeks @8 on Claymore…

- a few sets of summer clothes, from top to bottom
- swimming clothes (well UV suits)
- toiletries
- diapers for BabyL (lesson from my last Singapore trip – diapers are very expensive compared to the prices in Norway)
- shoes for hot weather (there is still about half a meter of snow outside our house)
problably a whole lot more..but still have a few more days to mull it over.

Travelling with two toddlers, it was time to buy a suitcase for the girls. We have been very happy with our old, trusty Samsonite hard case suitcases. So we looked into getting a similar one for the girls. A visit to a local store that sells Samsonite, we landed on a Samsonite S’cure. SweetieS chose the color, a very girly dark blue (not what I had expected when we gave her the options). So far SweetieS enjoyed pushing the empty suitcase from the store to the parking lot, not sure she will enjoy it quite as much when it is fully loaded. I’ll try to post our experience with this model when we get back.

In between preparing for our trip, we have had time to enjoy all the snow

hard at work building a snow castle in our back yard

Our previous attempt at building a snow man got buried in all the snow that has fallen lately…so we also had to make a new one…

No new knitting projects lately..but I have finished the knitted gift for a baby that’s right around the corner. Not to reveal too much…

a little teaser

I’ll post a picture of the finished project when it has been delivered to its intended recipient.

- how do you prepare for an overseas trip?
- how are you enjoying the Winter?

Not too early to organize

This week I put together a planner for SweetieS. Well not so much a planner as a binder set up like a planner. Just without the calender and planning part. I bought a cute planner from Aliexpress. This one to be exact. Very cute and perfect for SweetieS.

No point in having sections that require SweetieS reading and/or writing, as she don’t do either yet.

So I set it up with fire sections:
- ABC123: for all the flash cards I make/find, in Norwegian
- 中文 (zhong wen): flash cards in Chinese, preferably in Cantonese
- “free hand”; blank pages for whatever SweetieS feel putting on the pages
- coloring: coloring pages (there are tons available thru Pintrest)
- stickers: laminated colored paper for all thos stickers

I googled a bunch of Minions pictures and stuck these on dividers that I laminated before punching.

I’m pretty happy with the result…and SweetieS loved it!

	one a happy SweetieS
closed planner	lots of those yellow little guys	flashcards

And to add some bling I bough a bunch of crystal keychains for SweetieS to add to the rings. Today SweetieS is in a mood for cats…

I removed the keyring and use the hook in the planner rings

After two days of coloring I see I need to print more coloring pages…

- do your kids have a”planner”?
- what do you think of my attempt at a planner for SweetieS?