DIY projects for a birthday party. Our toddler got 2 last week.

It was our toddler second birthday, as it was just after our holidays in Tenerife, we decided to make this day special but with less effort as we did last year. Less effort I wouldn't say that it was less beautiful. We do not like, typical Happy Birthday things sold in special stores, as we think these are not as magic and personalised as we wanted to do for our toddler birthday. So, below I would like to share with you some birthday DIY projects.

The idea was to inflate balloons all the living room, as our toddler couldn't manage to go through them, but unfortunatelly it was just an idea, as in practice it was much more difficult to do, as only my husband were inflating them.

Then another idea was to make a hangouts images with birthday party wishes. For this task I took:

1. Free birthday icons from freepik.com, printed them and cut into pieces
2. Thread, white one as it is not so important this to be visible, glue, pictures of our toddler and icons printed before
3. Images, icons I pasted with the glue on the thread and leave it to dry.

These 2 ideas we managed to do for our flat decorations.

As well we had to prepare for his birthday in the nursery, actually everyone bring a cake and they celebrate this day in the nursery. We wanted to make his birthday in the nursary a special one, the idea comes to my husband, and this was to inflate balloons and make little dogs from the balloons. The girls in the nursery told us, that kids enjoyed the day.

I am happy as long as my toddler is happy, and there is always time and wish to make a great day for your kid.

Read more ...

Tenerife - travel with kids and how to manage a 5 days holiday in this paradise

Holidays to Tenerife seem to be a great idea for everyone who haven't had its holidays yet. There you can go as a couple, as a family with toddlers, or family with kids. Always, you will find a good way to rest and enjoy your stay and as it is said Tenerife are sensations at every mile. Apart of its picturesque landscapes, there is all year round 22-25 C degrees, you just can imagine how great is to stay there at the beach everyday.

We had our holidays at the beginning of May, we opt to stay in an aparthothel than in one all inclusive hotel, as we had clearly known that we won't stay all day at the beach or near the hotel, to be on the specific hours to eat. We wanted a holiday, that we will go there and forth, and discover this beautiful island of Tenerife. We rented a car and baby car seat, a map, a good advice of our colleagues about the places to visit and we went to discover the beauty of this land. As well, here I would like to mention, if you come to visit just the beaches of Tenerife, it is better to take a hotel in the South and if you want to visit iconical places, then it is better to take one in the North. We took the aparthotel in the South, but we thought that in our case it would be better to combine, to take some days in the North and then in the South of Tenerife.

Day 1. Our plan was to visit, by car, Puerto de Santiago - Acantilado de los Gigantes - Masca - Buenavista del Norte - Garachico - Icod de los Vinos/Arbol del Dragon - Puerto de la Cruz .... quite too much you will think for a family with toddler, here I want to say that we have seen all of these, we just missed Puerto de la Cruz. In Masca we had our lunch in a great restaurant with marvelous views to the sea and mountains.

 Below you can see Puerto de Santiago beach, one of the natural beaches with black sand, that was made during centuries like a result of Teide's lava.

Puerto de Santiago

Los Gigantes

Masca

Buenavista

Garachico, here people bath and swim, even kids. I was afraid to stay there and as well we didn't stay too much here, as Damian likes to play in the water, to me appears to be quite dangerous place to swim.

Icod de los vinos/ Arbol del Dragon, the oldest tree of the island, has almost 1300 years.

This is the park near the oldest tree.

This tree is the same as previous one, but this one has just 800 years. You can clearly see in the images how people protect this kind of miracles.

Here our first day come to an end. It was a good day, full of positive emotions, Damian enjoyed I think, as he was tired from the previous day, when they flew to Tenerife. We managed to see a lot of places, to eat well, to play with our kid and to take a lot of pictures.

Day 2. Our plan was to visit: Vilaflor/Mirador del Pino Gordo - Parque Nacional del Teide - La Orotava - Santa Cruz de Tenerife. We have visited all of the mentioned places, but not in the manner we would like it to do. Our toddler all day was crying in the car, he wanted to run and to play and not to sit in the car seat. We tried to do this on our stopovers, but it was really windy at the Parque nacional del Teide, so we have made a lot of little stops, to take a rest and to offer our toddler the time for play and run, and to get tired.

Here we have very few images and in a low quality, so unfortunately it won't be possible to share these with you. 

El Teide

But I want to share with you some interesting facts as: if you leave a coin in the Pino Gordo and make a wish, it will come true. The second interesting fact is that only near the Teide, grows a flower, that grows almost 30 days and then die. Tenerifet is the only place where this flower grows, from this flower is made honey, very good for health. This year this kind of flower grew few times, and we couldn't find honey of this flower. The third fact is that Teide is an active volcano, currently is dormant, his last erruption occured in 1909. Nice facts to know. I think that if your kid is bigger than ours, you and he/she will enjoy more of these places than we did.

Day 3, 4 and 5. On these days we were deciding where to go to lay on the beach. The most popular are Las Americas and Los Cristianos, both of them are with the yellow sand, nothing special apart of the expectacular views of these beaches, and very clear water. Los Cristianos has as well grey sand. Puerto de Santiago as mentioned previously it has black sand, very clear water, but for Damian it wasn't the best beach we have stayed, as it was dangerous because of really big waves there. On the last day, before our departure we went to the Las Teresitas beach, yellow sand, clear water, perfect for a stay with kids. Here were a lot of children playing with the sand and water.

Playa de las Vistas

Playa de la Arena

On our way to the beach we have seen a lot of banana plantations.

As you can see, our holidays were full of places to visit, places to eat, places to lay at the beach and to enjoy the sun, and of course full of emotions. We are thinking of coming back within few years, as we didn't see Loro Parque and Siam Park, and other beautiful beaches.

Here our holiday come to an end, and another day begin. These 5 days made me realize how important are holidays in family, as all this time together you reach the thoughts and feelings of each other. Be yourself and love your family.

Read more ...

Watercolor discoveries, painting with red color

Watercolor is always good inside activities, that capture all toddlers attention and you can enjoy playing with him. The only thing that I do not like is the mess that I have to clean after this activity. To keep my toddler busy and to make the activity fund and not so easy I have opted for other way of painting.

For this activity I needed:

• toilet paper roll
• piece of sponge
• watercolor, I choose red color
• special kind of dress that can get dirty

This activity develops fine motor skills of my toddler as he learns the texture of a sponge and how this changes once he use it to paint, learns red color and how he can paint with that color, and then paper roll, to paint it is not the easiest task for them as it is not a plane like a paper. I feel like I gave him a good lesson of feeling shapes and color.

Once finished the task, Damian enjoyed painting with fingers on the white paper, I think he loved the idea to get dirty :).

Read more ...

If you stay at home for a long weekend, you need to go to the park with your toddler

As we had a looong weekend of 3 days, we decided to spend it outside the flat, as much time as possible. Recently we have found a park for children of 0 to 3 years, till now we were going to another park that is for children between 2 and 11. I think you can imagine the difference between one and another park. In the park dedicated for older children, I had to run after my toddler and to lift him up and down of the slades that weren't well prepared for his age, and now on this park for 0 to 3 years all the objects to play with, are very well prepared for my toddler's age, and now I can sit down relaxed as my toddler can do all activities alone. Now for me this outside activity help to relax and take a time to think and don't worry as my toddler is a big boy and can manage his desires alone without my help.

I like these kind of parks for different reasons:

• our toddler can breathe fresh air
• he can run there and forth and I am not worried as all these spaces are closed, and no dog or cat can enter this space (I like animals, but just those which know that are clean)
• he can make new friends of his ages
• he can develop his vocabulary with the kids who are older than him
• he learns how to manage his body to get what he wants and needs
• I can relax and enjoy the moment to look at him

If you like to go to the park with your toddler, share your experience.

Read more ...

Crafting ideas for Mothers Day, what we prepared for such important day.

I know that this post would be more suitable some days before, but anyway I want to share with you some crafting activities that we have done on Friday, preparing for Mothers Day.

In my country Mothers Day is celebrated on 8th of March, very different from Spain or USA or other countries who celebrates this day on first Sunday of May. In any case I think that this is one of the most beautiful days in the year, even better than birthday, as on this special day you receive all the love of your men.

I thought it would be a great idea to do some crafting activities, I don't use to do these kind of activities, as these needs scissors, and our toddler do not know well to use scissors, even if I show him how to use them. As main present on such day are flowers, I opted to make some crafting with flowers.

For crafting activity we need: scissors, colored paper, glue, transparent duct tape, a lot of fun and imagination.

The task is easy to do as you just need to cut the forms you need of different colors, and to stick them with glue or transparent duct tape as we have done on the images below.

Read more ...

Great fine motor activity with pipe cleaners

Few time ago I bought pipe cleaners on Carrefour, as I found them a good choice for inside activities with my toddler, as well some other thing to play with my toddler at home. Looking through pinterest I found out a lot of great ideas to play with pipe cleaners, and thought in our own activity that we could do together.

Preparation: It took me less than 10 minutes to prepare all. I took pipe cleaners, scissors, and pack of colored foam paper. Cut foam paper into pieces, and then made a slot on this pieces.

The goal was to learn to insert these pieces on pipe cleaners, learn colours, and learn the texture of each thing.

The result: I enjoyed this activity, and my toddler did this. It took all his attentions as he found difficult the task to insert these pieces on pipe cleaners, but after several times of trying it was ok for him. He loved the texture of pipe cleaners, he took them into the mouth, made shapes with them and we made some colorful bracelets with them.

I didn't expected, but on this activity my toddler spend more than half an hour, this means that this activity was interesting and unusual for him.

Read more ...