Valentine’s Day Crafts for Toddlers

Hello my lovelies!

With Valentine’s Day being tomorrow, I thought it would be the perfect time to do some crafting with my little toddler. Here is what we came up with.

Hunter had so much fun creating this cute Love Canvas & Valentine’s Day Card for Daddy, so I thought I’d share how we made them in case you’re in the festive mood tomorrow with your little ones! These are great crafts to do just in general, but are a nice way to celebrate Valentine’s Day with your little loves.

1. LOVE Handprint Canvas

To create this craft you will need the following:

• A4 Artist Canvas
• Paintbrushes (I recommend getting decent ones, the kids ones weren’t great for painting letters on)
• Artist Palette for mixing colours (optional)
• Non-Toxic Paint (we used the Crayola Washable Paint)
• Glitter

Step 1. Select your desired colours and paint your toddler’s hand with a decent amount of paint, then press their hand onto the canvas randomly until all the paint on your little one’s hand is gone. Repeat with as many colours as you like. Set aside to dry.

Step 2. Paint the letters LOVE (or any other word you’d like) onto the canvas with white paint. You could also just use PVA Glue instead. Then sprinkle with a good amount of glitter so the letters are completely coated. I suggest painting and adding glitter to one letter at a time to avoid the other letters drying before you get the glitter on them. Set aside to dry & you’re done!

 

2. Footprint Heart Card

To create this craft you will need:

• White paper
• Red paint
• PVA Glue
• Red Glitter
• Black Marker Pen
• 8×8 inch Cardstock in Red

Step 1. Paint your toddler’s left foot with red paint, then carefully press onto the middle of a piece of white paper, angling the toes towards the top left corner of the page. Repeat with the right foot, ensuring the heel of the foot overlaps the first footprint & the toes are pointing towards the top right corner of the page. (This process is a lot easier if you use an art book rather than a sheet of paper. Sit your toddler on a chair and press the book onto their foot in the position you want, rather than trying to get them to do it standing up). Allow to dry.

Step 2. Once dry, write the following words around the footprints in a heart shape using a black marker pen.

“I love you from the bottom of my heart to the tips of my toes!”

Feel free to replace the little verse with something else if you prefer.

Step 3. Carefully dot PVA glue onto each toe print and over the entire footprint, then sprinkle generously with glitter and allow to dry completely. (I suggest doing one footprint at a time, to avoid the PVA glue drying before you get a chance to put glitter onto it).

Step 4. Once completely dry, cut around the words to form a love heart shape. Glue to your your cardstock and allow to dry.

 

Step 5. Once dry, add your message to the back. Alternatively, you could frame it and wrap it up as a gift!

 

I hope our crafts give you a little bit of inspiration for Valentine’s Day or your next crafting day with your little loves! If you decide to recreate any of these crafts, I’d love to see them! Feel free to tag me on any of the following social media accounts;

Instagram: KimberlyRose_xo

Facebook: Facebook.com/KimberlyRoseMU

or send them to me on Snapchat! My username is Kimberly_xoxx

Wishing you all a wonderful Valentine’s Day! If you don’t celebrate it then I hope you  have a wonderful weekend regardless!

Kimberly Xo

 

 

 

When Women Support Each Other, Incredible Things Happen…

“When women support each other, incredible things happen.”
This quote popped up in my newsfeed this week and it inspired me to write this. Being a mother in this day and age is difficult – not only because being a wife and mother is difficult (sometimes) to begin with, but also because we have so much pressure put on us by social media. Whether it be influencers telling us how to raise our kids or what we are doing wrong or ‘experts’ telling us we should hug our kids more one week, then telling us to let them cry it out the next. On top of that we have Mum’s in the comment section of every ‘Mummy page’ tearing each other apart for their choices. It’s not just mothers either, it seems to be in every niche or hobby women seem to feel the need to tear each other down. Whether it be with fitness and eating healthy, to how someone looks or does their makeup, to what clothes they wear and what they choose to spend their money on. Why do we as women feel the need to constantly compete and tear each other down? Why can’t we be happy enough within ourselves to be able to live our lives how we want to live them without telling others who live theirs differently that they are wrong?
Recently I was watching one of my favourite YouTubers, Samantha from Batalash Beauty on periscope and she made a fantastic point about the fact that YouTubers, beauty bloggers and Instagram ‘stars’ constantly receive comments that all have the same theme; ‘She’s really pretty BUT…’ Or ‘She looks awesome BUT…’ Or ‘She’d be prettier if she…’ What follows on from those statements varies with things like ‘she needs to lose weight’, ‘that hair colour doesn’t suit her’, ‘her nose is too big’. The theme with all of these comments is the authors of them are already admitting that they like the person/thinks she’s pretty etc but feel like they can’t make a straight out nice comment like that without the need to add something negative to the end of it. 
Why is it that in this day and age we feel so threatened by others’ success/beauty/whatever it may be that we can’t give somebody a compliment without adding something rude or negative? The problem these days is that we are constantly flooded with images on social media of people who seem to be ‘perfect’. Whether it be on Insta, Snapchat, YouTube or Facebook, most of us follow successful people on one platform or another. Now, depending on the sort of person you are and how you view your self worth, you will either be inspired by greatness or knocked down by it. I know first hand that when you don’t have confidence/have low self esteem and don’t *cringe* love yourself (I know how cheesy that sounds but it’s true) it’s easy to feel jealous of other people’s success. But what I have learned and what you need to remember is that you don’t see anyone else’s whole lives, you don’t see their family troubles or the struggles they went through to get where they are today. You don’t know that they aren’t as confident as they seem. Everyone has flaws, but is how you view them that makes a person. If you look at yourself and point out everything that is wrong with you; maybe you have stretch marks from having Bub, maybe you have freckles that you don’t like or maybe you have an incredibly crooked nose (like myself), you won’t ever be happy. I have always been someone who lacks confidence and struggles with self-esteem and self image. I have anxiety because I’m scared of people judging me. However, I am learning to overcome those issues and forget about what I can’t change. I’m starting to focus on only the good things and what I like about myself. When we start seeing ourselves how our loved ones see us, we realise what incredible women we are. When we love ourselves, we appreciate others more and are confident enough within ourselves not to become jealous of others. I have never been one to comment nasty things on people’s photos/videos etc because I’ve always been one of those people who looks at things like ‘if i wouldn’t like it if someone said/did that to me, then I won’t do it to them.’ So although I have been jealous at times, I’ve never expressed it in a nasty way. 
Nobody became successful by being nasty to others and even if they did, would they really be happy? Chances are probably not. Learn to love yourself and you will be a much happier person all around. Ignore the flaws you can’t change and work to change the things you can. What also makes a big difference is who you follow on social media. If you’re following someone who constantly makes videos/writes blogs or shares photos that you don’t relate to or offend you, don’t follow them anymore. Even if some of the things they post are good/encouraging, there’s no point following someone who shares something that really upsets you. Follow people that you feel you either relate to or can be inspired by and cut out the rest. You will be a lot happier by doing so! You’d be surprised how much of what other people post can influence your mood and change how you feel about yourself. 
Finally, if you are inspired by somebody, appreciate their posts/pictures/videos or just genuinely really like them, tell them! You’d be surprised how far one nice comment goes. Like the quote says, ‘When women support each other, incredible things happen.’
Love yourself. Be kind to yourself & be kind to others.
Kimberly xo