Kid’s Crafts For Holidays

Easter is coming up which got me thinking about how I am going to keep my kids occupied this year.

The easiest of kid crafts involves scissors, construction paper, crayons and a bit of tape or blue. It is most fun to theme the craft holiday or special event that is coming up which at the date of writing this would be Easter. You can also purchase crafts kits for kids that involve weaving, sewing, rug hooking, quilting, wood-working, embroidery, and much more.

A great Easter kids craft for Easter is to make bunny headgear. All you need to do is to buy several headbands and then have your children cut out the Easter rabbit ears out of stiff cardboard.

Another good Easter project is to decorate hard boiled eggs. You can decorate them so they look like lambs by adding cotton batten. You can also decorate them so the look likes Easter Chicks. You can also make an egg creature or egg people.

I really enjoy making things with my kids for Halloween. Halloween is a favourite holiday. Good crafts are pumpkin and squash carving. You can crate scary faces and construct bats, ghosts and other spooky creatures out of paper and fabric.

It's also a lot of fun to create your own Christmas tree decorations. If the children are old enough to handle sharp objects you can buy Styrofoam balls, pins and collared beads and have the children stick these beaded pins into the ball. Cover the ball entirely and you have a very attractive Christmas decoration (and personalized gift.

I also roll glass or aluminum balls in glitter or sequins. First trace out the design I want on the side of the ball in glue. Then after creating Christmas themed shapes in glue on the side of the ornament. Traditional Christmas kids crafts also include decorating the Christmas stocking with glitter Older children can be taught to embroider on Christmas stockings using needle and thereads.

There are several kinds of Mother’s day and Valentine’s day kids crafts, but I like dying flowers with my kids for either of these projects. All you do is take a flower (a pure white flower produces the most extreme results), cut off the end of the stems and soak the bottom of the stem in a jar of food coloring. The flowers will soak up the food coloring and tint the petals the color of the food dye. This takes about a day.

Homemade bookmarks and cards also make great Mother’s day and Valentine’s Day kid crafts. Photographs of the kids, pasted on the front of the homemade card personalize this homemade and heartfelt gift.

You can also purchase kids craft kits intended to create everything from felt projects, embroidery, tapestries, baskets, knitted creations, woven fabric, wood projects and dangling mobiles.

Healthy Sugar Substitute

My kids have sweet tooths and so do I and my husband. Still we all know how sugar is supposed to be bad for you.
The first thing that you have to do is cut the level of refined sugar that you take on board every day. This means that you must cut right back on sugar rich foods such as cakes, cookies, candies, chocolate, jellies and the like and if you currently ladle sugar all over your breakfast cereal in the morning, stop doing it right now.
In addition, if you take sugar with your tea or coffee, try to wean yourself off sweetening your drinks or if this is something that you cannot imagine doing, try a natural sweetener like stevia or sucanat as alternative.
The first of these natural sweeteners is somewhat controversial in that it is approved by the FDA as a dietary supplement but not as a sweetener. Nevertheless, even though it is a little expensive, the extreme sweetness of stevia means that a little goes an awful long way, so the cost per cup of tea or coffee is probably no different to cost of the sugar you are currently buying.
On the other hand, sucanat is a one-for-one direct replacement for processed sugar and as always, there are plenty of places on the net where you can obtain both of these substances.
The point about having too much sugar in your diet is that not only does all of that instant energy tend to get piled on as fat if it is not used, processed sugar is bad for your immune system and particularly for your skin. Consequently, if you consume too much processed sugar or products made from sugar, it is pretty much a given that you are going to suffer boils and other skin problems.
Of course, this does not necessarily mean that you have to cut all sweet foods from your diet, but what you should do is replace the sweets that you used to use with natural sweet substances wherever possible. For example, eating plenty of fruit and vegetables is an essential of any well-balanced diet, and if you want to boost your immune system, then you can replace some of the sweetness that you have lost with the sweetness of fruit.
Furthermore, there are lots of other entirely natural sweet substances that you can use to satisfy your sweet tooth. The sweet syrup that is commercially extracted from Agave comes in three different variations, ranging from a ‘light version' that has little traceable taste of the plant (just sweetness) to the version that carries a noticeable taste of the plant itself.
You then have reliable old standbys like maple syrup as well as less known but entirely natural sweeteners such as barley malt, date sugar, fruit juice concentrate and sorghum syrup.
There is also honey with some varieties such as manuka honey from New Zealand having acknowledged antibacterial qualities as well as being stunningly sweet as well. Indeed, as you can read on the website, the antibacterial qualities of this particular honey are so pronounced that you can even apply it to wounds for its antibacterial qualities!