Our Creative Spaces - Blackout

 Please excuse the pyjama bottoms!

So tomorrow it is here - the opening of the Rugby World Cup - and if you don't live in New Zealand you may not know that it is one of our biggest events ever and  will last for 6 weeks!

 Everything is going black - (Credits: Greg Page, Ruapehu Bulletin)

It has been a long and dramatic time coming, from when we lost our chance to co-host the 1993 tournament, to our Prime Minister flying to Ireland in 2005 to help with our pitch to the IRB, to Christchurch's games being moved after the devastating earthquake in February this year. It is 24 years since we hosted the first World Cup (also 24 years since we won...) which makes me feel a bit old, but it is lovely to see the little ones getting excited (see Aimee's Father's Day post here).

Rugby World Challenge on Playstation 2

Even Mr Toddler knows something is up because 'Dadda fast cars' has been replaced with 'Dadda rugby ball' (apparently after much research this one is the best game).

I had to commemorate the occasion with a little shirt for our future All Black, those of you with eagle-eyes may recognise the applique fabric as a lily pad scrap! I was so excited when I found it, I think it makes up for losing some of the cup's ornate detail in order to make a stencil shape.

This personalised shirt is for a friend's little man, how cute is the alphabet fabric? (I found it at Cushla's). See what everyone else has made this week at Our Creative Spaces.

I have written before about not dressing my daughter in black, of course now I can't find a plain black shirt to decorate for her...


Note: Obviously I can't sell cup shirts but I have a limited number of black shirts left for personalising, details here

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Gingerbread rugby teams....

On Sunday Miss Five, Miss nearly Two and I made gingerbread men for Father's Day. We're Rugby World Cup mad around here, and super excited that there's only a few days to go. So Miss Five's idea was to make a team of All Blacks, and a team of Wallabies (since Dad is Australian).

Once we'd made the little guys, we iced their 'shirts' using normal icing but piped their faces and the Wallabies insignia using special Icing Writing Pens. How cool they are! I'd never used them before.

Maddie kept asking me 'which one is the boss of the team?' (meaning the captain) so we nominated the biggest two gingerbread men. She knew the All Backs' boss was 'Richycaw' but she didn't know the Wallabies captain - so he remained just the 'boss!'

The best part was once Dad had seen his treat, there were enough gingerbread men to go around the GrandPops too...

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Things I'm loving...Dads.

This week I'm loving...hanging out with Dads, on Father's Day.







Miss Five has decided that this year we are going to make a little rugby team of gingerbread men for her Dad's Father's Day present. We've bought coloured icing to make them Australian green and gold icing tops...and of course we'll also mix some with a bit of red and blue to make some black shirt opposing All Blacks too!







She is SO excited about the Rugby World Cup 2011 - how neat is that!







But I'd also love to set up this activity for her and her Dad to do together. It's a fun, free and easy DIY that will keep the kids entertained for hours and keep Dad busy with the craft knife and string: amazingly cool little cardboard guitars, which I discovered online shared on one of my absolute favourite blogs. They have been created by the very clever Dad in the Make It Love It blog family.











To make them, all you need are old cardboard boxes, glue, pencils, jumbo rubber bands, and an adult to wield a craft knife. Simply follow the step by step instructions in the link above, thread the rubber bands as strings, and pretty soon you’ll be teaching the kids the classic song “Dance to my 10 guitars”.







We have heaps of cardboard boxes left over from moving house.

And I also thought, why not combine with my girls' favourite love - painting – and get out the craft paints and decorate them too?

(PS: if you need a reminder of the 10 Guitar song words, find them online here. I love this song too!)















To see what everyone else is loving this week, hop over to Paisley Jade's.



And Em's asked me also to link to the I'm Grateful bloggy game...so hop here to see who else is grateful for and loving Dads this Father's Day weekend!





To read my original column on babybites, click here.

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