Do It Yourself – Page 10 – The Creative Salad

Toddler Approved Healthier Smoothies

This is our go-to smoothie for that point in the afternoon when I know our daughter needs to eat and drink something, but she just won’t hear of it. (Can you tell we have a three year old in the house?!) In times such as these I need to break out something special. My secret weapon is this delicious smoothie fortified with yogurt and ground flax seeds.

The toddler gets to choose the flavor. I’ll like whatever we make, but she feels empowered being able to make the decision. Today she picked peach.

Load up the blender with a banana, tablespoon of ground flax seed, half a cup of plain whole milk yogurt, equal parts apple juice and water, and then that fruit of your child’s choice (peach, mixed berry, strawberry, or blueberry). Blend until smooth. Taste. Add more apple juice if the fruit isn’t quite sweet enough. Water down if the smoothie is too thick (a big no-no for our toddler audience). Pour into a sturdy cup and serve with a bpa-free straw (we love these stainless steel babies).

Simple and delicious!

Growing Things Greatly in Need of a Haircut

“Chard, smile for the camera! Smile, chard!” encourages our three year old as I try to stage a shot exhibiting the ridiculous height of the chard in our garden, while showing off her new haircut (more on that, below).

Our daughter’s hair and the chard stems in the garden were becoming too long and unmanageable.

Her hair brushing in the morning would take ten minutes as I untangled each and every curl. The chard was shading our tomatoes, a big no-no since I really want lots of tomatoes this summer.

Time to break out the scissors.

Much better.

Thank you to Sesame Street for helping occupy my daughter while I tried to evenly trim her hair and cut bangs, and for keeping her distracted each morning while we comb through her hair. (Toddler hair styling has become SO much easier since we discovered the trick of briefly plugging her into a tv show while we battle the tangles.) I am thankful for the short Sesame Street clips available on their website. My personal favorite? Madeline Kahn and Grover singing a duet, shown above and featured here.

iPod Felt Pouch

Inspired by Geninne’s folksy embroidered felt pouch for her iPod Touch, I decided to make a cover for our iPod using some of the felt from our stash.

Of course, my little helper had to sew one too. I made a blue one, while she opted for a pink one. (No huge shocker there!)

In the end, the use for her cover morphed. She decided that she needed a case for her calculator.

And by calculator I mean her (pretend) cell phone and camera. The buttons and screen actually works, so it’s almost like the real thing. At least it is to her.

Art Envelopes For the Play Post Office

We decided that we needed some handmade, toddler art envelopes to pair with our play postage stamp stickers.

So our toddler drew beautiful art made specifically for this project, i.e. she drew with marker on construction paper. It’s brilliant, I tell you.

To make our envelopes, we first deconstructed an existing envelope (by fully unfolding it), then traced its outline on the toddler artwork.

We cut out the envelope,

then folded and adhered the new envelope together. (You could easily use double-sided tape or glue for a more seamless envelope; I had an impatient toddler working on this project with me, so we relied on plain tape. SHOCKER!)

We then wrote letters to several of our daughter’s friends to place in the envelopes.

After assembling and stuffing the envelopes, we placed one of our play postage stamp stickers on the front of the envelope.

Love these toddler letters, ready and waiting for Postmaster Leyba, age three, to pick up and deliver to her friends!

Pretend Sticker Postage Stamps

Our daughter desperately wants to place real postage stamps on her letters.

I understand that she wants her stamps to look exactly like mine, but at 44 cents a stamp, letting her play with them just isn’t financially feasible. Besides, Mama has important letters to mail too!

Instead we photo copied stamp booklets onto plain white paper.

My daughter then cut them out and we fed them through her sticker making machine.

Now she has postage stamps of her very own that look like mine!

The postmaster wouldn’t be fooled, but my three year old is tickled pick by her realistic play stamps.