Murfdog’s
tips to make your kid’s (and your) life a little easier:
Note: I've been adding ideas as time goes on. And started adding the date
as well of the idea's posting. The ideas closer to the top are the first
posts and will work for younger kids, keep ready if your kid is older.
There maybe an idea or two below that can help you out. If you do find
something useful, drop me a line and let me know!
Car seat cup
holder.
I bought a plastic cup holder from Wal-Mart for something like 2 bucks
and change. I got some ½
inch self tapping screws that you can find at any hardware store and pulled out
my ole trusty cordless drill. My
son’s car seat has the bar that comes over him and sits right in front of him.
I took the cup holder and drilled it right to the
front of the bar. Now he can reach
for his own drink when he is thirsty.
Car seat toy
holder.
My son loves toys, and loves to play with his toys every where.
And just like any child, he drops them everywhere.
So I bought a cheap plastic rectangle container (the size is up to you).
And I got some ½ inch self tapping screws that you can find at any
hardware store and pulled out my ole trusty cordless drill.
I took the container and drilled it right to the front of the bar (right
beside his cup holder). Now he can reach for his own toys or put them in there when
he isn’t playing with them and I’m not reaching around and feeling blindly
on the floor for toys. Well...not as much any more ;-)
Child
need’s back pack. My son and I go
to a lot of places to get out of the house and just run around.
He’s older now, (3 ½) at this point and a baby bag isn’t practical
anymore. So I carry a back pack
with the practical stuff needed for a small boy.
I got a back pack (Scooby Doo) from Wal-Mart I believe, for around 20
bucks with plenty of pockets. Items
I carry are a change of clothes, baby and disinfectant wipes, band-aids,
Neosporin, some toys, sun block with bug repellant, sun glasses, a pouch of
Capri sun (the juice drink), a sippy cup, snacks (crackers, vanilla wafers) and
a roll of toilet paper. I
keep it ready to go and do a check often to see if any thing needs to be
restocked.
Added 5/10/2004
Booster Seat Non-Slip Pillows
I have several pillows in my truck for my son should he get tired and
want to take a nap in the truck. But half the time when I look back his
head is bobbing side to side because the pillow has slipped away and onto the
floor. Which makes me mad, because I don't ever want to see my son
uncomfortable. So I decided to do something about it. I took some
hard foam I found at work (packaging from a PC box) and some soft foam I had at
the house from padding my son's car seat. As well as an old sweat shirt
that I never wore. Other items I needed were Velcro strips, a sewing kit,
a square piece of plastic, some glue. I cut the hard foam out to be
"L" shaped and then cut the soft foam to go on top of the hard foam. I
glued the soft foam to the hard foam. I then glued the piece of plastic to
the side of the hard foam. I then glued several strips of Velcro to
plastic to make a 4 X 3 inch Velcro pad. Note, with Velcro there are two
sides, one has the soft carpet like texture and the other is sort of bristly.
Glue the Bristly side to the foam. Now take your Velcro and
use the softer of the two strips and make a strip about a foot long and 4 inches
wide. Glue them to the inner side of the car seat/booster seat. The
reason for it being so long is so that as your kid grows, you can adjust it up
for them. I then cut out patterns
out of the sweat shirt and sewed a pillow case, cutting out around where the
plastic piece is at with the Velcro on it. I now can stick it to the seat
if he is sleeping or rip it off when he's awake so its not in his way. It
works great!
Added 6/24/2005
Treasure Map and Treasure Chest My son is 5 years old, he
loves taking walks and looking for "clues", usually involves a dinosaur. I
wanted to do something special that he would remember for a while and keep that
imagination of his firing on all pistons. So here is what I did, I bought
a box shaped much like a treasure chest, couple of cheap pillow cases, some
paint, some red velvet looking fabric (a cheap table cloth), a small lock, and
roughly 2 1/2 pounds of gold chocolate coins. You can see the project
through its stages by clicking HERE. I painted the chest brown. Put
on a latch that could lock the chest, lined the inside with the table cloth cut
up and glued around some card board. Filled the chest with the gold
chocolate coins and some beads some friends at work donated to me. I even
painted the small lock to look old as well. I then took the pillow case
and soaked it in tea and coffee. Let it dry and then used a black pen to
draw my map and write out the clues. Of course I had already determined
where the treasure chest was to be buried. I then cut out a map shape
around what I had drawn. I then used a lighter to burn the edges of the
map and some of the cloth in the middle. To give it an old look. I
told my son I was in the attic and had discovered a treasure map, that a pirate
must of own the house a long time ago and hidden the map there. We then
got ready for our adventure and packed a flash light, some water, a few treats,
garden shovels, his side arm (plastic 9mm) for protection of course. His
safari hat, and the video camcorder. The adventure took about 2 hours and
to see him so excited digging his treasure chest up.
Honestly, if you only do one project for your kid ever, do
this one.
Added 3/09/2006
Dino eggs My son
just had his 6th birthday, and this year it was my turn to host the party.
I decided to do something cool and that hopefully would make his 6th birthday
party one that would always be remembered by him. He loves dinosaurs, and
I thought instead of
the standard treat/gift bags that people give out maybe I could do something
cooler. Well I wanted to get him a huge piñata but don't particularly care
for the distribution of candy to kid ratio. So I figured I could make a
small piñata for each kid myself. It's news paper, water, flour and
balloons. How hard can it be right? And the balloons blow up egg
shaped! Perfect! Well there are a few tips I'll pass on as it's not
that easy. You mix one cup flour to four cups water. That's for the
first 2 or 3 layers. Cut up the news paper in strips. I found
different size strips of paper were good. Lay out either trash bags or a
drop cloth if you have one, its going to get messy. dunk the strips of
paper into the flour mixture and apply it to the balloon. After you have
covered the balloon completely you want to do another layer or two. The
reason is that you need the paper mache to be stronger than the balloon when the
paper mache dries it shrinks a little,
squeezing the balloon. If the balloon pressure is stronger than the paper mache
it will bust the paper mache open, I know this to be fact, put the extra
layers on, it will be worth it. To dry them I put themk out side and
hung them from a clothes line like rope. The ballon part that you blow air
into will probably stick out and putting a paper clip through it and hanging is
a great way to dry your dino egg. After it dries completely you cut the
egg in half and pull out the balloon. Put in your candy and little toys
and what not. Then you have to repair the egg with the paper strips and
mache stuff. Let it dry once again. Cover the whole thing with a
batch of thicker flour and water paste. I think I used 2 cups water to one cup
of flour. When this part hardens it'll look very egg shell like.
Then paint the eggs. I used a flat white spray paint for the shell, and
then different colors of spray paint to give it spots and what not. The
kids will go nuts over them, I had 12 kids at Mick's birthday part and everyone
one of them loved the eggs. Two of them wouldn't even break the egg open,
they took it home completely intact. I've thrown a page up on the
egg making progress here.
Added 3/27/2006
Jacket Patches This one is fun and not too time consuming. Go to Wally World ( A.K.A Wal-Mart) and go to the back of the store to the art and crafts section. Let you little one pick out some cloth, They have about 100 or so different cloth patterns there to pick from. It's $3.96 for a yard which is way more than enough. Mine picked out dinosaurs of course. Also pick up 2 or 3 tubes of "Liquid Stitch", the stuff SO rocks. It costs $2.79 a tube. I also bought some small scissors for good measure and I am glad I did. We Liquid Stitched the back of the cloth around the dinosuars that we were going to cut out and make the patches out of, then let the stuff dry for about 30 minutes. Next was the cutting out part, that took a little time but not bad when you're watching the Three Stooges do their thing. After all the patches were cut out Liquid Stitch was applied on the back of the patch completely and smoothed out with a finger. Place the patch on the jacket and then place a damp wash cloth over it, press down on the damp wash cloth making sure to get the patch pressed into the jacket as much as possible. Lift up the washcloth and wipe away any excess liquid stitch that might have been pushed out. Let the jacket dry over night, the tube says 30 minutes but I found that it is dry but not completely, and you want that stuff to really take hold so that patch sticks right.
Added 3/27/2006
Pillow Mick's Pop pop just had his 57th birthday. I take the Mickster to Wally World and we decide to make him something this year. We go to the arts and crafts section and find cloth material. Mick wanted to make shirts......... I said let's aim a little lower on the difficult scale level for a project. We settled on making a pillow case, a dinosaur pillow case for this 57 year old man. Seemed like a good gift by Mick :-). I have to say, I was very impressed with the out come of this project and those of you that know me know I don't impress easy. I'm my own worst critic. The cloth is cut by the yard so that actually made it easy. I got two yards cut and laid one out on the coffee table at home. Fold the cloth so the pattern side is facing toward the inside, after we are done you'll be turning the pillow case inside out so the good side will eventually be on the out side. Lay a straight edge on the case about a 1/2 inch from the edge of the case. I used a piece of glass for an aquarium light, but you can use a yard stick or other object with a straight edge. Fold the top layer over the straight edge and stick the nozzle of the liquid stitch tube into the corner of the straight edge and the cloth. Squeeze a bead all the way down the straight edge, repeat so all but one side is done. Fold over the cloth so it is now back on top of the other piece of cloth and use the straight edge to press it down. on the edge of the cloth you did not liquid stitch fold the cloth over so the edges of the cloth are folded inward, leaving a nice crease. Put some liquid stitch under the folded flap and press down, do this for the other side as well. Let sit over night to dry, or place the oven on "warm" and place the pillow case on a cookie sheet and let it cook for an hour or so. You now have a very nice home made pillow case!