Creating Busy Boxes and Activity Schedules for your Toddler

Hello again! I'm here to share a quick post about busy boxes and activity schedules. If your toddler is anything like mine, then you know the stresses that come with trying to make dinner, fold laundry, clean the house, basically anything besides devoting full attention to your little human. Why is it that they pick the times when we are the busiest to become the most needy? It's like a 6th sense they all have! So I came up with a few "busy boxes" to help make evenings a little more smooth and a little less like a giant hot mess. 

Some things to keep in mind...

#1 - You DO NOT have to make your activities super extravagant. Your toddler will be excited about anything you pull out of your containers...seriously, if you are excited about it, they will be too.

#2 - You need to spend the first few times showing your toddler how to "play" with the items. So I suggest pulling out your chosen activity 1-2 times before just throwing it at them while you try and prepare dinner. 

#3 - Designate a special area for your busy boxes...these are not meant as a "free for all". My toddler has a little table in the kitchen where she plays with her busy boxes. She knows that the items need to stay at her table. You will thank yourself later when you have avoided scooping mini pom-poms out of the couch crevasses and every other area of your house...avoid that...seriously.

Ideas for Busy Boxes:

Stamps and Stickers...just add some paper and your toddler will enjoy creating a masterpiece!

Good ol' color crayons and coloring books. Remember, this does not have to be extravagant...my toddler gets excited the minute I pull out a container, no matter what's inside. 

Paint, paint brushes and sponge stamps. I would not recommend this activity during the times when you really need to be super productive with your house work...unless you enjoy scrubbing paint off the floors and walls!

These dot markers are so fun! And you can buy the coordinating dot coloring books. They are basically like a giant stamp/marker all in one. Your toddler will love stamping away!

For this box, I just threw in some old craft supplies that I had laying around. My daughter can glue pom poms or feathers to paper, we have even attached feathers to toilet paper rolls. She loves this one!

This one is my daughter's absolute favorite! I love it too because it is one of the less messy options that I have. I usually pull this one out during dinner prep time and it gives me a good half hour of work time. I have since added beans to the tub to make it harder to find the colored bears. My daughter sorts the bears into the coordinating cups and loves to scoop and dump them back out into the bin. I bought this set at learning palace for a very reasonable price. 

I usually pair this one with some measuring cups and spoons. My daughter enjoys scooping and digging in the pom poms. Sometimes will will even throw little toys in there for her to scoop out. Remember what I said earlier about giving your child ideas about how to play with each box? Yeah, check out the picture below...while it was a ton of fun for her at the time, I was finding little pom poms strewn about the house for the next month! LOL!

Play Dough! You can't get must better than that! Add some cookie cutters and utensils and your little one will have a ton of fun. 

Pipe cleaners and large buttons. This box has so many options! You can add a kitchen strainer and have your toddler insert pipe cleaners into the little holes. You can teach your child how to string the buttons onto the pipe cleaners (a great fine motor activity) Or you can just let them use their imagination! This is another one of my daughter's favorites!

Flash cards! The most simple idea is sometimes the best!

I'm sure whatever you come up with to put in your toddler's busy boxes will be a fun addition to your little one's daily routine. Remember, if you make it fun and a really big deal...they will too!!

Using the "PECS" System in a Home Setting:

Here is another great idea to help you busy moms manage their "at home" time with their toddlers. I don't know about you, but for me it was becoming harder and harder to keep my little one entertained at home without blasting the TV all day long. Our days were becoming filled with whining and frustration because it was hard for my daughter to place her time. She would constantly cry for a snack every time I entered the kitchen and it was hard for her to grasp the concept of "not yet" or "later". 

My background is in elementary teaching and I have seen this system used in schools before with fabulous results. I bought this PECS system online and it came with the CD to be able to create your own images. Simply, laminate and add a little Velcro and you are set! We call this her "schedule" and my daughter loves it! It has been life changing when we are getting out the door in the mornings, with filling our time with meaningful activities, and with bedtime routine...not to mention that my two year old can now function fully independently without me having to say anything. If I have to get something done, I put it on the schedule and she helps me. There is no more crying at night time or when it's time to go potty. She simply goes to her schedule, puts the picture up at the top and proceeds to do the activity. When she is done, the picture goes in the "finished" box at the bottom and she grabs the next activity from the top of the list. I have even made coordinating pictures to go along with each busy box that we have. 

 

I have made up a notebook to hold all of the picture cards. I've even printed ones for family members when we are planning to visit them that day. Lylah gets so excited when she sees her "Gamma" on that day's plan. This system has been so great in keeping an organized home. It even reminds me to plan fun activities for my daughter...and I can add my chores to the list so we can make sure to get them done! I highly recommend! 

Here are some examples of some of the pictures we have printed:

10 Quilting Tips and Tricks - Using Arizona by April Rhodes

I am so excited to share this tutorial! I had the pleasure to work with the beautiful Arizona fabric line by April Rhodes. It features an Aztec feel with bold and colorful prints. The prints in this designer line coordinate perfectly with the earthy,desert feel that is so popular in home decor right now. 

It all started last summer when my dear friend came to me with a proposition. She had found this amazing fabric that was perfect for her daughter's "big girl" toddler room. She decided on an arrow design for the quilt top and chose 7 of her favorite fabrics to incorporate from the line. With a little procrastination, and then a little planning I dove right in. First of all, I want to stress the fact that I am self-taught and not a professional by any means. I read a ton of sewing blogs and have learned some helpful tips along the way. So without further adieu, here is what I came up with! I will make this short and sweet, sharing helpful tips along the way. 

Tip #1 - Start with a plan. 

It's important to do the math when you are planning a big project. This is the biggest quilt that I have attempted. Usually I stay in the crib-sized safe zone. It was good for me to step out of my comfort area and tackle something a little bigger. For this project I knew that I would be making a twin size quilt with various fabrics, so figuring out how much to order of each was important.

I usually draw a scale version of what the quilt top will look like. It's also helpful to map out fabric arrangements and measurements. 

 Tip #2 - When working with triangles...SQUARE UP!

This is probably THE MOST important thing to do if you want nice, crisp corners. Overall, this quilt included 35 print arrows made up of 4, 7" blocks. Within each arrow, there were two triangle blocks that needed squaring up. That's a total of 70 small blocks to square up...A LOT! BUT...if you do it, you will thank yourself later. I used a simple 10" quilters square and lined up the 45 degree angle with the line of the triangle to rotary cut off the excess, then I flipped them around, and did the same to the opposite sides. I was left with 70 perfect 7" squares that matched up perfectly with my solid and white 7" squares. 

This picture shows the triangle blocks before they had been squared up...see how there is excess when it is matched with the solid 7" perfect block?

Look how nice and pretty they are after they have all been squared up to a perfect 7" I love it!

Here are all 4 of the 7" squares sewn together to form the first of 35 quilt blocks. This quilt required 5 arrows from each of the 7 different fabrics. 

Tip #3 - Get yourself a good iron!

Okay, so this is probably the best thing that happened to me during this project. I went out and got myself a brand new iron with an automatic shut off function. I'm not even sure if it is actually a real "quilters" iron, but I don't care...I love it! It makes all the difference when you are ironing small sections at a time. It saved me from having to remember to unplug, then re-plug, then wait for it to heat up, then unplug again, over and over...you get the idea. It's a small thing, but it made such a huge deal in my procrastination mentality. GO GET A GOOD IRON!

And they all stared in admiration and said "Ahhhh...." Here she is in all her glory!

Tip #4 - Color your scale drawing of your quilt to help decide fabric placement.

I am a visual person. In order for me to decide on anything, I need to see it first. I always like to break out my daughter's colored pencils and assign each print to a specific color on my scaled drawing. This process helped me to visualize what it would look like and it also helped to not have the same fabric prints too close together. I recommend laying out the final blocks into the arrangement and taking a picture with your phone to refer back to. This also serves as a morality boost because it's the first time that you get to see your quilt top all put together!

Here are all the blocks laid out in the arrangement I colored on my scaled drawing. 

Tip #5 - Use spray adhesive to baste your quilt.

Like I said before, this was the first time that I quilted a quilt this large. I searched and searched Pinterest for tips and tricks on the best way to baste all three layers together. I used this tutorial as a guide line and also watched this and this. Basting this way was glorious and made me wonder why I had even bothered with the pins in the past. You need a good open space in order to do this, and I recommend being kid-free when it goes down. Lylah was at preschool when I busted out this step and it worked perfectly!

Tip #6 - Use extra tables to help support your quilt while quilting.

I used two fold-able tables, plus my dining room table with extensions to help support the weight of the quilt while I was quilting. It helps to eliminate pulling and puckering while you are feeding the quilt through the machine. I quilted 1/4 inch from the seams in strait lines, so it went pretty fast. But having the tables there for support was a huge bonus! 

A table behind me supported the quilt and kept it strait. This prevented the weight of the blanket from resting in my lap. 

Tip #7 - Machine bind the thing.

Oh my gosh you guys, I can't tell you the anxiety this thing gave me when I thought about hand finishing off the binding! So I used this tutorial and it was pretty much the best thing ever. It went so fast! I extended my binding to 3 inch strips so that I would have more wiggle room when finishing off the final edge. It worked great!

Tip #8 - Use up your scraps!

If you're anything like me, you always save your fabric scraps from projects with the high hopes of someday digging them back out to create something glorious and colorful...a scrappy quilt, or an intriguing wall hanging...well DON'T! If you don't use them now, they will just waste away in a small basket in the back of your fabric closet. This fabric is too beautiful to be wasted...so I created a simple quilted sham to go along with the quilt. It was made up of a few test triangles, along with some squares that were cut too small. I love how it turned out and it is going to look great with this quilt!

I love that it mimics the arrow found within the quilt!

I even had enough extra binding left over from the quilt.

Isn't this better than wasting away in a closet somewhere? Turn your scraps into something useful!

Tip #9 - Don't be afraid to steal ideas from Pinterest. 

So I stole a design from Pinterest! Ooops! But...Isn't that what Pinterest is all about? My friend who's daughter this bed set is for mentioned that she would like to have something with a bull head on it. (It's such a popular decor choice right now!) She sent me the image below and asked if i could do something similar. 

Isn't this pillow awesome!?! I fell in love right away, and after playing around with switching different fabrics around...I decided it was just too good to do anything different.

I could not figure out how they attached the blue applique and the bull head applique. So instead, I used interfacing to thicken up the fabric and zig-zag stitched them on.  The best part about this pillow is the hand stitched detail framing the aqua bull head. So I added that in before attaching the bull head. Here are some pics of the process.

This pic was taken before the bull head was attached. I finished all the hand stitching on the blue fabric before zigzagging the bull head on.

Finish off the pillow as you normally would...attaching right sides together and 1/4 inch stitching all the way around, then flip right side, insert pillow and hand stitch closed. 

Tip #10 - Drink wine and take your time. 

'nuff said. 

The finished product:

 

I hope you were able to take away some good tips and tricks to make your next quilting adventure a little bit easier!

Until next time!

-Britt