Are you addicted to Pinterest yet? I am! So when I saw Tina Gray has a Pinterest blog link-up, I jumped at the chance to share my Pinterest offerings with you.

Recently, Missy 10 became Missy 11! (Her party will be in a few weeks’ time, so I’ll post all about it then) Anyway… Her favourite birthday present was her new Kindle. For those of you not familiar, a Kindle is an ebook reader that fits something like 3,500 books into it. The screen is anti-glare, so it’s just as easy on your eyes as a paper book. We’ve been blown away by how cheap the ebook versions of her favourite books are; most are around $2-$8! Our daughter loves to read a lot, and tends to go through a lot of books in a short space of time.

What I’m really loving though, being such a tight-arse and all, is all the free ebooks you can get for the Kindle. So today, for ‘Ooh.. That’s Pinteresting’, I’m sharing with you my new Pinterest board about free Kindle ebooks that are suited to school-aged children.

A lot of the free ebooks for kids are the classics that a lot of us grew up with as kids ourselves: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book and my personal favourite, Heidi.

We’re pretty much Kindle mad here at the moment. My daughter’s Kindle was $156 at Woolies (Australia). I’ve since heard that there is a new Kindle Fire reader for $199 (in colour) and another one for $79. I’m planning to get a Kindle of some sort before uni starts as I think it’d make my readings a lot simpler to organise.

Do you have a Kindle, or are you thinking of getting one? What are your thoughts on them?

One thing I love about Missy 10 belonging to such a small school (50 kids total!) is that they have time to do such cool things. Sure, at the end of term, they had the usual watching of DVDs, which I don’t mind. But they also had the kids make their own board games.

I’m happy, because I was going to eventually post about this idea myself, now the school has saved me the hassle. Although this is loads of fun for kids, there’s many benefits to be had without them even realising:

Having kids make their own board games let them:

- Make choices and design something, giving them a feeling of autonomy and creativity

- Have  an opportunity to problem-solve and mentally plan something in advance.

- Have a maths experience that is more fun than usual. It also doesn’t feel like maths!

- Be sociable, take turns, share, cooperate and be a good sport.

- Use their own imagination.

- Have ‘something to do’ during school holidays; not only as they play the game, but during the creation of it.

- do something fun that is cheap and resourceful.

The name of this game is an insect themed version of snakes and ladders. Missy 10 has added instructions on how to play at the bottom. You can make counters out of just about anything: buttons, coins, even cut up paper or cardboard. You can use a dice you already own, make one out of a box or create a spinning dial. Anything extra that needs to be made just means your kids will be busy for longer.

Of course, you have to be careful if you have under 3′s in the home, due to the small parts in the game. I’m loving that my youngest child is now three, because all three kids are at the perfect age to get pleasure, educational benefits and social skills out of it. Most importantly, they’re all interested!

Missy 10 plans to make more of these over the holidays. I will post her different versions of the games over at Hear Mum Roar’s facebook page, if you’d like to see them. If you have any board games your kids have made, I’d love to see photos of them too, so please upload them to the ‘school holidays’ album so we can all be inspired!

What are your kids doing these holidays? Are you over it yet, or still enjoying the break?

Bright Star Kids sell cute kids labels, wall stickers, bag tags, and all sorts of other cool stuff. I recently was sent some small name labels for all of my three kids…

I’ve blocked out parts of their names privacy reasons, but I left part of the lettering there so you can see the different fonts used. Missy 3 loves the fairy on her labels and always tells me it’s going to fly away! So cute.. I also love that if I put a name label on anything of hers, she’ll drink it, for example, water. She wasn’t keen on water for a while, but now she has a label on her water bottle, she’s drinking lots of water and is much healthier for it.

Forever Clover sells a new range of school-aged girls’ swap cards.

When I first saw these, I fell in love with them instantly! These cards were created as an antidote to the sexualisation of girls in our society. Your daughter can join the free Forever Clover Club online. Missy 10 has joined and loves it! You can read their Forever Clover girls’ blog with stories of their adventures. If your daughter is a member of the club, she can even comment!

The cards and packaging are made from renewable resources and starting a collection is very wallet-friendly, so anyone can start collecting and swapping! All three of my kids have been given some, and they absolutely love them.

KelliOne is the home of handmade toys. Simple concepts that kids will love and very cute too! Kelli was kind enough to send out three ribbon wands for the kids to play with.

Here, you can see Mr 5 happily fishing with his. This is a brilliant, open-ended toy for toddlers, preschoolers and school aged kids alike. They can get exercise as they twirl around in or outdoors, dance to music, draw shapes in the air, pretend they’re walking a dog on a leash, in short, they can do whatever they can imagine! KelliOne also can make these wands for weddings, and I’m thinking when we get married one of these days, I’ll order some for the guests! I can imagine how beautiful the wedding photos would be with ribbons swirls from happy guests, in our custom colours.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about these companies. They all have such great stuff and are lovely people to deal with.

I have a few things on my mind this Friday. One is homemade cleaning goods. The lovely Kelli from KelliOnegave me a copy of the book, ‘Speed Cleaning’ that she didn’t want anymore, and I found an idea I’ve been keen to try out…

Homemade timber cleaner! I mixed up a paste with some ash from the fireplace, and used it to clean these chairs my father made for me.

I personally would only ever try this on sealed timber, just to make sure it’s ok. Wanna see how it turned out?

And yes, I know the floor below is filthy, I just figured if I’d be cleaning with ash paste, I’d need to clean the floor afterward anyway, so why worry, right?

All in all, I’m happy with the result. I’ve talked before about how I’ve used oils as wood polish, but no matter how much I buff it, my children always slip off their chairs afterward! With this paste, I wipe it on, rinse it off with a wet cloth then buff it dry. I found using less ash to be more effective than ton of the stuff.

I love that this is using a resource that normally has no use. We burn boxes in our house as a cheap way to keep warm in winter, and to reuse our household waste. I’m so happy that this book has given me a free option to clean our wooden furniture.

The other thing on my mind is that today I’m launching my new site within Hear Mum Roar: Winning Mums. I know how much some of you love a giveaway, and I’m the same. So I’ve created a site where bloggers or other companies can submit their giveaways at one, easy to find site for free. The only thing it needs now is the forum installed and some giveaways posted on there. If you are currently running a giveaway, I’d love it if you’d submit one, so I can check it’s all working well.

With the forum side of things, it will start out with one or two categories, and if it takes off well, I’ll add more. If it doesn’t get used, I’ll get rid of it. Time will tell.

I hope you have a lovely Friday and weekend. What are your plans?

Other reading:

Vinegar cleaning

How to clean carpet naturally

Homemade air freshener

From today onward, I’ll be joining in the ‘On my mind’ photo feature from Down To Earth. It’s one of my favourite blogs, full of inspiration. The idea is to post a photo of what is on your mind that day.

Like most mums, I have a million things on my mind today. Can we get the man who pumps septic tanks to visit us soon? I’m sure at this time of year he’s very busy! However, my partner and I are keen to get ours emptied soon in this cold weather.

We have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, as my carer support worker and Phams worker cleverly picked up that I’m getting depression (occupational hazard, I’m told). I’m looking forward to getting some much needed medication and feeling better for it.

But what I’m thinking about most of all, is how much I can’t wait to sit down tonight and over the weekend to finish this jacket for Missy 3. I’m in the process of designing an ultra simple, ultra fast pattern for this so I can run a jacket up within hours in future. If it works out well, of course I’ll share the pattern.

I’m finding it’s getting easier to find the time to knit, these days. Of course I’m busier than I’ve ever been, but I love knowing that my kids are now old enough that I can knit whilst they’re awake without inquisitive fingers unravelling the yarn from the needles. I love that our cat Sookie is old enough now not to play with the yarn as I knit (but I still can’t leave it on the bench for a second or he’ll rip it to shreds! I learnt this the hard way when I was designing a beautiful pair of knitted gloves for my mother!)

I also find being a mother, I appreciate my crafting time so much more than I did when I was single. Time in general is more precious now, definitely. Especially time enjoying doing something I love.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and that you leave me a comment to let me know what’s on your mind.