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Summertime Fun Ideas from Oriental Trading

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to the products for your convenience but do not receive anything if you buy from them.

So one of the things that got me going on our Summertime Fun Series is this amazing review for Oriental Trading. We picked out a variety of things to review to bring different summertime activities to you. Hope you will try some of them out.


Bubble Fun

Who doesn't enjoy bubbles? I know they always make me smile and they certainly entertain Hazel. We had so much fun so far with the Big Fun Bouncy Bubble Set. The set comes with 2 ounces of bubble stuff (yeah, that was gone pretty quickly), a dish, a wand, a tube blower and a glove to be able to bounce/catch the bubbles. Talk about some outside fun!! This set is perfect for it!! Just make sure you have more bubble stuff to keep the fun going!


Ice Cream Fun

We love ice cream and Hazel is considering having an ice cream party, so we decided to begin planning. She fell in love with these Ice Cream Dishes and spoons, so we had to get them. They come in four colors and of course she always wants pink.
 We also saw the Ice Cream Dice Game on the website, but it is not there right now. I however was able to download and adjust the papers for the Pocket Dice. I used their pages as well as some of my own with their background. It is available here.  
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8PVW7zBWFxsNnpCOURUTjhCM0E/view?usp=sharing

The idea of the game is everyone starts with a dish of ice cream and take turns rolling the dice and following the instructions on the die. When the game ends the players eat the ice cream (sundae) in front of them. Talk about a fun party game!! We of course tried it out. We played it with my father last time we went to visit my parents.

He was a good sport seeing how he ended up with the one with lots of sprinkles in it. We decided to let everyone add whip cream after the game was over since only one actually had some on it.



 It is a fun game especially if you use the papers that have you pass the dishes around the table. We actually ended up with the same ones we started with but we all did something to each one. 
I also love that the papers can be changed whether still wanting to play the ice cream game of come up with a different game. There are also various pages available for the pocket dice at Oriental Trading. Of course to have an ice cream party or play date we need an invitation. I made one up and you can get it here. I saved it as a jpg so you could use Picmonkey to your details if you wanted. 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8PVW7zBWFxsdzN6WndqTlVGSzQ/view?usp=sharing

 Clubhouse Fun


Now I have been sharing details about how we updated Hazel's clubhouse this year. The inside of this clubhouse is full of various things we have reviewed from Oriental Trading. One of the most recent changes is we took the large wicker furniture out and bought two bean bag chairs for her. I wanted to make them comfortable and fun and the Plush Pink Unicorn Pillow is perfect for it. 

You will also see some decorations from our Themed Play Dates last summer, some flamingo fun leftover from Hazel's Flamingo Birthday Party, Minnie Mouse decorations, and even an Easter Bunny decoration is out there. It is such a fun way to use party decorations over!


Flamingo Fun


Now Hazel LOVES flamingos and goes for everything with a flamingo on it. Her favorite clothes have flamingos on them. She fell in love with the Flamingo Headband with Marabou Bow. The only problem is it is for a baby. We decided to get it and see what we could do with it. It was actually easy to change to a headband for her. We cut the loop and glued it onto a pink headband from the Dollar Tree. Now it is one of her favorite headbands and she gets many compliments on it when she wears it!
http://www.orientaltrading.com/flamingo-headband-with-marabou-bow-a2-13720617.fltr?Ntt=flamingo


Indoor Fruit Fun

Now even in the summer there can be some bad weather days and some indoor fun is needed. Hazel will tell anyone that her favorite food is fruit (and we considered a fruit themed party as well). She fell in love with this fun Fruit Balancing Game. It took us a while to figure out how to balance it.
http://www.orientaltrading.com/fruit-balancing-game-a2-13651600.fltr?Ntt=fruit

We kept playing and came up with this one as well.

It is fun to see what combinations will work!


Nature Fun


Now we have been spending a lot of time just enjoying the beautiful weather this summer. We also love watching and exploring nature. To go with our love of nature we have a few different crafts. The first is the Mother/Daughter Bird Bracelet Craft Kit. Hazel loves having matching/labeled bracelets. Plus of course there is her love of birds. (She wants every birdhouse and birdcage we see.) 

The kit comes with supplies to make two of each bracelet. Everything matches except the tags that say "Daughter" and "Mother". We each made the other person's so they are gifts to each of us. 

Hazel's class spent a lot of time studying insects and bugs this past school year, so I fell in love with these Summer Snap Beads. I didn't read the description well enough to realize you needed to buy the Snap Charm Bracelets to use them. However we found a fun way to use them. We cut small slits in ribbon to use like a buttonhole. I could sew a snap on the ribbon to make it a bracelet or we could use them as the center of bows on gifts or headbands.
http://www.orientaltrading.com/web/browse/processProductsCatalog?mode=Searching&sku=13689025
They are so cute and colorful and will add some fun to any bow or bracelet!

We also love flowers and have been having a lot of fun with these Layered Flower Templates. I know many people have Cricut or Cameos to do their cutting, but for those that don't (like us), these are fun to create different types of flowers and use scraps of paper up.
http://www.orientaltrading.com/web/browse/processProductsCatalog?mode=Searching&sku=65%2F80509

More Craft Fun

We have two more craft items we received. The first is the Exploding Box Stencil Template. These templates let you make triangle, square, rectangle, hexagon, octagon and a square pyramid box that when opened can open to have two more boxes of that shape in it. Now I have to admit that I could not get the pyramid box to stay closed without taping the sides (and then it would not explode). 

They are relatively easy to use and make fun projects and good creative starts. What would you make with them?

Our final item is a set of Unicorn Stamps. Hazel is very into fairies and unicorns right now. She loves the Rainbow Magic series lately. These fun stamps are easy and on the large size. We decided to try them out on some fabric and then I remembered we still had some DIY White Coin Purses from our Easter review. We used our fabric paints and markers on the stamps to stamp these and then I also gave Hazel one of the DIY White Bags (also left over from our Easter review) to stamp as well. 
 We are thinking of putting the coin purses in the fairy pinata for her fairy/enchanted forest birthday party. What do you think?

What are you doing for Summertime Fun?