Category Archives: Kids craft

Half Term Crafting Fun

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I can’t believe that half term is almost over already. It’s gone so fast I’ve hardly had chance to sit down.

We haven’t done a huge amount of crafting yet as we’ve been on all of our visits with friends and family, and we are well and truly exhausted with all the walking around. But we had a great trip to Manchester yesterday visiting one of our favourite places, John Rylands Library. There’s usually something on there over the school holidays, and this time we found a decoupage class. It was in the traditional form of decoupage, using copies of some of the incredible collection from the library. We were provided with everything we could possibly need to decoupage a small trinket box however we liked.

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What a fabulous way to spend a few hours. We had great fun, considering my daughter is only 6 she concentrated for over 2 hours to make her box. It was ell past our normal lunch time when she finished. This is definitely a craft we will do more of at home. So I need to keep a look out for items to cover and stock up on pva glue!

Here’s my finished box. Very different from my daughter’s.

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Happy crafting
x

Half Term again!

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It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since the Easter holidays! Half Term certainly has come around fast.  So the burning question is, how do I fit some crafting into this week of hospital appointments, playdates and phonics screening revision?!

I don’t want to spend the entire week indoors doing phonics practice on the computer, so I’ve arranged a few trips out, one to Chatsworth and I’m going to combine a hospital appointment with a trio into Manchester.  We haven’t been into the city for some time so it will be a girls day out.  After the softplay centre visit and a birthday party that only leaves us with a couple of days to fill, ideal for some crafting – particularly if the weather forecasts are correct!

It would appear that my friend has saved the day and the arrival of belated birthday and Christmas presents for my daughter have reaped great crafting goodies – a doodle book, glitter pictures, painting by numbers and glitter pens!  Maybe this will be a fun messy crafting holiday!

Happy half term crafting
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Half Term Baking

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This half term holiday has been a real whirlwind, from a funeral and birthdays to swimming lessons, hospital visit, Chinese New Year and a couple of family days out.  So there hasn’t been a huge amount of time for crafting.

But we did manage a little bit of baking for Mum’s birthday.  My daughter, now 6, loves to help and she really wanted to make something for her Grandma.  So on the way home from a funeral , we stopped at a Lakeland shop, which only sold kitchen accessories.  It was a great shop and lovely to browse around.  I could have spent a small fortune but was sensible!  We bought some chocolate cupcake frosting, pink wafer flowers and small chocolate beans.

Once home we decided that some cupcakes would be the perfect gift.  I chose the simple, all-in-one sponge recipe and we made two different flavours – vanilla with cherry, and double chocolate!  The smell in the kitchen was delicious.

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Once cooked and cooled. we had great fun decorating them. I used some ready-to-roll icing and an imprinted roller and then cut them into circles to top the vanilla cakes, my daughter then finished them off with the pink wafer flowers. The chocolate ones I topped with the chocolate cupcake frosting, which came in a tube with a piping nozzle! Of course they had to have small chocolate beans added. I think they looked great. We chose the four best and presented them in a lovely cupcake box.

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Mum enjoyed them too and we shared the remaining cakes around. A lovely little crafting session.

Happy crafting
x

Half Term Baking

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Half Term is upon us again. We have an extra day due to staff training, so we decided to put it to good use and do some baking. My 5 year-old loves being in the kitchen, although she does lose interest after a while.

So today we did some Mum and daughter Halloween cakes and biscuits, some paw-print biscuits and I made my Christmas cake!!

We started off with a very simple all-in-one sponge mix with added cocoa powder. My daughter chose to also add chocolate buttons and mini marshmallows to the mix for extra goo! She loved measuring everything out and adding the ingredients. I have to say she’s much better at cracking eggs than I am!!

Chocolate cakes

We let them bake for about 15 minutes then put them on the side to cool on a rack while we started on the Halloween biscuits to take to a Halloween party tomorrow. These are a really simple butter biscuit recipe. Instead of using castor sugar I used a bag of spiced sugar from a spiced apple juice kit that I’d been given (there was no way I would ever make 2 gallons of spiced apple juice, so what better way to use up the sugar!) The dough needed to rest in the fridge for around 20 minutes before rolling, so to keep her attention, out came the rich tea biscuits. I made a small amount of white water icing to top each biscuit and she added giant and ordinary sized chocolate buttons to make a paw-print on each one. I think they are lovely. So effective and they taste fantastic.

Paw-print biscuits

When the biscuit dough had rested, I rolled it out and my daughter had great fun choosing the spooky shapes to use. She settled on bats, cats, stars (large and small) men and Mickey Mouse! A fun half hour of rolling and cutting followed, with me on a bungee between the table and the oven!. Here’s a peek at the first batch once they had cooked.

Halloween spiced biscuits

They have a very subtle spicy flavour to them from the sugar. Very moreish. I think they will go down well at the Halloween party.

Once all the biscuits were cooling, it was time to decorate the chocolate cakes. Buttercream was the choice, so I made a batch, splitting it in half and adding orange food colouring to one half and green colouring to the other. Very spooky! Then it was little one’s turn to get creative with the decorations, and for her, more is most definitely more!

Halloween Cakes

The overall effect is great though. Very spooky and just right for Halloween.

Happy Halloween fun
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Christmas kids crafting

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This week my daughter has been quite poorly. The change in the weather has brought out all the bugs! So after a couple of days in bed I decided we could do a bit of crafting for Christmas. I’ve been making some Christmas cards, getting ready for my Christmas craft stall and for some orders. As I was making cards, she wanted to make cards too. Out came the Christmas bit box and we thought it would be fun to get a bit messy, so there was lots of ink, pens, glitter and stamps.

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It’s such fun making Christmas cards. My daughter still loves stickers too, so peel offs were greatly in evidence too.

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These will be her cards to her teachers and Grandparents this year. Stamping was great fun. So I think there maybe some ink pads and stamp sets in her stocking this year.

There’s nothing nicer than a kitchen covered in glitter!!! And only one more week to half term.

Happy crafting
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