Half Term again!

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
x

Easter Holidays

Easter holidays are tough for me this year as I love chocolate and cake and I just can’t have any!  But baking is also one of the best activities for the school holidays.  So with my daughter eager to make something for her friends and family, I helped her out with her idea of making chocolate nests.

This has got to be the easiest ‘baking’ ever!  I let her be in charge and tell me what I needed to do.  So she broke up shredded wheat into a bowl.  I was tasked with melting the chocolate over a pan of hot water and once melted I poured it into the shredded wheat bowl.  She then mixed it all together.  I had bought some Easter themed cake cases and little sticks from a local pound shop and they set the cakes off a treat.  The little nests were then made in each case and some chocolate eggs added to complete the nest effect.

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They looked great once they had set and I believe they tasted pretty good too.  We were certainly popular amongst the neighbours on Easter Sunday!

Now just another 2 weeks of holidays to fill!

Happy crafting
x

Half Term Baking

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

Our Handmade Tree

This year I’ve let my daughter have a tree in the hall, and given her a huge box of decorations.  The box was full of handmade decorations, some made by her through the few years of her life in nursery and school.   It’s been a real journey of remembering watching her decorate the tree. She made one of the decorations at playgroup when she was only just 1!  It’s great to see how she’s grown as some of the decorations she’s made at school have her photo on.

Handmade Christmas Tree

Once she had reminisced with me over all her decorations, she got out some of the decorations I’ve made over the last twenty years or so. I love the little snowballs at the bottom of the tree. They were some of the first decorations I made over twenty years ago. So there’s a real mix of little stockings, snowflakes, hearts and some Jean Greenhowe decorations (including the snowballs). We love our little handmade tree and long may we keep adding new decorations to it.

Merry Christmas
x

Half Term Baking

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
x

Christmas kids crafting

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
x

Summer Reading Challenge

The first week of the school summer holidays and we’re at the local library to look at the summer reading challenge.  We found a flyer in the school reception area and it’s all about myths and legends this year.  It seems there is a challenge every year to encourage children of all ages to read even though they aren’t in school.  My daughter is a very keen reader and the theme has really captured her imagination as she loves dinosaurs and dragons!

Mythical Maze

Having registered with the library staff, she’s been given a little pack of reading puzzles and accompanying activities to do in the library, at home and online. It’s a great use of different technologies, with an app and website as well as paper activities to do. So we’ve spotted Leprechauns and Minotaurs, Mermaids and Dragons, and Spiders and Medusa! She’s been colouring in loads of pictures and we’ve chosen 8 books for her to read, covering a variety of subjects. There are prizes along the way for the number of books read and she can’t wait to get to 6 and get a set of stickers! So keep an eye on the facebook page for what we get up to with those!

Happy Summer
x

Loom Bands

I suppose it was only a matter of time until my daughter discovered the craze for loom bands.  It was one of the girls in her dance class that mentioned them to her a couple of weeks ago, since when we’ve been inundated with requests for bands and a loom.

It is a brilliant concept.  A bit like crochet with the little hook and the loom makes it look a bit like the dolly knitting I did as a child.  As she’s only 5, she needed a bit of help to get going and we made the first couple of bracelets without a loom.  She’s now very proficient at this simple style and has made several bracelets for her friends at school.

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So I’m now investigating different styles on You Tube.  She would like to get the most out of using the loom and make a bag!  She saw the dress that has been sold on e-bay and is very inspired for me to teach her how to make more things.  I have managed to teach how to do the fishtail and she’s again doing very well with that.

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I love the simplicity of the materials and equipment with this craft.  The only problem for me is that I find it as addictive as she does and I don’t know where the time goes!  I’ve stocked up her tub of bands ready for the summer holidays next week and now need to find some more instructions for her.

Any ideas or links to good tutorials would be gratefully received.

Happy crafting
x