Getting Five a Day

"Would you like to make cakes with vegetables Milly?  Does that sound like fun?".
"No".

In my head, that conversation went a lot better.  I imagined a startled response, curiosity piqued by the potential of adding something savoury to a normally sweet product.  Then I remembered that Milly is three and knows that I talk mostly nonsense.  FACT.   Still, I want to encourage her to explore food a little more so we're making vegetable based and this *will* be fun.

Mother Knows Best Vegetable Cakes

Carrot & Orange

1 large egg

90g golden caster sugar

50ml vegetable oil

100g self raising flour

1 tsp mixed spice

1 carrot

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Zest and juice of half an orange

Mix together the egg, sugar, oil and orange juice.  I gave Milly the first try at the hand blender.  Unfortunately using a blender is difficult with both hands over your ears so I did that part for her instead.

Fold in the flour, spice, grated carrot, vanilla and orange zest.  Laugh to yourself about what it would be like if you used old spice instead of mixed spice.  Wonder if this is the onset of madness.

hat optional

Divide in to 6 large muffins or mini loaf cases and bake in my oven at 160 degrees for 20 minutes.

Whilst you're waiting for these to cool, it gives you time to bake

Chocolate & Courgette

1 large egg

2 tbsp vegetable oil

75g golden caster sugar

120g self raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa

1 courgette

handful of chocolate chips (optional)

Mix together the egg, sugar and oil in a bowl.   


Its a day of firsts and courgette is a lot soften than carrots so Milly got to grate her first vegetable.  Add to the mix and smile at how proud your child is with themselves.


Mix in the flour, cocoa, baking powder and chocolate chips if you're using them.  Doing the usual dance is also optional.


Cook as with the carrot cakes.




Once these come out of the oven you can frost (or not) the carrot cake.  We went for orange cream cheese frosting (recipe).

Carrot Cake Squares with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting.

The chocolate courgette cakes can take quite a lot of sweetness.  If anything they need it, so we went with a mixture of vanilla frosting and strawberries.  If I had it in, I would have gone with a white chocolate ganache instead.

Mini Chocolate Courgette Cakes

I do believe in fairies

Milly is now at an age where the nightmares she has stay with her and she has started to develop a bit of a fear of the dark and of being left alone at night.  It breaks my heart to think of her scared of anything at this age so we've invented a story to help things along a bit.  For all of her love of cars and lego and traditional boy toys she is a real girly girl and loves fairies, so we've told her the fairies will come and take away all the horrible things she dreams of and keep her safe.  Of course they need a way of getting in to her room so I took something else I've seen on the internet and used it to our advantage.

Knock Knock...

I have no idea what these things are actually for or what they are supposed to look like, so apologies to anyone who comes across this blog knowing their purpose.

You will need:

Air drying clay

Paint

Varnish

Rolling pin

Sharp knife

Paper and pens

Draw out your design on paper.  You don't need to be an artist for this - you are simply drawing a door.  Think about the size of your wall or skirting board when you do this because it needs to fit in place.  Any type of door will do.

Roll out the clay to about 1/2 cm thick, put your drawing on top and, using a ball point pen or sharp pencil, draw around the outline.  Cut around the indentation.

Now add your extras.  We had a rather famous teacher in college and I only found out about that fact on the internet a few years ago, which shows just how little attention I paid to pottery.  As a result, I am rubbish!  So, I went for some easy bits and bobs and added a "stone" arch and base, a tiny window, letterbox, hinges and door knob, a small plant, a few roses, a couple of butterflies and a ladybird.  If I was doing it again, I think I'd leave out the plant.

Leave to dry.  The packet I used said allow 3 to 4 days but mine was dry within 24 hours.

Once dry paint however you want.  Since I am a typical toddler parent I have absolutely loads of ready mixed poster paint in, so I used that.  It needed a few coats but its cheap and easy stuff to use.

Once again, leave to dry before gluing all the pieces together and varnishing.  If you want to add any glitter do so when the varnish is wet.  Wait for it to be completely dry before adding embellishments.

If I was going to do this again I would probably use normal modelling clay rather than air drying simply because it does dry out exceptionally quickly, which makes any smaller pieces difficult to create as it crumbles in your fingers.  I also wouldn't use my beloved global knife which has the end broken off it due to the fact that my husband thought it was the best tool to break a block of ice.  I'd probably get something a lot sharper for cleaner lines.

Our Feathered Visitor

Looks like the home made bird seed feeders have been a real hit.  In our garden the robins like peanut butter, magpies (ack) like suet and the blue tits love the ones made with gelatine. 

L-O-V-E Love

6 years ago I made the invitations to our wedding celebration.  Hoarder that I am, I still have most of the things I bought for them including a small heart paper punch and they're all kept together in one of our kitchen larder units which has been taken over by craft items.  Milly spotted it for the first time and, silly woman that I am, I showed her how it worked.  Of course these objects are not made for the finger strength of a 3 year old so I punched a few hearts for her.

DO IT AGAIN!!!!!

I decided that if I was going to punch holes in to ever item of paper in our home we may as well do something with it.

All you need is love

...and a heart shaped paper punch

and coloured paper

and something to mount them on

and glue

and a pencil 

Punch so many hearts out the coloured paper that you lose the feeling in your thumb

Draw a heart shape on to your mounting material.  We used black foam because its what I had to hand.

Fill the heart shape with glue and stick your little hearts in place.  Smaller children might need some help with the heart outline.  Continue until you have filled all spaces with mini hearts.

We decided to frame our picture, but it would work really well on a card.  If you have more time then a series of hearts on a large card would make a lovely picture.

Here Comes the Sun

do do do doooo


You know how you go to the loo and the phone rings, or you buy the dress you've been looking at for ages only for it to go in to the sale the next week?  We're talking about the sort of thing Alanis Morissette would turn in to a mislabelled song.  Well, today I am daring Mr Sod to do his best with that law. 

Its been months since I was able to hang out a full load of washing without sky watching and keeping my fingers crossed the rain would stay off long enough for it to dry, so I am certainly not in need of enough pegs to fill my line.  If we suddenly find that summer hits next week you know who to thank.

When is a peg not a peg?

You will need:

Assorted wooden pegs

Paint and brushes

A black marker pen

Assorted glitter, glue, sequins, gems (optional)

A plastic plant pot, empty tin or cardboard frame shape (optional)

Take whichever item you are going to peg (the pot, tin or frame) and work out how many pegs you will need to cover the area completely.

Set out all of your pegs and paint assorted designs on them.  If you have time then paint them on both sides and on the inside.  Ours is a bit limited today but the beauty of this is that you can always unpeg them and do more another day.

Once they are dry, outline any painted shapes with the marker and add the embellishments as required.

Clip in place on your chosen item.  Alternatively use on a ribbon / string notice board, attach a magnet to the back and use as a picture / note holder or glue on to a baton to hang small items from (ideal for childrens necklaces and bracelets).

We turned ours in to a paint brush pot

At some point we will take them all off and paint the inside, but thats a craft for another day.

Feed the birds

Unfortunately for slightly more than tuppence a bag.

The holidays are little more than a distant memory, the tan has faded and I'm thinking about turning ark building in to a Wednesday craft.  So, its back to crafting and blogging to fill our rainy days.

Since we've been away the weather has turned my postage sized garden in to something of a jungle and we have rather a lot of visitors of the feathered variety.  Now I'm not the biggest fan of birds - they fall in to the general category of things that are nice to look at but may fly in to my face - but the small one likes them and our first floor living room means we get a good view without fearing some sort of Hitchcock style open air attack.  Besides, I like to live life on the edge from time to time so lets encourage them.

Who needs Mary Poppins anyway.

You will need:

Pine cones

Bird seed

Twine

Peanut butter, suet, honey or d) all of the above.

Gelatine (I read on the internet that this is fine for birds so I hope this is true!)

Assorted cookie cutters

Greaseproof paper

Trays

Straws chopped in to 4

Food colouring (optional)

A tall person

Basically this little lot

Easy one first.  

Tie some twine around a pine cone and leave enough length to be able to tie easily around a something. 

Base your decision on which sticky stuff to use on the likelihood of finger licking and mix together some of the seed.  

Shove in to the pine cone and squish together with your hands to form a ball and ask someone tall to hang in a tree.  

Milly is all about instant gratification so she liked that she was able to put these out straight away.

Bit more fancy pants one.  

Mix a packet of gelatine as per the instructions on the packet and allow to cool slightly. 

Add enough of the seed so it is coated but not wet (for us, that was about 700ml in a jug).  If you want to colour the seed do so at this stage by adding a couple of drops of food colouring.  We went for pink of course.

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and set out your cutters. Smaller cutters tend to make more mess so if that's what you have you might want protect any fabric surfaces first because this stuff is about to go everywhere.

Fill each cutter with the sticky seed and press down firmly with the back of a spoon.  Push a straw in to each shape and allow to dry (for us this took a couple of hours). 

Gently push each seed shape out of the cutter and remove the straw.  If they're still a bit soft, stick them in the fridge to harden up completely.  Tie the twine through the resulting hole. 

They stay inside until that rain stops

This would make a nice gift if you replace the basic twine with something like ribbon or brightly coloured string.  You could even do a rainbow of colours or wire up shapes inside of shapes with a bit of patience (so that would be us out).

If anyone who looks like Tippi Hedren turns up, leg it.

Holidays are coming, holidays are coming

Even thinking about that advert makes me smile.  I am a complete diet coke and Christmas addict, so its my idea of heaven.  Clearly its June so no coke truck is heading my way and instead we're off on our first family seaside holiday.  Milly is almost falling over herself with excitement and the idea of having her own pool so getting her to do anything other than talk about swimming has been a task and a half.  Unfortunately for fish girl its fathers day and my mums birthday when we are away so she's had to do something not related to water.  For me, the problem was finding something that wasn't baking and wasn't bulky, so we went with the card that doubles as a gift by creating a fridge magnet...

Smile please

You will need:

1 willing child

1 sheet of magnetic paper

1 card blank

A camera

A pc and printer

Assorted embellishments

A way of attaching the magnet to the card - we went for a mini peg

Ask your child what they want to say in their card.  Ideally you're looking for 3 or 4 words that aren't can we go swimming, are we going swimming now or I can swim with one armband.  Clearly that's far too many words.  We settled on I love you daddy.

For each word decide on a picture that represents that word.  You can go for the easy option of holding signs, go for YMCA style cheerleader letters (Give me an I), act out the word or use props.  When I told the small one that I would be taking a picture of her making an I, she grabbed her magnifying glass.  Kids will often think of something much more interesting than us mere parents.

Once you have your pictures, shrink them to about 25% (or they will probably be too big to do anything with unless you have a super duper uber amount of memory), and line them on top of each other photobooth style

Print on to your magnetic paper and cut to size. 

Then you just need to attach to the front of your card and decorate as you wish.  I had some star beads so wrote daddy on the front with a sharpie.  Mill is very excited about reading at the moment so this appealed to her.  

We've also gone for a useful home made gift.  The hippy in me is rather in to upcycling as those who follow me on pinterest will know.  Unfortunately the things I find that look great would require me actually buying the products brand new to upcycle, which probably defeats the point of this exercise (hanging monkeys bowl I'm looking at you).  Since I have zero ability to let go of the small ones baby clothes I decided to do something useful with those.

When is a dress not a dress?

Now, I made a bit of a faff of this I admit, so there will be a round two with real instructions.  But here is the theory...

You will need:

2 / 3 different fabrics - I used a pair of the small ones jeans and her old dress

A sewing machine and cotton

Fabric paint (I used dylon 3D)

Dressmakers carbon paper

Snap fastening or velcro

Fabric 1 (outside main colour) : 6 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2), 3 inch x 2 1/2 inch square 

Fabric 2 (outside border colour ) : 2 1/4 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2), 3 inch x 2 1/2 inch square

Fabric 2 or 3 (lining) : 8 inch x 4 1/2 inch square (x 2)

hem width : 1/4 inch

 

Sew together the two small squares of fabric.  Trim the bottom corners and turn the correct way around.  This will form our fastening.

Sew each of the three types of fabric together.  The fastening should be sewn in place so it sits on the outside of the case and flaps down.

If you want to make a padded case, you will need a piece of fusible bonding or lining fabric and place behind the lining fabric.

Once you have two long pieces of the case place face together and sew around 3 edges, leaving the top lining edge open.  Iron the hemmed edges and turn the right way around . Sew the lining edge. 

Iron the top edge of the case so the lining sits correctly and add the fastening to the edge of the fastening square so the glasses are secure.

Once you have all of that you can decorate it (or not - the next one I make will be for me and wont have kiddy pictures on it).  I asked the small one to draw a picture of daddy which I then transferred on to the fabric with the carbon paper and painted over.

Holidays really are coming!!!