I'll Be Home for Christmas

Hopefully, assuming we don't have a problem with our flight.  We are now all ready for Christmas - presents are wrapped, food for the hamper is made, Milly's rag doll is almost finished and the spare room has become cardboard box city from all the deliveries.  Must do something with those in the new year.  I'm thinking play shop.

This week we made biscotti (or sausage biscuits as miss likes to call them) and its a recipe from good food, so I'll just give you a link to that below.  We stuck almost to the recipe but I substituted cherry for cranberries, just because I like them.  We did, however, do a very very quick gift craft which makes a relatively low cost gift a little more personal.  Its another of those where you do most of the work, but such is life with kids and crafting.

Here Comes Santa Claus

You will need:

A vase big enough to put your entire hand inside
A sharpie (remember those from the labels?)
Paper and pens
Sticky tape of whichever brand you prefer

Cut your paper so its no larger than the height of your vase

Ask your child to draw whatever pictures you (or rather they) want.  Milly decided on Father Christmas, a snowman, a helicopter cat and a round Christmas tree. 

Cut out the pictures you want to put on to the vase (I decided on Father Christmas and the snowman, plus her name) and tape them on the inside.

Trace around with the sharpie.  You might need to do this a couple of times because the pen doesn't always draw that well.  I should imagine it would be better on a ceramic but then you have the faff of getting the picture on there in the first place.  Its one for us to do in future when Mill can be trusted to not draw a helicopter cat on something.

Remove the paper and allow to dry.  Jobs a good un.

I haven't tried to wash these so I have no idea if the picture is going to wash off the minute it touches water, but I don't think it really matters since they still have a vase at the end of it.

We've also been tagging and wrapping.  The bird seed feeders now look like this

Bird Seed Feeders with a touch of Christmas Sparkle

and our Christmas hampers look like this (minus the bag of biscotti)

Christmas Food Goodies

if you want a list of the recipes I've used here you go:
Spiced beetroot and orange chutney   This is lovely and can be done at last minute
Spiced plum chutney  I make this every year.  Its a bit late for it to be ready for Christmas but its still suitable for a gift with strict instructions to leave it for a few weeks.
Christmas Cake I make mine in October but there is no reason why you cant do a last minute version.

Champagne and Strawberry Jam  

This is my recipe and it makes an 8oz jar of jam .

You will need :

200g strawberries
180g jam sugar
1 large bottle of champagne (or cava)
1 lemon.
A saucer in the fridge

Chop the strawberries in to 4 and add to a pan with the sugar.  Leave for about an hour for the juices to start flowing (or don't if you're in a rush).  If you want big chunky strawberries at the end, leave overnight.

Add a squeeze of the lemon and about half a glass of champagne.  Get your saucer ready.

Heat gently to dissolve the sugar, stirring as you go, and then bring to the boil.for about 5 minutes (double check after four).  Remove from the heat and spread a little on the saucer, give it a minute and then push it about a bit.  It should be all jammy and thick and wrinkly when you push and not sloppy.  If you have slop, give it another minute or two and retest.

Allow to cool and then pour in to sterilised jam jars.

Drink the rest of the champagne to celebrate.

Christmas Biscotti / Sausage Biscuits

The biscuits are simply shortbread with 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and topped with cane sugar.

So, its been a busy old week.  There are other things I will show you in the new year but since they're gifts for people who read this blog they're staying under wraps for now.


So that just leaves me to say have a very merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year xxx

Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer

once gave Santa's sleigh a lift.  And when mixed in with maltesers, makes a really simple gift.

Move over Bernie Taupin, there's a new kid in town.

Reindeer Noses

You will need:

1 bag of maltesers
1 bag of either red foiled chocolate balls or a bag of mixed m&m's and a willingness to eat everything that isnt red.  yum.  If youre in the UK a rather large supermarket chain beginning with T and ending in esco sells the ones I've used.
1 cellophane bag per person


Lob 8 maltesers and 1 red chocolate of choice in to the bag.  Tie with your pre-prepared rudolf labels.  Go.  

Requires absolutely no adult help once a child is
a) able to count to 8; and
b) able to resist eating the majority of the maltesers.

So, should be fine once they hit retirement.  Maybe.

Merry Christmas, Love Milly

Frosty the Snowman

Was a jolly happy soul.  I find that hard to believe given how moody all snowmen look, especially that one on the advert that you know wanted diamonds but ends up with gloves.  The power of love aint that strong.

So, crafting.  A while back I saw the cutest little snowmen on pinterest and decided to make them as part of our craft.  Unfortunately the geek in me refuses to read anything which may appear to be an instruction and I went on the wing in theory.  It was about 30 seconds in to said winging that I realised this is not a craft to do with a 4 year old or a 30 something year old with limited patience for things that ping out of your fingers.  Here are the instructions if you really want them.  They do look cute after all.

Pin it

You will need
(per snowman)

2 small white buttons, each with two holes
4 black seed beads (plus another 10 that will end up on the floor / down your top / in your eye)
1 medium brooch fastening
Strong Glue
Two pieces of felt (colour is your choice, but I had green and red in with it being Christmas so went with the pinterest picture)
Assorted small sequins
A cocktail stick
A large stiff drink.


Down the drink.  You're going to need it.

Cut a hat and bow tie shape out of the coloured felt and place on one side.  Tell yourself that this is going to be great.

Glue the two buttons in place on top of the brooch, so one appears to be the head and one the body.  Still tell yourself this is going to be great.

Hand the brooch to your child along with some pva glue, the cocktail stick and the beads.  They have small hands so it should be good for them, right.  Wrong.  Quickly realise that there is pva glue everywhere, apart from in the place you want it to be and the snowman appears to be melting since his eye is now somewhere near his navel.  Stop lying to yourself about the great thing, throw that one away and start again.  Allocate your child the job of passing things to you.  With the cocktail stick, blob in some strong glue just inside the button holes and drop the beads somewhere near to them.  Push in place and leave to the side to dry.  Repeat for all your buttons whilst slowing losing the will to live.

Meanwhile, get your small person to stick a sequin on to the bow tie.  Put a blob of glue on to the back and stick in to place on the snowman.  Do the same with the hat.

Be thankful that the buttons only came in small packets, put something Disney on the TV and relax.

Malevolent Snowman Army

I'll have a blue christmas without you

I have a craft related injury thanks to a bit of a slip when machine quilting at the weekend (yes, that does hurt as much as you imagine) so one trip to a&e later and my finger is in a ridiculously over sized bandage which hinders my ability to do anything let alone craft.   So this week I am without hand meaing we went for a tried and tested craft that I know the small one can do almost entirely alone.  She just needs me to boil the kettle and the rest is down to her.

Rockin' robin

to save you searching back through the blog you will need
bag of bird seed
cookie cutters
one sachet of gelatine
straws
greaseproof paper

plus, to Christmas it up a bit
glitter
Christmas ribbon


This amount has made 6 large bird seed feeders and 4 small ones (so would probably make 7 large ones if you want them for gifts).   I wouldn't recommend making more than one sachet at a time because you want to make sure all of the seed is covered in gelatine.

Lay out a sheet of greaseproof paper on a flat surface.

Make up the gelatine according to the instructions on the packet and add the seed in.  Throw in a bit of glitter.

Chop up your straws to make holes for the ribbon.

Place your cookie cutter on the paper and sprinkle a little glitter inside.  The right way to do this is to put silver all over, pink at the top and blue at the bottom.  Anything else is wrong. FACT.  

You may need to wear a woolly hat at this stage to prevent glitter getting in your hair.

Fill your cutter with the sticky seed and press down with the back of a spoon.  Sprinkle some more glitter on top.  

Shove the straw in place and leave to dry overnight.  

 

We're at that stage now, so I'll do an update when they're dry.  We've also tried a little mini seed chain so if they work, I'll put a picture up.

Making Christmas, making Christmas

lalala

Yes, its still October and yes, I've said the C word.  I admit that I'm a bit of a Christmas maniac - I'm the type of person to put a tree in every space of our house and I fully intend to infect the small one with this fever so by the time she is a women in her 30s she will still get excited at the first holidays are coming advert on the tv.

We've actually been quite busy crafting over the last few weeks on Christmas gifts from Milly, but nothing is finished.  This is one of those spanning lots of weeks project so you will have to come back if you want to see the final product.  Its the lord of the rings of craft projects, if you will, only with fewer potential endings and no elves.  Ok, maybe elves.

Not bread again

...said Milly when I announced we were making salt dough

1 cup flour plus some for rolling
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup salt
1 tbsp oil (optional - I find it makes the dough easier to work with)

to make that in to a Christmas decoration

absolutely anything to cut out a shape
absolutely anything to make impressions in the dough (optional)
a rolling pin
assorted paint (we used a metallic paint from tesco, a gold glitter paint from ELC and some white paint from asda)
a decision on how to hang it and either rings or string depending on what you choose


Mix everything together and that's it really!  If its too dry shove in some more water, too wet add flour.  

We decided to make some impressions in the dough using some snowflake cutters I had for last years Christmas cakes and then cut out shapes with cookie cutters, but you could use just about anything really - finger print impressions and a circle cut using an egg cup would be great.

Once cut decide how you're going to hang them.  We're trying a combination of ribbons which require cuts in the shape, string requiring a hole (I used a cocktail stick to form this), and rings which I will buy at some point in the next couple of days and glue in place.  We had rather a lot of dough left at the end of our cutting so we made little beads too so miss can have a princess necklace.  Not sure Kate would wear a salt dough necklace but you never know.

There are lots of cooking instructions on the web for salt dough.  I normally bake mine at 100 degrees for 3 hours (or until they are firm but not coloured in any way) but I wanted to try the microwave method.  For this you apparently simply place in the microwave for 1 - 2 minutes and bing they're done. Unfortunately I bing almost set my microwave on fire and bing made my kitchen smell of bonfires.   If you know how to do this without causing a major crisis then go for it.

Once cooked and cooled, its time to paint, and that's what today's activity was for us

Witch costume also optional

Next I will varnish them and then we will put them all together and attach them to the labels we've made (instructions coming soon).  But that's an activity for another day!  One without witches I imagine.

Happy Anniversary

6 years ago this happened

We had the perfect wedding and I married the perfect man.  Its all rather soppy really.  A couple of years before this happened mr invited me over to his place for an evening of fine foods, intellectual conversation and a drop of port towards the end of the evening (or maybe it was a bunch of mates getting drunk and playing twister).  At some point in the night he decided that dressing up in a tux, playing the ferrero rocher music and bringing in a tray of said choccies was a brilliant idea.

Regardless of the cheese, he won my heart and the rest is wonderful history.  Its a memory that needs to be celebrated so when I found out that six years together means a gift of sugar or iron I knew which one I was buying, and it wasnt made by tefal.

Why monsieur, you are really spoiling us

You will need : 

One polystyrene ball
One length of dowel
Plaster of paris
A pot
Tin foil
Clear glue
Assorted ribbons
Organza or tissue paper
64 ferrero rocher (which is a heck of a lot more than I expected).
The will power of an elephant

To start, I will say I bought a kit containing the ball, dowel, pot, plaster and ribbons.  I priced up getting everything individually and by the time I'd paid for p&p for each one it worked out considerably cheaper to get it in kit form from one place.  If youre making multiples for table decorations then it might be worth getting them seperately.  If that is the case, I used a 30cm length of dowel and a 120mm polystrene ball so adjust the number of chocolates if you buy smaller or larger.


Ok, this bit is pretty obvious but I'll go through it anyway.  Wrap and glue the ribbon around the dowel.  Prepare the plaster of paris as per the instructions on the packet and pour in to your pot.  Shove one end of the dowel in to the ball and sit the other in the plaster of paris and leave to set.

Now for the *ahem* fun bit.  Cover the ball in foil.  This will allow you to re-use (or sell on!) your sweet tree after you've finished with it.  Starting at the top add some glue to the back of the ferrero rocher and to the foil.  Hold in place until set.  Gravity will play its part in making this a tedious process unless you go foil-less, but you should be able to do 4 or so chocolates at a time and hold them all.  DO NOT EAT THE CHOCOLATE.  Continue until you've covered the entire ball and leave to set.  You will need to do this either the moment before you intend to give it as a gift or at least a day before because gravity will start to bug you once again by dropping the chocolates out of their wrappers, so DO NOT EAT THE CHOCOLATE - just glue them back in to place and feel better knowing that you will be sharing it eventually anyway.

Finish by decorating in any way you want.

Ferrero Rocher Sweet Tree

If you want a more budget option then melt a little milk chocolate and use that to stick maltesers on to the foiled ball, use cocktail sticks on marshmallows or licorice alsorts "kebabs", or just hoof lollipops in to the polystrene.  Its all sweets, so its all good.

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!!!

The daddy gift array part 4

About a million years ago when I was a child, the absolute highlight of breakfast time was the toy you got in with the breakfast cereal.  My favourite of these were shrinky dinks - small pictures which you coloured in and then put in the oven to shrink (hence the name).  I have no idea what you were supposed to do with these after this point but I still loved them.

So imagine my utter joy when I saw shrinkies paper and packs in my local hobbycraft a few months back.  They were instantly assigned to my I'm using those at some point brain file - I just needed a reason and a project.

Awww, its a teeny weeny me hand

Shrinkies A4 paper

Pencil crayons

Paint (any type that will produce a hand print)

Scissors

One keyring attachment and ring 

A big fat book

A hole punch

An oven

A child

Paint your childs hand and print on to the rough dull side of the paper.  We used paint designed for handprints from ELC and it didnt dry particularly well, so if I was doing it again I'd probably go for something else.

Cut around the hand leaving a good sized border and use the punch to make a single hole.

Put in to the oven according to the instructions on the pack.  The first time I did this in our fan oven it blew like crazy and stuck together so had to go in the bin.  The second time I turned the tray every 20 - 30 seconds.  It takes a couple of minutes before the print goes flat. 

Remove from the oven and shove a book on the hot plastic (Jamie Oliver books work well I have found).  This will ensure its flat (ish).

Allow to cool and add the key ring thingy.

I think we're going to try assorted colour prints and magnets next time.

Better than hallmark (maybe)

Stage one and we already have options

1. Have your child draw a picture directly on to the shrinkies paper and colour it in

2. Know that you have one of those 'if this goes wrong in the oven you will never draw another picture again' children and have them draw on to paper and transfer this on to pc and print (obviously you'll need a method of doing this and a printer for this option!)

I went with option two.  Milly is *that* child.  I also did it in two parts - first she drew the black and white outline which I scanned, fixed up with GIMP to make it darker (if you want to do this then look for a levels tutorial - it basically involves moving the little arrows to the right of the peak around a bit).  Then she coloured in this printed version and I re-scanned, fixed the levels and then printed on to the shrinkies paper.  The only problem with doing it this way was that the background has a slightly strange colour to it, but I can pretend it was intentional.

Cook as above and leave to cool and you get something like this

Now its over to the small people to stick to a card and decorate as only their crazy little selves can.

I hope he likes it!  I always get very nervous about these things.

The daddy gift array part 3

This is my favourite one, the one that brought a tear.

Milly has not always known everything.  There was a time that we would spend many a wet morning holding our very own question time in the living room.  Why is daddy going to work?  Why isnt daddy a lady? Why hasn't that man got any clothes on (yes strange man in the allotments behind our house, we can see you).  From this came the idea of writing down some of the Millyfacts she developed and turning them in to some sort of gift for his lordship.

Of course this bizarre turnaround where I asked the questions led to a complete breakdown in communications so I had to do a bit of reverse psychology and slowly it happened.

"Milly, I don't think you know what daddys favourite colour is"

Ask your child to talk about your partner and write everything down.  You might need to prompt a little bit but its good language practice - what does daddy look like?  What do you like to do with daddy?  You know the drill.

After you have enough dirt on your partner ask your child to draw a picture of them in any setting that takes their fancy.  Obviously the detailing of this is entirely dependent on their age, but simple line drawings work just as well as stunning works of art.

Scan or take a picture of the drawing - anything that gets it on a computer and open in GIMP (you will notice that I use this rather a lot).  Decide on 3 or 4 colours that you want to use and then type out each of the phrases and position them around the drawing.

Print on to photo paper and frame.

We left out the bit about daddy not being a lady.

101 things to do with tissue paper flowers

Well, 2 to be exact.

This might even be better than the basket.  Surely not, I hear you cry.  Read on crafters...

Least practical hat in the world

At some point in toddler life there will be a requirement to make a hat for some sort of easter, summer, the local paper is sending around a reporter festival.  Plastic flowers are expensive so we took to the tissue paper again and prayed for a dry day.  Now, you dont want any common or garden tissue paper flower hat for your child.  What you want to do is add bees! 

One hat of your choice
Assorted tissue paper flowers

Polystyrene balls

Kebab sticks and playdoh (this is just to hold the balls, so anything pointy will do)

Yellow paint

Black pen

White paper

Pipe cleaners

Glue

Needle and thread

Shove a kebab stick in to the end of three polystyrene balls and hold in position with the playdoh.  Smile at the level of concentration on your childs face as they paint these balls yellow.

Milly paints bees

Once dry, draw a black stripe across the body, cut out some wing shapes on paper and glue in place.  Depending on the age of your child you may have to do the cutting and striping for them.

Attach your wonderful paper flowers around the edge of the hat and green paper "but flowers need leaves mummy".  Add an assortment of rubbish that your child insists must go on the hat.

Shape the pipecleaner as you wish and then shove one end in to the bee.  You might need to glue this in to place.  Sew the other end of the pipe cleaner to the hat and you have this

and yes, the hat made it in to the local paper with one grumpy looking child under it.

A bunch of flowers to last a lifetime, or this ones for the dads

The natural progression from the ability to make a tissue paper flower has got to be making a bouquet of them.

Tissue paper flowers

Green tissue paper

Drinking straws

Glue

if you want extra daddy points, add a vase

Empty toilet roll

Tissue paper

Glue mixed in with an equal quantity of water

The flowers:

Make a 5 or 6 large multi coloured flowers.  Let your children use their imagination when it comes to the colour combination.  Reality isnt the keyword for this project.

Wrap a length of green tissue around a straw, leaving some excess at the top and glue to secure.  

Stick the flower to the excess green tissue.  Gasp in amazement at the wonder you have created.  Do it until all the flowers have stems, gasp each time.

The vase:

Rip up shreds of tissue paper and stick in to place with the glue-water combo.  Continue until all of the roll is covered and leave to dry (which with a toddler means hunting around for a hair dryer and using that).  Place the flowers in to the vase.  Add an assortment of rubbish that your child insists must go on the vase.

The daddy gift array part 2

There are things that Milly knows to be FACT, and then there are things I know to be FACT:

1. his lordship likes beer;
2. he adores the small one.

So, it follows that I should combine the two in some way for fathers day and the idea of the milford brewery was born.

Its time for the mums to get crafty, or how to make a gift for dads for under a tenner. 

For this, you will need a good picture of your child (head shots are good), some image manipulation software (I use GIMP - its excellent and available to download) and a vistaprint account.

Remove the background of the image using whatever software you have.  If you're unsure of how to do this there are likely to be tutorials if you google.  Otherwise, try getting your child to stand in front of a white wall and take the picture.

Scurry over to vistaprint (or any printing company you wish you use that happen to like to email free offers) and select the wine label with photo upload option.  There will be a multitude of backgrounds and text you can use so have a bit of a play until you have something you're happy with.  Ours came in a packet of 4.

If you're over 18 buy large bottles of beer or a bottle of wine.  Under 18, and you get to buy something without alcohol.  If its in a bottle then it should be fine (daddys sauce perhaps). If you have time, soak off the labels or if you're lazy like me, simply replace the beer label with your own and taaa-daaaaaa one gift for daddy. 

Lets bring in the children

Card time.  Children and finger painting - its like cheese and onion, David and Victoria, lego and bare feet.  But this is no ordinary finger painting, this is xTremE finger painting (I'm so down with the kids).  Ok, its just finger prints made to look like stuff.

For each family member print a single finger on to the paper.  If you want to turn this in to a learning experience discuss heights, who is the tallest, who is next and so on and then translate that to the size of their fingers.  In our case Daddy was her thumb, I was her ring finger, Milly was her little finger and the dog was a bit of a splodge.  In practice it doesnt work as well as the theory since kids fingers arent massively different in size, but its something for them to think about instead of running hand first on to the fabric sofa.

Then all you need to do is add some features with a black pen and turn the fingers in to people, and you have your card topper ready to go.

2 years in college and this could be my best work.

You can never have too many baskets

Has anyone in the known world ever said this?  I doubt it.

Tissue paper flowers that dont smell of tissue or flowers

Cut out two circles of tissue paper in different colours, one slightly smaller than the other, plus one circle of yellow or orange tissue whilst your child asks if its ready yet over and over again.

Make a cup of tea and put your feet up.

It is ready now.  Hand over the circles plus glue, glitter, sequins - anything you fancy really and allow them to get to work.  Glue the smaller circle on to the larger one, scrunch the yellow into some sort of ball and glue to the middle.  Add as much glitter and other junk as needed to make the worlds most freaky flower.  Pinch behind the yellow tissue and set to the side to dry.  Repeat.

Once they have the hang of flower making there is no end of things they can do with these.  Stick to the front of a card, add to ribbon for floral bunting, use on gifts...because, after all, you can never have too many baskets

The daddy gift array part 1

In my head I see that programmatically.  In three languages.  Geek.

One of the benefits of Mummy and Milly day is the ability to make home made gifts for his lordship (thats not an insult incidentally, I bought him one of those title in an envelope gift packs several years back).  Unfortunately one of the downsides to having a threenager is their apparent inability to keep anything a secret as our recent make daddy an easter card craft day went.  I think that secret lasted a good ten minutes.

"Daddy, we have made you a card".
"Milly, its a secret"
"BUT I WANT TO TELL DADDY"
*sigh*

His birthday is in a couple of weeks so its thinking cap on time only with the added pressure of him not finding out in less time than it takes the glue to dry.  Of course, he's reading this so no hints on here darling.


This time last year, we made this...

The container is from John Lewis, but anything airtight would do.  Then we had great fun sticking on foam letters and sticky gems from hobbycraft.  Of course, this makes it completely impractical since you can't wash it but a good wipe out will do the trick.  Ours is still going strong a year later.

Daddys its good to share biscuits

175g plain flour 

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

100g sugar

1 tsp unsweetened cocoa 

125g butter (or whatever fat you want to use)

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Family sized bag of m&ms 

Hide the m&m's.  This could be the most important stage of the entire process.  Then preheat the oven.  Again this is going to be for a fan oven, but I went for 160.

Sift together all the dry ingredients.  We have a set of digital scales and its great for learning numbers and the concept of greater than and less than.

Hand your child the egg and a whisk.  Depending on their age they might need a bit of help with cracking it, and you on stand by to fish out all the bits of shell.  Let them get on with whisking whilst you cream together the butter and sugar.  Pour in the egg and vanilla, and mix.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Beat the dry ingredients in to the wet a little at a time.  If you find its too runny add a little more flour.  You dont want something in between a frijj shake and playdoh.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Discuss what makes something a half and roughly divide the mix in to two bowls.  Add the cocoa powder in to one and mix through.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Spoon a little of the mixture on to a baking sheet.  These things expand more than you expect so leave some room if you're in charge or accept that you're going to have a giant mutated cookie explosion if you aren't.  Each bowl should make about 8 cookies.  It is not ok to lick the spoon at this stage.

Squash the cookie down a little bit and introduce the m&ms.  Yes, you can eat the brown ones.  Add 4 or 5 sweets in to each cookie and press down firmly.  For younger children its nice to have them count everything out.

Bake for about 15 minutes. 

It is now ok to lick the spoon.

And not a square bracket to be seen.  Geek out.