Lakeland Fairy tale Cottage mould

Well i have to say i think we have got something we will cherish for a very long time and is a lot a fun to do, it is the Fairy tale Cottage mould  available from Lakeland.

 This is so enchanting and so easy to do and you can just go creative mad with little ones and have a great afternoon of one on one Christmas fun.

Kingsbury square fair

 December and I'm doing an outside Christmas fair i must be mad !! i did this one last year and i was cold this year was a lot colder even though the sun was shinning and by the mid morning i couldn't feel my toes and fingers even though i had brought a hot water bottle with me.

Pregnant again.

Here is a baby scan for all the Grannies and Aunties in our family to see the next bundle of havoc to join our family in the new year.

Christmas hits the house

We have a tradition in our house that the first weekend of December all the Decs come out and the house starts to get ready for Christmas, tinsel, lights and baubles everywhere.  In the last 10 years we have been total been tree snobs and bought real Christmas trees.  

Magic Reindeer food

Getting ready for Christmas we thought we would do a small job to help Santa and his reindeer's find their way to our house.  Every year we have put out a carrot for Rudolf but this year we have decided to feed all of the reindeer, and we have made some magic reindeer food.  According to Soph this is best done in ones underpants !!!

 
  This is such a nice simple task to do and all you need are some oats and different glitters to add the magic and sparkle to the reindeer food.

First of all add some oats and then let your little one go to town shaking and sprinkling in some lovely silver glitter and maybe sing the Jingle bells song too.  Its quite good to add some bigger glitters so that really shows up as very twinkly and we added some lovely silver stars, of course after each type of glitter that was added there was much stirring to make sure the magic was well combined with the oats.  Finally we put our special magic reindeer food to a nice pot and put a ribbon on it and Sophie draw a lovely picture of Rudolf.

   

On Christmas eve we plan to sprinkle the magic food on the lawn so Santa and the reindeer can see the pretty sparkles from the sky and fly in for a nibble.

 

Baker Ross Christmas crafting kits

Having more fun and getting ready for Christmas we are playing with Baker Ross with a selection of fab crafting activities 

Peg Planes

 We are thought would try our crafty fingers at making some peg planes, which are simple enough to do for little hands.

Venturing slowly into retail

Well im starting to slowly venture out into retail and i am so happy to have met a wonder lady from the Waddesdon Deli company Wesscot i was really taken with her kindness as she let me stock my items foc as she explain she knew how hard it was for small business to get going and she did me a lovely display in her tea room and loved my cupcake soaps, she even placed once on her main counter to trick her regular customers into thinking it was real, What a Hoot!

Very simple Christmas gift tags

Ok so this is very simple but its great for recycling art works from little hands into more personnel gift tags, plus adding a lot of glitter to the paint adds sparkle to the tags.

Stir it up sunday

Well its the 25th of November and its stir it up Sunday which for those that don't know its when you make your Christmas puddings and Christmas cakes.  I had already made my Christmas pudding the year before as i made two and heard that if you save one over the year the flavours of the Christmas pudding just get better with age so we will be testing this out this year.

Renaissance Christmas fair

The weekend passed and i was at the Renaissance Christmas fair, which is a charity day care centre for adults over the age of 18 with mental health diagnosis, the fair was helping to raise funds for the centre. It was a good day trade was a bit slow i think this was down to the weather and perhaps the location but it was not down to advertising as these guys did a great job at putting the word out, how cool i made second billing! It was was lovely to see familiar faces holding stalls and coming to visit.

Pretty cuffs

I think the whole crafting creative thing is rubbing off on Sophie as she came up with her own craft today, Toilet roll cuffs.

Fireworks night

Well as most of England celebrated Fireworks last night and at the weekend our evening also went with a bang as we had our annual fireworks party in the back garden.  As always Unka (uncle) came over and was adored by Sophie the entire time, and he even got a make over from Soph as she stuck lots and lots of different coloured gems to his head.

Sainsbury's Taste the difference range

We got a rather nice parcel today and it put a smile on my face when i opened it as i had been running round trying to clear up Halloween and hadn't had a chance for breakfast or a sit down.

Halloween night

 

Halloween is here and daddy is not and we are missing his input on pumpkin carving and jumping out on us behind doors and doing his scary sounds round the house.

Baker Ross Halloween

This week we are teaming up with Baker Ross to explore all things that go bump in the night, not only that Baker Ross have got 50% off selected Halloween goodies to help your spooky parties go with a scream.

Our first treat was a set of dark and mysterious skeletons supplied with some scratching sticks and ribbons.

Sophie and I got busy scratching away having fun making lots of patterns and shapes on these dark characters until we showed off lots of lovely rainbow patterned skeletons.

Yogurt pot pumpkin lights

We were munching our way through some pots of Activia yogurt  and i noticed what a great shape pot it was just perfect for making pumpkins, so the craft cupboard doors were opened and Sophie and i got to work.

Friars Square Craft market

Saturday saw the first of the Craft fairs kick off and what a great start for a great cause, one of my crafty buddies did a pop up craft fair for CLIC Sargent and raised over £700 for the charity how wonderful.

Lakeland Fairy projects

We are having so much fun today creating Dolly Peg Fairies and Princesses from Lakeland

Sophie's first concert

For Daddy as he is working away at the moment and he missed Sophie's first concert for the Harvest festival  where she learnt with her class 5 songs in only 2 and a bit weeks.  Jump 5 mins in for the singing part

Banoffee Cupcake soaps

My latest creation drying on the racks waiting to be ready i am feeling happy as i have a few orders in from a gift shop as well a potential celebrity chef who i am seeing next week and i have made these especially for her.

Fourth Clandestine cake club

 Today saw the Fourth gathering of the Clandestine cake club with a theme around bountiful harvest and we had 8 wonderful cakes to taste.

Making mozzerella

Sophie and I are busy in the kitchen making mozzarella  if you remember our last cheese making exercise was really easy and very tasty home made goats cheese.

Having the chance to make some of our favorite cheese was most welcome and teaming up with Lakeland we got a fab kit.  Most importantly the kit was a recipe book, a thermometer, rennet, cheese moulds and some cheese cloth too, Although the moulds and cloth are not for mozzarella.

We started out by measuring out the milk and heating this to 32c using the thermometer to gauge the temperature we added lemon juice and rennet and the warm milk curdled in front of our eyes much to the amusement of Sophie who has renamed this to lemon cheese.

After 30 mins waiting for the rennet and milk to do its job the mixture had turned into curds and whey where this was then cut into 2cm cubes and drained out into a sieve and leave for 15 mins and then turn, adding some salt to give the cheese some flavour.  it is very important not to stir or mix the curds up to much.

 Then its time to form the mozzarella its a good idea to have a jug of cold water to hand.  We divided the curds into portions, ours didn't come out cubed curds just curds and then cooked them in the microwave for 30 secs, we saw all the protein break down and more liquid come out which we tipped away, we then had to microwave again for another 20 secs to be able to knead the cheese into balls

As we formed the cheese into balls we squeezed out a little more liquid and we kneaded and squished the cheese and it became drier then we dropped it into the jug of water where it set we then chilled this in the fridge before eating

This was a really simple fun task with surprisingly little effort involved in making something very tasty to eat.  The cheese tasted very cheesy which surprised us but what else could it taste of and we also melted some on a pitta bread pizza to see how it tasted cooked and it was thumbs up all round.

Blackberry and basil soap

The house is smelling lovely as i made a batch of Blackberry and basil soap i tried a swirling on the bottom part of the soap but i think i need more practice apart from that i am happy with my soap blackberries i made and i'm loving playing around with colour.

Strawberry cupcake soaps

Afternoon tea ..... well with a twist these are my new creation soaps which are a strawberry cupcake and i have made realistic strawberries to sit in the whipped cream on top of the cup cake base and of course a good twinkling of glitter.

Dessert anyone?

Feeling pleased as punch with my new creation curing on the racks, Cookies and cream soap.  This has chocolate chip cookie dough base piled with whipped cream and topped with chocolate cookie and a touch of fairy glitter for some sparkle.  Looks good enough to eat but i wouldn't recommend it.  I really need a particular mould as any soapers out there will notice im suffering from a bit of spread, but for my first attempt with a mould i knew would do this it isn't to bad so ill have to save some pennies and get a better mould.

Baker Ross Pens and Dough

This month we are very happy to have teamed up with Baker Ross and have some creative fun and play with some of their wonderful goodies 

Dairyland and misty Mawgan Porth

Our adventures continue with a trip to Dairyland  by the sounds of it, it did not sound too promising but we were pleasently surprised as it was a great place to take a little one for the day there was so much to do.

First day at school

I have found a nostalgic picture of Sophie on her first day back to school I am so proud of her and she looked really great in her smart new uniform and she was excited to go and couldn't wait to play and meet all the other children. We met her lovely teacher and the class was a hive of activity she settled in quickly and we had to go and find her to say goodbye, she wondered why we were going but when we explained she was perfectly fine and the only person that had a wobble was me !!  My that year past by really fast followed by the next one too.

A new school year is looming and as we are moving away to start a life a new with a new school my mind is already thinking about the shopping list of school uniform i will need to buy, not only has she grown but it is a colour change too.   

I bought lots of the bits for her first years School uniform from Asda from the George range initially lead in because of the fabulous 150 day guarantee school uniform range, great quality and value for money.  I was not disappointed the uniforms were so great they actually lasted 2 years of Sophie's School career. Wowzers that is great.  So now i cant wait to take Sophie shopping and get her excited about her new school with a bit of retail therapy.  There are such a great range of pinafores too but then Stylish Sophie saw these cute Hello Kitty range so she can be one of the cool girls.  The prices are so fantastic that i am really tempted to get Sophie a lovely Gingham dress for the last of the Summer term to help keep her cool on those hot days how can you not at only £4.  I really love how Asda think of both mums budget and the kids practicality and style, We cant wait for the first day of school!!