Halloween 2014

 Any excuse to dress up ourselves or the house and celebrate.   Halloween came early to our neighborhood and our house 2 weeks early !!  Well we started by celebrating Autumn and making our window display deliberately under pimped as Halloween would Jazz it up, with even more lights and candles, giving a lovely orange glow. Lots of gourds and a couple of fake crows one called Colin and one called Cawra.

 We did a little every day for a week, dressing the inside and outside of the house, the girls even have their own window to dress up as they please with Halloween lights and tinsel.  We even went to a pumpkin farm to look and choose our pumpkins, of which we have loads at the front of the house including BLUE pumpkins !!!  The front of the house is suitably tattified with fake grave stones, rats, an old dead tree we found in the meadow which we cobwebbed and added spiders.  For Halloween night we also have a fog machine to cast a spooky mist across our drive.   Both girls really enjoyed dressing the house and Sophie asked every day PLEEEEase can we do more Halloween.

 The weekend before Halloween we joined all our neighbors in the village hall for a massive party where everyone really went to town on their costumes really there was an amazing effort by people and we felt really under dressed.  Being new to the community we didnt know how far people went or even if they liked Halloween, but all the grown ups seemed more into it than the kids were and this just made for a more special night.  Sophie was taken by Fester from the Adams family as he kept making a light bulb glow in his mouth and she could not work out how it was done.

Ella won best kids costume as she was a baby skeleton and she was even more excited of the party than Sophie and couldnt wait to shake moves on the dance floor, which just made lots of people ohh and arr.  The party was really wonderful with a spooky pinata, lots of karaoke, raffles, cakes and the bonus of a bar for dutch courage to get up and sing.  We really can not wait for next year and the next party.  

However Halloween did not stop there the next night we decide to do a spooky glow in the dark hunt, think Easter hunt in reverse !! however there is the added danger of daddy monster creeping around in the dark making scary sounds and chasing the girls as they hunted for Chocolate goody bags in the dark marked out by glow sticks, pumkins and lots of glow balloons that blew around the garden flashing colours.  Our garden must have looked liked aliens had landed.

As we hide the chocolate 2 little noses were pressed really hard on the glass trying to see what we were up to.   Sophie did a lot of screaming as daddy scared her but Ella was brave and not scared at all and chased daddy, it wont be long before daddy changes that and has 2 girls running round the garden screaming in fear.  Sophie woke up the next day asking to do the Halloween hunt again so i know she loved it.

 Finally we have one last Halloween task to do this Friday and Sophie can not wait.   Friday will be the neighbourhood trick or treating and again we are surprised all our neighbours have already been planning a week in advance for the children who will come knocking,  I really in awe listing to them as a number of them sounded excited and were asking us to please knock on their door as they had loads of sweets to give out and i think that is something quiet unheard of in a neighbourhood most people shun Halloween, even Dotty a really lovely older lady has been asking us to please come and knock i really love where we live, it truly is a wonderful community and the people really do make the effort to make this a specail place.  3 months into our new life here and still every day i pinch myself.

Sloe time in the meadow

We have had our first frost and we are lucky to have our own sloes growing in the meadow so no more tromping round the footpaths hunting for sloes, dragging children through nettles and thistles.   Ella is getting to an age (16 months) where she is getting to an age where she loves to help, she watches and copies and as you can see very insistent to carry the basket and pick the berries.

After the girls helped pick the sloe's we spent time pricking them before added them to our yearly few bottles of gin, a bit of mothers ruin to help sooth the day for mum and dad when the kids finally go to bed.  I know your supposed to wait till Christmas to let them infuse but hey make a few extra bottles mean we can start drinking it a bit earlier Cheers!!

A few years back we also made some slow wine which you can find out how to do below

Mushrooms and Spiders

 This week i thought i would be a bit indulgent with my pictures and just focus on two things i have a lot of in the garden Mushrooms and Spiders, small and amazingly beautiful, well i think so anyway.

Baker Ross Christmas collection

Half term is coming and so is Christmas how how about an awesome box of treats to work on from Baker Ross who have now launching their Christmas collection.  How about some lovely handmade Christmas cards all come with wobbly eyes and foam shapes and letters.

Handmade gifts would also make lovely a present with these great trinket owls add your own colour and design before hiding your special trinkets inside for the wide eyed bird to look after 

 Sophie has been practicing her co ordination and dexterity with her fingers by making this super cute ladybird there is even a bumble bee and butterfly in this pom pom bug collection.

Other sticking creative fun can be found with these gem magnetic butterflies perfect to keep little fingers busy.  Or what about some flying dinosaurs gliders double fun with colouring then competitions to see who's dinosaur can fly the furthest 

 Another Christmas crafting activity we are working on are making our own Christmas sequin decorations to add lots of sparkle to the Christmas tree.

Now for your chance to win a selection of Baker Ross crafting goodies enter below


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pots for winter and spring

 We are full on bulb planting round the garden at the moment and have bought around 1000 bulbs and it is now way near enough for the garden but a good start to build on over the years, Next year i will bulk buy sacks of bulbs as it is much cheaper per bulb.  We have bought loads of varieties of bulbs but the basic types are tulips, daffodils, bluebells, snowdrops,crocus and muscari armeniacum, hoping for a good splash of colour come spring time.

We have a large front walk way and have made a start at trying to pretty it up with some pots.  We are trying to have pots that give blooms for a good 6 months through winter and spring and we have planned the layered pot approach.

Starting with the lower layer we placed tulips bulbs then soil then daffodil bulbs more soil followed by the muscari armeniacum, we topped the pot off with a selection of winter pansies and cyclamen.  Here is madam hitching a ride in the trolley as we took the pots from the potting area to the front door for display.

 My other little helper was on bed duty using the best tool i bought for planting the many bulb, my bulldog garden spear, making planting quicker.  Looking forward to Spring now and seeing all new flowers after our hard work.

Rocky road

 It seems like an age since we have done any baking together, what with the big move and settling into our new home.  So it was time to dust off our pinnies and open the baking cupboard to see what we could make.  With Ella's love of chocolate and Sophie love of marshmallows Rocky road sprang to mind.

we did not have any mini marshmallows but never fear Sophie got chopping with some scissors and chopped some up followed by bashing some digestives into little bits.   After we melted the hot chocolate mix and poured this over the goodies in the tray and sprinkling with candy stars this was left it set before chopping up and serving.  Double yum from both Ella and Sophie.


150g mini marshmallows
150g digestives broken
100g Brazil nuts roughly chopped

place all of the above into the greased tray

125g butter
3 tbsp golden syrup
150g dark chocolate
150g milk chocolate

Melt all the above and pour over the biscuits and marshmallows add sprinkles over the top and allow to set in the fridge for 2 hours.

Celebrating Autumn

We are continuing to celebrate Autumn at home last week we went on an Autumn walk and made autumn crowns and this week we are decorating the house, we cant resist making a wreath for the front door and used some of the acorns we foraged for, as well as some pretty fabric maple and oak leaves to add autumnal colours .  Sophie is getting a dab hand at wreath making now, even with the difficultly of an excited Ella wanting to join in by running off with all our crafting bits.  We even made a second small wreath for one of the kitchen windows and to add a bit of warmth and sparkle we mixed rattan light balls to natural oak leaves, ivy and maple florist wraps to lay across the window sill.

Large compost ambitions

This week we have been working on our compost area, as we have a sizable plot to look after we need a large compost area to help us deal with waste and make mulch and new compost to feed our beds.

We made the compost bins using long stake and attaching panels along the stakes,  We made a number of these sections then attached all the sections together to create the bins.  This is Ali's large wood work project and his two little helpers.

We wanted walk in compost bins so we could rotovate the waste and have the space to turn and airate the compost before tipping it into the second bin.

I have since bought Ali a rotavator as he was strimming the compost before which did work but the rotavate blitzes through the garden waste a lot faster.  Did you know a compost needs 60% carbon and 40% green waste so it is really handy for recycling as household paper and card as well as garden waste, Ali even wants to try and recycle some old clothes as he saw Monty Don doing this recently.

Finally i saw this lovely hydrangea and wanting to grow flowers in our back garden which is currently a large football pitch thought this was a really lovely plant to add some colour to garden and grow nice and big to eat up some of the green,  i totally blame Annie and her post from last week.

Finally i caught these two walking around down at the bottom of the meadow pics are a bit blurry as i had to use my 500 lens and they were 1/3 of an acre from me, but i think they are handsome chaps and its really nice having them roaming around. 

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