secret message holder and picnic plans

Saturday morning I made a secret message holder for H using an old key chain and a pet i.d. that had been kicking around the house forever. I typed the note and gave the secret key chain to Harrison wrapped in a bit of tissue paper. He has spent all weekend twisting the pet i.d. capsule open and shut and reading the note 'Dr. Horrible is my hero.' over and over again. I told him he can type his own secret note or the location of a secret hiding place and we will play spies. Or possibly list the secret location of food stores in the event of an alien invasion or zombie apocalypse. A simple thing to make a boy happy.

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picnic plan update: Its been a manic few weeks here with awards, organizing the school summer fair and more things than I can remember to blog at this moment in time. A few interested bloggers, twitter-ers have said that they are free to come play on Mondays or Wednesdays so I'm going to call the shots and say:

Picnic Blog/Tweet Up

Where: Chatsworth Grounds

(meeting near the car park on the grass near the trees leading up to the shops)

When: Monday the 8th of August

Time: From 11am-4pm (ish)

What to bring: a picnic, the kids, craft work in progress bag if you want to sit and sew/knit/sketch while picnic-ing and chatting. Cake works too but is not essential as Chatsworth has excellent cake and coffee.

Nothing is set in stone I figured this would be as flexible as possible with many different people coming from all over the place. I just thought it would be great to have a little get together. I may possibly be mad, as I like many of you I'm an anti-social introvert, But I have met quite a few bloggers and twitter people and so far we have all got on like a house on fire.

Any Questions?

Spider Jar

spiders caught in a jar

a Mini Halloween Tutorial

ingredients:

1x medium jar

a small amount of fake spider webbing

2x plastic spiders

instructions:

*Turn the jar upside down and place the webbing so that it goes up half the jar.

*Place your spiders on the webbing and then screw the lid back on the jar. You can add a small stick or some autumn leaves to make the jar more effective.

a super simple little project that kids of any age will love to do.. it costs pennies to make and recycles a jar. Harrison took great glee in showing the jar to Matt when he got home.

a little faery dust

faery, faerie, fairy.... whatever

Ingredients:
glitter
mini jam jars (the kind that you get when you order a scone with jam and cream or found at a hotel breakfast bar)
a handful of buttons
a few scraps of fabric
twine (a hair tie or rubber band will work too)
small piece of card
alphabet stamps
ink
scissors
1 x child

Instructions:
*Make sure the jam jar is clean (glitter and jam not so great actually). Fill the jam jar with glitter and put the lid on tightly (you can tape it down if you hate glitter as much as I do)

*Use scissors (or pinking shears) to cut the fabric into a circle to cover the lid of the jar. (I used a slightly larger jar as a template)

*Tie the fabric around the jar using the twine, (hair tie, rubber band).

*Cut a small piece of card into a tag shape and let your child stamp faery dust, magic dust, glitter (ignore the temper tantrum that follows when you say to said child that they have missed a letter,blurred the ink, or no they cannot have the glitter back it is it the fairy dust pot.....then sit and re-stamp another piece of card because you are fussy and anal about crafts and the letters must be perfect)

*Have a mini breakdown when said child stomps off in a rage, leaving you threatening to cancel Christmas and call Santa .....after eating all the chocolate in the advent calender.

*Thread some buttons onto a piece of thread and tie around the jar.

*Add the tag and there you go one lovely little faerie dust decoration/gift (and a way to hide the evil glitter in plain sight. because there is nothing more evil than a child with a bottle of glue and a pot of glitter)

*send annoying demonic offspring to help Daddy while you have a cup of coffee (or something stronger) and steal the chocolate meant for Christmas Day.

(alternatively you could fill them with edible glitter, but I couldn't find any round these parts)

if only it made kids be good, calm, and comatose

Tile Magnet Tutorial

Stone tile fridge magnets

Materials
5cm x 5cm stone tiles (they come in sheets from your local tile or DIY shop)
acrylic paints
magnets (as many as you have tiles)
1x tube superglue (or all purpose crafting glue)
1x can varnish spray

Step one: remove a tile from the sheet of backing it is stuck to. Clean and leave to dry out.

Step two: sketching your design. I sketched directly onto the tile, but you can draw your design onto some tracing paper and transfer it to your tile. Alternatively if you don’t draw or sketch you can used rubber stamps to stamp on a design.

Step three: paint your design using acrylic paints. I used them because I normally use acrylics in my art, they dry quickly and are pretty durable.

Step four: I sprayed my tiles with an acrylic varnish (2 coats)

Step 5: glue the magnet to the back of the tile. (the magnets I bought came with adhesive on the back but it was not nearly strong enough to hold the tile up. I know because I tried it and the tiles clattered down to the counter top)

I'm really happy with how they turned out, and seeing as there are several more sheets of tiles in the garage I plan to make some more tiles up as Christmas presents. I may even rope H into helping by getting him to make some Jelly Bean People magnets. I hope you find this tutorial fun and helpful.

p.s. if you look closely at the last picture you will see that they are indeed my kitchen tile leftovers. The noticeboard is a metal topped shelf from Ikea.

Peg Dolls

"Hi there. I'd wave but as you can see I'm only a peg."

Today H and I did some crafting together, its the first time in ages we have done some crafting that didn't a.) end in tears (usually mine) or B.) end with play dough stuck in the carpet or paint between the floorboards.

I bought a packet of wooden craft pegs from the Works, but any wooden pegs will do. , I had the intention of gathering together some scraps of fabric for clothing from the Charity shop, but never remembered so we got out "Mummy's special paints" and made some painted peg dolls. I'm quite enamoured of the little ginger one, he looks quite cheeky with his dinosaur t-shirt. H made two peg people but lost interested when I said the paint had to dry before he could put a face on with a pen. So H wandered off to play jedi-cowboy-alien-chef-pilot-inventor while I finished painting mine.

peg dolls

H and I still had fun making peg people and I think I will get another packet of pegs sometime soon and make more peg people, I may go whole hog and acquire some fabric scraps to make some peg doll clothes. I might even see if I can pin down H and get him to draw faces on his pegs, they are a bit scary without faces... but then again I'm like that, I think I watched way to many episodes of the Twilight Zone when I was little.

H's peg people

Jelly Bean People- Kids Crafts

H's Mr. Blue Jelly Bean


H's Jelly Bean People

You will Need:

paper

poster paints

little fingers

a pen

These little Jelly Bean people are quick and easy to make, and a good way to occupy little ones. Spread some paint onto a plate have the kids press there fingers into it and then finger print the paper one print at a time. Once the paint has dried you can then draw faces, arms and legs.

H had a ball painting them, and then drawing limbs and faces and constructing stories as to who his jelly bean people are. My favourites are Mr. Blue Jelly Bean, Mr. Wobbly Legs the Tall, and Jelly Dog which I think looks more like a rat but I am apparently wrong.

Reindeer Food

Reindeer Food (AKA Maple Cinnamon Granola)

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups porridge oats
½ cup flaked almonds
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
1 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
¼ cup raisins
¼ cup dried cranberries (sweetened)

Pre-heat the oven to 300
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, mix thoroughly and place in a single layer on a non-stick baking try ( if you don’t have non-stick then you will need to grease the baking tray with butter or oil). Place in the oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Every 5 minutes you will need to open the oven door and stir the granola mixture. Cool and add the raisins and dried cranberries.

The granola can be eaten on its own, or with milk for breakfast, sprinkled over yogurt or ice-cream, and of course left out on a dish for Santa’s reindeer on Christmas Eve.

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A little help for those who don't use cups as measurments. Oh and for the record I just use normal everyday teaspoon and tablespoons for measurments, less hassel than attemting to locate the measuring ones. Which I think have migrated to H's toy box.

U.S. to Metric Conversion Table

1/5 teaspoon = 1 ml

1 teaspoon = 5 ml

1 tablespoon = 15 ml

1 fluid oz. = 30 ml

1/5 cup = 50 ml

1/4 cup = 60 ml

1/2 cup = 120 ml

1 cup = 240 ml

2 cups (1 pint) = 470 ml

4 cups (1 quart) = .95 liter

4 quarts (1 gal.) = 3.8 liters

I hope that its of some help.
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Cooks Notes: The recipe is mine based on several granola recipes that I found on the Internet and was quite disgusted by the amount of salt, and veg table oil used in them. In the end I ignored the recipes I had found and experimented with what I thought of as Christmas-y tastes: dried cranberries, cinnamon and brown sugar. It smelled Devine and tasted great, I kept nibbling on it as i added the dried fruit and baked the second half of the batch. I gave the jar to Frizbe as her DD1 helped make it with H. They had fun mixing it and especially that it was edible and reindeer food at the same. A lot better than the kind made with glitter.

Dried Oranges

Drying Orange Slices

Choose fruit that is in good condition and not too ripe. Slice the oranges as thin as you possibly can, and as straight, if you cant cut straight, and I can't, then jsut do the best you can and tell everyone you were going for a more rustic and organic look.

Place the sliced oranges between towels and remove as much moisture as possible by patting gently.

Place the orange slices in a single layer, I placed them on the oven rack but I would suggest using baking racks on a cookie sheet.

Dry in a 150 degree oven for approximately 3 or 4 hours. Check every 1/2 hour.

If the fruit appears to be turning brown the oven is too hot. Shut off for 15 minutes and start again. Turn fruit over if the edges begin to curl. When dry the fruit slices should be pliable.

I threaded ribbon through the orange slices and added a bundle of cinnamon sticks to create tree decorations with H. He almost made one before wandering off to do something more entertaining than making Christmas decorations with me. The dried oranges can be added to potpourri, wreaths, garland, ornaments, and gift tags.