New Year, Bargains and Excesses!

We are back after our winter break and would like to wish all our readers a very Happy new year full of new adventures. Just thought we would give you an update of a few of our adventures over the last week or two. Our baby Christmas / Yule tree has been outside now for a couple of weeks and is looking much better.... hopefully it will continue to grow all year ready to be brought in again for next year.

The decorations have been very carefully packed away... If you follow our blogs you will know that we hand make a lot of decorations and each one contains so much love and so many memories of past seasons and the children growing up that we would absolutely hate to lose any of them.

As an extremely thrifty living family this careful packing also saves us much money each year... Talking about thrifty living, we have used the January sales to stock up on anything we may need for next Christmas at just a fraction of the price!

We have bought the crackers and all of the wrapping paper for next year for bargain prices many things were just a few pence, plus some rolls of paper which could also double up as other occasion wrapping paper, for example stars can be used as birthday or congratulation wrapping paper too. Extra thrifty bonus points! No need to worry or stress about these things throughout the year or in the run up to Christmas now.

Another good money saving tip is to look out for bargain foods after Christmas... most supermarkets are wanting to offload their seasonal excesses very cheaply. One of the things we bought were these parsnips for just 3p a bag, I have to admit we bought lots... more than 10 bags. Well, we do eat a lot of vegetables and most of them have been prepared for the freezer, ideal to grab a handful for a casserole or just for roast parsnips. We have also been enjoying parsnip crisps too.

My freezer is also now full of carrots too, apart from the ones used for carrot stick snacks and of course carrot cake. Not only has this saved us a lot of money, it has also stopped a lot of food being discarded and ending up in landfill. As a zero food waste family this means a lot to us!

For the whole festive season we have been enjoying the beautiful flowers on my rhipsalis pilocarpa cactus plant, it's like looking up a lots of tiny white stars. We are also looking forward to the new season of growing especially with the arrival of our new seeds.

So once again we wish you a very happy new year and good bargain hunting!

Natural wreaths

Following on from my last post showing how we made the wreath bases, I promised to add a few photos when we had finished decorating them. We prefer the natural look and usually prune a little overgrown greenery from our gardens to decorate with, which has the added bonus of being completely free.

This is our front door wreath, as you can see it has a completely green and natural look. I have used clippings from holly, ivy, pine and added a few pinecones. Some twigs have just been woven straight into the twig ring bases and some things, mainly the pinecones, have been wired on to hold them still.

I have also made a few very simple ones to add to the back of some of our internal doors, as you can see I have woven in a small piece of pine and stuck a couple of pinecones on with a hot glue gun. I'm not sure yet whether to add a little snow spray.

These ring bases can be decorated as elaborate or as simply as you choose and the bases can be kept and used year after year with a new decor each time. Very simple, very quick and very thrifty.

Twig wreath and star bases

Following on from our theme of thrifty or free homemade Christmas / yule decorations we have been making the bases for our wreaths and stars. As keen gardeners we tend to save any useful looking clippings and my husband had recently pruned our cherry tree which has beautiful reddish tinted bark, so we set to work creating the bases to woven wreaths seen above.

This is the pile of twigs I started with... when freshly cut, the twigs are still very pliable and can quite easily be bent and twisted into shape. To form the rings I first took one stick and bent it into a ring shape, then held it in place with one hand whilst intertwining the next stick around the ring. This is quite fiddly and it is possible to tie the first stick into a ring shape if you'd prefer but I always find that once you've woven in a couple of sticks it holds it's shape by itself.

Once it holds it's own shape you can then decide on how many sticks to weave in, you could go for a simple ring with just a few sticks or something much thicker and more substantial.

 We have gone for something in between as you can see in our first photograph... all ready to decorate for the season now. These bases have cost us nothing to make just using a few clippings from the garden and a little time, I usually decorate our wreaths with the natural look of fresh holly, ivy and pinecones from our gardens.

The stars are also easily made from twigs, cut five to the same size, lay them out in a star shape and tie off the corners. These can also be decorated to fit your decor.

I'll be back to post a couple of photos to show you the finished results when the wreaths have been decorated. After Christmas / Yule these wreath bases can be saved until they are needed again, I usually strip them back of all the fresh foliage and pack them away ready to be redecorated on their next outing.

Pine Cone Garland

I recently posted some photographs of our pine cone garlands on social media and was inundated with questions on how to make these and many people commented on how beautiful the finished garlands looked. So I have decided to post a little guide on our very thrifty and natural Autumn, Yule or Christmas garland decorations.

My husband and I decided over 12 years ago that we would embrace thrifty living... no more shop bought decorations for us!!... Everything we wanted we would make as thriftily as possible. Not only has this saved us so much money, unpacking our lovingly, handmade Christmas decorations every year holds so many memories.

I absolutely love the simplicity and natural beauty of these pine cone garlands, the one above was made for Autumn but I also have one that was made for Christmas a few years ago which has a few more sparkles.

First you will need to collect some pine cones, we usually grab a few throughout the year as we find them. The amount of pine cones you need will depend on the length of garland required, I'm using seven for my mantle piece. I usually leave them outside for a little while to ensure that any critters safely leave the pine cones.

To make the fixings we are using screw eyelets, they are really cheap only a few pence for a bag. I have managed to screw these directly into the end of the pine cone by hand but it is a little fiddly, so if you need help starting your hole, a very thin drill bit may give you a start.

 Next just thread your pine cones onto your chosen string or ribbon, we are using natural jute string here but ribbons work just as well and there is less movement of the pine cones. You may notice if using string that all the pine cones slip to the middle when you try to create a swag in your garland, you could tie them on to keep them still... but I have another remedy for this...

A little trick which allows you to easily fix them in place but still allows them to be movable if you need to change the position of a pine cone. Thread the string through your eyelet and then thread it through again, as seen in the above photo... so you create a loop.

This simple act gives your pine cone a little more resistance so that you can move it but it doesn't slip down the string.

These garlands can be kept natural or decorated for Christmas with a little glitter, paint or fake snow... the best part is it has literally taken a few minutes and cost a few pennies to make, and this beautiful garland can be reused every year.

Happy New Year 2017

Just a quick post to wish you all a belated happy new year, I hope you have got the year off to a good start. We have all been quite poorly with the flu over the Christmas season so were out of action a little bit and everyone has been resting up well to recover, however we are definitely much improved now. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas season.

The children have spent their recovering time enjoying all their presents including the many games, lego sets, education sets and craft kits to learn and complete to name a few things. They have also been catching up on some very interesting documentaries and are currently enjoying the royal institute Christmas science lectures.

I was able to make good use of the elderberry syrup made earlier in the year as we all had the flu and it has been lovely to enjoy all the homemade and home grown produce over the Christmas season. This year we made our own pickled onions grown by my husband at the allotment, these tasted absolutely amazing and we will definitely be making them again. Our redcurrant jelly also went down well.

The new year is bringing exciting projects and new challenges, we are expanding our plant collections and planting many more interesting things from seed. For me this means extending my cactus and succulent collection and starting off these new seeds when the weather warms up.

So as you can see we are still here and I hope to be resurrecting this blog more as time goes on, adding more crafts, science and other learning projects with an added taste of our lifestyle too... Happy New Year from our whole family at Lightly Enchanted.

Red Currant Jelly

We have a large redcurrant bush in our garden and this year it has given us a bumper crop of berries, over two kilos and still going. So we have been thinking of extra things to make to preserve the berries into the winter.

Looking into the history of redcurrant jelly, I found that it was traditionally used in England as an accompaniment for Sunday roasts and Christmas dinner before the cranberry version was introduced from America and became the norm.

I decided to just make a small batch of redcurrant jelly, mostly to keep for the festive season and my husband has used the remaining berries for a batch of homemade wine, which I have to say smells amazing. The recipe I have used is a very simple one just using an equal amount of berries to sugar, the same as I use for all the jams and jellies I make.

First clean your berries, there is no need to de-stalk them as we will be straining the mixture through a jelly bag later. A sieve and a piece of muslin will do if you do not own a jelly bag. I have used 500 grams of berries and just covered them in the pan with water as you can see above.

Boil the berries for a few minutes until they soften using a masher or back of a spoon to help release the juices. Then allow to cool for a while before straining the mixture through the jelly bag to remove any stalks and pips. Try not to squeeze the jelly bag while it is straining as this may give you a cloudy jelly, some people prefer to leave this over night.

Once you have your strained mixture it should be a beautiful clear jewel colour, you can then measure how much fluid you have to see how much sugar you need to add.

** Remember**  if you have 500 ml of fluid you will need to add 500 grams of sugar ... keep this measurement like for like and you can't really go wrong. ( keep to either both metric or both imperial)

Return your fruit and sugar mixture to the pan and bring to a boil, stirring all the time, to get your setting point, this will probably only take about 5 to 10 minutes. You can check if your jelly has reached a setting point by placing a small drop onto a cold plate, after a couple of minutes this drop will wrinkle when you push your finger into it.

Then simply pour into your sterilised jars and allow to cool.... I will need to add a sticker to mine saying do not open until Christmas dinner or there may not be any left.

Happy New Year 2016

Just a quick post to wish you all a belated Happy New Year, give you a quick update on a few of our activities coming up to the Christmas season and to post a photograph of the handmade gifts I made for my children this year.

 I usually crochet the children an extra gift to add into their Christmas stockings but this year I decided to get out my sewing machine and surprise them with a soft character toy each from their favourite computer game or cartoon. I made my son an Enderman from Minecraft and my daughter a Lumpy space princess from adventure time. They certainly got more than a few squeals of delight on Christmas morning.

Just before Christmas we went to the Harry Potter Warner Brother studio tour and had an absolutely wonderful time. We got to see the Hogwarts Express which arrived earlier in the year and had the pleasure of seeing Hogwarts in the snow with all the sets decorated for Christmas. An amazing day for adults and children alike!

We also took advantage of the last sunny days of the year to go beach combing on a nearly deserted beach and had a picnic by the sea. Using some of the time to clear a bag of rubbish from the shoreline as we usually do.

To finish the day we visited the local sea life centre, a perfect way to relax in the lead up to the Christmas season.

So as you can see we are still here and I hope to be resurrecting this blog, adding more crafts, science and other learning projects with an added taste of our lifestyle too... Happy New Year from our whole family at Lightly Enchanted.

Goodbye 2014... Hello 2015

Just a short post to wish you all a Happy new year and to say goodbye to 2014. We have put quite a few things off recently due to a death in the family, blogging has been one of those things but we have still been muddling through in a quiet way and we are now very much looking forward to 2015 and all the new challenges it may bring.

We still made some Christmas decorations for our home, but this year things seem to have taken a simple, more natural approach. Both my husband and I have made some Christmas baubles, complete with pyrography, from a section of an old branch.

I made this pine cone garland, another very simple, natural craft that looked so beautiful on the fireplace. I am definitely thinking of making some more of these next year.

Another one of my favourite additions this year was the snowflake mobile. My husband hung a twisted willow branch, that had been sprayed slightly with silver glitter to give it a frosty feel, in the window. We then hung snowflake decorations and crystals from it to give a feel of snow. It was very difficult to get good photos of this but it looked amazingly magical.

My husband helped the children to make these wooden snowmen using offcuts of wood, which they chose to paint. So most of the decorations we made this year had a wooden feel to them.

Well that's some of the things we have been doing at this very busy time, all that's left to do is wish you all a very Happy new year!

New Year and a Return

We are just returning from our Christmas break and hope you have all had a good start to the year. Every year we try to hand make a few extra stocking fillers for the children and I thought I would share some of the things we made here quickly. Last year I made little monsters, this year my crochet took a slightly different turn.

My daughter is a huge fan of the Despicable me films so I decided to crochet a minion, she was absolutely thrilled on Christmas morning.

I also had a go at making a replica of Edith's hat. Edith is one of the little girls from the film. My son is more interested in games so a Boo was made from the Mario games.

The children love these little extras, my husband also hand made some extra stocking fillers that were amazing. He made a beautiful wooden ring toss game I have put links in if you would like to take a look. A lovely tower of hanoi puzzle and large wooden dice, he also cut out all the parts for a bird house and wrapped them with instructions for the children to make for themselves, which made a good alternative craft present to be put up in our nature garden.

We also made some catnip mice for new our kittens, can't forget presents for them. I would like to introduce our newest members here at lightly enchanted Crow and Tesla.

This was a photograph from when they first arrived, they are a little larger now. Crow was named after two things, the bird is a spiritual messenger and also a character from my husbands favourite series in which a crow was the nickname for a member of the nights watch. Tesla is named after one of our favourite genius inventors, Nikola Tesla, the master of lightning. They have both been exploring the garden a lot lately and are learning how to get along with the chickens.

Happy New Year

I know it's a belated Happy New Year as I have been taking some much needed time off to spend with my family, but I thought I would send you all good wishes for this year and share some of the things we made over the Yule season.

As we had been studying life on the home front during WWII, we thought it would be nice to try and hand make some of the small stocking presents for the children. During the war many children received home made gifts at Christmas time and we thought this would make a change from the usual gifts. My husband made some beautifully turned spinning tops and cup and ball sets and I thought I would have a go at amigurumi, a sort of miniature crochet toy.

There are many patterns online but I had a huge problem following them and in the end I gave up and made up my own simply based on the style of a hat I made for my daughter last year. Not bad really for a first attempt, I have tried to give the little monsters a character matching one of the children's interests. A little ballerina and an alien, I had plans for more things but totally ran out of time.

We even made Christmas gifts for the cat, he has a little felt bird on a stick complete with feathers and catnip.

It has been very cold here the last couple of weeks and the children have spent a lot of time playing in the snow, they have also conducted so many experiments I have lost count. It has been cold enough to freeze the water in the chicken feeder on a daily basis, giving us beautiful ice bowls which have been saved in the freezer to be used as lanterns.

This is the smallest one with a candle inside, so beautiful... definitely worth saving. I hope you are all having as interesting start to the new year as we are.

Recycled Tin Christmas Decorations

The children love to try their hand at many different crafts and this year we thought we would have a go at a recycling craft and some metal punching. The metal circles were cut from the bottom of the cardboard tubes containing snacks often eaten at this time of year, in fact I saved these ones from last year.

The photograph above shows the equipment we gathered together to make our decorations and the metal disc. You could use a hammer and large nail for this but as we had small children keen to try, my husband put together a child friendly tool for small hands. This comprises of an old knitting needle fixed into a handle. If you look closely at the metal disc you will see I have marked the central point for my design. We have drawn on all of the designs or punched free hand but if you want to you could stick on a pattern to copy.

You just line up your pointed tool or nail onto your line and hit it with a hammer... very simple. I have moved along the lines tapping and making a pattern, in this case a snowflake. Remember to have a spare piece of wood under your metal disc to stop you going right through and leaving holes in your table.

The children loved this craft especially being let loose with a hammer and it got rather noisy at the table. My daughter also added some letters to her disc with a letter punch set.

These are the finished decorations, we have added some string to hang them with. They are quite shiny and catch the light beautifully hanging on the Christmas tree. I might hang some of them in the garden in the spring to use them to scare the birds away from our peas as they reflect so well.

The patterns could be as simple or intricate as you choose, I think the children have managed to make some lovely decorations from recycling something that usually just gets thrown away.