Goodbye Old Friend

 Yesterday we lost a dear, sweet old friend... our beautiful cat, taken quite suddenly due to an illness. It has been quite a shock as he was loved so much and he will be greatly missed by everyone.

Gone but never forgotten.... finally at peace and free from pain.... always in our hearts.
                             
                               Goodbye Greebo.... we will miss you.

Magpie Monday latest

It has been quite a while since I managed a magpie Monday post, but we do still  regularly frequent the charity shops that are nearby, even though the prices seem to have shot up in the last year or so. The first item is the most expensive thing we have ever bought from a charity shop, my husband came home with it one day and on telling me it cost £30, nearly sent me into a panic but it is now a much loved family member... a rather loud one!

The wood needs a good waxing but the clock works perfectly and chimes on the hour without fail. I had been wanting one for quite a while, since we found out it was impossible to fix my Grandfather's old one, so it was a lovely surprise from my husband... now we know what the time is from anywhere in the house without even looking.

Next is just a cheap trinket picked up for 50p but I have been looking for one of these for years, they seem to be very popular amongst the vintage collectors. I wanted to stand it on my cut glass dressing table set to keep up the Parisian faded elegance theme I seem to have going on. I now have to look for another one for my daughter who has an urge for a pink one in her room.

I seem to have so many things to pick from but I'll finish up this week showing you some of the books we have found. These old ones were 50p each, a little ragged around the edges but fascinating to read. I am a huge Agatha Christie fan and read her books with great enthusiasm in my teens but sadly I no longer have the books I had then. So I have decided to collect and read them all again, so these two will be added to my library.

This last Photograph shows some of the other books we have managed to find lately all for about 30-50p each. This is a huge bargain for us as we are home educators and the children love to read books... it's handy to have books on as many subjects as possible so that we are prepared for any eventuality. Although our library does appear to be about to burst at the seams.

This post will be linked with missielizzie from the me and my shadow blog for magpie monday.

Snakes for Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is on the 10th of February this year and it is the year of the snake, the children were very keen to make some snakes to celebrate. We have decided to make them with a few recycled and natural things we had around the house.

Old wine corks and left over pine cones are perfect for threading opportunities for young children and for the bodies of our snakes. We threaded five corks onto a length of string and knotted each end leaving a small gap between each cork so the snake could slither.

The tail segment was shaped by my husband and was attached to the row of corks by pushing the knot into the hole and sealing it there with a hot glue gun.

Red and gold are lucky colours in China, so the New Year snakes were painted using these colours mostly. The pine cones are going to be used as the head of the snake and have been sprayed with gold paint.

As you can see my husband has also drilled a small hole in the bottom of the pine cone (handy to put the stick in for ease of spraying) it is just a few millimeters deep so the knot can be glued and pushed inside to disguise it.

 Eyes and a forked tongue have been added to each snake ready to be attached to the cork body when the paint is dry.

Here are the finished snakes, I think they are really quite cute and they have a very snake like slither movement...The children are very pleased with their work and didn't stop there, deciding to add some gold sequins.

If you don't have the corks available it is possible to make a snake with small branch pieces my husband made this one a couple of years ago, and it is very sturdy and still being played with.

All ready to bring in the year of the snake....Happy New Year China.

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.

Homemade Granola

I have been wanting to make our own granola for a while now but kept putting it off for one reason or another, finally last month I took the plunge and loved it so much found myself wishing I had done it years ago. I wanted to make it wheat and sugar free, still be tasty and very heavy on the nuts, seeds and dried fruit. I went through a process of picking out which nuts and seeds would have the best health benefits for our family and gave the recipe a go.

First things first start mixing the main ingredients, I have used 400g of oats and 150g of honey this may seem like a lot but I have been making up a batch to last the week. I have chosen to use coconut oil in the recipe due to it's health benefits and lovely toasted coconut taste in the finished granola, melt about 75g of the oil and brush some on the baking tray  and pour the rest into the oats.

After mixing well, spread onto the baking tray or dish... the recipe needs to cook for about 25 to 30 minutes at 180 degrees centigrade but it will need stirring every 10 minutes to ensure even cooking. I usually put the nuts and seeds in half way through cooking while I am stirring as I don't like them too toasted.

I have used about 100g of mixed seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, linseed/flax and sesame) and about 75g of mixed chopped nuts (brazil, almonds etc) and mixed them in to the granola after the first 10 minutes although it could all be done at the start to save time.

After it has finished cooking leave it to cool completely it will crisp up... at this point stir in about 75g of your chosen dried fruit. We have found the honey to be sweet enough without any other sugar. Once it has cooled it can be stored in a jar to keep it fresh.

This is absolutely delicious, such an easy recipe to make and really simple to customise to include your favourite things. Perfect for breakfast with milk, with yoghurt or just out of the jar as a snack.

Hawthorn Berry Syrup

The hawthorn berry was the last syrup I have made this year, and it was made in exactly the same way as the elderberry syrup and the rosehip syrup. I decided to make just a small amount of this syrup and started with just 200g of berries. Please do not use any berries that you cannot identify without any doubt, we are very experienced.

The berries were sorted and those which were not used were put out on the bird table, so none were wasted. I won't list the recipe again, it can be found under the rosehip page above if you would like it. Hawthorn berries have lots of heart benefits amongst other things, more can be read here if you are interested.

This syrup tastes quite like the crab apple jelly I made last year and is an equally beautiful colour. Will be keeping this one for myself, although the children have been using the rosehip and the elderberry syrup to help with their recent cold.