Soap nuts!

I am writing this post as there has been a lot of interest in how we got on with the soap nuts trial. We have been trying lately to rid ourselves of as many of the everyday chemicals as possible, in an attempt to make our lives more natural and greener of course. One of the things changed is the way the laundry is done, we were originally going to make our own environmentally friendly washing powder but in the end decided to give soap nuts a try.

So, here they are.... they don't actually look like they will do the laundry do they?

But it is so simple, just put a few soap nuts in the little bag and I usually wet the bag with hot water and give it a squeeze to give the saponins a head start and toss them in the machine, you don't even need to add fabric softener. We have also been adding a couple of drops of essential oil to the fabric softener drawer to give the laundry our choice of smell but this is not necessary. Each batch of soap nuts can be used for a few washes and composted when finished with, so each wash works out at just a few pence.

More importantly though the laundry has been coming out clean and soft, with absolutely no chemical smell at all. It has been a lovely surprise really, as I wasn't expecting it to work. Things just feel different, in a good way and there has been NO itching what so ever. The big test for me was the the towels, I love to have a soft fluffy towel when getting out of the shower and the soap nuts didn't let me down! While I can't say they clean better than washing products, they definitely do not clean any worse.

The soap nuts can actually be made into many cleaning products including shampoo, but we have not tried this yet. My husband has washed his hands with them after working on his bike and in the garden and they did come up very clean and soft but that's as far as the testing has gone. He was also excited to find some black seeds in our bag of soap nuts which he is now going to try and grow...I'll let you know how that comes along too.

If you would like to find out more about soap nuts you can read more here, or just search yourself.

Happy Birthday!

Today is the 19th birthday of my eldest daughter... wow 19 years! so this is just a short post to wish her a very happy birthday and to hope that she has a truly wonderful year.

We made our own gift baskets for her presents, two of which can be seen above, we made them using the same design as we used for the Easter baskets seen here, if you chose to make some of your own. But back to the birthday girl...

Here she is aged just five, she has grown from a shy tomboy into the beautiful young woman that she is today... an engineering student hoping to follow her dreams and work in formula 1.

This is the cake we made for her birthday, the younger children helped, we chose chocolate stars as the decoration.

Of course the cards were hand made too... with much glitter!

So Happy Birthday once again... enjoy your day x x x x x

Is It A Sign?

The weather has warmed up significantly here so we thought we would give the Home educators sports club another try, to see how my son's feet would cope with the extra activity. This time last year he had to have surgery on his feet, which you can read about here. After recovering he quite excitedly started playing sports in the late summer but had to quit at Christmas due to the huge amount of pain his feet were in afterwards, possibly due to the severely cold weather we had been having. We weren't absolutely sure what was causing it, but they improved greatly when he stopped playing sports. You can read all about the painful decision he made here.

We arrived early as there is a lovely park adjoining the sports club where all the children play before and after sports, and the little brothers and sisters who are too young to join in the sports club get to play together, which my daughter loves. There were many new faces here since the last time we came.

My daughter had a great time, she played on everything, many times over. I have had to be creative with the photographs as I didn't want to include the ones with other people on, in case anyone was offended, she is not really playing alone, in an empty park.

And when she felt like doing something a little more sedate, there were puzzles and games all over the park and little hidey holes to keep her amused.

My son had a wonderful time both playing sports and in the park afterwards too, he played some football then they tried out some field sports like javelin and the hammer, for juniors of course. He has said his feet hurt a little but not too much, hopefully a normal amount for the exercise he has done, but we will see how he is tomorrow before he decides whether to continue going to the club.

We are pleased he chose to try out the club again as we are due to return to the specialist very soon and we can provide him with an accurate report of our son's progress, and all the things he can and can't do. He has been having some problems but we do not know if they are related, we will find out next month hopefully.

Flower Crown

Tomorrow is Beltane or May day, so to mark the day we have made a faerie flower crown or circlet. We have made it very simply with as little fuss as possible as we have been so busy lately with the allotment.

First, we have taken a piece of ivy and tied it into a head sized circle, this was a piece pruned back from our garden, any pliable twig would do here or if you haven't done any pruning, wire could also be used.

Then the circlet or crown was decorated, now this part is personal choice and can be as simple or ornate as you choose. We have tied on some ribbons and small flowers from our garden, if real flowers are not available to you, simple ones made with tissue paper and would also look nice.

Then just add the very simple faerie crown to the little ones head, and we now have one very happy little girl, who has spent the morning playing in the garden wearing it and feeling rather special too.

Please note that because this is made with real flowers it will not last forever, if you need one that lasts longer, the crown could be made with covered wire and synthetic flowers.

We have an allotment!

Having been on the list for an allotment for nearly three years now, you would think I would have been expecting it, but it has still come as a big surprise to finally be allocated a plot. Apparently, this plot is a half plot and has been turned down by quite a few people because it is very overgrown and it definitely  looks a bit challenging.

We have visited the allotment a few times to make sure we knew what we were letting ourselves in for, my husband is much keener than me, I have to say! After the initial shock it was decided that we would try to negotiate a little with the council... the end result was that we have a free year next year and the rest of this year greatly reduced... so we have accepted it. Let the digging begin!

As you can see from the photographs a lot of work is needed, but we have been planning the best way to go about this and still manage to plant things as we go along too. There are a few things already there hidden amongst the weeds, the vines you can see at the back and down the side are hops and we have spotted a few raspberry bushes, so that's a good place to start.

On the way to the allotment we walk past a small holding which has quite a few chickens and as we are hoping to get some chickens of our own soon, we have been stopping for a chat. They are very friendly and come up to the fence to greet the children which is nice, sometimes running from the other side of the farm. The children are becoming quite fond of them, so we have been talking about all the things that they can do for the chickens when we get our own. So now you know what we will be doing this year, it will be quite an adventure, I'm sure!

Recycling Jeans

My daughter loves denim shorts, last year we bought her some but were very disappointed with them so this year I thought I would recycle some of her jeans from the winter. They were already too short as my children are quite tall and the knees were worn through, so only fit for the bin really.... or maybe not! I had previously repaired these jeans once with this embroidered patch I made to make them last longer.

They lasted all winter with this patch and many people commented on how cute they were, but alas they are no more. First I cut off the legs at the point the knees had started to fray and get holes in.

Then folded up the bottom twice, pressed it with an iron ( yes sometimes I use it for more than craft projects) and stitched it at the seam to hold it in place.

There you go, as simple as that and it only took a few minutes and we have re-used a pair of jeans that were destined for the bin. My daughter is really happy as they were her favourite jeans because they have embroidered flowers and birds on them. As they were recycled by me, I could make them the perfect length... just right for playing in the garden as you can see below.

Definitely getting our money's worth out of this pair of jeans and why shouldn't we?... children grow so fast.

Early Rhubarb

We were lucky enough recently to be given some rhubarb, (thanks nan) so decisions had to be made as to what to make, the rhubarb in our own garden is not quite ready yet so we will have that to look forward in a few weeks. The children absolutely love making things in the kitchen so we decided to make things that interest them, like a rhubarb cordial and some ice cream, it is important to us to show the children that the things they love can be made simply at home, with a few natural ingredients and no additives.

We used 500g of chopped rhubarb in 500ml of water, simmer for 10 minutes, then leave it to infuse for about an hour.  We have made this for quite a few years now, last year we doubled the amount of ingredients as we had an obscene amount of rhubarb to use up.

After an hour sieve out the rhubarb pulp and pass the remaining liquid through a straining bag, as you can see above it is definitely worth straining to get rid of the remaining rhubarb pulp as it leaves the cordial clear and such a beautiful colour. Then return this to the saucepan with about 200g of sugar added, reheat just to dissolve the sugar. You can vary the amount of sugar used depending on the level of sweetness required but do bear in mind rhubarb is quite tart, if you are using other fruits less sugar can be used.

Then the cordial can be put into a bottle of your choice, it makes about 500ml and should keep for about 2 weeks in the refrigerator, although ours never lasts more than a couple of days as it tastes so good. Keep the sieved out rhubarb as it can still be used in pies, crumbles, ice cream (as we did) or just eaten with yoghurt.

This is a photograph of the finished rhubarb cordial, diluted with water... it tastes lovely and it is my daughters favourite colour so that is definitely a bonus. We have used the leftover rhubarb to make ice cream as we have recently bought an ice cream maker. Last year I put some recipes on here for our hand made ice cream, as we used to make it this way. We did however still use a similar recipe to our original ones.

So here it is... we used 200ml of cream, 100ml of milk about 200g of the sieved out rhubarb and 100g of  organic strawberries (mashed or chopped) for colour and sweetness and the ice cream maker did the rest! This tasted amazing, so light and refreshing and there certainly wasn't enough of it at all so I'm going to have to make some more tomorrow. If you don't have an ice cream maker, check out the link above as we used to make our ice cream by hand this way and it did still taste as good.

So two things successfully made today that the children love very much from a very small amount of rhubarb, and great fun was had in the kitchen by all. Cordials can be made from many fruits but we tend to use far less sugar for other types of fruit but this is rhubarb!