Dinosaurs in the park

Last weekend our city was visited by Erth's Dinosaur petting zoo, it had traveled all the way from Australia, so we really couldn't miss the chance to see it especially not with all the little dinosaur experts in our family. It was amazing, so glad we took the time to go. The park was packed as thousands of people came to see the show.

This was my son's favourite, a Australovenator. It got a little worrying for a time when the keepers stated he was hungry and the audience was made of meat!

As you can see he was a little anxious as the dinosaur was hungry and seemed very eager to eat the audience.

He was fed and all was well again, all this didn't worry my daughter at all, she was very eager to get selected to go on stage and put her head inside it's mouth but I think she was too small to be chosen.

My daughter liked the little ones best, and enjoyed her face to face encounter with this laellynasaura. Erth has a website if you would like to see some of the things we saw you can see it here. If you get the chance to go along and see the show my children would highly recommend it.

Regrowing Celery

As a home educating family, we usually have many experiments on the go at any one time and I am really excited to show you this one of mine. I am a huge fan of raw food especially salad and we also love to grow our own food. Having recently read many articles about regrowing celery from the stub part that is usually thrown away, I decided to give it a try.... lured by the thought of free food. Each week I cut the bottom off the celery and put it in a bowl of water.

Some people just kept it in water for one night then planted it in the garden but we were curious to see the new growth and growing celery in England is a bit of a challenge, from what I have read, as it is not at all frost hardy and shouldn't be planted out until May or June. As you can see the celery just continued to grow.

In the photograph above I have arranged the celery in age order so you can clearly see the growth, there is about a week or two between each stump. You can see on the second plant from the left a new root is forming at the base.

The new celery plant continues to grow from the center, some of the outside stalk does die back but is easy to peel off to reveal your new plant.

These are the two largest celery plants now, I have had them potted up for a few weeks, as it is still too early to plant out. The plants have really taken off since they were put into compost, as you can see, they have had a lot of new growth and the roots are starting to come out of the bottom of the pots. I have been getting them used to the outside temperature on nice days to harden them up ready for planting out soon.

I now have about six new celery plants, grown free from the pieces we normally throw away, we are really looking forward to harvest time as this has been quite an exciting project for the children to see. Why not have a go yourself...

Chicken Update

Lots of exciting news since the last chicken post, we had our first egg on march 16th from Ginger much earlier than we expected. So that was a big surprise not only to us but also to the chicken who was caught short and laid it in the middle of her run with a very confused look on her face.

The egg on the bottom is our first egg from Ginger, the egg on the top is for size comparison, it is a medium free range egg and only slightly larger. It was about a week later we started getting eggs from Dotty, then another week after that that Zelda joined in, rather dramatically as her first two eggs came just an hour apart with no shells.

This was a few days worth of eggs at the beginning of April, as you can see a different size and colour from each chicken, very handy for recipes requiring different sizes and the children love to pick out the egg they want for lunch. The chickens have changed quite a lot too, their combs and wattles have grown as has their tameness.

This is dotty now, she lays the caramel brown speckled eggs and loves to sit next to you on the garden bench especially if you have food.

This is an updated photograph of Ginger, layer of the first egg, she lays quite large medium brown eggs and is quite vocal.

This is what Zelda looks like now, she lays the light creamy coloured eggs. She is 'the boss' chicken and a regular escapologist, my husband has had to raise the height of the run several times. When she escapes she usually just digs for worms and grubs in the veg beds, although once she was caught eating the cabbages.

This is a very common view of the chickens, always digging about. They are currently watching my husband making some changes to keep Zelda in.

The chickens are very curious creatures, what ever you do in the garden, they are right there with you especially if you are digging or weeding. As soon as they hear the back door open they come running up to greet you, or should I say frisk you for food.

The children have been having the time of their lives spending time with the chickens and can often be found in fits of giggles, worm in hand being chased round the garden by three chickens. This has also been very educational for them and they have learnt many new things, one of their favourite jobs is collecting the eggs while they are still warm.

We now get three eggs every single morning and got a very large surprise the other day as you can see above. The egg was huge and weighed almost double that of some of the other eggs, it was laid by Dotty and turned out to have a double yolk.

Here is another picture of the large egg next to two of the other eggs I had in the egg box. We are all enjoying being chicken keepers and especially loving our three little feathered friends at the bottom of the garden.

Melted Fabric Flowers

Over the Winter I have been trying out a few crafts and I thought I would share a couple of photographs here with you quickly. Melted fabric flowers are something I have been wanting to try for a few years, and kept putting off, but as it turns out they are quite simple.

I have cut out a few circles of man-made fabric decreasing in size towards the middle and snipped the edges where the petals should go. Then you slowly lower the edges towards a candle flame...I started quite high above the candle you will notice when the fabric starts to melt probably about 4 to 6 inches above the flame, you need a gentle approach here and never get low enough to touch the flame.

Man made fabric melts whereas natural fabric would probably burn, I took safety precautions here and had a bowl of water close by just in case but nothing has ever caught fire. As you can see in the photo when the edges melt they curl inward like flower petals. I have stacked together a few colours and glued beads in the center to give the flower an anemone look.

I used one of the flowers on this hand made card for my daughter. I also sewed one on the crochet hat I made for my youngest daughter.

This hat was very simply worked without a pattern just increasing from a ring until it was the right size. I made the flower to go on the side of the hat as seen in the above photo but my daughter had other ideas and always wore it on the front of her head like a little mini pink Dalek.

Home made Toothpaste

Trying to get rid of as many chemicals as possible from our daily life has led me to give home made toothpaste a go. I researched many recipes online, searching for all the pros and cons, looking for the simplest ingredients with the most benefits and found this one works best for us.

These are the four ingredients I have gone with, most of the recipes I have seen start with equal amounts of bicarbonate of soda and coconut oil. so, if you use one tablespoon of coconut oil you will need one tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda and mix together. Bicarbonate of soda is also used in conventional toothpaste for the cleaning abilities it has and coconut oil, from what I have read, is anti bacterial, anti fungal and has some tooth and gum benefits.

This is what it looks like after mixing, at this point we added a teaspoon of ground xylitol to make it slightly sweeter but this is optional really and either a few drops of peppermint oil or extract of peppermint. Some recipes use stevia instead of xylitol, both come naturally from plants and both have some benefits. This makes a firm toothpaste and the consistency depends a lot on the temperature in the house due to the coconut oil.

Then store, at first I used the little pots you can see above as I only made up a small amount but having decided we really like it and intend to keep using it I have now made it in a larger quantity so it is being stored in a small mason/kilner jar. Due to sensory problems I have never really liked the way conventional toothpaste foams up in your mouth and this home made toothpaste doesn't foam at all. I have also found the taste mellows slightly after the first day, it was a little zingy the first day I made it.

** If you have been thinking about doing something similar, I would recommend researching both the ingredients in conventional toothpaste and the many home made recipes out there.

New Arrivals

We have wanted some chickens for a few years now and finally this week saw this dream come true when we welcomed three young chickens into our family and I thought I would introduce you to them here. My husband managed to build the coop from some new pallets he was given you can read about it here if you want to, he is currently making some minor adjustments to make the run area larger, although they will be spending some time free range in the garden.

This is a photograph my eldest daughter's boyfriend took of our girls just after they arrived, I think they are wondering what is going on and are just as curious about us as we are about them. Firstly I'll introduce you to my youngest daughter's favourite one, she has named her 'Ginger', she is an amber ranger and the smallest of the three.

Ginger

My eldest daughter and my son both like our largest chicken best, she is a bluebelle and my son has chosen to call her 'Zelda', she is quite bossy with the other chickens but a little shy with us.

Zelda

The last one is our speckledy hen, according to the children this one is mine to name so say hello to 'Dotty', she is the bravest one and was taking corn from our hands the very next day.

Dotty

We have only had them a couple of days and already they just seem to fit right in, the children appear to be new 'chicken experts' and my youngest daughter calls them 'her girls'. I will never forget the squeals of delight when she found that they would take corn from her hand and it was soon declared 'the best day ever'.

Dotty

They are point of lay chickens, which means they are young and haven't started laying eggs yet, we have a few weeks to wait until that happens, so there is enough time for us all to get to know each other better. Really cannot wait to see how excited the children are when the first egg arrives, much squealing I expect!

Here is our self appointed chicken guardian, although I suspect he is only here to sun himself as he did not look too impressed with the very large birds that are now at the bottom of the garden and has been keeping his distance. Well, that was our exciting news this week, will keep you posted when the first egg arrives.

wire bending

Recently when we were experimenting with the wire bending for the frame of the wooden hearts, I got a little carried away and decided to explore this project a little further, as you do. So began by twisting garden wire into a heart shape, very easy to do with thick gloves and a pair of pliers, I'm also thinking of doing spirals.

This is what I ended up with... it will be a plant support and I am going to be hanging something in the middle with the name of the seedling on but haven't quite got that far yet. As it has a rounded top you won't accidentally poke yourself in the eye whilst gardening either unlike normal canes.

I also had a go at writing with wire as you can see above.... it's a bit shaky but it is definitely still readable... just about. I have used a much thinner, red wire for this and pushed the end into a small piece of wood so that it stands up alone and can be used as a quirky photograph or memo holder.

Although I am tempted to fix the wire to the top of our family pin board along with the two little photographs.