Quick Paper Garlands

A recent celebration had us reaching for the scrap paper to make some very quick and cheap party decorations. We try to live very thriftily here and spending money on party decorations which could be used for extra presents seems a little strange and the children have a huge amount of fun in the process.

As we didn't have much time and the children are small, we went for the simplest garlands possible. The top one is just a simple bunting garland made with paper, cut, folded and glued over the string or ribbon. Any paper or card can be used and it can be highly personalised to suit the birthday girl or boy, you can use letters or numbers if you choose, my son is hoping for a dinosaur one on his birthday. As you are making this yourself you can choose the exact length and design.

The butterfly one is another very simple one and takes just a few minutes, I have used a shape cutter and a scrap sheet of sticky paper. The butterflies were just stamped out and stuck back to back over some gold string. We made heart ones like these on valentines day, very pretty, my daughter is planning on having these in her room.

The spring blossom garland continues a craft idea we had a few years ago spring blossom craft.

Each flower is made up of three or four cut out tissue paper flower shapes, stacked and twisted together.

These are then threaded onto your chosen string or wool to make the garland.

You can make these garlands out of anything you choose and what's more, it saves you money and it's a wonderful craft idea to get children involved in the decorating.

We have garlands hanging in the house at quite a few times in the year, mostly made by the children who are quite proud of their creations. A couple of recent, very pretty, seasonal ones have been the Autumn leaf garland and the paper snowflake one.

I am hoping to eventually get round to sewing some more permanent garlands in felt and fabric to keep forever, it's just finding the time, it seems to be in short supply here.

Bean Projects

Every year since we started home educating, one of the spring science and nature projects has been bean growing in a jar to see the root growth. We have studied them, grown them, dissected them and eaten them... We have tested growing variations like light, dark, with water and without, and grown many different kinds of bean to compare. We have kept records and logged our data in every different way we can.

This year we tried something different....

This year we placed one side of the jars so that they touched the window, it has been so very cold and frosty here that we thought we would see how much temperature affected the beans. We put two beans in each jar on opposite sides, one side was touching the window pane at all times, the other bean was facing into the house.

As you can see in the two photographs above the bean on the inside of the jar (the warmer side) grew but the bean touching the window (frosty side) did not... the results were the same in each and every jar so the children's temperature experiment is quite conclusive even though there is only a short distance between the two beans on either side of the jar, this makes a big difference!

There is also added incentive to grow beans this year....

My husband built this tepee in the garden from some tree prunings, we wanted to create a living tepee, a quiet place to play or read in a bare part of the garden. The beans will be grown up all around the sides to provide the cover for little ones to hide in, my husband has added a little fence at the bottom to protect the young beans from the chickens. Although it looks like Dotty is having a quick dig to see what is in there, which doesn't look good for the beans!

On the celery front, we are continuing to grow new plants from the stubs which you can read here if you missed it. I have noticed some new shoots coming up from last years plants too, which is very unusual as the weather in the UK is too cold in winter for celery to survive!

We also still have and love the three chickens that live in our garden, they have been no trouble at all (so far) and have provided us with loads of eggs. In fact so many that we haven't had to buy any at all for over a year and I think there are about forty in the kitchen waiting to be used.

That concludes our quick update for now, we will be back very soon to breathe some life back into the blog.

Magical Museum visit

Last week we had the chance to visit the Magic Worlds exhibition at our Castle Museum, it is touring from the V&A. There was a wonderful mix of magical items from film props, magician's props, items from fairy tales and many beautiful works of art.

My daughter was really pleased to see sooty was included in the exhibition and even happier to perform her own puppet show with some of the props available.

 Many fairy tales had their own sets to explore... I know one little girl who was in her element and totally oblivious to the real world. 

We really enjoy going to the castle museum there always seems to be something that fits in with our studies, something amazing to see. As a teenager I used to visit the museum nearly every Saturday and it's still a place I love to visit.

Whist exploring the keep we found this model trebuchet, a siege engine weapon from the middle ages. My husband and son were very keen to explore the workings of this as they have been planning to make a small one for the garden in the summer.

As you can see it's like a large catapult or sling which throws heavy items at the castle walls... we were aiming for the little model of Stonehenge my son built.

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.