30 Days Wild - day 1

As you know we have joined the Wildlife Trust's 30 days wild, and we will be committing random acts of wildness all month long. Today is day 1 and we had a very long swimming session planned at our local pool, so we had to fit our wild time around this.

 We took extra time to walk to and from the pool passing some interesting urban mini wild areas. We spotted some rabbits and squirrels hiding along this pathway. We also found a very busy hand rail which was covered in sticky pollen from the trees causing a huge amount of aphids to walk along it, these were being predated on by ladybirds and their larva. The rail had so many different kinds of insects on that it looked like a major highway!

We also found this very old, tattered butterfly which sat on my daughter's hand for quite some time feeling all around her fingers with it's proboscis. Looking forward to day 2 now.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

I have had a lot of people ask about my homemade sweet chilli sauce recipe so I thought I would write a quick post about it here. We love this sauce and it is so simple to make in just a matter of minutes, definitely worth making yourself.

As you can see in the photograph, it's a beautiful colour and has an amazing taste, a mixture of hot and sweet, a real treat for the senses. The whole recipe from start to finish only takes about 15-20 minutes.

Ingredients

• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 2-3 red chilli peppers
• 200ml water
• 200ml apple cider vinegar
• 200g sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 2 level tablespoons cornflour

I usually de-seed my chilli peppers first and save the seeds for use later, then Put all the ingredients except the cornflour into either a food processor or use a hand blender on it until finely chopped and blended. We usually use 2 large chilli peppers and 2 large garlic cloves but this is all down to personal taste, If using smaller ones I sometimes add 3.

Next put it into a saucepan along with some of the chilli seeds, remember a lot of the heat comes from the seeds so add an amount you would be comfortable with, I usually add about half the seeds back in. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for a few minutes.

While this is simmering put the 2 level tablespoons of cornflour into a cup and mix with 2 tablespoons of cold water. Remove the pan from the heat temporarily and whisk in your cornflour mixture. This will help to thicken the sauce slightly and allow the chilli pieces to float in suspension throughout your sauce.

Return to the heat and simmer for a further few minutes, whisking continuously to help the cornflour to thicken.

All that's left to do is add to a sterilized bottle or jar and leave to cool... the sauce thickens more as it cools a bit like jam does.

This sauce can be used as a dipping sauce or on anything you choose, we love it so much I even add it to my salads and baked potatoes. It will keep for quite a while, although it's usually eaten quite quickly here. Everything seems to taste so much better if it's homemade... Do be careful though to wash your hands after preparing chilli peppers and try not to touch any sensitive parts like your eyes.

Why not have a go yourself and enjoy...

Exploring Digestion!

The children have spent some time recently exploring body functions, and digestion came up for discussion as we had a science kit in the cupboard.

They were exceptionally keen to get the replica stomach to work, as you can see in the above photograph safety goggles are very important especially where the digestive system is concerned!... who knows what could happen.

The stomach was filled with random pieces of food, liquid, colouring and a few other necessary ingredients and gently squeezed to try to replicate the digestion process. An old stocking was fixed to the end to simulate the intestines as the food passed on it's journey.

Quite basic but helped the little ones to understand the process a little better, although I expect the gross factor had a lot to do with their enjoyment. The children love to experiment and usually have quite a few things on the go at any one time. No doubt this one will get repeated a few times.

Nature reserve and return to the blog

It's been a while since I posted here but we are definitely back now after our time away. We have been so busy as usual but I have managed to start a Facebook page if anyone would like to visit us there for a chat and like us, the link is on the right.

Last week we visited our local nature reserve, we love to keep a check on the wildlife at various points of the year and there are many babies about at the moment, like this Egyptian gosling.

We have taken a picnic so that we could spend the day nature watching and exploring at a leisurely pace with nothing to hurry back for.

Some of the birds seem just as interested in us. The children love to see how much the young ones have grown in between our visits and to keep track of how well they are doing.

We managed to spot quite a lot of fish swimming by, very close to a spot where we usually see a pike but we couldn't see it today... Just small fish.

I even explored the ruins this time, there were some beautiful arches which seemed like doorways to another world it was so quiet. Magical...

On the walk home at the end of the day the children spotted some young cows in a field and stopped to say hello.

As I said before we are back, you will be seeing much more of us so stop by and say hello either in the comments, on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. We have signed up to do the 30 day wild challenge, click the link if you fancy signing up yourself, there are a few days left until June. I can't imagine that this will be difficult for us as the children love spending time out in the wild.

See you soon!

Clay Doily Hearts

For Valentine's day this year we have made a clay heart garland which has been printed to look like a vintage doily. I really loved the pine cone garland we made at Christmas and have to say I really quite miss it, so we have decided to have a seasonal garland throughout the year filled with craft items and memories.

We rolled our clay out and pressed an old plastic doily that used to belong to my grandmother into it to give us the wonderful pattern. We used a cookie cutter to give us the heart shapes, put a hole in the top for the string and left them to dry.

We also made a larger one as a gift for my eldest daughter who has had heart surgery this week.

We gave them a red undercoat and left them to dry for a little longer.

To pick out the highlights in a lighter colour gives the heart a vintage doily look, and we have lightly brushed over the red hearts with a white paint. Then finished with a coat of varnish to give it shine and a little durability.

So after threading onto a rustic natural string this is what our Valentine garland looks like. Hopefully it's a lovely keepsake that we can bring out year after year and enjoy. The special one for my daughter was finished off with a red ribbon.

We wish you a speedy recovery and hope you are soon feeling much better xx

Pumpkin Relish

We still have some pumpkins stored from our allotment and as time is ticking on I needed to think of some different ways to use them up. My husband is making a batch of pumpkin wine so I thought about preserving them in a similar way to the courgettes...Relish!

We love the courgette relish I make every year and it never lasts very long at all, so the only change to my usual recipe was to swap most of the courgette with pumpkin. The results were so tasty I will probably make it this way again.

As you can see in the photo it is an amazing colour, a slightly richer more orange colour and has a very pleasing crunch.

I won't put the whole recipe on again but if you would like to try this... and I would definitely recommend it, I will put a link on to my courgette relish here...

I have used exactly the same recipe and method as this courgette relish recipe except the 750g of courgette was swapped instead for 500g of pumpkin and 250g of courgette.

These jars should keep us going for a little while, although if it lasts as long as the courgette relish I may have to make a larger batch next time.

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!