Spring!

Spring was suddenly in the air today! Blue skies and sun, it was beautiful. As if by magic our first crocus appeared, and the snowdrops finally opened.

Chart of the week

The Bean has recently become very interested in what day it is and what happens on each day. So of course I decided to make a chart to show her. I think this came about due to starting preschool and having that fixed every week and this is a really nice way for her to get up each morning and know what is going on that day. She got rather excited about it this morning and has been informing me that we are going to Little Fishes playgroup and then Grandma is coming!
The board is just one of those thick cardboard circles you get pizzas on, and I just drew the events and covered them in selotape. Everything is stuck on with bluetack so can be moved around as necessary. Hardest part: dividing a circle into 7 sectors without a protractor.

Playhouse and kitchen

Way way back in the Summer I found this amazing playhouse in a skip. Being a bit of a scavenger I carried it home (I think the excitement of a bargain might have raised my adrenalin as it is pretty heavy).

The girls loved it and it has been happily located outside under the gazebo for the summer, and then into the shed for the Autumn. We resurrected it for the winter since we don't use the French windows when it is so cold and wet and it has been taking up rather a lot of room in our lounge since.

I wanted something a bit more exciting for the girls to do in there than just sit around, and being skint I didn't want to buy a nice kids kitchen for them so I have had my eyes open for more skip goods. I found this shelving unit by the side of the road and for ages it has been just sitting in the house, happily played with by the girls but while they were away this weekend I decided to get down and sort it out.

So here's the new kitchen. The unit slotted together really easily, so it was simple to change the layout, and I just added a little shelf at the top. I'd been collecting Calpol lids for this purpose and just screwed them in lightly to give oven knobs. I usually use tester pots of paint for this sort of thing, but I had some leftover paint from decorating our house and from my parents so there was plenty.

Here it is in situ. The girls love it!

Birthday cake

For months before the Bean's birthday she was asking for another Peppa Pig cake the same as last year.

Then out of the blue she changed her mind the week before in favour of Pingu. So I had to come up with a Pingu cake. I am not a fan of that icing you buy and is ready for use (Royal icing?) as it tastes gross, so I decided against a big novelty Pingu character in favour of an igloo. Of course the easiest thing would have been to bake it in a bowl to give me a nice shape, but I didn't have a bowl big enough and time was of the essence. I baked two marbled Madeira cakes, one smaller than the other, froze them, and then carved them when frozen. A nice bit of maple syrup butter icing covered the lot and then I cut up marshmallows and stuck them all over.

This picture makes me chuckle a little...it reminds me of a former life of science where my fumehood looked pretty much exactly like this. Chaos. I liked to wash up once a week.

The characters are the disgusting ready icing, but they are just for decoration. Even Bean and Bug could only face eating their heads. The little snowballs are those Cadbury sweets. Yum!

T-shirts

More t-shirts! Same idea, same process. You might recognise these butterflies from Cerys' curtains. The thing with stencilling 262 butterflies is that I now have a lot of butterfly cut-outs! The make pretty good t-shirts though, and the Bean loves them. Similarly I had the negative image from this t-shirt, so I thought I'd just use it for Bug.

If you would like a t-shirt or indeed anything stencilled in a similar manner send me a mail at alice@beanpi.co.uk and I'll let you know if I can do it.

The Horniman Museum

If you have kids and live anywhere near London you have to go to this place...it's fab!

School bag upgrade

The Bean started preschool in September and I had been unable to resist buying her a special school bag from Poundland (I know, I really spoil my kids) as it was the exact same colour as her uniform. Also I rather fancied it myself. I thought she would be happy with a nice messenger bag but when it came to the big day she wanted a rucksack, so a super-fast bit of sewing later and I customised it to a little rucksack. The key with rucksacks for tinies is the chest strap. I had one of those little clips in the sewing box anyway so it was easy to add one in...and luckily there was plenty of strap on the bag to make a loop to hang on her peg.

Really I should take a photo of her and the bag, but hey, she's in bed.

Eat this!...Banana muffins

Man these were good. Asda was selling off bananas for 20p per kilo so what could I do but buy stacks and stacks. Much banana related cookery resulted but these really were the star of the show. Made a couple of dozen and froze them. They are fantastic straight out the freezer and into the microwave. Yum.
9 oz plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3 large bananas
1 egg
2 1/2 oz brown sugar
50 mL vegetable oil
as many raisins as you like.
Mash the bananas and beat in the egg, sugar and oil. Add the dry ingredients and beat in gradually. Add the raisins. 3/4 fill muffin cases and bake at gas 5 for 20-25 mins.

Invitations

We decided to give Anneli a birthday party for friends this year for the first time...mainly because she seems to know now that you have party when it is your birthday. So we had to make some invitations. I got this brilliant shaker pack of coloured stars from the local garden centre (with the Christmas decorations for some reason) and both the girls love it. I was in charge of glue but everything else was up to Anneli. I'm pretty impressed with the result, and her writing is really coming on as you can see.

Apples on the Downs

What happens when you ask your kids to wait by the car...

...and the grass has just been mown.

Wow doesn't the summer seem so long ago now? The girls made a lovely nest of grass on the pavement that quickly dried into a sort of grass pancake.

By the way here's a lovely pic of my beautifully coloured car. I like to think that I make it cool despite it being gross. D calls it mouldy gold but I think it is dirty lime. Either way, I just tell people to look for the worst coloured car in the car park and that is mine. Of course we shortly won't be able to fit in with 3 car seats (why don't family cars fit 3 children any more?) so we'll be saying goodbye at some point.

blog blog slog

How did I ever have time to blog...I can't work out where and when I got it done. It's only going to get worse of course as I am now 36 weeks pregnant with number 3. Got to try and get into a routine of doing it! So I am still trying to catch up...still got summer bits and bobs to put in and it is now January!

Cerys' curtains

This was the biggest stencilling job I have taken on so far. My niece Cerys has the hugest window to her room (lucky her) and her Mum and Dad wanted some personalised pink curtains to cover it. They have chosen butterflies as the theme to her room, so the job description was just lots of butterflies!

I took the opportunity to find some decent ink this time...I had been using Dylon fabric pain previously to do t-shirts but it is expensive and messy as it is very runny. This time I used proper screen printing ink (permaset aqua) which is water based and doesn't create a hard plasticy finish. It washes well and remains soft. We wanted pinks and purples this time so I got the dark red and purple and a transparent white mixer and made a colour chart of possibilities...which was a nice t-shirt for the Bean.

And then to the butterflies! We went for a mix of mid-pinks and purples and a random spatter of 4 different sizes of butterflies.

Yes it took a long time. Yes I had to cut each butterfly out separately! 262 butterflies and 4 curtains later and I love the result.

Summer memories

OK I know summer is long long gone, but events have got away with themselves and I haven't blogged for so long! Just thought I might get back and catch up and of course looking at the photos makes you long for those lovely warm times! So I just thought I'd kick off with a picture or two of when the garden was still producing and it was warm enough to wear a sleeveless top!
Neither of my children likes tomatoes unless they are just freshly picked from the plant. I have no idea why this is, but they will eat bucket-fulls if they can pick them.

and as I am really the only person in the house that likes tomatoes, and none of us like courgettes, this is the fate of the majority of this produce. We roast it up with some onion, garlic and chilli and then wizz it up to form a nice sauce base which freezes and comes out any time we want pasta, curry, pie, whatever!

Eat This - Green Tomato Chutney

I eat so much of my Mother-in-Law's green tomato chutney I though this year I would actually make some of my own. I never knew before that the inside of green tomatoes is almost exactly the colour of Spring.

I actually enjoyed all the chopping which I decided to do by hand rather than with the food processor as I couldn't be bothered with the washing up. I rarely get that much time to do something so dull so it was a nice change! I prepped all the veg last night and then left it all to soak in vinegar till this morning. Let me tell you that making chutney is not an activity to undertake in the morning when you are pregnant. The stench was almost unbearable when combined with morning sickness.
Four hours hellish simmering later and I had my marvellous chutney though. I won't be able to tell you how it tastes until next year though, it needs a good three months to mature!

Here's the recipe I used:

Green Tomato Chutney (makes about 8 lb)

2.5 lb green tomatoes

2.5 lb cooking apples, peeled and cored

2 lb onions

6 large cloves garlic, crushed

1 lb raisins

1 lb 6 oz brown sugar

1 oz pickling spice

1/2 tbs cayenne pepper

1/2 tbs salt

2 tbs ground ginger

3 pints malt vinegar

Chop everything up nice and small and put it all in a big preserving pan. Wrap the pickling spice in muslin and tie the parcel to the handle of the pan so it can freely sit in the middle of the mixture. Pour in the vinegar and bring to the boil. Simmer for 3.5 hours or so, stirring occasionally and more frequently towards the end. Once the liquid has reduced significantly and the mixture thickened nicely pour into hot sterile jars and seal immediately. Leave for 3 months to mature.

Teepee - how to

I said ages ago I was going to write more than a small comment about the teepee I made for the girls. The fact of the matter is the very morning after I made it I came down with a kidney stone that laid me out for the next 6 weeks or so. Nasty nasty and not something I recommend to anyone.

In any case here I am back in the land of the living to tell you how it is done. I didn't make it up myself! I got the idea from Obsessively Stitching and she has done a lovely tutorial for it here. Just so you know the Americans call a single sheet a twin sheet. I know, confusing.

New bookcase

Remember the ridiculously large "IN" pile of books in our house? Well hoorah D built a twin bookcase to match the other one he made from our old bed.

And at last I have filled it up with our IN pile. There was me thinking we'd have loads of space, but no, it's already full. If you look closely though you can see some very very interesting reading like "Experiments in Undergraduate Mathematics". I can't imagine how I have coped the last few years without that one readily available on the shelf. A clear-out might be in order.

More t-shirt stencils

Here's another few t-shirts. First up a new set of PJs for the Bean, who loves stars and moons

and second up a t-shirt for our friend's new baby, Max

This one was an attempt to make a shirt inspired by the Beach Boys' album of the same name. I don't think it came out too badly!

The Basilarium

I have been out of the blogosphere for far too long. I will not bore you with excuses but suffice to say these two things: 1) kidney stones are not recommended, it was the most painful thing I have ever encountered and I've had two children; 2) I am pregnant again. Both of the above were discovered coincidentally and each provided complications to the other. But it hasn't been all about me...the Bean has had to have an operation on her foot after getting an infected splinter which turned into a huge abcess, and that took good month to heal.

But we are all well again, and I'm through the horrid first trimester, so let's get back to business!

Of course I have not been neglecting the little projects, but they have been more in dribs and drabs. So I will be reporting them in a similar fashion. First up is the Basilarium.

I have had trouble growing basil successfully outside in this country. Firstly the slugs and snails just can't get enough of the stuff, and secondly any sign of cold the the whole thing karks it. I've had this old bottle garden hanging around for a few years. I inherited it from my sister when she emigrated, and much as I love it, it just doesn't mix too well with the toddlers. Bug in particular thought it was a fantastic repository for anything from toys to clean, wet washing, so I put it to the side some time ago. I'd acquired 5 or so basil seedlings of mixed variety from a charity stall in Epsom, and decided this might be the perfect match!

Sadly I didn't photograph the rather tiny seedlings in situ, but here's the result 4 weeks later:

Marvellous! I don't even have to water them that much as the bottle is lovely and humid. The only downside is that harvesting is relatively difficult. The bug delights in adding a bit of soil every so often with her mini-trowel, but the basil doesn't seem to mind.

I made some lovely pesto with this lot and can't wait for the re-growth.

Teepee!

OK this might be the greatest thing I have ever made. More on the hows later!

I left it in the living room for the girls to discover when they got up this morning (5:20am arrrggggh), hence the crazy hair!