Sunday 31 August 2014

Sunday 24 August 2014

34/52

little e: pleased with herself about the size of her play doh tower

Big E: Admiring some tiny baby peacocks!
Joining in with Jodi again for the 52 project.



Monday 18 August 2014

Thursday 14 August 2014

DIY Elsa from Frozen inspired head band


I love fabric flowers and have made lots of head bands with fabric flowers attached so I decided that was the way to go for the girls party bags at little e's frozen party. I hate waste, especially the toys you normally get to put in party bags that end up in landfill a week later, so, Elsa inspired head bands for the girls it was!


If you want to make head bands (alice bands) I got mine on ebay, but you could also put the corsages on to hair clips.

To make the corsage:


Fold organza circles into quarters then stick 4 on to a small felt circle with hot glue. then stick a felt snowflake in the middle and stick a rhinestone in the middle of the snowflake. The corsage is stuck to the head band with a small blob of hot glue as well.

They were very well received and worked out at less than £1 to make so cheap as well as useful!







Linking to some of these link parties!

Tuesday 12 August 2014

Frozen Birthday Party


What a crazy week, I have been in party / back to school mode and I think I need a holiday to recover!

Little e was 6 on Friday, how 6 years have passed I have no idea but all of a sudden our little girl isn't so little any more :( She is Frozen daft so wanted a Frozen birthday party for her friends. We had it on Saturday and it was a simple affair - 14 children, 1 bouncy castle, 2 organised games (stick the nose on Olaf and frozen statues, no photos of these as all the kids are in them) and some food.

I had been madly pinning Frozen party ideas which was probably a mistake as my effort looks lame in comparison but here are some pics of the day:



These are 2 marshmallows, a chocolate stick broken in half, some raisins
and a bit of dried apricot cut into a triangle. They went in the party bags.

Frozen Hearts

Food - Melted Snow, Olaf noses, snowflake biscuits, snowballs, frozen hearts and fairy cakes.


Olaf on the beach cake
The cake was a night before job. Little e requested an Olaf on the beach cake so that is what she got! I used this how to to help getting the shape of Olaf's face correct, it worked not too badly. The sand is crushed digestives and I used a flower garland round the cake. If I had had time I would have piped the surf but just stuck on a sausage of fondant instead...!

Finally, here are the labels I made for the various food, if you click on them they will come up full size and then you can right click and save them so you can print and use them as well!


Use this on small bottles of water.
Put it into a word document and make the correct size for your bottles!

carrots!

white chocolate coated strawberries


I put this on the party bags

I made Elsa inspired hair bands for the party bags but I will do a separate post about that.

Now to recover from the party and get ready for back to school tomorrow!!







Linking to some of these linky parties.

Sunday 10 August 2014

Thursday 7 August 2014

Sugar Free Banana Cake


Sugar free seems to be the latest craze, I stick by the everything in moderation rule but I do try and avoid processed food so removing excess sugar from my baking appeals!

Unfortunately I have had a few bad experiences with sugar free recipes but this BBC Good Food recipe for banana cake looked very normal, it had eggs, flour and butter, just no sugar.


I split the batch in two so got small loaves but they tasted lovely, even the kids like it and it is perfectly sweet without sugar. Also, if you are making this then I would avoid the agave syrup, it is not the great healthy stuff  it is hyped up to be!

I am not sure how long this healthy baking will last though, The Great British Bake Off is back!




Tuesday 5 August 2014

Refashioning my favourite handbag.


About 5 years ago I asked for a purple handbag for my birthday, I got a gorgeous bag from my Mum and used it loads until earlier in the year when it ripped.



Unfortunately I didn't catch the rip in time and it was unfixable but the bag was too nice to just get rid of and there was a lot of leather there to work with, another bag was definitely in order. Realistically a cross body bag is far more practical for my life at the moment so that is what I decided to attempt!


The purple suede had gone a bit brittle so I only used as much as was necessary to keep the pockets. The rest is made up of the back of the bag and I reused the lining.


It was really hard to make the first cut , I had never sewn leather before and knew this could have gone horribly wrong, but it went smoothly, the only pain was inserting the top zip. My machine was not particularly happy with the bits where the tabs for the strap attach - 3 layers of leather and a zip was pushing it a little, so there is a little glue holding some dubious hand stitching in places :)


I have been using the bag for a couple of weeks now and it has held up to life so far, hopefully I can get another good few years with my purple bag and who knows what it will turn into after that!







Linking to some of these link parties!

Sunday 3 August 2014

Friday 1 August 2014

A Cheats Millennium Falcon Cake!

Today is Husbands birthday, he joked that he wanted a Millennium Falcon Cake so he got one, of sorts!


The kids and I were hatching a plan for the cake and Big E came up with this brilliant idea! He got the mini Millennium Falcon on holiday and it was perfect! He also made a car for the top, not sure why!


The cake is a lemon sponge with lemon buttercream and, although it didn't rise as much as it should have, it tasted great!

Husband managed to leave his Quadcopter, and all the new bits he got for it, for long enough to go out for a birthday meal to our favorite local restaurant.



We then had a wander along the canal, foraging plums along the way!


Now to start the prep for little e's birthday next Friday!







Linking to some of these link up's.