Just like mummy

Recently I was slightly perturbed when youngest asked me to make 'a miniskirt'. After further questioning, it turned out that she wanted was a mini *version* of  my skirt. Ah...

My husband jokes that I am making her in my image (as we already have similar haircuts) but of course there is a little part of me that is quite flattered she wants to be 'just like mummy' at the moment. I look forward to reminding her of this when she is a sullen teenager, when she will no doubt shriek at me for not dissuading her from matching outfits. Oh well!

But as I had a spare piece of fabric left over, it seemed foolish not to use it. So I made a rough a-line skirt pattern out of paper, just a front and a back piece, plus allowance at the top for an elasticated waist (much easier for little hands, plus I didn't have a zip to hand). And there we have it one 'mini' skirt.

And seeing as even my trusty H&M doesn't seem to have the clothes that youngest wants to wear at the moment (and I'm not prepared to pay Boden prices), making a few summer clothes for her seems the best way forward. I've already made a pair of cotton shorts (below), but in the interests of transparency must admit that this was the second go at shorts, the first pair being rather on the <ahem> voluminous side. And as they were in blue/white striped fabric, did look a little like pyjamas.

I also had a little moment in Fabricland this morning, and bought these two cute heavy cotton prints. After consultation with youngest, the pink will become a skirt and the blue birds another pair of shorts.

Work in Progress

Exhibit A - un-finished objects (ufo) basket

So what a weird October huh? So unseasonally warm I was almost relieved to finally dig out my woolly tights and fuck-off big boots this week. So what have I been up to? I've been offered extra hours at work during term-time, which is great in some ways, but does mean I have less time for creative stuff - boo!

Just before half term we made a magnificent family effort and created a Anglo Saxon warrior outfit for my 8 year old for a school 'wow' day. If he's not too embarrassed I will post some pics, as he did look pretty cool (although his main interest was the weaponry - he's normally a very gentle soul, honest...). Then during half term we had a big family wedding, which involved lots of travelling but was so much fun, and we now have an Official Auntie C. Managed to squeeze in a visit from my parents too, which even meant a bit of babysitting so that husband and I could go out at the weekend and watch 1930s horror films.

Eldest child (he of the Saxon warrior fame) then celebrated his exciting half term break by suddenly vomiting late on Sunday evening, just as we were all due back at school and our respective workplaces after a week off - timing could have been better. So another day off on Monday then, oh well, better use the time to tidy up the craft stuff, in between providing weak glasses of squash and dry toast of course.

Exhibit B - frog it don't slog it

I discovered quite a few unfinished projects, which I've now gathered together in one place (Exhibit A), in the hope that I might get on and finish them. There's a couple of things that are virtually finished already, so no excuse really. But one thing I've learnt about creative work, sometimes it's better to rip it up and start again, no point slogging away on putting work into something that you don't even like. Which brings me to Exhibit B, which was half a baby blanket that I just lost enthusiasm for, and then ran out of yarn, and then the baby graduated from university (sort of kidding). You know the story... So I frogged it, and now the yarn has the chance to be something lovely.

Or maybe sit in my stash for a while longer, let's not do anything hasty ;-)

Harry Potter Party

It had to happen eventually, my bookworm boychild has read the full Harry Potter cannon and developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Hogwarts world (he even shares Harry's birthday). So when asked what he would like for his birthday celebrations, the theme was an obvious choice...

There are some incredible ideas out there for Harry Potter parties, special mention goes to the My Harry Potter Party blog, which is possibly the ultimate in Harry Potter party planning. The books have a very strongly developed 'world', and while I was browsing the internet I found it heartening to see so much creativity sparked off as people made props, decorations and food.

We didn't go too overboard, as the boy just had a couple of his friends over, one of whom hasn't read the books. But it was fun making a few things, and I thought I'd share a couple of photos to show you what we did...

Robes
I made a simple set of robes for the Birthday Boy out of some super cheap black polycotton. After a bit of measuring of limbs, I cut out two large t-shapes, cutting the front piece in half down the middle. I was aiming for a sort of academic robe look. It was very quick & dirty and I finished them off just before the party this afternoon. Machine hems all the way!

Wands

My husband made these, and they really are pretty impressive! He collected likely looking sticks from the park and stripped the bark off. Then he took slightly larger diameter sticks to make handles, drilled a small hole and glued together. They were then stained and varnished.

Potions

We knew there had to be some potion making today, so I gathered up interesting looking bottles and filled them with a variety of liquids (in reality fruit juices and water with food colouring) and attached paper labels. For the record, my son would like to point out that Dragon's blood is in fact green. We also had strawberry laces standing in for worms and various sweeties.

There was a lot of giggling as they sloshed various 'ingredients' into the pan. One of my guiding principles in life is 'never drink a blue drink', one that today's party guests would concur with. When stirred up in my Maslin pan/cauldron, they ended up with this:

Food
There is so much food in Harry Potter, another reason why it makes such a great party theme. We had normal party food (i.e. I made sandwiches, carrot sticks and hummus, and the children chose to take their calories in the form of hula hoops) with a few Harry Potter touches. So we had some Hagrid's Rock Buns, Butterbeer (Fentiman's Cola with a new label, served in glass mugs) and then chocolate frogs and Bertie Botts Every Flavour beans for party bags.

The chocolate frog mould came from Ebay, and other supplies came from Rajanis, possibly Bristol's best ever supplier of party tat. Including knock-off 'gourmet' jelly beans...

And finally...

I think this is the favourite thing that we made: Golden Snitches. Basically a Ferrero Rocher with two feathers hot glue-gunned to the sides. Talk about instant craft! We used these to play Hot & Cold (we judged that this would last longer than a free for all 'Hunt the snitch')

Festive Crafts

Now that my children are 7 and nearly 5, we've finally reached the stage where they will sit quietly and do craft activities, and the whole experience is a lot less stressful than when they were toddlers. This afternoon they very much enjoyed some craft kits from Baker Ross including paper-chains and colour your own Christmas crackers.

After many years of fretting about doing 'enough' at Christmas, I think I've finally learnt not to get too bothered - as an old friend of mine likes to say, to "let the ash drop off..."

I've bought presents and food, but not stupid amounts. We have some tinsel and lights up. I also had a day off yesterday with the Husband, before the children broke up from school. We both did a big cleaning blitz and got rid of a whole load of junk that had previously spent most of its time being shuffled from place to place or ignored completely while we were caught up in working and school routines.

Also this afternoon we 'made' a Christmas wreath. I say made, but what I actually did was buy a plain fir wreath from the local florists for £4 and then add a few bits and pieces from the craft stash. I used thin wire to attach some holly sprigs from the garden (much swearing, fiddly *and* prickly - yay!). The 'berries' are red wooden beads attached with more wire, along with some little gilt bells and a scrap of fabric for a bow. Just hoping it doesn't get blown away - it's pretty wet and wild here tonight.

And tomorrow some friends and their children are coming round for Christmas drinks and nibbles. I'll happily serve up shop bought snacks and crack open the mini-keg of Bath Ales that we've bought for the occasion.

Today is the winter solstice, which means lighter days are on the way. Have a wonderful and peaceful Christmas wherever you are. See you in 2014 for more making and wittering. Thanks for reading :)

Make Sunday Special

You'd be proud of me, we did a proper Family Outing today. It involved raincoats (at first) and interaction with the children and everything...

Make Sunday Special is an initiative dreamt up by Bristol's elected Mayor. Several of the streets in the centre of the city are closed to traffic one Sunday a month - or as one of the signs put it, the streets were 'open for people'. All sorts of free street entertainment and activities were laid on.

We took advantage of a (for once) bargainous bus ticket - FirstBus are offering a family bus ticket for just five quid on Make Sunday Special days (usually it's £8). This means that it's starting to be comparable to paying for parking.

When we got to town we had a wander. It felt really strange walking down the middle of a road that's usually full of cars, particularly as the traffic lights were still cycling round as normal. Which reminds me, there were *loads* of bikes around too, and lots of cycle-related activities. A quick shower of rain sent us scurrying under the nearest gazebo which happened to be one offering a rosette-making workshop. The children set to work and Youngest wore her rosette all day.

Then of course the sun came out, which makes wandering about with the children much more enjoyable. The Ambling Band provoked much jiggling in the children, and they also enjoyed playing with a musical instrument maze set up by Acoustic Arts.


We even managed to fit in a bit of Gromit Spotting...

Presenting Mr Wonka!

It's done, phew! Ok, so maybe a cardboard top hat of unusual size is not the most practical of headgear on a rainy day in Bristol, but we got there...

Willy Wonka

Hat: made from A2 piece of black card, lots of sellotape and swearing
Bow-tie: yellow spotty ribbon hastily stitched to a piece of elastic
Coat: purple velvet, lapels and everything, hurrah
Waistcoat: silky gold dragon fabric, made from my old dressing gown
Golden ticket: model's own

Very Hungry Caterpillar

And not wishing to be left out, youngest was happy to reuse a Very Hungry Caterpillar costume that I made a few years ago (we made a new hat together, so that cutting and sticking ain't faux naive it's just plain naive). The body bit is basically a sack with an elasticated neck and seams popped at judicious points to make arm holes. Thanks to Aunty C for coming up with the idea in the first place.

Next year I'm totally stitching gert big leaves to this costume and calling it a Beanstalk...

You can read more about creating the Wonka costume here. And Mumsnet is hosting a Blog Hop about World Book Day costumes here.

World Book Day

My son and I have a deal for World Book Day. He's just got into reading Roald Dahl, and one of his favourite books (I've read it at least 10 times mum!) is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So the deal is... I will attempt to make a Willy Wonka costume for him, but if it doesn't work or doesn't get finished in time then he can go as Charlie Bucket - which is basically your own clothes plus a golden ticket. Excellent.

Having never done any dressmaking (bar a circle skirt for a party last year), it seemed that a purple velvet tailcoat for a six year old was the perfect place to start. I made a paper pattern by drawing round the boy's school jumper, and worked out that one metre of fabric should do the job. Fabricland provided some fab velvet of just the right shade of purple. I cut out the pieces, and was even clever enough to cut out two sleeves.

Then I threaded up the trusty sewing machine with some purple thread and got going on all the seams. It was all pretty quick and dirty, as sewing a fancy dress outfit is all about what the costume looks like on the outside, for one day. Well, that's what I kept telling myself. Turns out velvet frays quite a bit, ho hum.

I re-used the jacket pattern to make a waistcoat from an old dressing gown of mine. Turns out (cheap) woven silk frays even more than velvet.

By this point I decided that velcro was the way to go for fastenings, as I'm not spending hours handcrafting buttonholes for a costume that will probably be trashed by the end of the day. As luck would have it I still had just enough left over from the Dolly Nappy.

Current state of play is that the waistcoat is finished, the coat is just waiting for final touches. When the boy gets home from school we're planning to wrestle with a large piece of black card and make a top hat. Oh and a bit of spotty ribbon has to transform itself into a bow-tie.

Only slight fly in the ointment is that youngest was sent home from preschool today with possible ear infection. Main symptoms seem to be lots of whinging/crying and clutching ears. I do so enjoy craft sessions with the accompaniment of a poorly child. Still, amazing what a dose of Calpol can achieve.*

Suddenly that Charlie Bucket costume is looking very attractive...

*other super sweet kiddie painkillers are available

Hush a bye dolly

So as I posted recently, I've forbidden myself to buy any new craft supplies in January and to instead concentrate on projects that use what I already have. And so I give you... the Dolly Bed. It's for my youngest, who has just turned four. She has two dolls, one called Florence (pictured) and one called Nip Nip. Don't ask...

My daughter is funny and independent and quirky and all those wonderful things, but also at the moment we're going through what I like to call the Farking Horrible Fours. Like the Terrible Twos but more decibels and the fact that distraction no longer works. The paddies are few and far between, but when they do come they are legendary. Last night there was a difference of opinion over walking up stairs to bed and it didn't end well. Well, actually after a considerable amount of screaming, the poor girl admitted between sobs that she didn't know why she was crying and demanded a cuddle and a song, which is quite a sweet ending. Many choruses of You are My Sunshine later she finally agreed to put her pyjamas on and was suddenly back to her sunny self as if she hadn't been screaming and kicking with rage for the previous twenty minutes.

However, she has been very interested in the making process for this project, and has been making flattering noises, so I s'pose she's forgiven.

The bed itself is made from an old shoebox. I cut down the sides a little as when I first popped the doll in, it looked a little (a lot) like a doll in a coffin - not really the look I was aiming for. The header is made from half of the shoebox lid.

The mattress is made from a scrap of old sheet with a few layers of wadding left over from last year's rainbow quilt. Then I moved on to a mini quilt as a cover, which uses fabric I had left over from H's wedding bunting. I settled on a simple patchwork of squares which I machine sewed. I used a scrap of an old fleece blanket in the middle of the 'sandwich' as the wadding I had was too thick.

A fat quarter of mint green from the stash provided a backing.I really enjoyed hand-quilting this project, very satisfying and quite soothing. The edges are bound with some white woven tape, again left over from bunting production.

Somehow it's suddenly 3pm again, so I'm off to retrieve my offspring and maybe run through a few show tunes, we'll see how things pan out.

p.s. this project has just given me the itch to to a proper massive big quilt <plots> Watch this space...

Change of Plan

I had plans for this weekend, not grand plans mind, just normal ones. Go to the dentist on Saturday morning, run a few errands, bake a cake, do some sewing for the stall next week, and on the slightly more exciting front, go out on Saturday night and meet a bunch of strangers from the internet (aka a Mumsnet meet-up). But that's not actually what happened... of course not.

The run-up to the weekend had begun with the three year old being too poorly for childcare on Friday. But no matter I thought, I'm going out on Saturday night. I'll get my reward for mopping up sick and trying to force calpol into a recalcitrant preschooler, with chat about the Mumsnet scarf and Centre Parcs. And things on sticks and plenty of booze. Lovely.

On Saturday morning my daughter was no better, and my spidey senses were starting to shift from the default position of 'If you take her to the docs now they'll give you the anxious mother look' to actually being, well, an anxious mother. So off I bombed to the GP surgery before 9:00am, thinking I'd just get them to have a little listen to her chest, give me the look and send us home with instructions for clear fluids and calpol as usual. And hopefully make it to the dentist by 10:00am. My first clue that things weren't going down that route was when I turned up the surgery and the receptionist politely informed me that the surgery was only open for pre-booked appointments and that I should really go to out of hours. She then took a closer look at my slightly unkempt state and the sad child on my hip and said she would ask the GP on duty if we could be seen.

The next sign that things were really not so ok, was that the GP not only agreed to see us straight away, but then listened to my daughter's chest and started to do the serious look. And then hooked my now very pale sad child up to a nebuliser while she went to phone the children's hospital.

So we had a rather too eventful morning in A&E with more nebulisers, oxygen masks and chest x-rays, before being admitted to the short stay ward for observation, and nurses started muttering things about an overnight stay. I can tell when my children are properly ill, by the way that they lose all their fight, and submit to people doing necessary but rather unpleasant medical procedures with only a sad little whimper. Plenty of that this weekend.

There's been a fair amount of media coverage recently about compassion and caring in nursing, and whether it's missing. Speaking from my recent experience I'd have to say not. I was incredibly impressed by the care that my daughter received, and the attitude of the staff towards her. Sure, there was one slightly brusque antipodean nurse, but I think they're obligatory. And her main concern was to get the children better so they could get out of there, something that all of us would agree with.

But of course the main thing about our hospital visit is that for us it was a rarity. Barring the odd visit to check out possible broken limbs or swollen appendices (they weren't), we've had minimal contact with hospitals. So I didn't take offence at being referred to as 'mum' by all healthcare professionals. Because if you're at hospital with your children long enough for the nurses to learn your name, then you've got bigger things to worry about....

I'll stop now as I've gone on too long already. I don't even have a lovely picture to cheer up this post either. Back to cupcakes and bunting soon I promise.

The Weird Kid

When my son started school two years ago, my main concern was not how quickly he'd pick up phonics or get to grips with numbers. No, my main concern was that he wouldn't be the 'weird kid'. You know the one, home haircut, cord dungarees, general air of social awkwardness coupled with an embarrassingly precocious vocabulary. Yes, it was me... I was the weird kid, and occasionally I feel like I still am.

But naturally my son has surprised me by being completely socially at ease, and the fact that his school has a uniform means that fashion faux pas opportunities are thankfully limited. He has two (male) 'best' friends - the three of them have been a tight unit since they started in Reception, and he is also seemingly very popular with the girls in his class, judging by the volume of party invitations he receives...

So I think I'm safe in hand-knitting him some rainbow socks (pictured above). He chose the yarn himself and was trying them on this evening, they were pronounced 'comfy' and 'really warm'. There's a bit of room for growth in the toe area as he's shooting up alarmingly at the moment.

The only problem is that now I've finished them I have nothing to take to craft group tonight, might just have to take some Christmassy fabrics and see where that takes me.

Dolly Nappy

This was one of those spur of the moment quick makes, but I took a few photos so thought I would stick it on here.

When I was at the craft shop I remembered that I wanted some velcro for a project, but couldn't remember what the project was (head like a sieve). So I chucked some in the basket on the off-chance. When I got home started chatting to my 3 year old, which jogged my memory for the forgotten project - a nappy for 'Baby Dolly'. This is the same doll I knitted some clothes for a while ago.

I used cloth nappies for about 50% of the time with my real children (yes, I'm one of 'those' mothers, lentils, cloth nappies, homebirth, it's a pretty damning picture), and disposable nappies for dolls seem even more wasteful than those full of real shit. I am informed that there is a doll that you can buy baby 'food' for  that will consequently produce dirty nappies - the mind boggles...

Anyway... this is how I did it:

I used two old face flannels and cut two matching t-shapes from them. Accuracy wasn't my main concern here, as this nappy wasn't going to have to deal with containing anything. It was just a case of a bit of hacking with the fabric shears.

Then I used my machine to sew round the edges (about 1 cm from the edge), leaving a gap at the top of the T.

Then I turned the nappy inside out, and quickly sewed the open seam shut. I stitched a fuzzy strip of velcro to the front of the nappy (the bit that goes over the doll's belly) and then the corresponding hooky bits onto the tabs.

And there you go, a nappy that a 3 year old can do/undo as many times as she likes. There's a high level of curiosity about babies in this house at the moment, mainly I think because a couple of friends have newborns, and it's quite interesting to see how my children deal with their 'babies'...

Fairy Cakes

When I was a kid these were the sort of cakes you had at birthday parties, a little sponge with a splodge of luridly coloured icing, maybe topped with a bit of dolly mixture or some sprinkles. Recently they seem to have mutated into something called cupcakes, which usually look beautiful but are often a bit of a letdown on the taste side. Cupcakes also usually seem to have mountainous swirls of buttercream on top, which I find just too icky.

It being the school holidays, and with the odd wet afternoon, we decided to indulge in a bit of baking yesterday. This is a really basic recipe that always seems to work. You could use soft butter, but I find the marg gives a nice texture to the sponge, and also is a bit lighter for everyday (for making biscuits I would always use butter...). A few drops of vanilla essence in the mix is good too but not essential.

Basic Fairy Cake Recipe
125g margarine
125g caster sugar
125g self-raising flour
2 eggs
2 splashes of milk

Decorations:
Icing sugar and a little water
Food colouring
Sprinkles, sweeties and all that jazz

To bake:
1. Preheat oven to 170 (fan) or 180 (conventional)
2. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper muffin cases
3. If you're doing this by hand, cream the fat and sugar until light and fluffy before beating in the eggs. Then gently fold in the flour until well mixed. If you have a food processor then just bung all the ingredients (except milk) in the machine and whizz it up.
4. Add a couple of splashes of milk to the mix and mix in
5. Divide the mix evenly into the paper cases
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the cakes have risen and are golden brown
7. Leave on a wire rack to cool before decorating

To decorate:
Glacé icing is just icing sugar and water mixed up together until smooth and glossy. Separate the icing out into some little bowls and add a drop or two of different food colouring to each. Lay out icing, sprinkles, sweeties and cakes on a covered table and let your little blighters loose with their creativity. Resist the temptation to try and direct them...

Little Doers

This is one of those posts I've had in the pipeline, and it's not about my craft stuff, instead it's about what my children have been up to. I was moseying about on Mumsnet a few weeks ago and noticed a post from Beth at Little Doers who was looking for bloggers to review their children's craft boxes. The idea behind the scheme is that you get a box through the post once a month with all the materials you will need for a weekly craft activity.

Excitement was running high when the box arrived, and Youngest was very impressed to have a parcel with her name on it. We opened the envelope marked week one and were pleased to find two different activities, which was handy as Oldest decided that he wanted to join in too. Youngest took her time making a queen mask on a stick, with plenty of glitter and sparkly sticky bits and Oldest made a crown. The only thing that I had to provide was a bit of PVA glue. Everything else, including all craft materials, an apron and glue spreader was included.

There are different levels of membership for the scheme, starting with the Basic package which is £15 a month on a rolling basis. That's £3.50 a week which I think is pretty reasonable. If you sign up for longer then the price drops accordingly. I thought the materials were good quality, there were some nice little touches like pre-applied sticky dots on some of the pieces to make it really easy for the children. I think this is a great scheme for anyone who doesn't have the space for lots of craft supplies, and it's good for inspiration. It definitely made us do more craft together, which was lovely. 

Little Doers was set up by Beth and Ed who are parents themselves, and work from home in Hampshire Check out their site Little Doers to find out more.

N.B. I received a free Little Doers box in exchange for writing this post