happy valentine’s day

Cyan wanted to make Valentine’s cards for some of her school friends.. she picked coloured card which I trimmed into some little rounded cards using a corner punch. Pink for the girls, naturally, and purple and blue for the boys. She drew a different picture on each card, and added some heart stickers, gems and sequins.



A fairy and a princess..



A dragon and a T-rex for the boys..



Even the envelopes looked cute, she added heart stickers on all the ‘i’s..

I included the little toadstool in the photos at Cyan’s request, when I asked her not to seal the cards in the envelopes so I could take them out later and take a picture of them she told me “I’m finding pretty things to go in the picture with my cards”. Amazing, five years old and she’s thinking about staging photographs!



This laser-cut wooden heart was my alternative to a Valentine’s card for Karl, from Timber Green Woods on Etsy. I love that it has the year – 2011 – worked into the design, it commemorates this the year of our wedding.

double giveaway time!

I apologise for my lack of crafting and absence from the world of blogging..

Apart from the usual pressures of work, family, friends etc. I am getting started on plans for our wedding in October. Expect to see posts on this in the coming months, needless to say I am planning to craft a lot of things for our wedding.

I just realised that it’s my blog anniversary this month (where has the year gone?!) so I have decided to do a giveaway. Entries welcome from anyone anywhere, instructions below.

You could win a cute fabric party bag with some fun goodies for your child,
and some cute little extras (yet to be decided) for yourself..

I will be giving away an Alice in Wonderland and a Dinosaur fabric party
bag, yes – that means TWO winners!





To enter:

• leave a comment on this post stating your preference for Alice or Dino
• if you are a follower please leave an extra comment for an extra entry
• giveaway closes Friday 25 February 2011 21:00 PM GMT
• the two winners will be picked at random, announced here,
  and contacted via email
• please make sure your email address is accessible via your profile,
  or include it in your comment like this: you (at) domain (dot) com

The two winners will get to choose which bag they would like, there are 6 Alice character bags to choose from (Alice, Queen of Hearts, Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, White Rabbit, Caterpillar), and the Dinosaur winner will get to pick the prints from my stock and the colour for the handles (green, orange, blue, pink)..

Each fabric goody bag will come with colouring book, shaped crayons, stickers, and other fun goodies to match the Alice or Dino theme..

There will be extra little gifts included just for you, I haven’t decided what exactly yet, but they will be cute/crafty/handmade!

Good luck! and thank you for taking part..

winter woolies

Some gratuitous cuteness.. Oliver and Cyan modelling their stylish new hats and scarves knitted for them by my Mum..







We took some photos the same day of the kids with my sister, Auntie Arwen – Oliver wanted a photo of them to go in his picture frame which he made at school..

gingerbread playdough

I made some gingerbread playdough for the kids, a little stocking filler for Christmas.. completely inspired by Christy’s gingerbread playdough over at from glitter to gumdrops..



When I came to make it (on Christmas Eve) I realised I had neglected to buy the cream of tarter necessary for Christy’s recipe.. a moment of panic, then google to the rescue! I figured there must be other recipes for playdough right? Yes indeed! There are many! I found this site PlaydoughRecipe.com with a multitude of recipes for playdough..

I decided to try the simplest sounding one – oatmeal playdough.. all you need is flour (1 cup), water (1 cup) and oats (2 cups)! I used porridge oats and ground them fine first in a food processor.. I added ground ginger, cinnamon and mixed spice for the gingerbread ‘flavour’. You simply stir together the dry ingredients and add water and food colouring (I used a little yellow and red colouring added to my cup of water) gradually until you have a dough, then knead it and add a little flour and/or water as necessary until you have the desired consistency! Easy as pie – or should I say gingerbread!



As an afterthought I decided to add some coppery glitter, it really did smell good enough to eat (it isn’t – I tried – before adding the glitter!), I thought the glitter would look pretty and put the kids off eating it!



I had bought some cookie cutters, cute gingerbread men and snowflake buttons, and mini cutter embellishments with this little project in mind.. I wrapped the gingerbread dough in cling film, one lump for each child (and some left over which I wrapped and put in the fridge for later), and placed in some empty body butter pots I have been saving..



Lastly I printed out some labels to stick on the lids..



What an easy gift, the kids loved it, and it was super quick and simple to make! Thanks Christy!

oliver’s school makings

Well, I have some serious catching up to do here in blog-land.. I’ll start off with a selection of some of Oliver’s school work and projects from last year 2010..



This was a project he worked on through the Autumn term, and he got to bring home the finished article just before Christmas.. it’s a picture frame which he designed, planned, fabricated from wood, painted, and decorated all by himself! He is very proud of it, rightly so!



This is a table centerpiece he made at school the week before Christmas, it came home with him to grace our Christmas dinner-table, it was lovely with the candle lit..



A beautiful still-life artwork, a pastel drawing he made at school of a vase of flowers and foliage.. this is going in a frame up on the wall..



This was a homework project from back in May, he had to produce an piece of artwork relating to The Wild Woods – a book by Simon James, a local author of children’s books; who incidentally my Dad used to teach to play the guitar many years ago, we have a copy of Simon’s first book The Day Jake Vacuumed in our family signed by Simon with a sketch of Jake playing the guitar!



Simon visited Oliver’s school shortly before this to give a talk and presentation to the kids on his work processes for writing and illustrating children’s story books, which I was also lucky enough to attend. Oliver found it very inspiring..



While I was in school Oliver showed me his monster puppet, a project he worked on last year, again designing and making it himself, stitching the felt shapes together and gluing on the features..



I love that there are so many opportunities at school for the kids to get crafty and creative, and I’m sure it helps that we do a lot of crafty stuff at home!