Something a bit different for Easter

Excuse the silence blog friends...the school holidays arrived, and with them chicken pox. One of our little ones has now gone through it and we are waiting for the other to come down with it. So many thoughts have been brewing in my head that I have wanted to externalise into blog posts, but they will need to wait. So, I hope you like this Easter offering....

Every year at Easter when I was a child, my mum and aunt would make traditional Southern Italian biscuits...they are quite unique in that they are big and at the centre, you have a hard boiled egg, still in its shell. I remember year after year, sitting, munching my way round and round the biscuit (this could take half an hour!) until I was left with my egg.

These biscuits are called Pupi cu l'ova (southern dialect for doll with an egg) and are traditionally made in shapes such as bears, dolls, hen's or baskets.

I haven't had one for...well at least 25 years, until this morning! We found a recipe online - the one we used is here though I really wanted to do this one as its more like the one I remember, but I was missing a couple of ingredients.  Well, they tasted fabulous, just like I remember. Taste buds sure give you a trip down memory lane don't they?

 

And the kids loved making them and more particularly, eating them! There is a lot of childhood delight in munching through a giant cookie ;)

Why not give them a go? Something a little different for Easter...

Lastly, here's some of our Easter decorations (I have started keeping a little box with Easter decs in them...why should decorating our homes be just for Christmas eh?).

The wreath was something I started last year and finished yesterday...at last (that's just the pace of how it goes round here...).

Wishing you the best of what Easter can give...new life and the power of transformation.

Concetta xx

Free toys - love and fun included!

This is Sally.

She was made with a lot of love by my little boy, Toby (with some help from Mummy).

Component parts: an empty salt tub, a lid, yoghurt pot, old insulating foil, insulating tape (she is very warm!) some pipe cleaners and good old British milk bottle tops from our doorstep milk bottle delivery (a great craft resource if there ever was one).

Fun was had. And when she was finished, he squealed with glee "Mummy, I have a new toy, I have a new toy to play with!"  Enough said...

Mosaic hanging decorations and jewellery with recycled lids!

A recipe for children's jewellery and hanging decorations

Take some lids, the kind you would normally throw away (milk & juice bottle,  jam jar...)

Buy some tile adhesive (white creamy stuff, same consistency as peanut butter - pre-mixed in a tub from Pound / Dollar store or mix your own from powdered tile adhesive from DIY shop - both very cheap)

If you are going for hanging variety (tree decoration or necklace pendant), make two small holes in the lid. Use heated skewer for plastic lids (don't breathe in fumes) or a nail and hammer for metal lids.Then hook some wire through to form a loop.

Fill lid with creame tile adhesive.

Get some sparkly things - glass nuggets, beads, broken mosaic tiles (note, if you think you might get into doing mosaic projects, invest in some cheap tile nippers. They look like this...and it means you can use old bathroom tiles as well as mosaic tiles for lots of making fun!)

Stick your sparkly things into the tile adhesive. Make sure you embed tiles well, so they don't fall out.

Add appropriate hanging mechanism - sticky badge pins for brooches, ribbon for necklaces or string for hanging decorations (I use dental floss!)

Here's our variations on the theme :

A beady brooch - we used a bit of extra PVA/white glue to make sure the piles of beads stay in place

A little face brooch made with glass nugges and some broken tiles (but you can experiment with small beads for the pupils and lips, if you don't have tiles and nippers...)

Our tree hanging decoration, which doubles up as a pretty child's necklace.

Some more tree hangy things made with jam lids.

As you can see, we have done quite a few of these - a great way of recycling! Anyone who has followed this blog may have noticed that I have a thing about hanging pretty things in trees... especially good on bare branches for winter I think! And Christmas tree decor of course...

More tutorials for hanging decorations here and here.

Have fun making :)

Make cement foot prints and hand prints

This is a great activity which creates wonderful memories of babies & children's footprints at various stages of life - you can go to town and do the whole family, including your pets!

We have just done them as a memento of when Isabella started school. Her footprint will be a stepping stone. Toby's hand print was done in a smaller container and will become a paperweight. You can also do them as doorstops, bookends...whatever creative function for a lovingly adorned bit of concrete you can find! Think Christmas presents for grandparents, mother's and father's day etc..

A friend of mine left recesses in her patio especially for this and I recently went round and did them with her children (see pic at the top). They loved it and mum says it looks 'magical' having their footprints immortalised in the garden.

Don't be intimidated by concrete if you have never used it before...its easy peasy as you will see here.

What You Need

• Mortar (a mix of cement and fine sand) easily and cheaply available from DIY stores (I have tried this activity with both rapid set cement and cement adhesive (thinset) and it didn't work so well, so best avoided)
• Containers to cast the prints into. We used an old spring form baking tin (where the side can be loosened and removed) and an old Tupperware tub. You can use anything with sides (old take-away containers, foil trays, plant trays etc...)
• An old bucket to mix the mortar in
• Something to mix and smooth like a decorators palette knife - or a stick and an old credit card!
• WD40 or petroleum jelly (Vaseline) for lubricating the container 
• Water to hand
• Gloves (it can be a bit messy and cement can make sensitive skin sore)
• Mask (for pouring cement powder - you don't want to breathe it in)
• Things to decorate your stepping stone with if you wish (we, of course, used mosaic tiles)

What to do

1. Get everything ready and to hand as you need to work methodically.

2. Line the inside of your casting containers with WD40 or petroleum jelly so that you will be able to easily release the cast when it is dry.

3. Pour mortar powder into an old bucket (use your mask)and slowly mix until you get a peanut butter consistency.

4. Pour the mixture into your casting container, pressing and smoothing it with your palette knife / credit card (should take a couple of minutes) until it is level.

5. Clean your child's hand or foot (and put a bit of oil on to act as a barrier for sensitive skin).

6. Rather than letting your child step into the cement (which will be their instinct), hold their foot and gently (but firmly) push it in yourself. This will help make sure you use the right amount of pressure (if they step right in it will squish too much). Babies will have a tendency to grab the cement so its best to push the hand / foot in firmly and then remove it quickly. If you end up with too much squish or not enough of an impression, simply smooth the cement out and try again until you are happy with it. There is plenty of working time with the mortar mix.

 7. If you want, you can now decorate the cast. You can also add name and age using a pencil nib. If you are embedding objects into the cement, make sure you push them in firmly so that the surface doesn't have jagged edges and the pieces stay put when dry.

8. Cover it and leave it to dry for 2 weeks - it takes this long to cure. You can spray it occasionally with water to help the cement cure, especially if it is very hot.

9. After 2 weeks, turn the cast upside down - it should pop out of its container easily - and voila! If at this point, a bit  of decoration falls out, you can stick it back in its place with PVA (Weldbond) glue.

10. If you want to use your cast as a paperweight or doorstop, you can stick some felt underneath to make sure it doesn't scratch surfaces.

We also added some iridescent glitter glue into the imprints of ours - for a bit of extra sparkle. Why not do a stepping stone a year and create a great garden path? I wish I had started doing this when my two were babies, but its better late than never!

Fun, Farms & Crafternoons

Just a few pics of our last few days...

 Stems of the chard we harvested from our community farm where we go every Saturday to weed, water, pick and picnic! Amazing colours and very delicious, especially made with this recipe for Sicilan chard (being half Sicilian, rather appropriate too!).

I love this picture Isabella drew of me, herself and her brother. Such a treasure.

And this is us at the Mayfield Lavender fields - one of our favourite places.

We are carrying on with our Crafternoons...

Making a mosaic elephant...

Tracing round our bodies and decorating them!

And making fingerbobs (remember those?).

Hope you have had a good weekend...I'll be back in the middle of the week...hope to see you then!

Crafternoons!

I love making. I love making with my children. I love it because it's fun and appeals to my inner child. I love it because I believe creativity is  a core aspect of our human language that needs developing, as much as learning to speak and verbalise.

 I have a bundle of books with ideas for activities to do with children and en famille. We have a cupboard stuffed with materials that we might use one day to make things with.

 I visit a host of web sites and have many pages bookmarked with exciting activities to do.

But somehow, our making often defaults to self-directed art and crafts that the children initiate, informed by materials at hand (I have made a point of them having lots to hand in their own craft corner) while mummy flits in and out and tries to do the dishes, hang out the washing etc.. etc.... While child-initiated activities are fantastic and valuable, I do feel a pang of guilt / parental failure when I look at the mountain of children's activity books and our bulging craft cupboard. It's like having a pantry full of amazing ingredients and not using them. I've realised that there is something about balancing spontaneity with intentionality  and choosing to give 100% attention to being with my kids and making together. So...I have decided to introduce a new rhythm to our home.

Enter "Crafternoons". Four afternoons a week, I will now intentionally plan an activity for us to try. From now on, whenever I see / read about / think up a new activity I am going to write it down in our special crafternoon book.

 Yesterday, I opened page one of our crafternoons book and started making lists of activities for us to try. It helps me to think in categories so I divided the book into sections (drawing, painting, 3-d, nature, messy play, games, cooking etc....oh and of course, mosaics) and have started populating the sections with ideas from books and web sites.

Here's our list for this week:

Yesterday we had a go at shaving foam play (or "champagne foam" as Isabella calls it!).  We introduced food colouring and did lots of squishing - oh my it felt good!

 Then, Isabella decided to do a drawing with the food colouring and some toothpicks. Great until she spilt loads of red food colouring on her hand and arm which freaked her out somewhat and led to 20 mins of crying (that was not fun).

 Once we all recovered, Toby wanted to do an activity he had seen in an Usborne activity book which involved lots of black paint - heck there was mess everywhere so we went for it. Here are their beautiful creations.

Finally, as we were clearing up, Toby (totally spontaneously) decided to create his first art installation! He was intent on copying the picture on the paint container box...but because some of the coloured lids were missing, he improvised!

He was so funny - as I was trying to take a picture of his work he kept saying "wait, I haven't finished yet" and would add a balloon here and a brush there until he was satisfied with how his objects were laid out. My little artist!

Yup...a bit more intention from Mama is a good thing. Directed activity is releasing spontaneous creativity. Love it! What are your favourite sources of activities and ideas? Which books or web sites have you actually done activities from? I'd love to hear...