Felt food and gingerbread houses

I belong to a fabulous forum of very clever mums and mums to be.  They constantly inspire me with their craftiness and generosity, as well as impact my daily parenting with their wisdom and vastly differing, yet well-researched philosophies on raising little people.  Once upon a time, I naively thought parenting was some kind of innate ability that clicked into gear when you gave birth.  Um... nope! I love the way these women (and presumably their other halves) think about their actions and interactions with their children and embrace what they do, rather than just manage the 'inconvenience' that so many view children as.

They can be found here: http://thenappynetwork.org.nz/forum/index.php

These lovely ladies have been so kind over the years, gifting my children with lovely handmade clothing, nappies and goodies, and offering an encouraging word on those days when I really needed one.

Recently, some of us on this forum got together and arranged a swap of felt food.  We all made mass amounts of something, sent them all to an organiser (thanks Kaz!) and she distributed a set to each of us.

Here's what we got - the tomato, cheese and lettuce is what I made.  Aren't they cute?!  Go on, make some.  You know you want to.

And here's what the kids and I spent yesterday afternoon doing.  Did you hear any ranting obscenities?  It wasn't me, I promise **darty sideways glance**

The children managed the icing and decorating well, using royal icing in a small snap-lock bag.  Much easier to handle for small hands than a piping bag.  We learned a few tricks along the way, such as the fact that 2 halves of a boiled sweet make a perfect stained glass window - one whole sweet didn't melt fast enough, and smaller bits tended to blend too much and burn.  Don't ask me how many we made before we realised this!

I found more photos!

Amazing what you find when you clear the camera.

One of the other activities in our advent calendar was making Christmas cards.  I know you can buy a thousand for 99c, but hey, this filled in an afternoon.  We used a booklet of scrap-booking paper I've had for years (bought from the Warehouse for about $4), which was quite handy as it meant that all of the colours were already vetted for colour coordination.  This is not a strength of my son's.  It also meant that the prints were kinda flowery, and not so well received by one of Caleb's Nursery School friends, who suggested he give it to a girl instead.  Just as well he has a thick skin!

We traced cookie cutters to get the shapes, cut them out and layered them with rectangles onto plain paper.  Don't they look cute?  The crooked sticking kinda adds to the appeal.  Or so I'm telling myself!  Might make gift tags too.

I have been having a love affair with felt of late.  I've made lots of felt food (will post pics one day), and Soph has been helping me make felt decorations too.  The blanket stitching is beyond her, but she can sew buttons, plait and use a snap press.  I should really buy her a cross-stitch kit, because she'd love it.

And here's my vege garden, as of a week or so back.  Garlic and peas are ready for harvest, tomatoes, beans, courgettes, corn, spuds and capsicums are well on the way and we have a constant supply of strawberries, lettuce and carrots.  Summer has arrived (did I just jinx something?) so everything has doubled in size since this photo was taken.  I need me some more dirt!

Christmas craft and stuff

It's a lovely time of year when you aren't dashing about writing reports, swiping National Standards sheets and stressing about getting Christmas shopping done in the nano-second you have between school finishing and Christmas day.  Admittedly, I'm also relishing every moment that I have my bigger two children at school, because very soon I'm going to be embarking on a long summer break with 3 children to entertain.  I can see we're going to be spending a lot of time at the local pool or watching movies!

By the way, when did I become a mother of 3 children?  Last time I checked I was still meandering my way through university.

So this Christmas, I've been able to do some of the things I have always wanted to with the kids, but been prevented by time and stress.

This year, I made a point of filling our advent calendar pockets up in advance with holiday activities, instead of forgetting, and hastily shoving lollies in the pocket before the kids got up each morning.  This took an entire evening.  I'm serious.  My children have more on their social calendar than I, so it was a complicated process of brainstorming activities, cross-checking with my diary and making sure that easy activities tied in with days when we had swimming lessons, Pippins or social commitments and the more complicated events were scheduled for cruisy days.

I should have listed them all on the first of December, but half of them are now wadded wee balls in the fireplace, and I can't remember what they all said!  I've tried (and will continue) to take pictures of the interesting ones in any case.

This year I've made a point of creating a range of activities that capture the 'spirit' of Christmas, rather than the commercialised 'getting' side that my kids are very familiar with.  This is one of them, stolen in part from my friend Laura Hall.  This idea was instigated after my original plan of gifting unwanted toys to the Salvation Army resulted in a series of minor nervous breakdowns by Sophie at the thought of parting with any one of her thousands of (apparently) deeply loved playthings.  All about loving our fellow child-kind here, clearly.  In any case, no amount of ranting, guilting or lecturing would change her mind, and merely resulted in her sleeping with EVEN MORE soft toys in her bed, for fear that I'd thieve them in the night and give them away to some undeserving, underprivileged child.  I don't think she slept a wink!  Clearly a National Party voter, that one ;-)

Anyway, this was fun, and we can't wait to stash them about the village tomorrow.  Though it has crossed my mind that people are so honest here-abouts that they'll just leave them there, thinking they must be for someone else!

Another fun craft has been cornflour dough ornaments.  To be honest, after 11 years (really?!) of teaching, I'm a bit of a salt dough grinch.  It never bakes evenly, goes rotten after a few months, the salt crystals don't dissolve and it always looks just like a kid went nuts with some playdough, paint and yarn and hung it on your tree.  Which they did, essentially.  So I tried a new recipe:

1/2 C Cornfour
3/4C Baking Soda
1/2C Water (we used a bit more)

Mix, cook over a low heat and stir.  Cool, knead and roll out.  Bake for an hour at 50deg C, turning them over half way through cooking.

Easy!

To get pretty texture, we rolled some naff old doilies onto it before cutting our shapes out, or used rubber stamps.  I sealed them with homemade Modge Podge (AKA watery PVA) and added some details with nail polish to get a bit of shimmer happening.  I love how they are actually WHITE, not salt dough grey, and the kids actually didn't need much help to produce ornaments that may actually pass muster onto 2013's tree.  Will do this again!

More of our happenings some other time.  Oh, but also...  we have chicks!!  Mostly purebred Plymouth Barred Rocks (with a random foster hen) but as you can see, we have a rogue bitser in there too.  Anyone want him / her?  We WILL not be keeping it, despite my family's protests.  We need some quality breeding control around here!  And yes, I do believe chooks are quite possibly the hardest creatures on Earth to photograph.