A beautiful late summer salad

Personalised papercut wedding gift

Although I am very happy to buy a gift from a wedding list, I think if you are a key participant of the wedding party (like the best man) it is important to give an additional gift which is a bit more personal. I know some of our most memorable gifts where the ones with a home made element.

So I decided to have a go at doing a papercut in the style of Rob Ryan who is one of my current favourite designers. I have been meaning to have a go at papercutting but was sure it would be super tricky. Turns out it is simpler than it looks all you really need is a nice sharp scalpel & a bit of time!

I am quite happy with the result. I hope the bride and groom like it. I have put it in a frame but I don't mind if they just put it in a scrapbook or photo album.

After we have moved I am very tempted to use this technique for the family tree I have been wanting to make for ages. We will see!

Olive leaf wreaths

We are loving the Gymnastics, swimming and the rowing and, well everything about the Olympics is fabulous; EXCEPT, those silly poncy flower bouquets of garish coloured roses which offend me mortally as an ex florist!!!

So to abate this disgust, I made the boys make some much more classy and sylish olive leaf wreaths!

We made them using green sugar paper strips and stuck on leaf shapes, then backed them with some strong (and trusty) duct tape in a circlet the size of their head. I think the boys look so much better than the male Olympian champions of 2012 with their silly flowers. Much more fitting for men (and women- how good are the women!) of such strength, commitment and endurance.

Opening ceremony feast & flag bunting

This was another of our Olympic themed Mummy school activities. We printed lots of flag colouring pages off the internet and coloured them in. It is so impressive how well they absorbed this information and can now recognise at least 25 flags from around the world!

We joined them together with some trusty duct tape and hung this around the (now very sparse due to packing everything up for moving) living room.

This served as a lovely backdrop for the opening ceremony.

The boys got to stay up late and we had a feast with at least one dish from each of the 5 continents represented by the rings;

Prawn toast & bhajis & thai spring rolls for Asia

Chips and Tex mex dips for the Americas

Moroccan cous cous salad  & biltong for Africa

Cocktail sausages and cheese for Europe

Key Lime Pie for Australasia

Mummy school - Olympic biscuits

This weeks topic isn't very original but still worthwhile and very exciting. It is the Olympics.

We have been busy counting down & preparing for our opening ceremony feast, doing worksheets galore, playing some of the many games on the official Wenlock and Mandeville website and learning all about the countries participating , the history of the games and what games are included.

I will post a few of our favourite activities and this was certainly one. Not exactly in keeping with the ethos of health as they are cookies but they are made with wholemeal flour and malt to attempt to make them healthier than the average biscuit.

We used Nigellas cut out biscuit recipe but substituted wholemeal flour and added some instant horlicks powder for flavour rather than vanilla.

I then used my lovely new colour pastes to make the colours of the rings. Did you know the colours are chosen because every flag in the games contains at least one of these colours? 

We decorated them with our friends, learning that the 5 rings represent the 5 continents (although North & South America is counted as one which is a bit of a cheat!)

BBQ flat bread, with piri-piri chicken and black bean rainbow salad

Barbequed flat bread is my new favourite addition to a BBQ supper. And the great thing is you can add stuff into the basic flat bread mix to make variations. This mix included some chilli flakes and dried oregano but the sky is the limit.

This black bean salad was a marvellous success. It was so beautiful, the photos do it no justice at all. The black of the beans made the colours of the coriander, sweetcorn, red and green pepers and tomatoes so much more vibrant.

Summer Mummy School

So successful has Mummy School gone down in our house and so enthusiastic the boys are for me to put the  Bear down for his sleep, that the other day, Ollie came downstairs dressed like this.....

Saying "I'm ready for Mummy school, Mrs Mummy!"

I thought I would post inks to a few of the sites that I have found helpful in providing free worksheets on all manner of topics.
Here is a few of my favourites;
ISLcollective
www.printactivities.com
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk
http://www.magickeys.com/books/
http://www.worksheetuniverse.com/
http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/worksheets/
http://www.mes-english.com
http://www.homeschoolmath.net/

Homemade Fruit Leather sweets

So we still have fruit left from PYO. So I decided to have a go at making some fruit leather. It is so simple!

First choose any fruit and blend with a hand blender. I made 2 batches, this is kiwi, gooseberry and apple, and the other was pure strawberries. You can add sugar or sweetner to taste. You could also add any other flavourings like almond essence to cherries or raspberries, or vanilla or cinnamon to apple etc.
Then pour the mix onto a baking tray lined with cling film. Try and make it as evenly spread as possible.
Then place in your oven on the lowest possible heat setting and leave for 6-8 hours or until it no longer leaves a dent when you press it. If it is not evenly spread you may need to moisten the edges with water to make sure the middle is cooked before the edges frazzle.
Remove from the oven and slice as you wish. I made small squares for sweeties, you could make roll ups or use some of the kids playdoh cutters (cleaned obviously) for more interesting shapes.

An Amazing Strawberry Cake

Nothing in the world beats a fresh Strawberry sponge. It is so wonderfully summery and British, evocative of   tea parties and the sound of cricket balls hitting bats as the game is played by gentlemen on the village green on a warm sunny day.

And it is so quick, bung all the ingredients for a simple sponge in the mixer, throw it in a couple of cake tins and bake for 20 mins. Whip up some fresh cream and slice or half the strawberries and when the cake is cool pile it up! Yum yum. And even better when you have just been out picking the strawberries yourself!

Strawberry picking

Our end of week outing for the fruit topic was a trip to the local fruit picking (PYO) farm.
We had a great time despite the weather being rather grey.

We all discovered that we love fresh gooseberries. A perfect end to the week - a new found fruit to enjoy!

The cafe there (Cairnie Fruit Farm) had some great treats. I loved the idea of this cookie on a stick lolly.

And this fine looking cone was in fact a cupcake baked in a cone with vanilla butter icing and a strawberry.

We picked 4 kilos of fruit, time to get creative with the pickings!!!!

A glut of walnuts - Walnut, Parsley & Goat's cheese pesto

Our recent trip to my sister-in-laws beautiful French abode saw us return home laden with a big sackful of walnuts their garden. I am not actually very keen on walnuts but these walnuts were lovely as they hadn't any of the bitter taste of the skin, I think because they were quite young still.

So I spent 2 days shelling the little beggers, so that they didn't take up as much space for moving, and set about thinking what to do with them. 

I found some interesting recipes but decided to stick to one of my favourite things, homemade pesto.

I made this batch with walnuts, flat leaf parsley, a hard goats cheese, olive oil & lemon juice, salt and pepper.

It served as an accompaniment to pasta, but was also delicious mixed with a bit of plain yoghurt as a dip for crudites.

Dinosaur watermelon carving at Summer Mummy School

This week we have been learning all about fruit at 'Mummy school'

Because we are moving from Scotland to England over the summer holidays, the boys are going to end up being off school for 10 whole LOOOOONNNNNGGG weeks!

So, to help them remember everything they learnt to do so well this year, (and to stop me going quite so insane!), we have decided to go to 'Mummy's school' for an hour a day, while the smallest boy is having his morning nap. Each week we will choose a topic.

This week was fruit. This is what we have done;

Thought of every fruit we can think of.

Made a banana smoothie

Been shopping for a fruit we have never tried before, weighing it on the scales and buying it with coins.

Surveyed family and friends for their favourite fruit and drawn a bar graph

Coloured in pictures of fruit found on the net

Drawn our own pictures

Completed various fruit related literacy and maths worksheets (free online downloads)

Read a free online book about fruit that was really cute

Carved a watermelon into a dinosaur shape (after last years success with a shark - see here)

Gone to the library and got out books about fruit

We are going pick you own fruit picking at the weekend and we plan to make some fruit leather with the pickings.

Made a fruit salad.

Illustrated the seasons with the seasonal cycle of an apple tree

Next week will be the very original.... Olympics. Today we kicked it off by watching the torch procession come passed Nanny's house on the Skype video chat! It froze at the exact moment it came passed!

The Park Farm Cookbook

Granny is now a published celebrity chef!

For her birthday we created a photobook of all her most loved family recipes. I am please to say that she seems very chuffed with it! It is available for purchase here!!!!

I just love photobooks and all their home made and personalised gift potential.

Nursery Teacher Gift Idea

Teacher gifts are always tricky, and when it's nursery it's even trickier because there are lots of them!

 My friend is a primary school teacher and when asked what her preferred end of year gift was she said "Wine is always the winner, you can't go wrong because even when it isn't very nice you can always cook with it!"

So I give wine to the primary school teachers, but it felt a bit wrong to walk into nursery with 3 bottles of red! So I started thinking along the sweet treat line, but thought that they probably get overwhelmed with sweet treats all in one go, and had a eureka moment of making them some cookie dough that they can put in their freezer and slice and bake as the urge comes to them.

I used my best chewy cookie dough recipe (find it here) and made three flavours, cinnamon oaty raisin, peanut butter choc chip and mint choc chip.

I hadn't made the mint choc chip ones before so I had to use trial and error a bit. I made the basic choc chip (though you could use mint flavoured chocolate) and then added a bit of peppermint essence (about 2tsp) and a bit of my new paste colourings to make the perfect vivid green!!!

On a side note, I am so excited that I finally got around to getting professional paste food colourings for baking. They have changed my life - well, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, or maybe not - my life is truly that sad!) They are such amazing value for money as you use just a tiny spec and get more colour than you get from a whole bottle of the stuff you get from supermarkets. I got mine here. I only bought yellow, red and blue as you can mix to make any colour yourself.

I dressed them up with a little poem we wrote to make it more personal and some baking/storage instructions. We did get some funny looks as we walked in with them on the last day, and some mothers asked me why I had made a green sausage but the teachers were absolutely delighted with them. I'm not sure who picked which but I think I can guess based on their three personality types!

A very yummy barbeque

Summer fruit pavlova 

Turkey mince Caesar burgers