Wine-making and Children...Two Things You Dont Often Hear In The Same Sentence!

Whilst I wouldn't really consider this a craft activity it fits within my basic remit of 'fun, free,educational and useful'. I don't normally suggest the use of alcohol around children but this week I've made an exception. Together with the children's assistance, I've been making wine. My parents have a monstrous grapevine that used to give me strange body snatcher dreams in my younger years, but the grapes aren't that great for eating. My Dad suggested making some wine and in my current 'why not, I'll have a go at that' state of mind, I agreed. So, after school yesterday we went down to my Mum & Dads and the kids had a ball picking as many grapes as they could, 10kg in total. As this is my first attempt at making wine I bought a kit with all the necessary bits in to make life a little easier. After cleaning the grapes I then let my little darlings loose on the wonderful business of 'squishing'. Not wishing my finished product to taste like small children's feet I made sure their hands were VERY clean and gave them a lovely big bowl each with a suitable pile of grapes to mulch. I can honestly and quite sadly admit they haven't had this much fun in ages! What a delightfully disgusting experience it is to pop each little berry between your fingers - delicious! With all the grapes squished they were then added to a large vat containing a huge amount of sugar and a seemingly small quantity of water. Sachets of various things were added (don't ask me to get technical - there's plenty of sites for that!) and by teatime tonight it was frothing away quite nicely. Unfortunately I know I am now going to have the question every morning 'Mum, when's our wine going to be ready?'  Hmmmm, sorry kids.

More Retail Therapy

My blog seems to consist more about shopping so far than actually doing any craft. I can assure you that this is is not a fair representation of things to come (promise!). In fairness, both my little ones are in nursery today so I have been doing a little research whilst it's been quieter around the house.

I find arts & crafts shops a little on the expensive side normally but sometimes you just can't find what you want anywhere else and you just have to bite the bullet. I'm a huge fan of ebay for searching out things a bit cheaper, for example I managed to get a tube of green fabric paint for a couple of quid recently which may seem trivial but I would've spent that driving to my nearest craft store.

Anyway, whilst researching today, I noticed the lovely people at Hobbycraft will give you a £5 voucher just for signing up to their email newsletters, which I thought was jolly nice of them.
Hobbycraft are also offering free delivery of online orders over £30 and they now accept PayPal as payment.

So I did, and I now have £5 to spend (£25 minimum spend I think but that's easily done). I shall be using it to put towards a big bundle of goodies to keep us busy over the summer holidays.

Click below to get your voucher:

Mess Free Baking - Well, Nearly...

With two little darlings I find baking a bit of a nightmare, in that, which ever one I'm not watching that second will empty a bag of flour onto the floor or something similar. I discovered some wonderful Dr Oetker baking trays in Aldi the other day. You simply add water or milk to the mix (depending on the instructions obviously!) and stir it well & stick it in the oven - job done! Perfect for a quick, easy & virtually mess free baking session. I've seen various ones, bread & cake mixes, possibly not all Dr Oetker but all the ones we've tried have been good. Anything you can bake in a tray gets my vote as an easy one for the kids to tackle. We cooked a Dr Oetker lemon & poppy seed cake yesterday, which was gorgeous. The Mediteranean bread mix was also a hit. Just right for pulling out of the cupboard on a rainy day.

Alphabet scrapbook

I spent about an hour cutting out pictures last night from magazines and catalogues (anything that was in the recycling bag!) whilst I sat watching tv. The kids now have a lovely pile of pictures that they are going to stick in their 'alphabet book'. An inexpensive scrapbook was purchased and lettered with each letter of the alphabet and then the little ones take it in turns to stick a picture onto the appropriate letter's page (after saying what the picture name begins with ie; 'a' for apple etc). They've been doing the book for a few weeks now and it's quite full and they're both doing really well with their reading & recognising letters. They can also refer back to it when they want to see their work, which they enjoy almost as much as doing it.