Top Tips for Staying Warm WITHOUT Putting the Heating On

Our heating has only been on once since about March, and that was only because I didn’t wash uniforms early enough and the school jumpers, which shrink just waving them in front of the tumble drier, were still wet one Sunday night. Yes it was lovely to wake up in a toasty warm house, but we were all groggy and too snuggly to even want to get out of bed, so counter-productive in my eyes!

Some friends, and family, are always bemused to hear that our heating is rarely on even in the middle of winter, unless we have a small baby in the house, and can’t understand how we haven’t all frozen to death yet. But with rising energy costs, doubled with the cutting of tax credits and benefits I know a lot of people will start to feel the pinch soon so I thought I would share some of my simple, yet effective tips to staying warm.READ MORE »

We Have a New Allotment!

On Sunday I hinted upon the fact that I had some news! Even if you haven’t seen that post, I’m pretty sure the title of this post gives it away!

This is our 3rd allotment now. Sadly we had to give up the other two for various reasons but the land this one is on is owned by a friend, so we should be pretty safe to stay here unless she moves house, or has enough of me pottering about!

This new allotment is miles better than our old two it is extra spacious, easy to get to, is facing south west and gets sun pretty much all day! It doesn’t look like much, apart from the mountain side field that it is, but hopefully by next summer it will be filled with lots of pretty, and tasty, fruits and vegetables!

I have so many plans of what I want to grow. I’ve already ordered some seeds from the Real Seed website for vegetables I can plant over the next few months, including beans, onions, radishes and cabbage. It will take a lot of work to get the ground even a bit ready for planting, but the work has already started. Lee and I did some strimming today. FYI a strimmer harness is not the most flattering of accessories when you have big boobs 😉

Sensory Play ~ Mini Edible Water Beads

It’s been a while since we had our first attempt at sensory play. We were unable to do any over the summer but now the holidays are over and O is missing the company of his older siblings. To keep him occupied during school time I have decided I’d like to try and do more of these types of activities. This week we tried:

Mini Edible Water Beads

Easter Bonnets

So yeah, I was meant to post this last week but with the run up to the girls’ birthday and Ff being poorly I didn’t get the chance. But the two L’s worked so hard on these Easter bonnets I wanted to show them off anyway! Of course we did them very last minute so we had a costume change into jammies midway through while they were waiting for turns and the photos are a bit scarce as I was trying to do about 137 things at once!

We started off with some really stiff paper plates, not the cheap budget ones, these cost more than I would have liked but it’s my own fault for leaving it till last minute! We then got one of our bowls, which we checked fit over their heads, and drew a circle to cut out. The plates were so stiff neither got very far without me thinking they would slip and chop off a digit so I did this bit of cutting.

LM needed it yellow so she painted hers, (she has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Hypermobility Type and struggles to hold pens or pencils hence the odd way she’s holding her brush)

We had cut some A4 card lengthways into strips and *very carefully* using the glue gun stuck them together. We used one of the pieces of the plates to protect the table, I’m sure you could find something much better than this though!

I tried to tell him he looked fab like this and that he just needed to decorate it, but he wasn’t having any of it so I guessed we had to finish it properly! We pulled the plate over the top and bent the edges up. We then glued these ends down. It was a bit fiddly but once they were all bent into place it was easier to work on the ones closest to the plate and work your way to the outer ones.

Poor LM gave up waiting for hers to dry so she brought out the big guns, fair play it did the trick.

I had some foam sheets and glitter glue pens so using some cookie cutters they pressed the shapes of an egg and a chick (we also had a bunny) into the foam, cut them out and decorated. They stuck a few fluffy chicks around and we also had some other bits to stick on. Can you tell what their hats are meant to be? These were two very proud but very tired milliners!

Here’s a close up. I think we should have let the glitter glue dry a little as we had a few drips but they were soon remedied with a cottonbud.

I wasn’t sure how the strips of card would look but I liked how they turned out. You could use these as a base for any type of hat, you could even weave things like patterned paper and ribbon around the strips of card. Or even make the strips themselves out of material I guess. I can write a proper tutorial with better pictures for the hat if anyone would like me to.

Did you make any Easter bonnets this year? I hope you were a bit more prepared than I was. Let me know

A happy kitchen accident

Today I had one of those days where most things went wrong or didn’t quite go according to plan. Not to the point where I want to curl up and cry with a bucket of melted chocolate and a spoon (admit it, you would!) No, today was filled with mini annoyances like not being able to find even one pair of trousers in the shop that wasn’t too long, or O falling asleep 15 minutes before it was time to leave to pick the kids up from school.

I also had a kitchen disaster which I managed to turn around into something, actually two things, which were much more exciting than the original item!

I have been trying to save a bit of money this week and empty our cupboards at the same time by using mostly only things that we already had in the house. So after entering a few random ingredients into Google (my favourite recipe book!) I came across this recipe for chocolate cornbread.

I expect if you follow the recipe properly it would turn out lovely but I wanted to make muffins so I had something easier to pack in lunchboxes tomorrow and I had seen a few cornbread muffin recipes(not chocolate) so I figured it was doable.

Maybe the muffins would have turned out great if I hadn’t used a mini muffin tray, without cases.

And maybe they wouldn’t have stuck to the tray (and risen) if I had added the sugar and didn’t have to take the mixture back out of the pan to add the forgotten ingredient.

I may or may not have added too much sugar in my attempt at pouring into the measuring cup over the mixing bowl.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have missed out the sugar if I didn’t have a grumpy, clingy baby and rowdy kids hitting a balloon around in the background.

But hey these things happened and I still managed to make these:

and these:

So what did I do? After I got over the disappointment of flat muffins that were completely stuck to the pan and had a few quiet minutes while the kids were watching Glee, with the baby, I had an idea.

I sliced off the top of each muffin putting them on a cooling rack. I then spooned out what was left over into a bowl.

After they had all cooled, about the time it takes to feed a baby, I rummaged around for some extra ingredients:

White chocolate and Betty Crocker Vanilla Icing

They were both left over from the cakes E&Ff made for O’s christening a few weeks ago.

I spooned some of the icing into the cake crumbs mixing it all in well(it didn’t take much icing at all) and formed into truffle sized balls. I then dipped each one into some cooled melted chocolate and put each one onto a mini muffin case to set.

With the lids I just spread one half with some of the icing and sandwiched them together. They had dried quite crispy so held their shape perfectly.

In all I am very pleased with what we eventually got. The cake balls especially, are really scrummy! I may even consider making these again on purpose, perhaps in different flavours!

I will definitely be making the chocolate cornbread again too. It tasted really nice and the texture was lovely. I added white chocolate chips just to give it that bit of an edge but it didn’t need it. I would also make it in a baking dish and follow the recipe to the letter lol.

Do you have any funny kitchen accident stories? What would you have done with some destroyed muffins? Let me know below 🙂

Pizza for Dessert?

I had to go to the local shop today as I had been too disorganised to arrange for our shopping to be delivered yesterday and we had nothing in the cupboards that I could make quickly. Loath to spend the higher prices compared to the supermarket shop I always head for the bargain shelves. And there, for only 45p each were three packs of the ready rolled puff pastry. So for £1.35 plus some other random ingredients like cheese and ketchup that are already in the house I figured I’d just find the kids some fruit for dessert and we were set.

My kids on the other hand had a different idea!

A few years ago, we’d had a takeaway menu pushed through the letterbox for a pizza place that had opened (and since closed without us ever ordering from them). One of their pizzas was a sweet pizza with m&m’s and skittles and some other random sweeties. *Apparently* at the time I had promised my darling children that we would make one “soon” and being as we didn’t really need three boring cheese, hotdog sausage and sweetcorn pizzas why couldn’t we make a dessert one now? Thus allowing me to finally fulfil my promise as every good parent should!

Well they made a compelling argument and I told them if they found enough stuff to go on it we would give it a go. Here is our result:

What did we eventually end up with as toppings after a rummage through the cupboards full of half empty packets?

condensed milk (for the sauce)
grated marzipan
chocolate chips
sliced snickers bars
grated banana(because I had to spoil it with something healthy)
marshmallow fluff
raspberry jam

It tasted lovely, the kids were trying to eat it before it had even cooled down! I think next time I would use a tart jam as the sauce to break up the full on sweetness, or add some sour candy. Win for me though, the banana was an all round favourite. The only one who may complain is Dadi, he’s not that fussy on pizza anyway and doesn’t have that much of a sweet tooth. Shame, I’ll just have to eat his slice too 🙂

Two courses for only £1.35 out of my pocket and I got to use up some leftover bits, not bad if I say so myself!

Have you ever made pizza for dessert? Did you like it? I’d love to hear some different recipes.