BritMums Book Club: My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding

There are not many things I miss about my pre-baby life but if I had to pick something, it would be the time to get lost in a book. I used to read lots but the last few years a lot less so, and I miss it. I'm going to try and make reading a part of my routine again though and a book a week seems a fairly realistic goal ( if Finchy can manage it surely so can I?!)

Having no real special interest in horses, or Clare Balding, or sport in general really, Clare Balding's autobiography is not a book that I would normally choose for myself. However from the high accolades on the cover it did look promising. Last week I wasn't well so had a sofa day and took the opportunity to pick it up and have a read. Well I was hooked from the very start and ending up reading it cover to cover in a day while the girls had a Disney movie watching marathon. I loved it. I never quite got 'horsey' people before, but this book has certainly opened up my eyes to see horses in a new light. I learnt a lot too, about jockeys, and the Grand National, about why we measure horses in hands, about furlongs, about the upper classes, about the Queen (she takes her tea black) - it was a peek into a world I know very little about and had me captivated the whole way through. 

Clare's honest description of her seemingly privileged and idyllic childhood had me in tears at points and her relationship with each of her animals was heartfelt . She is a brilliant natural storyteller and there are some very funny anecdotes in the book as well as some good life lessons.

I'll definitely be paying more attention to Clare when I spot her on the telly now, she came across very warm and funny in her book and I would recommend it to anyone. 

Disclaimer: I was sent my copy of the book for free, all opinions are my own

Castle Cake Fit For A Princess

It was Poppet's THIRD birthday recently (where has the time gone?!) and she requested a castle cake for the occasion. Thankfully, there was a castle cake in my mum's old Children's Birthday Cake Book from the Australian Women's Weekly that I used as a basis for this cake, with a few changes.

To make this cake you will need:

• A square and loaf chocolate cake
• Butter icing
• 4 ice cream cones
• Sweets to decorate
• Pink wafer biscuits
• Cocktail sticks

I used a chocolate fudge cake recipe from Lindy's Cakes and it was (without sounding too immodest) the best homemade chocolate cake I have ever tasted. Very moist and almost brownie-like but not too heavy and perfect for carving up. It surpassed even the Ultimate Chocolate Cake from BBC Good Food that I have used in the past.

I doubled the quantities given in the recipe so I was making an 8 egg cake mixture, which would not fit into any of my mixing bowls so I had to improvise with a toy tub. I divided it (not equally) between a high-sided 20cm square tin and a standard 2lb loaf tin and baked it at fan 140 for nearly 2 hours. This made a really high square cake which was perfect for our castle.

Once cooled, and with help from my dad as shapes and estimations are not my strong suit, we carved up 4 rectangular 'turrets' from the loaf cake. There was plenty left over for us to taste test which is always a good thing. We used some of the scraps to create a pathway and drawbridge to the castle. We shaved a bit of the domed top off of the square cake and then flipped it over to give a flat surface to fix the turrets onto and sellotaped tinfoil to a big wooden cutting board to use as a cake board.

I made a big batch (or what I thought was a big batch) of butter icing by beating together a whole block of unsalted butter with double the weight of icing sugar and a few drops of food colouring. This still wasn't enough as we ran out before we could ice the turrets but they still looked good left bare. We used the icing to 'glue' everything together and then coat the entire cake (minus the cones). I forgot the rule of chilling the cakes in the fridge before doing this so it crumbed quite a lot during icing, but it looked fine once covered in sweeties!

The fun part was the sweetie decorations! I bought smarties, jellytots, liquorice allsorts, fruit pastilles, mini-marshmallows and pink wafer biscuits. Two pink wafer biscuits became doors to the castle with jelly tot handles. Mini-marshmallows lined the pathway. Smarties and jellytots lined all the edges and the pastilles and allsorts became windows. I used a couple of cocktail sticks to make a drawbridge and the rest to make some flags for the tops of the turrets.

I added Poppet's little Cinderella figure to the cake board and raided the toy box for anything else to add - I found a goose and a plant so we ended up with a goose happily roaming around the castle's gardens too.

The cake was brought out after Poppet's requested birthday tea of sausages, crisps, milkshake and pizza. She had also asked for hot chocolate (which we had earlier in the day inside Cinderella's carriage!) and jelly (which I forgot to make). I think she liked her castle cake!

Poppet: 3yrs!
Little: 15 mos

Aunty Anna's Toilet Tube Nativity Scene

Going to squeeze this final Christmassy post in as Aunty Anna & Poppet's amazing Nativity scene couldn't go unmentioned!

I was glad to finally have a use for our large collection of empty toilet tubes! Aunty Anna cleverly rounded and then stapled the tops of the tubes to create the nativity characters. A cream circle was then stuck on for a face to which Poppet added details such as hair and facial features, using her Usborne touchy-feely Nativity book for guidance.

Drawing on Mary's hair

The craft box was then raided to clothe all the main figures, with outfits made from paper, felt, fabric, elastic bands, ribbons, paper doillies, lollipop sticks, goggly eyes and glitter. They did this over two days and Poppet had a lot of fun making them.

Very intensely showing off a shepherd, clothed with felt, ribbon and an elastic band.

Inside the stable

Aunty Anna brought with her a cardboard box that she had turned into a stable for her classroom. Little promptly crawled inside it and surprisingly fitted! One of our walnut babies from the Christmas tree became baby Jesus. We added animals from our toy animal collection (queue much debate as to whether there should be pigs in there or not). I strung a little set of battery operated fairy lights inside the stable, and we put a star Christmas tree decoration on the top. Aunty Anna made a little manger from a toilet roll tube.

The Magi, with lollipop stick arms

Poppet clutching Mary, a Magi & Joseph

Playing with the Nativity scene

 

Poppet loved playing with it; she would get Mary to ride the donkey, sing lullabies and carols to baby Jesus (or sometimes the walnut baby was named after her new baby cousin), and fly the angel around. When she asked us what noise a donkey makes, we said 'heeee-hawww!', and when she asked us what noise Mary makes, we said 'I'm having a baby!' So her nativity play was punctuated with 'heee-hawww' & 'I'm having a baby!'. It was very cute! 

Poppet's favourite, the Angel, with paper doily wings.

We have packed it all away to bring out next Christmas, and hopefully many Christmases to come! Thank you Aunty Anna!

Poppet: 3 yrs

Little : 1 yr 3mos

Christmas Sensory Tub

Well Christmas has been and gone but I have had this sitting in my draft posts for weeks so I thought I might as well publish it!

Our run up to Christmas was busy, with the building work for the extension going full steam ahead & daddy away for a little while to see family in South America, our 'Advent Activity Calender' was becoming a bit neglected (the chocolate ones, not so much). As a list-making obsessive type it was getting me down that I wasn't able to do some of the nice activities I had planned.

Then Aunty Anna arrived a few days before Christmas to spend the holidays with us and brought with her a whirlwind of festive creative energy! She arrived bearing gifts of homemade christmas spice and peppermint playdoughs (make christmas playdough -check), brought a stable made from a cardboard box (make stable for nativity scene -check), made 3D snowmen Christmas tree decorations with Poppet (make christmas tree decorations -check), made a complete set of nativity figures from toilet roll tubes with Poppet, made spiced  biscuits, wrapped presents and generally just became our little house Elf.

Uncle Pete, who also spent Christmas with us, also deserves a mention for his impressive parsnip peeling. 

This was our first Christmas in our own family home and it was exciting to start to cement the family traditions that will make Christmas special for us in the years to come. Drawing from the lovely Christmas memories we have each brought with us from our respective families and inventing some new ones of our own!

So, back to the post -this was (as the title suggests) a tub filled with interesting Christmassy things for the girls to explore with all their senses. Except taste, preferably, but Little didn't get that memo. We used a drawer from our Trofast storage system as a tub.

I filled it with cinnamon scented red rice, gold pine cones, dried orange slices, cinnamon quills, baubles (top removed) ribbons, a bell, green pompoms, lengths of beads, a plastic pot filled with peppermint oil-soaked cotton wool and measuring scoops.

They loved exploring everything; I did not love hoovering up red rice all the time. Or fishing it out of Little's mouth. I really need to reclaim my Tuff-Spot as that would have contained the rice better; it was used in the building works and is all grubby now.

Little liked carefully dropping the lengths of beads into the pot. Very serious. Poppet liked filling up various containers with the rice using the scoops. She filled the baubles up with rice and then shook them to make a sound. And I often found the nativity figures in the tub too.

Poppet: 2yrs 11 mos

Little: 1yr 2mos

Homemade Christmas Potpourri

I love the smell of Christmas. At home my mum always buys the M&S Christmas potpourri which is amazing but I wanted to have a go at making some myself because it seems really simple.

This is what I used to make it:

Pinecones

Dried orange slices

Cinnamon sticks

Cloves

Star Anise

Cinnamon oil

Baubles
Gold laquer spray paint

I spray painted the pinecones gold and once they were dry sprinkled them with cinnamon oil and sealed them inside sandwich bags for a week or so. The smells fades after a while so I top it up by sprinkling on some more cinnamon oil every now and then. You can also buy bags of ready scented pinecones which would make it even easier. I put everything in a bowl and it is now sitting in our family room filling it up with a Christmassy scent.

Unfortunately the potpourri is also really popular with the girls especially Little who takes a grab and run approach.......so I am now missing most of the dried orange slices (her favourite to take away and chew on) and a few cones.

Poppet: 2yrs 11mos

Little: 1yr 2mos

Paper Christmas Wreath for Toddlers

Ever since we made a wreath for our front door Poppet has enjoyed spotting them when we are out and about, and she was very happy when she opened our picture Advent calendar and found a picture of a wreath one day! 

We decided to make a paper one that the girls' could have indoors. It was really easy and combined two of Poppet's loves - cutting things up with scissors and glueing!

I cut a circle out of the middle of a paper plate to form the base of our wreath, but you could also just cut a circle from an old cereal box.

I got out our red and green foam shapes and we roughly tried to cut them into leaf and berry shapes (really roughly!). Poppet is still getting used to using scissors; it takes her a lot of effort to open and close them so she is so pleased with herself whenever she does actually manage to cut the smallest bit off. I also added red pompoms, and lots of green tissue paper that we ripped up into small pieces.

Then Poppet just had to glue on green bits until the plate was covered. After a while she was asking me to help her because she had glue all over her fingertips and the tissue paper was sticking to her rather than the plate which was making her frustrated. Together we managed to glue all the green bits on, (using lots and lots of glue). Poor Little wanted to help so badly, she found some tissue on the floor and reached up to stick it on to the plate. But only this morning I found her eating Sudocreme out the pot so she just can't be trusted around art materials yet!

Can you spot Little desperately trying to join in?!

Poppet then stuck all of the 'berries' on, and it really looked like quite an effective wreath. We left it to dry and then I stuck it to her bedroom door. However when Poppet saw it she demanded that I move it to the window so that "Santa can see it". And so it begins!

Poppet: 2 yrs 11 mos

Little 1yr 2mos

Homemade Christmas Tree Decorations: Walnut Babies & Dried Orange Slices

Our Advent activity calendar yesterday instructed us to make some Christmas tree decorations and I have been wanting to have a go at making walnut babies ever since I first saw them on Red Ted Art.

I split a walnut into two halves by carefully inserting a knife into a weak point and wiggling it around a bit until it opened. We took a half each, and it was a lovely activity for us to do together side by side (as usual we do these kind of crafts while Little is sleeping, poor Little always missing out!). Poppet said she was making a cot for baby Jesus.

We cut some little bits of green ribbon and glued them into the shells, then left them to dry a little bit while we worked on making our babies. We didn't have any wooden beads to use as heads like the instructions specified but instead used cotton wool tightly packed into sheer beige material (leftover from Grandma's wedding outfit!) and tied with thread (we found out how to do that here). We secured a pipe cleaner in the head as well, that would form the body.

I trimmed the pipe cleaner and then wound them round Poppet's finger to curl them into a body shape.

Our babies

We cut tiny scraps of fabric and used one piece to make a little 'pillow' and one to make a little blanket. We glued the pillow into the walnut shell, then glued the baby in and finally covered the blanket in glue and tucked it around. It was quite fiddly so Poppet needed assistance but she was fascinated by it all.

With our babies all tucked up in their walnut cots all that was left was to draw a face on which Poppet was very keen to do. I did mine first while she watched eagerly then passed her the permanent marker.

She did a great job but always wanting to go one better, she decided to give her baby 'eyebrows' as well!

She is so proud of her little walnut baby hanging in the tree! They look so cute.

We also made some very quick and easy orange slice tree decorations. I had already dried some slices of orange, so all we had to do was push a skewer through to make a hole then thread a piece of ribbon through it to tie it up with. 

I love how they look in the tree. Obviously so did Little because she would make a beeline for the orange slices, pull them off the tree and take them away to chew on them. Poppet would retrieve them and hand it back to me complaining that her sister had "wet it". So we have hung them high up now out of Little's reach.

Poppet: 2yrs 10mos

Little: 1yr 2mos