Miniature Making

After we finished reading the 'My Father's Dragon' trilogy, we moved on to 'The Borrowers'. I think Maria's finding it a little bit old for her, but she's very happy snuggling up with us and listening to it all the same. It's a book I loved when I was little, but not one I've read again since, so I'm really enjoying revisiting it. And I'm loving the creativity and inventiveness of the Borrowers, how they manage to repurpose so many odd bits and pieces from the big people 'upstairs'. I do vaguely remember enjoying this side of it when I first read it, but I'm appreciating it even more this time around, and picking up on so much more of the detail. And having the Borrowers' world in my head is making me slightly obsessed with miniature things at the moment. Although it's an obsession that has been brewing a little ever since our visit to the Contemporary Craft Festival back in June. I feel like I have a huge number of miniature ideas or half ideas popping around my head - but no time to actually do anything with them! But today, they popped around so much I had to let one out to play. 

I took a quick silhouette picture of Venetia...

And then tried to turn it into a postage stamp. Because, after all, often stamps are the ultimate mini pictures.

It's reverse applique, so the pink fabric has the silhouette cut out of it and then is stitched on to the white. I'm not completely happy with it - there are several bits that went a little wrong. And I didn't really have a plan for anything to do with it while I was making it, but as I got further into it a plan did pop into my head. And now I want to make it again, only better this time, and then use it in a mini quilt. Too many ideas, not enough time! But some of my miniature making ideas are ideas to make with the children, so I'm hoping they may get off the ground some time soon.

A child's world seems to be full of lots of lovely miniature things - doll's houses, fairy gardens, tiny model animals or tractors or cars, even teeny, tiny books - like the ones Arrietty reads in The Borrowers. So, miniature crafts seem perfect to do with children. That's my excuse anyway! Is it just me - are you a big is beautiful kind of person, or does miniature hold its appeal for lots of you out there?

Sally.

This Moment

 Here's a link to Soulemama's moment and here's mine - one moment this week, but shown in a few photos...

{this moment}

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{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

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Making burgers with the children

Apologies to vegetarians, this is about meat! Please feel free to look away now. The making 'pork and apple burgers' grew into a big, experimental general burger making session and the children loved it so much that I felt it deserved a post of its own, albeit a fairly short one. Unfortunately I really wasn't expecting it to be quite such a hit - either the making or the eating - so I don't have lots of lovely photos. I have a few, generally fuzzy photos with little glimpses of a very messy kitchen in the background!

We gathered together a selection of meat - pork, lamb, turkey and beef, herbs - we had fresh parsley, mint, basil and oregano and some dried sage and thyme too, and some vegetables - grated apple and carrot, sweetcorn and tomato puree, as well as salt and pepper. I found it worked best to put the salt and pepper and even the herbs, veggies etc into small bowls so the children could help themselves without getting raw meat fingers all over salt/pepper mills etc.

And each of the children had their own bowl to create their own variations of burgers. There were quite a few combinations created, mostly fairly conventional - like lamb and mint, or pork and apple, but a few slightly more adventurous options too. My personal favourite was turkey, grated carrot and apple, parsley and salt and pepper. It was really delicious, especially with tomato slices in the bun.



And I'm sure it also helped that they all helped cook them on a quick, little BBQ immediately they'd been made.

It really was a perfect children's activity - it appealed to all of them, kept them occupied and making for quite some time and we had tea sorted at the end of it. Couldn't ask for more!

Sally.

Elephant Quilt WIP

I've got some progress to report from my early morning sewing sessions on my quilt. It's going to have a slight elephant theme going on, so I got to do some fun applique first...

Since I'm going down a quilt as you go kind of route I then sewed these straight on to my wadding - the chopped up wool blanket pieces. And started building up the piecing around them.

 A piece for the top of this elephant applique...

Once it was assembled I sewed it straight on to the elephant piece right sides together...

And then ironed it back over...

And added lines of quilting to sew it down. Here it is with the bottom added in the same way...

And then side pieces one at a time in the same way...

Building up to cover the whole wool piece...

This one started as a log cabin kind of design, adding one side at a time directly on to the wool...

And then I switched to strips as above.

Here's another one completed...

And one more just started...

I've got eleven to do altogether, so still a way to go, but it will be lovely to not have to worry about the quilting when they're done!

It seems like ages since I last did, but today I'm organised enough to be linking up with WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced and Lets Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts.

Sally.

Apples and Baking

This post is to get me in the mood for 'The Great British Bake Off' starting on television again tomorrow! To be honest, it's not something that I've watched at all in previous years, but:

• so many of my friends have loved it and are practically jumping up and down with excitement that it's returning.
• I don't remember the last time I watched anything on tv.
• I have some hand sewing that needs doing and I always find sitting in front of the tv is good for hand sewing.
• Sam has decided that he's going to watch it and is really looking forward to it.

So this year I've decided I'm going to give it a go too.

And we've been gathering seasonal fruits recently that are also perfect for baking, so the timing is obviously meant to be. 

We've had just a few ripe blackberries from the garden over the last week but on our walk back from a beach at the weekend we came across masses of ripe blackberries. Plenty enough to satisfy 4 hungry children on the spot (and that's a lot of blackberries in itself!) and also to fill a bucket (thankfully reasonably clean and sand free!) to bring home. 

Combined with the early fallers we're gathering daily from our bramley apple tree...

They turned into the first pie of the season...

And then today Sam decided that the apples needed to become an Apple Cake. So I thought I'd share our favourite Apple Cake recipe with you. I'm not sure where it came from originally, but it has been well tweaked by us over time, as recipes often are here!

Apple Cake
250g butter
450g bramley apples (there's always great debate in our house as to whether this means 450g of whole apples which you then core and peel, or 450g of already prepared and chopped apples - since we love apple-i-ness we go with the latter!)
250g sugar
3 large eggs
150g self raising flour
2 tbsp baking powder
200g ground almonds
1tbsp brown sugar and flaked almonds for the top if desired.

Cream together the sugar and butter, add eggs, flour, ground almonds and baking powder and combine well. Peel, core and chop the apples into small pieces then add to the mixture. (Don't worry too much that the apples will 'brown' as you prepare them, the original recipe called for the juice of a lemon to prevent this, and it made a lovely cake if you wanted a lemony apple cake, but since we like the apple to come through better we skipped the lemon and increased the almonds over time. Once it's cooked the apple seems to look pretty much the same anyway.)
Spoon into a greased and lined tin, sprinkle with the brown sugar and flaked almonds , and cook at 180 celsius or 350 fahrenheit for approx an hour.

Here's ours as it came out of the oven. I thought I'd better take a photo in the tin in case it all fell apart as I got it out!

We didn't have any flaked almonds today, Sam decided he'd grate a bit of marzipan on instead - and it worked well.

I hardly left it to cool in the tin at all since Sam was nagging me to let him eat it, and then it came out almost in one piece, but it was a close run thing!

It tastes much better than it looks in my photos, good job I'm not a food blogger!

 We like it best hot with vanilla ice cream, but it is good cold too.

We always find this cake is lovely and moist and appley, without being too sweet. How about you, do you have any favourite apple recipes? Sweet or savoury, but we are particularly on the look out for savoury ones - home made pork and apple burgers are planned (by Sam again!) for later in the week, but other than that our apple cooking tends to be all sweet. Any recommendations?

And if you are jumping up and down with excitement at the return of the 'Bake Off', then I hope you have a lovely peaceful hour to watch and enjoy it tomorrow night!

Sally.

Fairy Garden

It's become a bit of a tradition around here that we create a Fairy Garden for the Magic Onions Fairy Garden Contest at the start of the Summer holidays. We had lots of fun painting colourful fairy houses last year - here.

The obvious place for our fairies this year was somewhere close to Maria's play house, and it seemed fitting that we got Theo to start the building process off, since this is very much his patch.  So he created a little fairy tree house for us between the pallet play house and his own tree house.

And then Venetia and I started decorating it. We decided to use lots of sea glass, with some driftwood and shells too.

We wrapped wire around some sea glass to make a garland. And glued some on to driftwood to create our fairy.

Shells worked for a kitchen chair at the driftwood table, with some teeny shells for food as well.

And Venetia painted a large pebble for a sign.

An extra large shell makes a perfect bath.

And when those solar powered fairy lights come on in the evening, it all looks a little magical.

Hopefully the girls will have as much fun with this one as they did last year. There are lots of gorgeous gardens full of fairy inspiration over at The Magic Onions, so take a look and maybe create your own.

Sally.

This Moment

Here's a link to Soulemama's moment, and here are my two (I've given up apologising, and have even added some words this week, cheating is a slippery slope!)

{this moment} ~ A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

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Could not leave out moments spent digging with Maria, whilst watching Venetia practise her cartwheels as the tide came in.

But equally I couldn't leave out our first game of 'Beat the Tide' for the holidays.