Home made gifts.

Sometimes my children really surprise me. Stephanie recently had a birthday party (well actually she has had several). I asked what she wanted to do for a present for this little girl, what we could get her. Stephanie said lets not buy one mum. We can make her a jar of sweets like we did for Christmas present last year. So that's just what she did and a card as well.

We have also discussed the plans for Christmas present making. We now just need to get on with beginning to make them. I will reveal once we have finished.

What are you making for gifts this year?

A birthday present.

It was my niece's birthday on Sunday. She asked me if I could make her a quilt as her present. She wanted it to have purple, flowers and fairies on it.
I got busy collecting fabrics and looking at ones I already have in the house to see what I could do. I decided I wanted to be a little playful and created random blocks of fabric for this quilt. My niece is very playful and I feel this suits her personality.
Here are some of the blocks I made;

I didn't get any of the fairy fabric! I could only find one little fat quarter of fairy fabric so I hope that she doesn't mind that.

Once all of the blocks were stitched together Stephanie helped me to lay them out into a design she was happy with;

Then it was all stitched together;

I just need to buy the backing material (I had to forget something didn't I!) Then I can get it all stitched together. Oh did I mention the time constraints- I am travelling up North to deliver this on Saturday. I am working until Thursday so no time pressure at all. LOL

Now I need to think of things I can make as Christening presents. I have three nieces/nephews being Crhistened over the August bank holiday so I need to get on with this. I have a new born baby boy, a 6 month old baby girl and a 7 year old girl to make for. Ideas on a  postcard!

Preserving

So the other day I went to the supermarket and look at what I got reduced;

That's write punnets of plums for 4p each!

I chopped up 5 punnets and popped them in a pan with some water and let them cook down. Once they were nice a cooked I strained them.

The 'lumpy bits' were mashed and frozen as they will make a tasty crumble later on.

The liquid had sugar added and made some lovely looking jars of jam.

I now have five of these in the cupboard ready for when the current lot run out. 

So I still have a few plums left. So this is what I do;

prick the plums and place in a jar. 

add a little sugar

Pour in the magic ingredient to cover the fruit.

Lid on and shake, shake, SHAKE!!!

Shake regularly throughout the next couple of days. Then place somewhere cool and dark for as many months as you can handle!

Wonder who can guess what I am making now?!

Forgaing makes

So the other day when we went blackberry picking Stephanie decided to make a fruit cordial with the berries she picked. Here is the cordial in the bowls;

Last night it was ready for bottling. Stephanie isn't here, but as she won't be back for another week I needed to get this in the bottles so that it doesn't spoil before she returns. So I set about separating the cordial from the fruit;

And then into sterilised bottles;

Not a bad amount of cordial for  the cost of 900g of sugar and a little tartaric acid. everything else was free. I had a taste and it is fruity very like squash, which I don't actually like but I had a little atste. Dylan had a glass and declared "it's better than Ribena, you can actually taste the fruit in it!"

High praise indeed from the boy who only eats fruit under duress! I can't wait until Stephanie gets home and has a try. I hope she likes it as much!

Elsa dress up

Stephanie along with thousands of other little girls is very into Frozen at the moment. she has asked for an Elsa dressing up dress, not even the Disney website are stocking them at the moment, although I did hear  a rumour the other day that the local Disney store had them in stock. However, Disney dress up is eye wateringly expensive starting at around 330 for a dressing up dress. So I got some material and made her one. It cost me about £8.00 in material and  4 hours of my time. Stephanie hasn't seen the finished product yet, although she did see it at the nearly complete stage. I can't wait to give it to her;

the dress

dress and cloak. I may need to adjust the cloak, I won't know until she tries it all on, but it is a small 5 minute job.

 

Stephanie' won't get this beautiful dress for a few days as I am picking her up in a short while and we are off on our holidays, somewhere in the South West- I will tell more when we are home again.

 

We are still trying to empty our freezer so Dylan and I made a pack up for the journey using up little bits and bobs;

 

There are chicken goujons, fish fingers, veggie fingers, veggie hotdogs and garlic bread tucked away in those two boxes.

 I also made some cakes for us to take with us, well cakes cost a lot when you are out and about. I made plain sponge cakes and lemon cakes. I made them different sized for Stephanie as she doesn't like the lemon ones so I wanted to be able to easily tell the difference when they are in the tin I received for free

All safe and snug and ready to go.

I doubt I will have signal to post while we are away so I am going to leave you with this picture of my water baby not quite getting the point of the dodge the sprinkler game in b&q!

 

Happy holidays!

Summer preparations

As is customary before the summer comes Stephanie makes her preparations by trying on her dresses and putting her order in for new ones. So far we have found 4 that don't fit. In Stephanie's opinion 3 that definitely don't fit and one that will be ok for this year!

Stephanie went through my fabric stash last night and has placed an order for 5 dresses and 2 skirts. This evening she is spending the night at her daddy's house so I have spent the evening fulfilling one order.

 

Here is the finished product. I will get a better picture when she wears it. Once she is home tomorrow I will be able to see how the fit is on her before I make the others.

 

For now though I need to Google for a set of new needles for my sewing machine, I may have bent one by catching it on the zip...

Dressing up

I have had a couple of dressing up days at school this term. We had world maths day at the beginning of March where I became a super hero by the name of Miss Calculate. I made the costume myself by wearing a top and trousers, bikini bottoms over the trousers and a maths cape I made for myself. I don't seem to have taken a picture of the cape, it was made from a length of fabric and some oddments cut up to be numbers and symbols sewn on. I deliberately left the fabric in a long large piece so that it could be reused.
Then this week we had a dressing up day to support our story writing as we have been lookin gat traditional tales. I went as a princess. I made the dress out of the cape from world maths day for the skirt and the bodice was a little leftover fabric in my stash. I borrowd one of Stephanie's tiara's to complete the outfit.

 

Today was our Easter bonnet parade, so last night I borrowed one of Stephanie's hats and sewed some Easter chicks I had from past years around it will a little ribbon, again deliberately leaving the ribbon long so that it can be removed and reused for a more permanent something.

 

Very fetching!

 

Next term we are looking at china and learning traditional Chinese tales. So need to get my thinking cap on for a dressing up costume as the dressing up really supports the children's writing. I also need to make some Chinese inspired costumes as I want to have a Chinese dance school as our role play area for the term.

All ideas welcome!!

 

 

 

Learning to sew.

Stephanie has really got interested in sewing and cooking recently. Fabulous news as they are hobbies I enjoy and we can do together.
Last week I made her book week costume, she is going to be Hermione from Harry Potter. I made the robe, but Stephanie decided she would need a satchel bag and she wanted to make it herself. Here she is making it;

We started last Sunday and finished it today. I helped Stephanie with drawing out the pattern pieces and then on how to sew them together. However she has done the bulk of the work herself.

 

 

The finished product.

The name Hermione sewn on.

Some wizarding iron on patches.

A very proud little lady with her new bag.

 

We didn't buy anything to make the bag, it is made completely with items from my stash. The pink fabric is left over from a dressing up outfit I made, we used an old pair of Dylan's jeans in the middle of 2 layers of the pink to add some 'stiffness' to the bag. The handle is made from an old shirt.

The patches were even stashed away. I bought them in a sale something like 50p for the lot when Stephanie was a baby. The intention was to make something with Dylan using them, but he didn't want to use them.

 

So a bag made by Stephanie and not a penny spent- perfect project!!

 

 

What's a girl to do when....

her pencil case breaks due to being over crammed with essential things! Does she head to the shops with her purse- not when she's being frugal. She head to her bedroom where she keeps her stash and the sewing machine. Within 5 minutes she has carried the sewing machine down to the table, made a pencil case and put the sewing machine away again!

Take a scrap of material and a zip from the stash.

And here it is- a perfect pencil case with plenty of space.