And a Craft Post

3 posts in a day. What a treat for...everybody!

Ok, this covers the huge number of craft things I have recently accomplished. Both of them.

To begin:

Nail Varnish & Wire Flowers!

Inspiration for this make came from a picture on Pinterest which led to here. It's a beautiful picture, and reminded me of something similar I did many moons again when I was in the Girl Guides!

I had my aunt over for the night, drinks were had, radio song requests were made, and crafts were considered. This won because it looked very simple and we had all the resources to hand.

Oh were we wrong.

Good Lord. What a palava! The tip here is - make your petals and leaves small. Don't make them wider the the full length of the varnish brush. Just trust me on that. Many swears were had that night. It really is just a case of having a go and finding out as you go along. Worst tutorial ever, I know. Sorry! Go slowly - you need the varnish 'bubble' to almost dry as you're pulling it across, be gentle, and be very careful 'handing it off' to the other side. If the bristles flick into the wrong side, you won't be pleased. Believe me.

My First From-Scratch Item of Clothing!

Huzzah! 

So here's the background - I've been sewing for a while now, mostly handbags because I can generally deal with straight lines. I've always wanted to attempt making clothes, but I'm scared of patterns and hate cutting nice fabric if I'm not confident with what I'm doing.

I've made alterations to objects (refashioning, upcycling, etc), and I've made fancy dress outfits by sewing onto a bought item, but this was the big one. The first item made from scratch.

This is the blog I was reading that gave me the inspiration. I really wanted to give the whole infinity dress a go, but didn't have enough material for the straps, so just went with the skirt instead. It's a full circle, hangs beautifully, and I even managed a little pleat in the front! Very swishy :)

I used a (Walmart bargain!) jersey knit, so it's got that thicker-than-cotton, snug-winter-clothes feel to it. Because of the stretch I found myself getting annoyed at pins so used little pegs to hold everything in place. 

There's not really much more I can tell you about it, so here are some (bad) pictures. I'll update them when I remember to take photos when it's daylight!

Displaying my Love for School!

So I work in a school. I can't remember if I mentioned that before.

I just wanted to show off a couple of displays that I'm particularly proud of this year. And that I never want to replicate because I'm sick of cutting, laminating and cutting again.

Here's my most recent board, my Writing board:

Yes, I know the i's are weirdly sized. I don't even care anymore. So it's just a general 'VCHOP' (Vocabulary, Connectives, Handwriting, Openers, Punctuation) board. Our theme this term is 'The Natural World' so I wanted everything to be connected to that. Also, I didn't just want a wall of words under headings, my littlies wouldn't be able to use that very well. This way, I can say 'I want you to use a leaf word', or 'make sure you're starting with a good rain word'. Makes it a bit more visual for their small minds (well that's the idea).

As an added extra it's also got 2 of the sounds we're working on that week. I usually add one myself, and they come along and add their own. 

And this is the 2nd board, one I've had up since September, but due to the nature of it, it changes all the time.

This is our 'This Week' board. Our first term's topic was Superheroes, so I wanted this board to have a comic book-like style to it. 

The 'Superhero' of the week gets to do special jobs like take the register to the office and help put out people's things at the end of the day.

The 'Sounds' are the phonemes we are learning/focusing on that week, the 'Number' is a randomly chosen number and the children can tell me different facts about it and how to make it, the 'Words' are the Tricky/High Frequency Words that we are focusing on, and the rest is pretty self explanatory. 

I try to keep the rest linked with that week's learning, we read Roald Dahl as a class so often come across good idioms to add, and the animal is usually chosen by the Superhero.

So there you have it. Some school stuff. 

A Round Up...

I keep meaning to pop by and update, but life (see: work) gets in the way sometimes!

So here's a general, 'Eating the Slimming World Way' guide to my dinners of late... (don't mind the huge volume of cucumber I eat...)

SW Pasta Quiche - Free!

I love this, pretty easy to make, filling and tasty.

Cook up a Batchelors Pasta 'n' Sauce pack as per instructions - microwave is fine. I used the cheese & broccoli one on this occasion. Milk as HEa, or make up with water & save your HE for in a minute...

When cooked, add 1/2 tub quark (125g) and 4 eggs. Mix well and put the lot into an oven dish. At this point, I use my HEa for cheese on the top. 

Cook for about 20 minutes. You'll know when it's done as it will be firm and starting to turn golden on top. Great as the main part of a meal or as a snack to keep on hand in the fridge.

Omlette - Free!

Beat a few eggs and chuck them into a frying pan with whatever you feel like. This particular one had ham & cheese (HEa). The tip to making them whole & not just fancy scrambled egg(which for some odd reason took me a while to learn), is to resist the urge to flip it until the cooked side is reeeeaaaallllyyy cooked. To the point where the top is starting to cook through from the other side.

SW Smash Pizza - Free! (But a tweak*)

Ok. So this is officially a 'tweak'... but I don't really care. Sometimes, I just really need pizza. 

Mix up Smash with a little warm water. Add a tiny bit of water at a time, you are after a doughy consistency. I added a generous amount of garlic granules and some mixed herbs at this point too. 

Press the 'dough' out into a round, flat shape. You want it as thin as you can realistically make it, without it sticking to the tray and falling apart. Trust me on this. I like doughy pizza. It does not happen with mash.

Bake until crispy, remove from oven. Spread on tomato purée, add toppings (Linda McCartney Rosemary & Red Onion Sausages for me this time) & cheese (HEa). Put back into the oven until cooked.

Chips are of the SW variety - cut chip shapes. Spray a tray with FryLight & heat up, bung chips on (I don't concern myself with such matters as par boiling!), bake. Done. 

*Using a food stuff for anything other than the intended use.

SW Tagliatelle - Free!

This was the tip of the spaghetti iceberg. I have never cooked a single person's portion of pasta. Enough to feed at least 4 yes, 1, not even close.

I followed the nice and easy recipe at Vicki-Kitchen's blog. She's spot on when she says it's a quick dish for after work! Really tasty. I hadn't used my HEa so added some cheese into mine too.

SW Cheesy Pasta - Free!

As above - this is about a quarter of what I actually made. 
Cook the pasta, chuck in a bunch of cheese triangles (you can have up to 5 if you use Laughing Cow Light Triangles, 4 Dairylea Light) & some pre-cooked chicken & stir in. Another quick & easy one.

So yeah. Hope some of this has given inspiration to someone, I love looking at other people's meal pictures and thinking about how I'd have it :)