On the ninth day of Christmas...

my true love gave to me, nine ladies dancing,

 eight maids a milking,

seven swans a swimming,

six geese a laying,

FIVE GO-OLD RINGS...

four calling birds,

three French hens,

two turtle doves,

and a partridge in a pear tree

Not sure the video works so well on the blog, which is a shame :(

On the eighth day of Christmas...

my true love gave to me, eight maids a milking,

seven swans a swimming,

six geese a laying,

FIVE GO-OLD RINGS...

four calling birds,

three French hens,

two turtle doves,

and a partridge in a pear tree

The maids are based on the Princess Leia Star Wars project... Who'd have thought?

On the seventh day of Christmas...

my true love gave to me, seven swans a swimming,

six geese a laying,

FIVE GO-OLD RINGS...

four calling birds,

three French hens,

two turtle doves,

and a partridge in a pear tree

(The swans are based on the ducks/geese in 'Make Your Own Zoo'. One egg carton is enough for about four swans, which is pretty good.
 But the challenge is getting harder now.. )

On the sixth day of Christmas...

my true love gave to me, six geese a laying,

FIVE GO-OLD RINGS...

four calling birds,

three French hens,

two turtle doves,

and a partridge in a pear tree

(Instructions for the geese and nests can be found in 'Make Your Own Farm Animals'. Though to be fair, they're ducks in the book... think they pass as geese? All the projects are easy enough to adapt, which is handy!

On the second day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me, two turtle doves 

 and a partridge in a pear tree.

Instructions for the little doves and the dovecote can be found in Make Your Own Farm Animals.

Easy bunny project from 'Make your own farm animals'

Looking for something crafty to do with the kids over the hols? What about making a farm? All the projects in this book are simple to follow, and they use easy to get hold of cardboard bits and bobs, like egg cartons, cereal packets and tubes - so you should have just about everything you need to get started..

None of the book projects have made an appearance on the blog yet, so, as it's a kind of bunny time of year, thought I'd share this one :)

You'll need:
Egg carton
Pencil
Ruler
Red, yellow, blue and white paint
Fine paintbrush
Kids' craft scissors
Craft glue
Black felt-tip or gel pen
Cotton wool ball

1 Roughly cut out a whole middle cone from the egg carton so it's easier to work with.

2. Use a pencil and ruler to measure and mark 2cm (3/4in.) from the top on one side of the cone, and draw a line across here. On the opposite side, measure and mark 3cm (11/4in.) from the top and draw another line.
Join them with sloping lines either side.

3. Cut out your bunny's body. A handy way to do this is to snip up two adjacent cone corners to the pencil line, then fold back the flap and cut it off - now it's easier to cut along the rest of the line.

4. For the ears, draw a petal shape on card from the egg carton lid. As a guide - make it no more than about 4cm (11/2in.) long and not too wide. Cut this out. If you want to make more bunnies, you could keep it to use as a template to draw around.

5. To form the ears, draw a long, slightly curvy 'V' in the middle of your petal shape - don't take it down as far as the pointy end. Snip out the card piece between the ears.

6. Brush glue on the bottom part of the ears and stick them just behind the top of the cone (on the longer cone side).

7. When the glue's dry, pinch hold of the cone where the ears are attached and bend the ears back. Paint the bunny whatever colour you like, remembering to paint both sides of the ears. This brown colour is made by mixing yellow with a little red and a dab of blue - lighten with some white.

8. When it's touch dry, use a fine paint brush to add a white fluffy chest, then mix a touch of red with the white to make pink and paint a stripe inside each ear.

9. For the tail, pull off a small amount of cotton wool, roll it between into a little ball between your finger and thumb and glue to the back of your bunny near the base.Use a black felt-tip or gel pen to draw a face. Do the twitchy nose first, right on the edge of the cone top and add the eyes just above.

TIP: If your egg carton has cones with holes in the top, brush some glue inside them and push a little scrunched up ball of newspaper up, to fill the hole.

There are some good deals on Amazon, and noticed 'Make your own farm animals is only £3.99 on the UK Book People site at the moment. Free postage too if you spend over £25.

Make Your Own Farm Animals - kids' craft book

A bit of a ta-dah! moment as this is the cover of my latest craft book! Hope you like it.  I was sent an advance copy the other day, and although I've been through the instructions and the pictures more times than I care to remember, my heart was beating like the clappers when I opened it. Felt a sort of mix of excitement and a touch of terror that maybe I'd missed something important. Hopefully not! Suddenly it all feels very real. Some days that's good, some days I just worry what people will think.

When I'm not whipping myself up into an anxious frenzy I do feel so pleased with how the book's turned out - it's colourful, fun and packed full of farm projects all made from stuff that's easy to get hold of - just like Make Your Own Zoo. All you need to do really, is hang onto some recycling, and build up a small collection of egg boxes, cardboard tubes and cereal packets. Nearly everything in the book can be made from these three very ordinary bits of packaging.

Obviously the book's themed again like the last one, and everything works together, so you can keep adding to your farm, and it can all be played with after.

I am proud of it, especially as there was a pretty quick turn around. I came up with most of the projects over the summer, which wasn't always so easy as the kids were expecting to be entertained too. But actually they helped develop some of the ideas - I was a bit stuck on what to use for the bull's nose ring and my daughter cracked that one!

You'll find all the animals you'd expect on a farm, like cows, sheep, hens, pigs etc, and I made more buildings this time, as well as a tractor that took FOREVER, because I was absolutely determined to get it right.

My books are aimed at primary school aged children, to help keep that interest in craft and creating alive, especially now there are so many other distractions. And the projects really are great for grown ups and kids to make together. That precious time is hard to hold onto these days.

Make Your Own Farm Animals is available on Amazon 

There are a number of the projects from Make Your Own Farm Animals (and from the Zoo book too) on the blog - you'll find them on the Kids Craft Page.

Photoshoots, foraging and a food festival

Two trips to London and 8 days of photoshoots later, and at last I feel I'm making proper progress with the second craft book. Of course I'm relieved, but also weirdly deflated, which has left me feeling a bit restless, and possibly, depending on who you talk to, a little grumpy?

Coming up with 35 new craft projects took over the whole of my summer - if I wasn't making something out of cardboard, I was thinking about making something out of cardboard.... or feeling guilty I wasn't. It drove me mad but also gave me a focus, because I didn't have long, just 2 months, and the date for the first photoshoot was burning a hole in my wall calendar. Couldn't really think about much else, which made me feel guilty I wasn't doing enough with the kids. Can't win, can you.

When the London days came and went, I suppose it was a bit like taking the lid off a pressure cooker - and I just wasn't as over the moon with what was left in the pot as I thought. Probably didn't help that I'd had a really good time in London - the days were full-on but rewarding, and I stayed with an old school friend I don't see enough. After work we chatted, went out, ate out - no one else to feed or clean up after. I felt like me. Even took a bit better care of me. Even used my hardly ever touched eye-cream, which seems to be some kind of strange barometer to where I sit on my list of priorities.

There are many wonderful things about being able to work from home, especially with kids, school runs and an often absent husband to deal with - but it is hard to keep motivated sometimes, and it's lonely. Being away just brought all of that into sharp focus again I think.
I miss people and chat and talking ideas though with someone.
So, best not to ring me during the day at the moment, you'll never get me off the phone.

Possibly it's been a bit of an anti-climax and I'm kicking my heels about getting back to my quiet existence in peaceful Herefordshire - but I know it'll pass, it usually does. And it's not as if I have nothing much to do. Still need to write up all the instructions for the craft projects! Which is what I should be doing right now.

And sure, there are adventures of a different kind to be had here too. The day before I caught a very early train to London I went for a 'get thoughts in order' walk near home and did a double take when I spotted this huge puffball by a gate.

It was so big and brilliant white in the sun, I thought for a second it was a sheep taking a nap.
I rushed back to tell my daughter who gets extremely excited about this sort of thing. And it was a perfect giant puffball; very firm and hardly nibbled.

Giant puffball

She was desperate for me to take it home - when we found a much smaller one a few years ago, I fried slices in butter, garlic and bacon and it was a big hit. Lasted for days too, so goodness knows how many meals we could have got out of this one.* But we left it in the end, because I was off first thing, and my husband isn't keen on cooking bog-standard stuff, let alone a mushroom twice as big as his head.

When I got back home I treated myself to a day at the Abergavenny Food Festival. What could be better than delicious and lovingly-made produce as far as the eye can see? Though I do seem to suffer from some kind of food festival meltdown - happened last year as well - there's just too much choice. I become annoyingly indecisive, can't make up my mind at all, and end up eating very little. Instead I seem to spend most of my time checking out what other people are eating and wondering where it came from. I did bring a few things home and they did go down very well, especially the orange and chilli jelly.

I also bought a beautiful knitting book, which was a bit of surprise at a Food Festival.. Delighted with it though. More about that soon.




*Giant puffballs like this are about the only mushrooms I'd happily forage because they're pretty hard to mistake for anything else. More nervous about other ones, after going on an fungi foraging course last autumn (which was excellent) and realising there are a few common wild mushrooms that have an evil almost identical-looking twin. You really need to know your stuff. Think now the pleasure's in the finding rather than the eating for me.