Cress Heads

This is a great penny pinching home craft for the little ones.

The kids enjoy getting messy making them, lots of stickers decorating them, then watching them grow. The best bit is they grow super quick for those impatient kiddies who tend to loose interest if they can't almost see something growing before their very eyes. These only take a week or so to mature so are perfect.

So here is how:

1. Cut up an old pair of tights around the ankles.
2. Pour a few cress seeds into the toe part of the foot.
3. Top with soil and tie up end. (for the daddy pour a few extra seeds in around the top of your soil to create a beard before you tie up)
4. Turn upside down onto the tied up end.
5. Decorate with stickers. We did a mummy, daddy and Scarlett. 
6. Place into little dishes to collect water.
7. Water thoroughly at first, then just pour water into the dishes when they start to feel dry.
8. Watch them grow.
9. When shoots appear to be trying to break through the tights, cut a small hole to let them through
10. Add to salads and sandwiches when you want to give them a hair cut.

Day 1

Day 3

You can see the shoots coming through. 

Day 7

Rainy Day Fun with Friends - Wormery

It's officially Autumn and as we have a lot of rainy days to come I thought I'd share one of our rainy day favourites. Although it's easier to stay inside and keep warm, sometimes when the kids are bouncing off the walls, you just need to get out!

We invited a few friends over and made rainy day wormeries. Rainy days are best as the soil is easy to dig and the worms are closer to the surface. So I let them all loose with spades and they collected a bucket of worms.

We made the wormeries using some super cheap tubs from Ikea I poked numerous holes in the lids of the pots (for the worms to breath) using a sharp knife. Obviously the kids didn't help with this one.

Then I set out a bucket of sand and a bucket of compost. Each child set to work layering the compost and sand one scoop at a time. Putting in the distinctive layers makes it easy to see where the worms have gone and the tunnels they've made.

Once all the layers were filled about 3/4 of the way up the tub, add some leaves for the worms to eat.

Once the worms are dropped into the pots you can put on the lids and head back inside ready to make a cover for your wormery. The covers are important as worms are mostly underground so you need to keep them covered to keep them happy.

I pre-made the covers as the little ones we had over are too little to do their own, however I got out a load of stickers and pens and let them decorate the covers instead. 

All the kids loved these and we kept the worms for about 2 weeks. Scarlett even took her wormery into preschool once you could see the tunnels they had made and loved sharing them with her class.

Scarlett's Veg Box - A Very Hungry Caterpillar!!

I'm sorry to report Scarlett's veg box has been under attack from lots of wriggly friends. Thursday morning upon checking the veggies Scarlett came running to me in horror. It didn't take long for me to realise why. A very hungry family of caterpillars, we counted 50+ as we picked them off the sprouts, had left what can only be described as a skeleton of a sprout tree. We picked off as many a we could, but the next day MORE. We battled for a week but we lost.

Poor sprout tree!

I have since read online that if you grow these plants through hard cardboard tubes they don't get attacked. So next year we'll try that out.

Our efforts will now move inside the house over winter with some herb growing. So I'll make sure to keep you up to date with those.

Scarlett's Veg Box - 2 Months

Mary, Mary, quiet and trary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and conker shells,

And pretty maids all in a row.

This is Scarlett's version of it anyway. The version she loves to sing whilst tending her own little garden.

Scarlett removing the weeds

The veggies are loving the warmer wet weather at the moment and they are growing like mad. Hopefully it won't be long until we have some peas! 

Fairies in the Garden

Spring has sprung and the tulips are in bloom so we decided to keep the flower fairies happy by creating a little home for them. The idea of a little home quickly turned in to a princess style tower under Scarlett's direction. So here we have it: Fairy Towers. 

Fairy Towers

To make the fairy home and garden we collected a pot tray to contain the whole thing, a plastic tube for the tower (this was an old tennis ball tube), pink fish tank pebbles, a sheet of craft foam, a handful of coloured lollypop sticks from the craft supplies, some sparkly bits to decorate, 2 plastic party cups and a marker pen. 

We then set about the garden to get some plants for the fairies. I took some rockery plants, a small thyme plant and ivy. I planted the ivy into the two party cups, cutting a hole in the bottom for water to drain. 

I then cut the end off the tube to become the roof.

Ready to add to the tower

I also made a window for the second plant to grow out of. I dropped the cups into place pulling the ivy out of the windows. I then wrapped the tube in the foam sheet, in hindsight I would have drawn the bricks onto the foam BEFORE sticking it to the tube, not after, it was annoying!

Please ignore the tape, this was put on whilst waiting for the glue to dry so we could carry on making the tower, who knew 3 year old's were so impatient! 

After adding a door outline with a different colour felt we added the tube to a plant try filled with soil. 

We built up the soil around the base of the tower to add support and depth to the small garden. We planted the thyme next to the tower to look like a small tree and planted the other plants around the mini garden. I made a picket fence with the coloured lollipop sticks and used the pink pebbles to create a path. We made a swing (to match Scarlett's one, on her request) out of lollipop sticks. Scarlett decorated the roof with sequins and glitter glue whilst I added on details with the marker pen. We made a right mess but we had fun. 

Almost completed.

We then very carefully carried the fairy house into the rockery corner of the garden ready to find a new inhabitant. It's nicely sheltered there so hopefully wont be too destroyed by the elements. I just need to add a bit of moss around the plants to bring it to life. 

A quiet little nook. 

After picking the rest of the pink pebbles out of the lawn we scattered them along the fairy path to lead to the house, nicely tucked away waiting to be discovered by fairies and children alike. 

Scarlett's Veg Box - 1 month

 All peas growing nicely up the fairy houses. Sprout trees are starting to sprout and the carrots are coming along too. We've added a second wigwam too which according to Scarlett is for the elves to live next door to the fairies.

Inspecting the vegetables

Only a little time to wait until we can start to enjoy our efforts.

An Eggcellent Alternative to Chocolate

An eggxpertly finished chocolate alternative gift for Easter.

So we're on a tight budget, which means I have to think a little out side of the egg box when it comes to getting multiple gifts for family members. We are visiting family over this Easter break, and I know they are getting gifts for the girls, so I thought it would be nice to reciprocate. Plus Scarlett is of the age now where she loves giving gifts too.

I needed to purchase at least 5 presents, with most decent eggs are at least £5 to £10 a go for something more than basic and that's just too much for me to spend.

Thinking alternatively I headed to my local garden centre which always have a few managers specials, which are usually less than perfect plants with a very, very good discount. I got lucky and found these.

Hyacinth

I picked these up for £1.12 for 3 plants, I then put them into pots I had saved back. These two pots were given to the kids in last weeks Robot party and contained the party favours. So they were free.

I then cut out some rabbit and egg shapes from some free wall paper samples I picked up from the local DIY shop.

Rabbits and Eggs

Using a strip to wrap around the plant pots I stuck the eggs and bunnies in a pretty pattern. Scarlett enjoyed doing this bit and I let her colour some in for a fun Easter craft.

Ready to wrap.

And we are done. Easter flowers in a pot, with home made decoration for £1.12 or total £5.60 (about the price of just one egg)

They last longer than chocolate and smell just as sweet. Easter on a budget!

Fairies in the Vegetable box

Finally a few nice days of weather and the spring has arrived. So me and Scarlett decided to make a vegetable box to grow our own.

We went to the garden centre a few weeks back and Scarlett choose what vegetables she'd like to grow. We came away with carrots, peas, pumpkins, courgettes, parsley and sunflowers. We potted them around the house in loo rolls we'd been saving up and once they were ready to go out we made our vegetable box.

Using a few left over planks from decking I made a very simple 1m x 1m box. We made bunting to decorate and an old bucket to store some tools in.

Scarlett's Veg Box

We filled it with compost and made a few mud pies along the way. Then we put in our plants. Unfortunately a week later we had an odd hard frost and it killed off most of the tender plants. Thankfully we kept some plug plants in the house and I sneaked back out into the garden and replaced the dead plants without Scarlett realising.

Now the peas are starting to grow we made a fairy house / pea wigwam to grow the peas up. Using a few bamboo canes we tied them together and I left Scarlett with a few lolly sticks, feathers, stickers and glitter glue to go to town on them.

This is what she came up with.

Fairy Pea Wigwam

Looking forward to picking plenty of fresh veg in the weeks to come.