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

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! 

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.