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.

Woodland Themed 1st Birthday

We had an awesome day for Millie's 1st Birthday!

My little lady bug.

Now we're on a tight budget with me staying at home looking after the kids, so I had to be careful. Parties can easily get out of hand so this is what we did.

1. Hired the local hall for the day £10 per hour charge. (I don't have a big enough house to host at home)
2. Did a BBQ, pulled pork was the main dish, which was cooked in a slow cooker the night before. Minimal effort and just reheated on the day.
3. All games were home made with crafty bits we had around the house.
4. Most of the decorations were home made.
4. We had a bouncy castle which was hired to us for free from a friend in exchange for some baby sitting the week before.

Hanging Decorations

Home made decorations included loads, and loads of these paper lanterns and fans. All used from some super cheap tissue paper and looked lovely hanging from the high ceilings.

Room Decor

A friend had this tree and kindly let me borrow it for the day to add to the woodland feel. I had bought these paper photo frames very cheap (£1.50 delivered) and got a load of photos printed for free. You can get loads of free prints online when signing up to new photo printing sites. 

I used the cake as a centre piece. Above the cake table I placed the wooden letters I'd decorated. The giant number 1 was made from a cardboard box and wrapping paper off cuts.
I also bought a helium canister (£25) and used the balloons to decorate the venue. At the end of the party I handed out the balloons as party favours so I got my monies worth out of them.

These are the toilet roll mini pinatas I made for the little ones. They loved these!

I also made a large pinata for the older kids to enjoy. I made this with off cuts of the wrapping paper and a spare balloon. Filled with sweeties and confetti which was off cuts from making the tissue paper fans. 

 Happy Birthday Millie Moo!

Millies 1st Birthday

I've been doing the odd post showing the odd little craft here and there leading up to Millies 1st Birthday party, so I thought I'd share some photos from the big day and fill you all in on how it all went.

Firstly for both my girls I prepare a birthday table for them to come down to on the morning of their birthday. My mum did this for me as a kid and I used to love coming down in the morning before school, opening presents and having a cheeky slice of birthday cake for breakfast.

Here is Millies 1st birthday table.

For Millies cake I use a giant cupcake mould for the toadstool and a standard Victoria sandwich cake as the base. The woodland theme party was based all on the Ikea birthday decorations party pack I had bought. So to tie the cake in with the decorations I cut out the animals from the wrapping paper, backed them onto card them placed them on the cake. Simple and effective with very little skill involved. I placed the cake on top of a wooden stool I'd bought the kids months ago. I thought it just added to the woodland theme.

I also decorated some wooden letter I picked up from the local craft shop with woodland theme paper. This was a great party decoration which I've now used in her room.

For party details see my Woodland Party Blog.

15 Minute Meals - Continued

We've been using Jamie's meals for a couple of months now and they have been lovely. Although we're not having a Jamie meal every day of the week I do now use them for at least 4 out of 7 meals a week. They are also super useful for lunch play dates with friends.

So this was my second weeks choice of meals.

Day 1 - Crackin' Crab Bricks - Page 240

These are my favourite so far. Although one tip, the recipe calls for 400g of Crab, and my local super markets sell 100g of crab for around £4.50, and frankly I'm not in the position to spend £20 for one family meal. Sorry Jamie. So I used 100g of crab and substituted the rest with prawns. It was yummy, and the prawns added a nice meaty texture that would have been missing if we'd have just used crab. The dipping sauce was amazing, and so simple!

Day 2 - Pasta Pesto With Garlic and Rosemary Chicken

This one was super yummy. I substituted the fresh lasagne sheets on this one for dried fettuccine as this was on special offer when I went food shopping making it loads cheaper than the fresh pasta and it stores better for future meals.

Day 3 - Flashy Fish Stew

I wasn't completely sure about this one as I'm not mad keen on fish, and it was the garlic ciabatta that convinced me to give this one a go...and it was well worth it. I have to admit I've used the garlic ciabatta as an addition for a few other recipes now. If you try nothing else from these recipes, try this bread! NOM!!

Day 4 - The Best Fish Baps - Page 214

I used Pollock for this one as it was one of the cheaper white fish fillets I could find, and I had some left over from the last time I did this recipe. Although the frozen fillets weren't as nice as fresh. They'd gone a bit rubbery. Only £1.80 for all of us.

Day 5 - Grilled Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

What can I say about this except nom, nom, nom! It was lovely. We are spice fans in this house so this went down very well. We added thyme roasted potatoes to the recipe as we shared out two steaks between the four of us, so I wanted to fill it out a bit. 

I forgot to take photos of the other bits, frankly dinners are a bit crazy in our house since Millie has started to feed herself...crazy and very messy!

15 Minute Meals - Week 1

After having a lovely lunch over at my friends house thanks to a recipe from Jamie Oliver's 15 minute meals I decided to get back on it and have a go myself. Turns out this was a great idea as my oven broke the first day of this menu (whilst baking bread) and luckily none of these recipes uses an oven, as it's all quick cooking you just use the hob. A real lifesaver!

Just before little one was born I used Jamie's book to get me through tired pregnancy days whilst working and looking after my eldest (who was then 2 years old) And I wondered why I had stopped? They're tasty, healthy and quick, plus it helps me really carefully budget for the week.

So this is my first weeks choice of meals. 

Day 1 - Tasty Daal Curry - Page 240

I forgot to photograph the accompanying lemon and tomato pickle which was the tastiest bit! This was delicious. We used green lentils rather than red lentils as it's what we already had in the store cupboard but the flavour didn't suffer from the substitute. This was Millies favourite one of teh week I think.

Day 2 - Pasta Pesto With Garlic and Rosemary Chicken - Page 172

This one was super yummy. I substituted the fresh lasagne sheets on this one for dried fettuccine as this was on special offer when I went food shopping making it loads cheaper than the fresh pasta and it stores better for future meals.

Day 3 - Blackened Chicken with San Fran Quinoa Salad - Page 46

I wasn't completely sure about adding mango to a savoury salad and being a slightly more expensive purchase I was a bit dubious however this was delicious and we all nommed it without complaint. This was my favourite.

Day 4 - The Best Fish Baps - Page 214

I used Pollock for this one as it was one of the cheaper white fish fillets I could find. Only £1.80 for all of us. This was made with home made rolls, which are obviously not included in the 15 minute make time. But I make my own bread all the time rather than buying it so this was no extra effort.

Day 5 - Sausage Fusilli with Creamy Garden Salad - Page 176

This is what had been made for me for lunch a week earlier and inspired this weeks menu. Everyone loves this one, it's a real crowd pleaser, who doesn't love sausage and pasta in a yummy tomato sauce. 

Day 6 - Happy Cow Burgers with coleslaw and corn on the cob - Page 222

These aren't really a substitute for a good beef burger, however they are really tasty and much healthier bean burgers. A great way to get some hidden veg into the kids. 

Day 7 - Chilli Con Carne Meatballs - Page 58

I will be making my meatballs and pasta like this from now on. They're full of flavour and work amazingly well. The original recipe here calls for Bulgur wheat but as I had some dried fettuccine left over from day 2 recipe I just used up the rest and saved myself a bit more money along the way. 

Lunches (Well some of them)

Spring Frittata - Page 242

Mexican Salad - Page 238

(Cooked just before my oven broke!) - Goes well with beer. 

Next weeks menu looks just as exciting and delicious. To be continued!

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!