MAKE: What to do with kids drawings?

The children are always presenting me with lovely little drawings. Special things that capture a thought or  something they wanted to express. I love these little treasures but its got to the point where there is simple no space left in my purse, diary or noticeboard for any more. Throwing them away just seems wrong (and if I get caught they would be pretty upset) So what to do with them? I started to keep a few of the most precious ones in a box. I then invested in a cheap laminator and made some fantastic bookmarks. I hole punched most of them and then plaited some leftover wool to make them even more pretty. Really simple and it only took half an hour, start to finish.

Bookmarks are something I ALWAYS need........to mark pages in cookery books, crafty magazines etc and I normally rip up scraps of paper to do the job. Not any more.......

I've put an old shoebox on my bookshelf to collect the kids drawings in and plan to make a few bookmarks every time the pile starts to get too big. Great!

Pollen Biscuits

I found a jar of pollen in our local supermarket the other day........Pollen? According to the label its supposed to be a really good immune builder and good for anti-fatigue. Seeing as January is normally a time for looking after yourself I thought it might be a good idea to give it a go.

 I love this awesome biscuit stamp.

So I made some pollen biscuits. Substituted the sugar for honey and they turned out really well. I also started adding it to our homemade bread although it only really works for toast (rather than sandwiches) as the pollen does have a honey aroma.

I've been working on a crafty project this week in the evenings.....If I get it finished over the weekend I will share.

Free iPhone cover pattern

This is pretty cool. A free knitting pattern for an iPhone cover. Great for using up wool stash and you can download it here. I'm going to make one so I thought I'd share.......

Filo Curry Parcels

We love curry in our house and few months ago I discovered The Spice Tailor. Its amazing and makes a brilliant speedy curry. Needless to say I stocked up when I went back to the UK and this is a photo of one of the shelves in our pantry. I love the packaging as much as the curry itself.

With the leftover curry we reinvented it and wrapped it inside a couple of sheets of filo pastry brushed with olive oil and put back into the oven. Absolutely delicious as a lunch. Yum! and no waste.

Cherry Chocolate Cake

Well its only January 6th and the diet has already slipped......whoops. I will be better next week.....

In the meantime it seems like so much longer since we welcomed in the new year and one particular bar of chocolate just screamed from the cupboard to be made into chocolate cake. 

In fact, I did have two other good reasons for making this cake. One was that I wanted to use the vintage yellow enamel bain marie that my Mum bought me for Christmas. The other was that I need to start using up the glace cherries I made after the bumper harvest from the cherry tree last year. It won't be too long again and we will be picking more......

Bon Dimanche. I hope your day has been cake filled too! 

Spring bulbs

The internet and our telephone line have been dodgy all week. All very annoying and it has meant no phone calls to my mum back in England (we talk almost every day). So its been very quiet.

Anyway, I have been busy planting bulbs in the new cut-flower garden. 500 bulbs planted and still more to do. I know its very late for putting them in and I should have done it back in November but the wet weather meant we couldn't rotovate the old vegetable patch and then a trip to England put the bulb planting back even further. 

I picked up this large enamel bowl for 50cents (40p) at a brocante before Christmas and did get round to planting it up. It looks great now they are all coming through. Spring must be just around the corner, right? Maybe a little optimistic, it is only the 4th January.....

Apart from planting bulbs I've started on a pair of curtains for one of the girl's bedroom. I wanted to make them entirely out of the Ian Mankin stripe (shown above) But as the windows have a 3 metre drop the price was so horrendous I have had to go with just a border at the bottom and paired it with a plain linen. So far so good......I will post a photo once they are finished. Bon Weekend!

Happy New Year

I think I may have enjoyed the celebrations a little too much last night......Hope you all feel a lot better than I do. Happy New Year!