Books and baking

Currently at Tea Towers we are busy getting the most fun possible out of our Summer holidays. We have a long list of what we want to do with our time and have been enjoying reading, crafting and playing games.

My reading pile is looking pretty tall right now. I was delighted by all the beautiful books I received for my Birthday recently and I have further added to these with some lovely ones from the Library and a few borrowed from friends.

"Sense & Sensibility" by Jane Austen
"The Lie tree" by Frances Hardinge
"Stone mattress" by Margaret Atwood
"The Heart goes last" by Margaret Atwood
"The Street" by Bernardine Bishop
"Charmed life" by Diane Wynne Jones
"Witch week" by Diane Wynne Jones
"The Magicians of Caprona" by Diane Wynne Jones
"The Lives of Christopher Chant" by Diane Wynne Jones
"Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman
"Ruby and Custard's crochet" by Millie Masterton
"Crochet home" by Emma Lamb
"The Gentle art of stitching" by Jane Brocket

Talking of books I also was given a copy of Nadiya's "Bake me a story" which is a lovely book containing a range of recipes to try with the kids each with a story to read.

We had a try at making the 'Breakfast muffins' using blueberries from the garden.

We have also had a go at the 'Zebra cake' recipe which is a rather tasty chocolate topped marble cake.

Yumm! I hope your Summer break is just as tasty as ours is turning out to be!

Halloween craft

Hope you all had a lovely Halloween yesterday - we did :-) Because of having two Halloween parties to attend we didn't have enough time to carve a pumpkin this year but we did dress up and I even managed to make some yummy Halloween cakes.

These cakes were simple fairy cakes and butter cream icing. The decorations were made with melted white chocolate and a piping bag... you just melt the chocolate, stick it in the piping bag and then pipe out whatever spooky shape you like straight on to greaseproof paper.

Sam wanted to be a ghost this year so after a quick trawl of the local charity shops I found an old table cloth that I cut up to make a poncho style body and added a hood to the top. He really loved it and I loved being able to whip something up last minute that actually fit okay!

Happy Halloween!

Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween last night... we did, what with making Halloween cakes, wearing costumes and getting to trick or treat the neighbours. In fact we had such a good time I completely forgot to share this year's Halloween project with you...

Happy bats from Paper-and-string's super cute Halloween decoration tutorial. These little guys are great fun to make and make really lovely Halloween gifts.

Because I was crafting these in a last minute panic I got my felt colours reversed - the body should have been grey and the wings black... not to worry though as they still look like bats :-)

There was also a bit of Halloween baking taking place here too - we did a batch of scary ghost gingerbread biscuits to give out to the neighbours to say 'thank you' for our Halloween treats. I really liked being able to give something out to our neighbours and I'll definitely be doing this again next year :-)

So now we've scared all the ghosts and ghouls it's time to start thinking seriously about Christmas.... now that really is scary!


This post has been shared as part of Lakota's Ta da Tuesday.

October's craft: Icing :-)

Sorry for not posting a craft for September - I did try to do one, but it turned out so badly that I didn't even bother photographing my attempts...

So for October I thought I would give a bit of simple icing a go. First I made up a quick batch of gingerbread men from a recipe on the BBC food website. Then armed with a circle of greaseproof paper and some icing sugar had a go at making some icing and my first ever icing bag... and I'm very happy to say I managed it!

Icing bag in hand I got to work and before I knew it I had my own little army of gingerbread men... now to go and test a few :-)

What Santa brought us

This year it seems that I wasn't the only person trying to make handmade gifts for my friends and family, it turns out that my sister, sister in law and brother in law were all busy crafting away. Look at all the lovely things they made us!

From the top left going clockwise:

- bib for Sam (but I'm avoiding using it as Sam will only get it covered in food)
- pull along duck
- crochet ball with bell
- lavender sachet
- small & tiny totoro (the tiny totoro also has lavender in - lovely)
- tasty jam
- cute crochet flower brooch (mollie flowers)

As if all this wasn't enough my lovely sister also painted this for little Sam's room - isn't it just beautiful? I'm going to get it properly framed and hung in his room very soon and I know that it will become one of Sam's favourite things.