Sweet Potato Casserole ..... With a twist!

Well quite a big twist!
We first made Sweet potato casserole as our contribution to an American thanksgiving meal and it was ....well sweet, really sweet which was kind of ok but slightly odd for a savoury dish!

Left with surplus mini marshmallows and pecans I toyed with making it again but to be fair there are better uses for sweet potato, but what if I switched the potato for Apple, nice tart cooking apples?

So stew cooking apples and place in a casserole dish with no extra sugar

- there is plenty of that on top! I used about 6 for this dish.

Then mix 1 1/2 cups of crushed cornflakes with 1/2 cup of chopped pecans and 1tablespoon of brown sugar.
Melt 50g of butter and mix into cornflake mixture.
Place the cornflake mixture on the apple in diagonal lines with approximately 4cm gap in between.
Place in a preheated oven, 180c for about 15 min, till cornflakes are browned but not burnt ( you need to watch it they turn quickly!)
Allow to cool for 5 min then fill the gaps with marshmallows and bake until mallows are golden brown.

Delicious wth ice cream!

Just for fun : Baby bag

The disadvantage of being the youngest sibling is that sometimes you don't get stuff because it is presumed that you play with your older siblings toys.
Two things struck me this year, first I had forgotten that baths were fun - not functional. Having moved to a house with a working shower we have moved away from baths, washing the girls in the shower is just so much quicker and easier. Then after a cold muddy walk on New Years Eve Annie asked to have a bath, thinking it would warm her up I agreed and filled a bubble bath for her, she had a great time with her plastic tea set playing for ages. So I guess baths are going to feature a bit more often now!

The second was that we had never bought her a working baby doll, we had meant too, when she got older but somehow had never got round to it. So with her birthday coming so soon after Christmas we thought this was the opportunity to put that right. After some discussion as to how old is too old when it came to dolls we ordered an Annabel at a reasonable price. The accesories were so pricey that I looked at buying second hand, but fell fowl to not checking before I bought and ended up with something shabby and too small for Annabel. So plan b was to make some which to be honest is what I should have done in the first place.
I didn't have a pattern but had an idea of what I wanted to create, so I used a paper template to cut out the pieces, pinned it together to check it worked then hit the sewing machine!

Change bag
The letter were attached using a permanent iron on adhesive, and the base included a pocket for a piece of card to give shape to the bag.

The pocket was made by sewing together two pieces, turning them right side out, pressing them then attaching the piece to the back of the bag using a decorative stitch.
Change mat

I also chatted to Rebecca about giving some of her stash of dolls clothes as a birthday present to Annie, she was happy to do that and in the processof getting all the dolls stuff out she and Sophie's dolls suddenly became the toy of choice! Dolls are back in vogue! To be fair Rebecca's doll has always been in the picture but hers and Sophie's are now dressed and actively being played with so Annie is now desperate for one! And the selected items have been washed and ironed ready to be wrapped.

Just for fun - Christmas present for a frozen fan!

This gift was inspired by the fabric! I saw this material on-line and knew Annie would love it, so I ordered a metre then had to come up with a project to use it!
Pinterest is a great source of ideas and I found a tutorial for a lovely full skirted apron, which would be perfect.

http://www.annkelle.com/tutorial-childrens-apron/

The tutorial is straight forward and easy to follow, and there was enough fabric to make two so I was able to make one for my niece as well as one for Annie.

She loved it, and it helped to keep her dressing up clothes (which needed to be worn all day!) clean.
She folded the bib down on Christmas Day and wore it over her jeans as a skirt, which does make me wonder if that might be a potential project for the summer! Though what's the betting if I make her a skirt she won't wear it!

Just for fun : Bean bug toss...

I'm not sure what prompted this present, but it began as an idea of making a bean bag game, where you would throw the bean bags on to a numbered mat.

As I pondered on it, probably at a rediculous time in the morning I wondered if I could adapt it to be a bee on a beehive.

This progressed to a bee on a flower, so I ordered some felt and fabric. But decided to go step further - how about doing bugs on a flower, and so the idea was now formulated.

I always think about recording patterns, measurements and step by step photos after I finish a project so apologies! But essentially the flower was created with fat quarters. I used a dinner plate so make the pattern and sewed them with a sheet of wadding in the middle.

The numbers were attached using a permenant iron on adhesive. I combined fabric to make the centre rather than use another pattern, and edged it with giant ric rac as I felt it needed something to finish it off. I also backed it with a circle of green felt to strengthen it and this helped give it more structure when folded up, the buttons were added to secure it with a piece of elastic as the fastener.

The bugs were cut freehand and the body pieces sewn by machine to ensure the filling was secure and then edged with blanket stitch as a decorative finish.

I tested it out on my 5 year old who loved throwing the bugs and adding up the numbers, so it is definatly a game that can evolve as the child develops.

It's been a while ...

Well after a lovely Christmas it's back to 'normal ' life ....

it's been a bit quiet on the blogging front lately...
The last 3 months have mostly been taken up with adjusting to life back at work with new routines and settling into the new role.
I am now working as a TA in a local school, and loving it. Being involved in education has been a long held ambition so when it came to looking for work once Annie started school it seemed a good time to try to make the switch!
I am enjoying using my creativity in my job as well as continuing to craft for fun ... mostly during lunchtimes!
I am hoping to post some Christmas crafts over the next few days beforeI get stuck in to preparations for Annie's Frozen party!

Hodgeheg

Some of you will know that our eldest daughter has short term memory issues, it's taken a while but we now know that her auditory memory is very poor fortunately her visual memory is about average and her long term memory is good.
Much of what we have done to help her was without knowing the problem, just knowing her and how her brain worked. Knowing the specific issue has helped us understand more and given us tools to support some of our decisions regarding her learning.
It also explained her difficulty in reading, it's not the words that pose the problem but holding on to what she has read in order to piece the story together. Understanding stories has always been challenging but picture books gave visual clues and were short enough to read several times allowing her to put the story together. However as she has grown up and her class mates have moved on to chapter books with few if any illustrations she has struggled. She no longer wants to read little kids books! But has little comprehension of the chapter books.
She loves reading and it is heartbreaking. At the moment she still gains pleasure from completing a book, but I wonder how long this will be the case.
So when we were told at the beginning of the Easter holidays that the class would be reading the Hodgeheg this term I decided to experiment with it, could we make it visual and interactive? Could we make it fun, and could we hold her interest enough to get through the book a number of times a hence access her long term memory?
To start with we read it to her, and we made a bookmark giving the names of the main characters.

She then read the book and we made felt puppets of the characters and she labelled them with stickers, she was beginning to remember the key character Max.

So as she read through the book again we created a story mat, a section at a time, but crucially Rebecca created it, she came up with the design and cut out many of the pieces - I got the job of sewing it together!

Once the basic areas were made, we then went through the book to find what we needed to add, essentially this is comprehension but creative comprehension, she would keep looking because we needed to know what to make next, there was a point and a purpose.
Letting Rebecca design it and do the cutting, engaged her brilliantly with the story even if I had to sit on my hands occaisionally! The tactile and visual nature of the mat helped her remember the flow of the story, it was no longer random words.
But doing this for every book just isn't practical and so the search continues!

Life from the back of the pack: Rebecca is nine

Craft parties are the party of the moment it seems well if your 9 and go to Barton Primary anyway!

I decided to have 6 craft options running simultaneously and kept my eyes open for bargains!
The result was : Felt bags, painted coasters, Decopatch bird houses, loom bands, Hama beads, and butterfly tags.
The bags were reduced Easter stock from Tesco. The original design was tricky so some savvy ones left out the side panels and sewed a simple bag!

Decopatch is always fun, in my head they were using one colour for the walls and another for the roof, the reality is that they used a complete mix on all of it and bizarrely it worked!

The coasters were another Easter bargain, this time from hobby craft. Some had more success with the stencils than others, but they enjoyed painting them anyway.

Loom bands were definatly the favoured activity but all the girls took home a selection of crafts, and having a garden available meant that they could have a run around when they hah had enough crafting!!

Rebecca's cake followed the craft theme, I purchased a silicone mould for the buttons but wasn't happy with the result so opted to make my own.

She had a butterfly theme running through the decorations and tableware so these were incorporated in her cup cakes.

It was a fun afternoon !

The plans are now underway for next years parties! No joke Sophie is planning a loomy party! And Annie a frozen party - even discussing costumes with her friends! I guess with 6 months to go she will have it all sorted by February!!