ARRRRRRR

Pirate cake.
Simple enough.  We did a pirate ship a couple of years back, and this was actually a darn sight easier.  Basic victoria sponge (6,6,6,3 if you're wondering about the size) 
Bit of pink royal icing (beaten egg white, 350g icing sugar, tiny bit of red colouring) 
Cover cake with pink icing.
Make red icing (not royal - the chickens didn't lay enough).  Sadly, Dr Oetker's red food colouring, when used in any quantity, makes the icing taste absolutely revolting.
Slap on red icing in one corner (I know, it's a circle - it's an arc then, not a corner)
Then it should look like this.

Make up some black icing (thankfully, the black colouring didn't have the same taste outcome as the red!)
Put it on the cake in likely places (you'll see from the above pic that I poked the cake to get an idea of where the icing was going...)
Eventually, your cake will look like this:

All in a day's work.
I ignored the suggestion about including a parrot...
Big Boy was happy with it, which was the main idea really!

Jam hot.

Today's project:
Pick plums

(Don't worry, I picked some myself too!)

Put plums in pan with water:

Put pan on stove.  Turn on stove and cook until mushy:

Add sugar and heat to 105 degrees:

 Leave for 10 minutes to cool.

 Retrieve jars from dishwasher (sterilising...)

 Put jam in jars and seal:

 Simple.
(1kg, 1.4 litres and 1 kg, if you're wondering)

No, not that sort of bed.

This was one of the projects for the year. 
It was always going to have to be done sooner rather than later, but it was sped up somewhat by necessity.  We've had a whole load of space cleared and it will be replanted.  Crucially, some topsoil was being brought in last week, and I wanted a couple of barrow loads, so the bed had to be made quickly.  The construction itself was about and hour and a half.  Filling it with soil took another chunk of time, and topping it with compost isn't quite finished yet (obviously having the lights go out by about 5 doesn't help...)
So, here's the patch of ground.  Strangely, I took this photo from one angle, and all the others looking the other way, but I'm sure you get the picture (so to speak...)

 It's not ideal in terms of sunlight, but there's plenty of space here by the hedge, and there's room for expansion if necessary.  I'm guessing the soil's not great, what with the hedge having been there for yonks, but that's part of the point of a raised bed of course - it doesn't really matter!
 The first task was to put in one side, aiming to make it at least vaguely perpendicular to the hedge (tricky, given the hedge isn't straight)

 Then do the front and other side.  Note the profusion of power tools.  I had a jig saw, a power drill and a cordless drill (used as a screwdriver).  If I had to choose one, I'd have gone for a powered screwdriver - there wasn't too much cutting, and drilling the pilot holes for the timber was precautionary (didn't want the wood to split) rather than vital.

 Uh, then I seem to have taken a picture of the same thing, but without the tools there.  It's a bit like Kim's game I guess...

 This was the hardest bit physically.  Bringing 6 wheelbarrow loads of soil (wet, and therefore very heavy!) to put in the bed.  Having said that, it was also the bit of the job that made the rest happen.  The soil was delivered for another project on the day I made the bed - if I hadn't got some immediately, it would have been absorbed into the other project and I'd have had to order some more.

 Once the top soil was in, it was a question of getting in some compost.  This was a bit of a pain, because there's loads of ivy in our compost.  Having said that, the compost was thankfully lighter than the soil, so that was a relief!  (Spot the wheel barrow change!)

I think it was only four loads of compost, but I'll add to that in due course.  It's good for now though.  I'm hoping to plant the blackberries tomorrow, but it rather depends on time.  If I don't do it soon, the money I saved on getting them cheap will be wasted, because they'll be dead!

 

So, there you have it.  One raised bed, almost completed.  Bring on the vegetables...

Slated.

Just a quick one this time.  It's all about table mats.
We've wanted some slate table mats for ages.  They tend to go for about £15-20 for 4-6 placemats.  (In fact, I've just checked and it seems to be £20 for 4 for the bottom-of-the-range)
So, we figured we could do better.
Trip to Build Base (I was actually looking for an architectural salvage yard, but found BuildBase instead, and they did reclaimed slates)
Buy 20 slates for 62p each (and have an extra 5 thrown in for free, because some are a bit damaged)
Go to Dunelm Mill and buy a fleece blanket for £4.99
Get home and chop the blanket into slate size squares (it's a bit tricky, because fleece is a bit of an awkward fabric to work with)
Following the example of the Nester, who seems to have a fascination with glue guns that verges on fetish, hot glue the fleece to the slates.
Hey presto, you've got yourself a whole bunch of tablemats for less than £1 each (including slate, fleece, and glue for glue gun)
They are pretty heavy, which makes carrying them all at once a good workout.
The only down side is that the slate 'splinters' easily, so we have lots of shards on our table cloth.  However, I reckon this would be solved by varnishing them, which I may or may not get around to doing one day.

A quiet Christmas Eve?

So, the presents are wrapped, the mince pie and carrots are out for Santa and co., and everyone's looking forward to a chilled evening, after putting the boy to bed.
"Where's the stocking?" seems like such an innocent question to throw into the ether.  But after a hasty search results in no stocking, a full scale search and rescue effort is mounted.  Again, no joy.  Not so much as an old sock.  Solution?  Well, make one of course.

Bits:

Fabric (in this case, red stuff from a bean bag (yeah, I do seem to make loads...) for my sis-in-law) for the stocking itself.
Some white felt/fleece (in my case, it involved butchering a pair of white stockings (no, they wouldn't have worked for Santa's offerings!) that we'd bought the boy last year for his role of '7th sheep' in the nativity, only for him to refuse to take part)
Some black felt/fleece (as it happens, we had some lying about from the table mats - a different post altogether...)
Thread
Sewing machine (if you don't fancy doing it by hand, that is)
Fabric glue.


Grab a piece of fabric that's sort of squarish, and sketch a stocking shape on it that you're vaguely happy with. 
Cut this out. 
Use this as a template to make the other half (though remember that if you've chosen a fabric with a 'front' and a 'back', you'll need to make sure that you end up with both the 'fronts' on the outside of your stocking (unless the look you're going for is 'weird') and this will require you to cut the shapes out the right way round!
Cut the other half out (if you ignored my advice above, and now discover you have a 'front' and a 'back' that stick together, try again!)

Hem the tops of your stockings.  This will just mean that there's no taggy bits on the top - everywhere else will take care of itself.
Put them front to front (maybe I should mention at this point that I chose a fabric that didn't really have a discernible front and back, so less care was needed...)
Sew them up, using your sewing machine (or your mother, or whatever works best, really)

Turn your stocking inside out.  It should now be neat and tidy.
Next, cut out some bits of your white fabric (felt would be best, if you want to avoid butchering things) into circles.  One big for a snowman's body, one smaller for his head, and then a whole load of small ones for snow.

Glue all these onto the stocking, then cut out detail bits from the black fleece.  I went for a top hat, three buttons, a nose and some fluff for his pupils.
I didn't mention the blue fabric earlier did I?  No, that's because this was the point in the operation when I realised I needed it, so I figured you didn't need to know in advance either.  Now, I was a little bit shocking here in choosing my fabric donor.  I went to the cupboard where we keep his too-small clothes, found a blue polo shirt from his school uniform and, where there's a double layer of fabric at the top of the back, I cut out two small circles from the inside of the polo shirt.  No-one will ever know...  These were also glued to the snowman, along with the black bits.
Next, stop at the top of the stairs for an impromptu photo shoot with your stocking.

 Finally, hang the stocking up on the fireplace.  Yes, that is a real fire - I don't think my camera phone has really done it justice.  That and the fact that the wood's a bit damp...

Of course, you could add more decoration, trees, stars, angels and the like.  In fact, if you were talented, you could probably go the whole hog and hot glue a felt nativity onto it.  But that's out of my league :)
You can now enjoy the rest of your Christmas eve in peace.  (It took just over an hour, if you're wondering.)

Rex.

Well, last year it was a pirate cake. This year he announced that he wanted a dinosaur cake. Specifically, Rex from Toy Story.
So here's a little outline of how it went. First, bake a cake in a sort of A4 sized tin. Just did an all-in-one sponge myself (Delia's, if you must know...) for this purpose. Then, draw a template on a bit of A4 paper. Look at the template, appear shocked at your own lack of artistic prowess, get another piece of A4 and try again. Finally, after a few tweaks, and some internet based research, you'll have a template you can show in public. Place this on top of the cake. Sorry this first photo's upside-down. Wasn't really thinking at the time.

Next, get a sharp (and, ideally, quite narrow) knife and start cutting out the template. You'll notice that the tail on the template is somewhat foreshortened. This is because I was intending to salvage a bit of cake from the offcuts to form into a tail. In fact, in this second picture, you can see the gap where the tail has been taken from. If I was thinking, I'd have cut the tail the other way, so that it was the same way up as the body. But I wasn't, so it wasn't...
When you've finished that part of the operation, you'll hopefully have something that looks like a cross between a dinosaur and a lizard who's shed its tail. I have to confess I didn't really try to make 'hands' for Rex's front limbs. Neither the knife nor the cake looked like they were going to be up to that sort of detail.
It's now ready to be transferred to its final resting place. In this case, a chopping board covered in tinfoil. Classy stuff. At this point, add the tail. (see - it's the wrong way up...)This is the fun bit. Make some green icing. Now, I looked at the green colouring and thought to myself that it would be pretty easy to get it to Rex-green. However, I ended up emptying the bottle into the icing and it still wasn't green enough. I tried a few drops first, then a lid full, then another, then just tipped the remains of the bottle in. Still ended up with a bit of an insipid outcome. Hey ho.
Start slopping the icing onto the cake in vast swathes. It's not exactly for the faint-hearted, this cake. Obviously, at this point it would be a shame to find out that you've not made enough icing, as colour matching is notoriously difficult at such times. I went the other way and hopelessly over catered. Thankfully, one of the birthday party activities was cake decorating, so it didn't all go to waste.
Once you've finished off the icing all over bit, add some detail. This is another stage where my lack of artistic finesse worked against me, but I think that you can probably get the general impression that it's supposed to be a dinosaur. If you're wondering what on earth is going on with the '4' in the top right, it's because Joshua doesn't actually like icing (ironic, I have to admit) and so asked for a bit without icing. I didn't really want a 'bare' bit of dinosaur, so opted for creating a '4' out of off cuts, and holding it together with a bunch of skewers.
And there you have it. A Rex cake. In fact, one of the kiddies said, as I put the cake down, 'it's a dinosaur' (cue sigh of relief from me). Another kid responded, "it's Rex" (cue declarations of undying love from me!). Top of the class boy, well done.


As it happens, it was a year ago today that I wrote,
"I'm seriously considering starting a blog called 'man made' to start to try and balance the approximately 40 billion blogs out there that are craft by women for women - or at least with the assumption that only women will be interested :)

Sadly, if I did start such a blog, I think it would only be read by women..."

Here it is :o)

Harvest time.

Not really sure where to put this blog, so I'll bung it here, and then link it to the 'outdoor blog'.
It's apple season. And that means lots of work to do in the orchard.
In particular, it's a bit of a race to actually pick the apples before they drop off. When an orchards is as chronically neglected as ours, the trees have grown too big, and a drop to the ground generally proves fatal (or at least bruising) for the apples.

Solution? Well, you need an apple picker. Such as this fine one from Harrod Horticultural (no, they're not paying me for that plug!). Harrod Horticultural is one of those websites I window shop around from time to time, dreaming of the old lottery win scenario, where I can then afford such items as this fine apple picker. "From 29.95" the website tells me. (Does that mean I can pay them more if I really want to?!)
Actually, if I'm honest, if I was the recipient of a windfall of cash, I'd try to avoid spending it on things like this, on the assumption that, if I didn't buy one before, the need can't have been that great... But that's another story!

Anyway, I'm digressing horribly from the point, which is, as stated before, "God gave me the same hands as he gave to the bloke (or woman...) who made that, so I may as well make one myself".

So I had a crack at it. I figured a wire coat hanger would make the 'frame' bit (the red bit in the picture above) as I could bend it in and out to make the 'teeth'. Sure enough, that was a cinch. Then I had a think about an appropriate bag type thing. The prototype had a bubble-wrap catcher. This was then taped to a bamboo cane, to give good reach. Ok, so it doesn't look as pretty as the one on the open market, but it's got a certain charm... No, actually, it hasn't - it's very ugly. But the main thing is, it has a USE! I went straight out to the orchard and gave it a go. There were a couple of slight issues, like the taping had been done fairly haphazardly, which left some gaps for leaves to get trapped in. But other than that, it was a good first try. On my way back into the house, I spotted the pole for the washing line. It's autumn, I thought to myself, and that pole won't be needed for a good long while now... So, having made a successful prototype, I moved onto the first 'production' model.
Again, there was a wire coat hanger involved. This time, however, I buzzed the sewing machine around a bit of scrap cloth I had in the box. I then sewed this onto the coat hanger (this seemed a little more refined than masking tape. Finally, the 'basket' was taped (perhaps some nice garden twine could have been used...) to the washing line pole. And here's the result. I was (arguably over-) excited by the outcome. The lads who come to pick apples for us on a Wednesday referred to it as 'insane'. Now, being one who's 'down with the kids', I interpreted that as a positive thing. But maybe they are just concerned about my mental health...