I posted a few pics of our gingerbread house on Instagram yesterday and got comments saying I was far too early for Christmas! Since when was a gingerbread house just for Christmas? I think they make a pretty good treat for Halloween too as they are really versatile and easy to decorate for any season. Decorating a Halloween gingerbread house As we’re currently in the middle of half term we decorated a gingerbread house as part of our Halloween celebrations. This is always a great activity to do with my children and it kept them occupied all afternoon. It also…
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How can I not start off my weekly Monday Happy Things post with Parents evening? Now both my children attend the local school I had the pleasure of two parents evenings. It’s always lovely to hear other people saying nice things about your children and they both got glowing school reports. At 3 and 5 they are both young but it’s still great to hear they try their best and enjoy learning new things. They both got new books as a reward ( Little Sis received a set of The Dinosaur Who Pooped books and Big Brother received The BFG…
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I’m always on the look out for gingerbread recipes and a friend recently introduced me to an amazing Nigella Lawson recipe for Chocolate Gingerbread. Once I’d made it I couldn’t believe I hadn’t discovered it before, the combination of gingerbread and chocolate makes an amazingly rich cake, and a ginger glaze really sets it off. Chocolate Gingerbread cake ingredients: 175g unsalted butter 125g muscovado sugar 2tblsp caster sugar 200g golden syrup 200g black treacle 1/4tsp ground cloves 1 tsp ground cinnamon 2 tsp ground ginger 1 1/4tsp Bicarbonate of Soda 2 eggs 250ml milk 275g plain flour 40g cocoa 175g…
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We’ve had a steady stream of visitors recently so thought we should give our baking a seasonal twist. We love gingerbread so made our favourite gingerbread biscuit recipe and used a great Halloween cutter to make Halloween gingerbread ghosts. Ingredients for Halloween gingerbread ghosts: 350g Plain flour 1tsp Bicarbonate of soda 2 tsp Ground ginger 100g Butter 175g Light muscovado sugar 4 tbsp Golden Syrup 1 large egg How to make Halloween gingerbread ghosts: Place the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger in a bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, then stir…
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After a busy weekend it’s so lovely to sit and take stock of the last week.My 5 Monday happy things post is my favourite post of the week. I framed the horoscope papercut I made at the Handmade Fair in a simple glass frame which looks great but was impossible to photograph! It currently has pride of place on my mantelpiece although my children are itching to cover it in Halloween decorations. I enjoyed a delicious Gingerbread cupcake from our local farmers market My son discovered a pad of sticky notes and quickly used up a whole pad. I did…
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I mentioned that my 5 year old has fallen for the wonderful stories of Roald Dahl. Although we were reading James and the Giant Peach (which I was really enjoying) he decided we had to stop and read The Twits instead. So, we’ve been reading a couple of chapters each evening and taking a lot of pleasure in it, so much that it inspired a fun baking session. Yes, we baked a beard in honour of Mr Twit, decorated it – then ate it! We had so much fun we thought we’d share our Twits-inspired activity. Make an edible Mr…
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I can’t believe we are 10 days away from the Summer holidays! This term is really rushing by. Top of my list of things which made my happy this is surviving the parents race at Sports Day! I hated Sports Day when I was at school but I’m pleased to say both my children loved theirs this year. I was so happy to be challenged to decorate a teepee by Hobbycraft and write a post for the Hobbycaft blog. We were sent a teepee and some craft supplies and the whole family had lots of fun decorating it. We experimented…
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You know that I love to celebrate the seasons which is why I had to mark Twelfth Night in some way. We took the Christmas decorations down over the weekend (not a job I wanted to do on my own) so the house has been looking a little empty. With everyone back at work and school I made some yummy gingerbread crowns for Three Kings Day, also known as Twelfth Night. So I made a large batch of yummy gingerbread dough. I rolled it out and cut out my shapes – three Russian-inspired crowns for the Three Kings. I used…
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Today seems to be a great time to tell you about our felt gingerbread house. This is one of those projects that has been waiting to be finished for a while. I’m terrible at starting something and not finishing it! Felt Christmas Cookies and Gingerbread House I made it as much for myself as the children and we’ve all had fun getting it out and looking at it. Here’s our Felt Christmas Cookies and Gingerbread House I purchased the pattern from Jeanette Lim at umecrafts a while ago, she’s also the author of Big Little Felt Universe which is one…
