Family Crafting - How to make a Kandinsky tree collage

After our concentric circles painting we carried on with our circle theme and Miss E had a go at making a tree collage.

Beforehand I had drawn and cut out a tree shape out of brown paper and drawn lots of different sized circles on a variety of coloured papers.

Miss E choose a background colour and stuck the tree trunk shape onto it.  She then cut out the different sized circles.  With older children they can draw and cut out the circles themselves but drawing around things without them moving is still a bit tricky when you are 4!

We then experimented by layering up different combinations of colours until she was happy with them and then she stuck them together and then stuck the circle "sandwiches" onto the tree branches.

This can easily be adapted to even younger children with the adult doing all the cutting out and the little one doing all the sticking.

For older children they can do the activity themselves from start to finish including using a set of compasses if you are feeling brave!

Rhubarb and Custard Muffins

Remember my rhubarb in this post?  Well it is absolutely huuugggeee now!



What to do with a glut of rhubarb?! Friends pass comment on it as they come up my path, small animals can hide in it and I am trying to find some new recipes to make use of it.  Last year a neighbour made me some rhubarb and custard muffins and they were delicious.  Today whilst the children had their friends over I searched online for a recipe but couldn't find one that I liked.  After reading a few I decided I would attempt my own recipe and they turned out a little flat but taste great.

Rhubarb and Custard Muffins

10oz plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb
4oz sugar
1 egg
5fl oz milk
5 fl oz natural yoghurt
2 fl oz vegetable oil
one stick of rhubarb,washed and diced to approx cm cubes
half a tin of ready made custard

Prepare muffin tins (I think you need to use cases here as the custard would stick if you just greased the pans).
Preheat oven to gas mark 5.
Mix flour, baking powder, bicarb and sugar in a large bowl.
In a jug mix up the yoghurt, milk, oil and egg until combined.
Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and add the rhubarb.
Mix just until combined, if you over mix they will be dry.
Put a spoon of the muffin mix into the bottom of each muffin case so that the bottom is covered.
Add a spoon of tinned custard to each case.
Put the rest of the mix on top so that you end up with two layers of batter with custard in the middle.

(At this point I realised I had over filled my cases so I would go for 14 muffins instead of 12 next time!)

Cook for about 20 to 25 mins until the tops are brown and spring back when touched.

As my rhubarb is home made the stalks are quite thick, if you are using supermarket dainty rhubarb you may want to use a stick and a half!

I used everyday value everything

My muffins are quite flat, as you can see from the photo.  I am not sure whether it was because I used out of date baking powder.  I will try them soon no doubt and will use fresh baking powder to hopefully get those tall cracked muffin tops!!

I reckon the ingredients, if you use everyday value/basic ranges and free rhubarb, come in at less than a £1 for 12 huge muffins.

If you have a go at these please let me know how they come out!

Girl-ing Up My Brown Pom Pom Hat!

I absolutely love this!  What a great idea, I never thought of this hat as anything but a boys hat but the talented Tami Bears, photographer at Artistic Photography by Tami added a lovely pink flower and voila, perfect for a newborn girl!

This hat in a number of sizes and in other colours is available in my Etsy shop.

Star Wars Baby

So today is Star Wars Day.  Mr T is a big Star Wars fan, and his little sister has realised that being interested in Star Wars means she can play with him and his lego a bit more, something she is always trying to do!  For a long time this Yoda baby hat has sat in my to-do pile until a photographer reminded me  and I finally cast it on.  It is knitted with a super soft chunky acrylic yarn and I think it is a great match for Yoda himself.

I borrowed Mr T's lego figures and set myself up a little scene with them, only to be told that this character would not be with that character and so on, so I let him set them up instead.  I am not sure whether to stock this hat or whether to keep it for custom orders as the ears took more concentration than I have late at night at the moment.  This one is winging its way to Ireland to Linda Clarke, hopefully I will be able to share a photo of it being worn by a gorgeous newborn baby soon.

If you would be interested in ordering one please contact me through my Facebook page, here or via The Yarn Owls Nest, my Etsy shop.  In the meantime May The Force Be With You!

Family Crafting - How to paint like Kandinsky

This is a great family activity as the idea is such a simple one and anyone of any age can produce a lovely piece of art.  

First of all we looked at some images of Kandinsky's piece Concentric Circles online and talked about the shapes and colours.

Concentric Circles by Wassily Kandinsky

Next we took some paper and folded it in half, then half, then half again to get eight equal sized rectangles. If I had had bigger sheets of paper I would have cut the paper into a square shape first so that each section was a square like Kandinsky's but we only had A4 paper so we worked with rectangles.

 For younger children it works better if the rectangles or squares are bigger so for Miss E's second attempt I just folded her paper into quarters.

We then used watercolours and appropriately sized brushes to build up circles in each section starting from the centre and working outwards.  Again I tend to give younger children larger brushes as it produces better end results and they get to finish before they get bored!

And here is how they turned out, I love how cheerful they look.  We are off to get some frames as they are destined to be birthday presents.

 Miss E's first attempt

Mr T's picture

 My attempt!

 Miss E's second attempt with larger rectangles

Little Grey Easter Rabbit

A collection of gorgeous photographs from Gail at Lemonjelly Photography featuring my silver grey Easter bunny hat.  If you are near Coatbridge and need a photographer please pay her a visit.

A New Book and a Delicious Curry

Recently I was gifted this brilliant book.  I have been a fan of the Girl Called Jack website for a while now.  Many of her recipes have become family favourites and my lovely Mum treated me to the book a few weeks ago.  The timing was great as the maintenance payments we have been receiving since my split have been cut again without any warning so I have been looking at ways I can make our already tight food budget go a bit further.

The first meal I cooked were the falafels which were great.  I love falafels and these work really well, just wish I had had pittas and some chilli sauce and salad to accompany them.  Our second recipe was the peach and chickpea curry.  It was really delicious, seconds and thirds were enjoyed and I even managed to squirrel a little bit to have for my lunch the next day.

I didn't use any chilli as the small people aren't keen on anything too spicy and instead of the cumin I substituted curry powder.  I always kill of coriander if I try and grow it so I missed that out too, along with the stock cube as I figured with the curry powder it would have enough flavour and I was right.

Has anyone else got the book?  Which recipes have you tried?  How did they work out?