October 16th 2015 - Christmas Candy Sleighs

I know it is only October and we haven't got as far as Halloween BUT I needed to sort out some craft activities for St John Ambulance including 1 week where they are in uniform which means no paint, glitter or glue or anything that would make a mess.   Yea not the easiest of tasks in the world!

Then I remembered the Christmas Candy Sleighs I made for the boys teachers 2 Christmas's ago - they were very easy to make and used double sided tape.

These were the ones I made for the teachers.  They look pretty good and the teachers liked them.

Que me going shopping for sweets and chocolate to make them.  £19.81 later I have everything I need to make a new demo version and enough sweets for 19 children to make sleighs - that work out at £1 per child - when you put it that way you cant really complain especially as 4 bar kit kats are 79p each in my local shop.  The sweets were from b&m, home bargains and poundland, all in multi-packs.

Take 1 huge pile of sweets:

And  split them to what you need - 1 kit kat, 2 twix bars, 2 maoam blocks, 1 orange segment, 1 choc santa and 2 candy canes:

And you are almost ready to make the sleighs.  You also need 2 pieces of christmas ribbon and either double sided tape or sticky glue dots.

Step 1. Take out your kit kat and 2 twix bars.  Place the Kit kat right way up on the table.  Take 1 of the twix bars and a glue dot to each end on the back, then push down onto the back of your kit kat.  Do the same for 2nd twix and stick infront of the 1st one. You can add a sticky dot between the 2 twix bars to keep them together.

 

Step 2. Place kit kat on the table.  Take 1 of your 2 maoam bars, add a glue dot to each end of it on the back and stick on top of the twix bars.  Do this for the 2nd maoam as well.  You can add a glue dot between the 2 so they stay together. 

 

Step 3.  Place your kit kat on the table.  Take your orange segment and put a glue dot on each end on the base.  Stick this at the back on top of the maoam blocks. 

 

Step 4.  Take your Santa and place a glue dot on the base and 1 on the back about half way up.  Place Santa infront of the bars on the kit kat. 

Step 5.  Take 1 of the candy canes, put a glue dot on the top near the straight end, a glue dot in the middle and a glue dot near the curve.  Stick this to one side of the base of the kit kat.  Do the same for the other candy cane.  The curves need to be at the front near Santa. 

Step 6.  Take 1 piece of the Christmas ribbon.  Place a glue dot in the middle of the kit kat on the base and place the middle of the ribbon on it.  Take the ends up and over the sweet “parcels” and fix with a glue dot on the top.

 

Step 7. Take the other piece of the Christmas ribbon, tie both ends of the ribbon together in a knot.  Place a glue dot just infront of Santa and fix the knotted it to it (leave the knot to flap about like reins).  Take the rest of the ribbon under the front of the sleigh, stick to the glue dot from 1st ribbon if possible and bring up the back of the sweet “parcels” and fix on the glue dot on the top.

 

You now have a sleigh with reins. 

Some websites say to make these with hot glue or super glue - i dont reccommend this as the glue melts the plastic wrappers of the sweets and ends up touching the sweets making them un-eatable.  Therefore it is safer (especially if being done with children) to use double sided tape of sticky glue dots.

March 15th 2015 - Happy Mother's day

March 15th 2015 - Happy Mother's day

Happy Mother's day to all the Mum's around, and a big Happy Mother's day to my Mummy who sadly isn't here in person anymore but is in my heart and thought about all the time.  I found a similar pic to this one (but didn't like the look of it so made my own.)

 

I would also like to say thank you to my 3 boys for my lovely cards:

And my gifts that they got me:

This morning would have been great had I not been woken up by my eldest being sick and yelling down the stairs that he had been!  Still love him though.  I know i'm not perfect but I try to do my best for all 3 of you.  You are my world and I love you all.

Hubby is cooking us all a lovely roast beef dinner as we couldn't afford to go out for a meal.  As my eldest was sick and didn't want dinner we took his plate full round to the neighbour as she is on her own for a few days as her hubby is away.  I hope she enjoyed it as much as I did.

February 14th 2015 - Valentines day

February 14th 2015 - Valentines day

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY EVERYONE I hope that you have had a good day and all got at least a card.

I have had to "make" a pin for today as I couldn't find anything suitable that I liked.  So here it is, my pin about Valentines Day.

Today has been a rather strange day, it started off with 2/3 children giving me cards they had made at school (see below) and a card from hubby.  Blake (5) also got his first valentines card from Rosie his girlfriend at school.  Hubby got me a mini sewing machine that I have winged about for ages so I can try and learn to sew with it.

Anyway after the nice cards had been given out etc I went and got dressed as I was being picked up at 10:30am to go on a course with St John Ambulance.  I got picked up, nipped to asda to get my luch on the way and off we went.  An hours car trip to get to the training venue to be told the course had been cancelled as "there was no-one booked on it".  Errrr we were booked on it and at a meeting thursday we were told there was 4 people on it.

So we had a wasted trip and i'd bought a pack up for no reason.  The lady who picked me up wasn't happy either.  As it happens I could have gone out for dinner with my family and the neighbours but had to alter it to next week because of this course today.  Never mind, I have sent an email to the person who organised it asking why we wern't notified it had been cancelled.

Well when I got back from the non-existant course the sun was shining and it looked really nice out, so I decided to go outside and pull up some weeds and cut back my hedge.  The boys decided to help by taking the cuttings to the bin for me.

January 16th 2015 - Plastic Bottle flower vase

January 16th 2015 - Plastic Bottle flower vase

I saw this tutorial on pinterest of how to make a flower vase from a plastic bottle  it didn't look that hard but looked really effective.  Now I don't get flowers very often as Hubby doesn't me them, so this was 1 of those pins that would probably sit forever on my board.

That was until the neighbour came round with a bunch of tulips for me as an appology for not removing her food from my freezer (had bits since christmas as  she had no room).  Its not a problem and its not in my way.  Well the tulips spent 2 nights in a jug until I found this pin.

Here's the pics:

the plastic bottle with the top cut off and slits in it

the bottle with slits now opened out

the finished thing

the finished thing

with flowers in it

It's worked of sorts.  Mine hasn't got as big a frill/lip/rim as the 1 in tutorial and it doesn't lay flat like tutorial.  Plus some of the strips that you weave have already popped back out.  So not sure if my stipe were long enough or what but I can say I tried and it didn't work brilliantly!!!