When the relatives are coming it's time to...

Make mince pies for the freezer...



...and then eat them all up straightaway.

Easy Peasy Christmas bunting

We were in need of some new Christmas decorations and were shown how to make these by another home edder at a home ed group. Really really easy bunting!

First cut squares out of scraps of material. We used pinking shears to reduce fraying, but ordinary scissors are fine too (and the fraying just makes them look authentically rustic!).
The squares don't have to be a particular size (2-3 inches square works fine with thinner fabrics, you can go larger with stiffer fabric (light fabric tends to flop a bit if squares are large, as we discovered!). Vary the sizes and don't worry about making the squares precise unless you are totally retentive.


We used mostly free fabric swatches (checked and silk furnishing fabric samples) so the material was stiffer and worked well.



Use an ordinary running thread to sew diagonally across the square. We used our hand-cranked sewing machine which is evil, but easier for the kids to control than my equally evil electric one. Don't fasten off, just keep going.

Sew a couple of stitches after you come off the diagonal point and then tuck the next square in and carry on going. Having a couple of stitches between squares helps them to twist and spin a little.



We found some shiny fabric and popped that in as well to make it look a bit more Christmassy.


When you get to the end of all your squares just do a few stitches back the other way and fasten off.

You can choose to have short bunting strands and hang them vertically, or do like we've done and make a super-long string of them to go across the room in a zig zag.

The photos don't do them justice, but you get the idea.

Like I said - easy peasy! (And a good way to use up those not-so-nice fabric scraps that you can't bear to throw away)


(Spot the lovely hanging paper Christmas tree we got from Wilkos this year only £1!)

This year's bunting hung above last year's strings of pot pourri and little hand-sewn padded hearts:

Free Christmas Word Search (for non-confident readers)

Free wordsearch with a Christmas theme to download from the currclick here

Nice and simple, so ideal for younger children or non-confident readers. My dd (a just-started reader) has done two of the pages.

You probably need to make an account with currclick before you can download it, but after that it's pretty simple. There are other freebies on the site, plus they are having a sale at the moment, so you might just happen to be tempted...

Apart from exploding pressure cookers...

We've been

visiting a local archaeology & art museum:


making Christmas decorations at home ed group:


Christmas fencing:
enjoying late night 'Light Night':
eating candyfloss:

This is what happens when...

...the pressure cooker explodes:


I'd like to say it was an interesting home education experiment



But the real skill came in trying to clean it up. First the Jack-vac:


And then the sky-high mop (yes, that is the kitchen ceiling):



And in case you hadn't guessed from the debris, it was potato and vegetable soup. Or it might have been if it hadn't detonated in my very small 1930s kitchen.

End of November Catch Up

Feels like a while since I last posted. Here's a quick catch up of the end of November.

Batizado (annual Capoeira awarding of belts):



Ds1 at the U15 team foil competition



Ds2 at U12s team foil fencing competition:


Ds1 decides to make trees:





and cook noodles:



More on our polar theme. Fake antiqued letters with wax seals. Despite the newspaper, my table will never be the same again.

Sewing up the polar explorer's recipe booklet:

Making Anzac biscuits:




Making 'hardtack'


And yes, they were hard (and, after a few weeks, rather mouldy). But the dog enjoyed them.