Gifts from the heart and home

December 13, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct, Making Tags: candy jars, christmas, cookie recipes, holiday gifts, homemade gifts, hyacinths, pinecone firelighters, sweet jars, vintage sleigh 21 Comments

We’ve been beavering away in the kitchen this week, whipping up festive treats to give as gifts. Harry is just old enough to begin to take pleasure in gift-giving, so making things together for him to give to godparents, grandparents, grown-up siblings and teachers is a source of great pleasure and pride. Our best and most explosive offering is our proprietary Christmas Cookie mix (proprietary simply because with such flamboyant measuring of ingredients and dosing of spices, no-one could ever hope to accurately replicate our secret recipe…).

We’ve measured and stirred together all of the basic dry ingredients for our cookies and packaged them up into pretty take-out boxes which I’ve customised with labels and simple instructions for how to bake the cookies. We of course road-tested these kits ourselves, to excess – so I’m about 6lb heavier and will be unable to look a cinnamon and nutmeg scented raisin cookie in the eye for at least a ~~day~~ month.

The photo I used of Harry is actually of him playing with his toy BBQ back in the summer, and is one which always makes me smile. If you want to try these, download my recipe and details of how to mix and combine the dry ingredients below; it’s very simple, as you’d expect by now!

Dry ingredients for Bag 1: 80g caster sugar, 80g soft brown sugar

Dry Ingredients for Bag 2: 180g plain / all purpose flour, 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp, nutmeg, 60g rolled oats

Dry ingredients for Bag 3: 150g of raisins or currants.

Christmas Cookie Mix Instructions

Another of Harry’s gifts are these jars of retro sweets – all current favourites of Harry’s, and designed to transport his recipients nostalgically back to their childhood and to provide them with a dippable stash of the kind of illicit, high-sugar treats that they wouldn’t dream of going into a shop and actually buying for themselves.

I added a gingham fabric top, glass candy cane and festive bell, and then pondered how much they look like shepherds (it’s the nativity week thing; I have a one-track mind at the moment…). So now they are branded as Shepherds’ Midnight Feasts; an energy-packed snack for those wintery nights tending sheep and waiting for virgin births, which is doubtless a long and chilly old business. Or perhaps just to accompany a night slumped in front of the TV, which is a tad more likely.

Remember those hyacinths and paperwhites I planted a few weeks ago? They’ve sprung into life and are at the promising, budding stage, so I’ve popped a few into inexpensive but pretty mugs, and will be taking them along to decorate the kitchen windowsills of my nearest and dearest later this month – something both beautiful to look at and useful afterwards; I do hope that William Morris would approve.

I’ve also made a couple more batches of pinecone firelighters, bagged in cellophane and tied up with ribbon. Our central heating blew up yesterday so I confess I have already delved into one of these and raided supplies to keep our own fires burning whilst we attempt to dress in every piece of clothing that we own.

I’ve wrapped red evening candles with ribbon to accompany the bottles of wine we’ll be taking to friends for dinner; another very simple project whose results outweigh the effort involved (my perfect formula for the attractiveness of a craft..)

And finally, because the holiday season is often as much about indigestion and ill-advised consumption as it is about anticipation, I’ve sourced some luxuriously highbrow peppermint teabags and added my own bauble tags before piling into pretty china cups; useful to have on hand for Christmas Day night, and then for those first few weeks in January when one’s body is a temple and your resolve to never let caffeine pass your lips again has not yet faltered (well alright; the first few days then…)

And now I must leave you; I have a feisty toddler who needs to be wrestled into his Joseph costume before we wend our chilly way through the gloaming to the church hall where his nativity play is to be held. I already have a small head wound from being accidentally bashed with his biblical wooden staff; I have impounded it until the moment critique when Joseph needs to make his entrance, and have warned Mary’s mother that Mary needs to keep her wits about her in case there’s any flamboyant gesticulating from her husband in the stable, stick in hand.

Back at the weekend; stay warm!

A miscellany of happy things

December 7, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct, Making Tags: christmas, craft, diy, driftwood, handmade christmas cards, home renovation, Kids, nativity, salvage 24 Comments

Despite the greyish mizzle which has rendered our little corner of the world ferociously wet and windy at a time we were hoping for clear, bright skies and sprinkles of snow, we are a happy house this week. We’ve been beginning the Christmas preparations and finishing some long-overdue DIY, including the decision of what to do with this piece of boat salvage which I stumbled across on ebay back in early Summer. I fell in love with the layers of peeling paint and the uniqueness of it. It’s a transom by the way; the end piece of an old navy boat which I bought very cheaply from someone selling bits and pieces of driftwood and maritime junk. It weighs about as much as a baby elephant, as my long-suffering husband did not hesitate to point out as he dragged it home for me.

Never ones for conventional interiors, we’ve opted to mount it here, in the kitchen, where in the two days it’s been up it’s drawn a range of reactions from ‘are you completely mad??” to ‘gorgeous!!’. The handy builder who helped us baton it to the wall insisted on taking a photo home to show his wife who could not believe that someone would choose to do something so daft. I suspect she is not alone in her view, but we think it’s rather cool….

I’ve also been busy making Harry’s nativity costume for his role as Joseph in the nursery nativity play next week; it’s amazing what you can do with a tea towel and a length of hessian… oh, and of course a Biblical staff made from a stick we borrowed from a friendly dog in the park. It promises to be a comical affair as well as a maternal tear-jerker; Mary towers over Joseph due to a recent growth spurt, and the inn-keeper at 2yrs old is already such a jovial and accommodating soul that I think it’s unlikely anyone will be turned away, regardless of the official plot line. The children have been learning songs about which they have been sworn to secrecy, so for some time now Harry will distractedly break into song at home and then, realising his error, rear back and exclaim ‘SHHHHH!!!!!!” to himself before glancing suspiciously at us to see if we were listening. It’s at moments like this I don’t want him to grow up at all, ever.

Whilst all the signs are promising, I’m desperately hoping that on the day he enjoys it somewhat more than last year, where the official photo reveals him to have been possibly the saddest teddy-bear in the chorus (tears still wet on his lashes; *gulp*)

Did I tell you that Harry’s big Christmas present is to be a pretend play hardware store-come-garage? Somewhere he can refuel his scooter, examine a stack of tyres, play with locks and keys and mull over buckets of tools and paints and generally do whatever it is that guys do when they manage to lose an entire afternoon doing man-things in places like this. Progress is slow, but I’ve at least managed to knock-up a mini paint range for the store, using little baked bean cans with adulterated labels:

I’ve also been making my grown-up Christmas cards to accompany Harry’s reindeer ones; I raided my collection of upholstery fabric samples, set to them with pinking shears and created these simple Christmas trees, decorated with buttons and bells;

And a few of these, made by threading old beads onto a piece of wire and twisting into a wreath shape before gluing in place. The joyeaux noel embroidered tags I ordered years ago from a regular school name tag supplier and have used for just about every christmas craft under the sun since.

And finally, today I have a day off work and Harry ensconced in nursery in final rehearsals and so will be turning my hand to my biggest culinary challenge yet; making dessert for the eighty octogenarians who will attend my mother-in-law’s birthday party tomorrow. It has to be something that can be safely transported for two hours in the car, will not inflame any known medical conditions, can be eaten with a plastic spoon and can be tackled by those with dentures. Ha!! No doubt Martha would take this in her stride with barely a moment’s pause, but after weeks of denial and prevarication I have decided on cake, jelly and trifle; it works for kids after all. I have torn a recipe for a divine-sounding White Forest Trifle from a magazine (leaving behind the footnote which alludes the 951 calories per serving this provides). Made from cherries in kirsch, mascarpone, custard and sponge, it sounds suitably decadent. And if it looks a bit chaotic when I’m done, we can blame that on the car journey and repent our sins later….

Have a great weekend.

A signal to the skies!

December 5, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct, Making Tags: christmas, christmas ever, crafts, family, festive food, holidays, Kids, magic reindeer food, NORAD, recipes 16 Comments

It was with trembling hands and bated breath that I opened the travel-worn vellum envelope postmarked the North Pole….Yes!! I had been sent the top-secret recipe for Magic Reindeer Food; the scent and sparkle of which can be seen from the skies as Rudolf and his friends wend their weary way around the world on Christmas Eve. If you want to be sure of a visit from the great man himself during Christmas night, then catching the eye of his reindeer can only help increase the chances, especially if – like me – you have not managed to be good quite all of the time this year…. The lovely Mrs Claus is a fortunately a forgiving and generous soul, and has shared the recipe with me on condition that I share it only with you, and that none of us tell Mr Claus.

I’ve included two options for making these; a use-it-and-keep-it drawstring bag that will be a small labour of love for your own children, grandchildren or those very special young believers in your life, and a simple paper bag version for mass production for school Christmas fairs or parties (below)

In her letter, Mrs Claus explains that – somewhat surprisingly – Rudolph, Dancer and chums have a particular soft spot for sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, preferably all mixed up together. In short; birdseed mix. Who knew?? Add a dash of sparkling glitter and they are in heaven. Or more importantly; in your back garden, quick as a shot. I used a conventional birdseed mix and Martha’s tinsel glitter, which has bigger flecks. I’m assured that should any birds or wildlife get to your sparkly reindeer food ahead of Rudolph, the glitter will pass harmlessly through them or be ignored altogether.

For the special sack itself, which I will give to Harry at dusk on Christmas Eve, I used a simple bouquet garni sack (sold in packs quite cheaply at foodie shops), and rethreaded it with red thread, to which I tied a pair of festive jingle bells. I added a label – PDF attached below - and glued it to a scrap of leather before stitching in place.

I stealthily borrowed a little wooden scoop from Harry’s play shop and hey-presto! his reindeer food looks like it might just have been sent special delivery from the North Pole itself.

To mass produce these as I’ve done for Harry’s nursery party, I simply stuck labels on mini paper bag, added (sealed!) baggies of reindeer food and clipped shut with a little silver peg. The printable below has a sheet of the labels I created for these, so do download and have a go if you’re making these in quantity.

Now onto other festive preparations and a couple of websites for you to check out; these may be familiar, but if – like me – you’re still relatively new to the world of doing-Christmas-for-children, then they might be a source of new delight… At PortableNorthPole you can get Santa to record a (free!) video message for your child, which is beautifully done and awesomely real. Harry received his last night (via email), and was astonished to discover that Santa knew not only exactly where he lived and what he wanted for Christmas, but also that he had been asked to try really hard to remember to brush his teeth before bedtime and that he was doing – mostly – very well. You can upload photos and lots of details and if you haven’t done this, I urge you to click and explore – we love it. I should add that it’s not just for kids; I sent one last year to a girlfriend, who witnessed Santa opening his special book to find a compromising photo of her, post-Tequila slammers, and received a sorrowful warning from him that she had better stop being naughty if she wanted a visit this year. So, fun for all…

Finally, one to bookmark for Christmas Eve is NORAD – the multi-langauge site of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks Santa’s progress through the skies on 24th December. There is nothing more exciting than going to bed knowing that Father Christmas is due to enter the skies above your bedroom in approximately 3hrs and 42 minutes…

We’re creating kitchen chaos this week with some homemade gifts and festive projects – more news later this week!

Magic Reindeer Food Printables

A little birdie SOS call

November 1, 2012 By Kate in Green Fingers, Homing Instinct, Making Tags: bird feeders, bird seed, birdseed favours, birdseed ornaments, crafting with kids, diy, weather, winter birds 32 Comments

In the aftermath of Sandy across the Eastern Coast of the US, our week of wet and windy weather here seems to pale into insignificance. I hope that if you’re reading this from across the pond you’re safe and well, unscathed by the havoc the storm has wreaked. In our small corner of England, the stormy weather is proving traumatic for the garden birds arriving here for the Winter months. Stories abound of weary birds dropping from the skies into the waters around coastal harbour towns, metres from reaching dry land, after days of flying in battering, gusty winds. Harry and I have decided to launch our own garden bird SOS by making a myriad of DIY bird feeders, to welcome the exhausted new arrivals and help to fatten them up for the chilly months ahead.

Making birdseed feeders is one of the messiest and most fun kitchen projects; it’s incredibly simple, gratifyingly mushy, and very forgiving; if your mixture hardens before you’re done, you can just warm it up and start all over again. We made a mixture of feeding balls and cookie-cutter shapes, pierced through with straws to create a hanging hole for thread…

Some of these looked so pretty that I think we’ll make them again to accompany Christmas gifts for our green-fingered friends and family members. Others looked so vast and lumpy that we had to search out very hardy branches to hang them from; I suspect that any robin or chaffinch brave enough to tackle one of those will have trouble getting airborne for a while afterwards..

The other glorious thing about these is that even the most haphazard and amateur cook can manage it (that’s us, of course…). As long as your ingredients are in proportion to each other, you’ll be fine. So, grab a cup or a mug and measure out:

4 cups of birdseed (we chose a winter bird mix, with differing sizes of grain to attract different birds)
3/4 cup of flour
3 large spoons of golden syrup (corn syrup)
1/4 cup of hot water, in which you’ve sprinkled and stirred a sachet of powdered gelatine (find these in the home baking section of supermarkets)

Mix all of these together in a bowl. Have lengthy and circular conversation with any young children about why this is one recipe where they are not allowed to lick the spoon and/or bowl at the end

Spoon into pre-greased cookie cutters, using your fingers or the back of a teaspoon to squish the mixture into the edges and compress it down; the more firmly you can pack it, the easier it will be to hang and then peck. For the birds, that is. Resist the urge to peck at them yourself. Poke a chopped up piece of straw into each to create the hole for hanging.

After a couple of hours of drying, ease them out of the cookie-cutters and remove the straws, then turn over, so each side can harden. Ideally leave them overnight for this stage. If you need to free up the kitchen counter space, you can pop them in the freezer for an hour instead, which does the trick.

Finally, thread a piece of string, cord or ribbon through each, ready to hang; we chose bright ribbon to attract the birds, and to give us something cheerful to look at through the kitchen window..

So now we’ll retire indoors, and await the happy sound of chirruping and crunching from our feathered friends. At least, that’s what I have assured Harry will happen. I suspect that in fact I will be bursting through the door again in minutes, shrieking at the squirrels who will descend upon our efforts with glee, as the neighbours look at me, baffled at such random behaviour. Such is life…

Autumn Tablescapes

October 28, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct, Making Tags: autumn leaves, autumn table arrangements, bat wings, chicken and leek pie, dinner party, entertaining, fall centerpiece, food, martini glasses, menus, recipes, thanksgiving, the simple things, weekend 12 Comments

The weekend is drawing to a close – a blustery, windswept close here in our small corner of England – but it’s been a rather magical one. We’ve had a brief but promising flurry of snow prompting Harry to announce, rather prematurely, the imminent arrival of Father Christmas, and we’ve had walks through the autumn leaves and evenings snuggled in front of the fire. Like all the best weekends though, it began with a lovely event; dinner here with some of our closest friends on Friday night.

Usually when we’re hosting dinner, it’s something of a mad rush; whilst in my head I imagine myself uncorking a bottle of wine and pottering around the kitchen in a form-fitting silky number as delicious smells waft from the stove, I am more usually arm-deep in bath time suds whilst my husband does emergency runs to buy forgotten ingredients, and the first guests to arrive have to tactfully remind me that I have only made-up one eye before getting distracted, and thus look like a freeze-frame from a You Tube video on how to apply eyeliner. In the early days of dating my husband, I even managed to accidentally lock myself in the bathroom during the early stages of a dinner party (don’t ask how; it’s surprisingly easy I promise you..), and had to eventually ring him from my mobile phone to come rescue me. This, after 20 minutes of waiting for him to notice my absence, I should add.

So, my history as a hostess is a somewhat chequered one, and evenings with us are nothing if not excitingly unpredictable – or so I tell myself. On this occasion however, I managed to pull it off; the table was decorated with nature’s finest autumn finds, the menu was delivered without culinary disaster, and I even remembered all of my clothes and make-up. I think I shall retire at this new-found high; it’s surely downhill all the way from here…

In a nod to Halloween, I added shimmering grey bat wings to small gourds and nestled them in martini glasses at each place-setting; I drew these freehand onto a piece of card stock then made small incisions into the sides of the gourds to slide them into place. The name cards were glued to small pins which I pushed into the stalks. I added tiny seed pearls to the tips of the wings.. and then decided I had better stop faffing around and concentrate on the actual cooking and cleaning *sigh*.

First though, I printed out menus onto end-pages from an old book and pegged these to each napkin; I’d bought a handful of yellowing paperbacks in our local charity shop with a view to using them in some crafty fashion, and they ran through the printer very simply; on one side guests could see what they were eating, and on the other were excerpts of letters by Evelyn Waugh – I carefully didn’t ask which side was more gripping..

Over the course of a day or so, I added odd bits and pieces to the centre of the table; blush roses and vibrant chrysanthemums, a selection of pumpkins and gourds which Harry and I dragged back from our excursion to the pumpkin patch (Harry picked up a small gourd and announced ‘my hands are all full Mummy; come along, you bring the rest!’, and marched jauntily to the car. I see he has mastered the art of delegation at the tender age of almost-3).

Quail eggs, walnuts, corks and pine cones gave our guests something to examine and play with between courses and whilst chatting (though playing with fresh quail eggs after a couple of glasses of wine is a hazardous old business, as we found out)

As for the food itself, I tested out a recipe from my new favourite read; a magazine called The Simple Things, which is a sort of pared down Martha-like celebration of slow food, nature and living in the moment; their chicken and leek pie won the popular vote and will appear again on our table, just as soon as our arteries recover.

But possibly the best part of evenings like these is having managed to choose a husband who invariably says those magic words at the end of the night; ‘you head on up to bed; I’ll clear up down here…’

Homemade Pinecone Firelighters

October 19, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct, Making Tags: autumn, christmas gifts, cinnamon, craft, fall, fir, firelighters, holiday craft, ikea, log fire, pinecones 76 Comments

Log fires, blankets, mugs of hot chocolate, toasty warm socks… there’s something magical about this time of year. It’s been a misty, cold day here and we’re planning to light the first fire of the season tonight to celebrate the start of the weekend and our hibernation from the winter weather. In preparation I’ve made these pinecone firelighters, lightly scented with cinnamon and guaranteed to set the kindling alight with a pop and a crackle.

You can buy these commercially but at vast expense, so I decided to have a go at making my own, with a view to giving these as homemade gifts this Christmas. My research uncovered scarily complicated instructions involving double-boilers, safety goggles, wick-trimming and dipping and general scientific sorcery… so I applied some lateral thinking and came up with a much simpler approach. It’s very safe and quick, though perhaps the only downside of this is that you’re unlikely to need to attract your local Firemen for manly assistance.

You’ll need:

A pocketful of pine cones
Pack of tea-lights or small candles; I used IKEA’s gorgeous white Fenomen ones.
Cupcake cases, slightly larger than your pine cones
Optional candle scent; cinnamon, pine, cranberry and sandalwood are all divine.

Firstly, gather all your pine cones. Size doesn’t matter here, but give them a quick brush to remove dust and bits of forest-floor debris. Pinecones which are tightly closed will open once exposed to the warm, so you may want to store them inside for a week before using.

When you’re ready to ‘cook’, line a cupcake tin with cases and place one of your tea lights or candles into each. Make sure you remove the little metal cases if using tea lights, and tweak the wicks so that they are standing upright and proud of the wax; it’s much easier than fishing for them later. Place in a moderate oven and keep checking until the wax melts and resembles water. At this point you can add a drop of candle scent to each, or simply leave plain.

Once the wax has melted, move the wicks gently to one side of the case, using tweezers (or with your best pointy fingers; remember that some people claim to quite enjoy being covered in hot wax…hmmm). This will ensure that the wicks don’t get lost underneath the cones.

Then simply place a pinecone into each case; the wax will rise around it and hold it firmly in place as it sets.

When the wax has cooled and set, lift the cases out of the pans and peel away the cupcake case, revealing your firelighters in all of their glory…

These also look very pretty when left in their cases; I’ll be tying a bundle of these (below) up in cellophane bags or small burlap sacks to take as gifts for those we visit during the festive season (though I’ll probably check that they have an open fireplace first…).

And now the light is fading, the kettle is on, and we’re almost all home; have a wonderful weekend whatever you’re doing!

*Update*; a few people have asked via email or comments how these work; to use these firelighters, simply place them at the base of your fire and arrange kindling over the top before lighting the wick; the wax ensures that the pinecone will catch light and burn for long enough to ignite the kindling and create a real blaze; at that point you can add bigger logs and settle back for an evening watching the flames. Here’s how ours turned out this evening;

The Dream house Renovation Part II: Making an Entrance…

September 27, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct Tags: decorative logs, feature wall, hall flooring, hallway renovation, home, home makeover, interiors, log fireplace, period house 27 Comments

I posted here about the first stage of our home renovation; creating a huge family kitchen and living space what was originally a formal reception room for visitors. We’ve now turned our attentions to the hallway; a vast Gone With The Wind style affair, which previously looked like this (below). Our house was built in the early 18th Century as a sizeable ‘Gentleman’s Residence’ in the countryside bordering London. It changed hands several times and has served many purposes, including a brief spell as a military hospital during WW2, and even a film studio in the 1950s. As property prices escalated and families shrank in size, this once grand residence was divided into two, and the hallway shows the most evidence of this; the staircase below originally swept up once side of the hallway and down the other, and the chimney breast was centred in the main entrance hall. The floor, though striking and a period feature itself, is not original to the property, but was added after the subdivision. In the half of the original house we now own, we wanted to preserve as many original features as we could, whilst toning down the overall colour palette and working with the scale of the property.

Here’s where we’ve got to so far; we uncovered part of the original stone floor in the porch area, and sourced a near-exact replica to lay in the main hallway. In a rare contemporary touch, we found this huge chandelier (it’s around 1.5m wide but weighs hardly anything, fortunately…). Arguably the most dramatic change is to the chimney breast, which we’ve opened up top-to-bottom and filled with logs. The previous owners had created a sort of floating shelf for dried flowers and ornaments, but we felt this was a bit incongruous; we didn’t have the option of a ‘real’ fireplace due to oddities about how the chimneys and flues are arranged, so opted for a striking, floor to ceiling feature which echoes the real fireplaces in other rooms around the house…

The logs are kiln-dried and sanded, and we spent a comical evening wobbling on ladders arranging them (and glueing them in place, for safety reasons). If you’ve ever attempted one of those jigsaw puzzles where all the pieces look the same but fit together only one particular way, you’ll have some idea of how tricky it was…

The long, shallow console table is almost 2m and holds a constantly changing display depending on the time of year and whatever junk shop or ebay finds I’ve dragged home. Currently in pride of place are these Indian temple bells which make the most beautiful and ethereal deep chiming noise when they move; I need to find the right place to suspend them properly, but in the meantime they wait patiently for inspiration to strike.

Bob (below) is one of my oldest possessions and was one of my first purchases after leaving university and moving into a shoebox-sized rented house. Over the years I have occasionally flung yoghurt over him and left him outside for a few days, creating the aged patina you see here – but mostly he’s lived in the many different hallways I’ve owned since then. It’s a testament to my husband’s devotion that he’s done most of the heavy lifting in recent years…

The chest (below) was given to me by my mother when I was fourteen, as a junk shop find for my bedroom. More recently I’ve changed the handles and used transfer decal paper and turps to add lettering to each drawer (please, French readers; break it to me gently if my spelling is all wrong…). It now holds the keys, junk mail, single gloves without soul mates and general clutter that tends to accumulate in a hallway, and hides it from general view. The old typewriter – a personal passion – was an antique shop find which I’ve just sourced ribbons for via Ebay; hallelujah!

This olive tree is a faux one, rescued ex-display from a shop which was closing down; it looks beautiful at Christmas time bedecked with tiny silver baubles and white porcelain bells. Once in a while a branch drops off, which is why we keep SuperGlue and gaffer tape in the aforementioned chest of drawers…

We’re far from completely finished; as you can see, we lack stair carpet and are pondering whether to keep or replace the wall lighting – decisions, decisions – but the biggest and most dramatic changes are done, and the dust is settling; time to pause once again and enjoy the temporary calm…

A Coastal Escape

September 25, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct Tags: beach combing, holidays, jersey, sand, seaside, shells, vacation 9 Comments

Last Thursday we played hooky from work, nursery and all things domestic and took to the skies for a short hop over to the island of Jersey, where my wonderful brother and sister-in-law live. With the Summer season drawing to a close, we had the beaches to ourselves and spent the days roaming the sand, collecting shells, driftwood and seaweed and building castles and kingdoms.

There’s something profoundly lovely about the British coastline on these bright sunny days of early Autumn; the end of a day at the beach calls for hot chocolate and log fires rather than ice cream and barbecues, and is just as magical as a result. For Harry, it’s the first time he’s really experienced the sea and the coast (amazing, in our island nation), and he was utterly captivated.

We collected a small but very heavy bucket of the treasures that Harry couldn’t bear to leave behind… pebbles shaped like whales, tiny shells for listening to the sea, and tufts of brightly coloured rope from fishing trawlers. Creative instincts twitching, we’ll be turning these into something crafty in due course to remember our heady few days on the shore. First though, there’s the next stage of our house renovation to share later this week – just as soon as I blow all the sand out of my camera…

Flea Market Foraging

August 24, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct Tags: antiques, brighton, craft, decor, design, flea market, interiors, rétro, recycling, trunk, vintage flag 11 Comments

I had a magical day last week when the rest of the world was at work and Harry was in nursery and I could pack up the car and head to the coast at Brighton for a few hours of mooching around vintage markets and architectural antiques barns – heaven. Brighton has a very unique vibe and is a mecca for artists, craftspeople and alternative lifestyles; you’d struggle to find a McDonalds but if you’re looking for a vegan, gluten-free falafel with wheatgrass juice you’ll be spoilt for choice. The Lanes near the seafront is a twisty, windy area stuffed with one-off shops and galleries, and some very cool homeware stores. I bravely resisted the urge to burn my credit card until I came to a huge and rambling vintage shop called Snoopers Paradise which hosts lots of different antique and second-hand dealers. I set myself a max. budget of £70 ($110) and here’s what ended up coming home with me…

This vintage flag cost just a few pounds and I bought it thinking it would be great in the garden for future boy-activities like the building of camps and adventure games; perhaps it would mark home vs enemy territory, be hung from the top of a play castle or be waved triumphantly as the victory pendant of the winning side… but now I’m very taken with it where it is, dangling from a stair rail in my office; we’ll just have to fight over it later.

The sea-green tin trunk weighs hardly anything (though it didn’t feel like it by the time I’d manhandled it to the car…), and would make a great blanket box for the end of a bed. I’m thinking of the smallest bedroom at the top of our house, which has a hideaway feel to it, and is a cosy, calming space. It’s next on our project list for redecoration and this chest will probably be the basis for the colour palette I use. I thought about stencilling letters on it, but the more I look at it the more I’m inclined to leave it alone; all views on this welcome!

This old printers tray (above) would originally have held fonts for typesetting, and will make great quirky storage. I can’t decide whether to wall-mount it in Harry’s playroom to store the ever-increasing number of small character figures he is accumulating, and which are forever getting lost down the sofa / in pockets / in the car never to be seen again…

…Or whether to use it as flat tray storage for my miscellany of embellishments, findings, glitters and magpie-like collections, per below.

Finally, one last small purchase was this dusty old pocket book guide to birds eggs, from the time when it was perfectly acceptable to spend weekends rummaging around in birds nests and collecting eggs to bring home and label. I’m thinking I will use some of the beautiful tonal watercolour plates for future Easter cards and home decorations, or maybe simply create a miniature framed collection to hang on the wall.

I only get to do this about twice year (which is just as well, given the amount of eclectic junk I drag home each time…), but it’s one of the things I love, and definitely a case of the journey – the rummaging, speculating, pondering and pouncing – being as much fun as the destination itself.

An Indian Summer: The 10 Minute Tipi

August 12, 2012 By Kate in Homing Instinct, Making Tags: diy, garden fun, Kids, make a teepee, outdoor play, projects, tent, tipi 4 Comments

We’re having a mini heatwave here in England, specially ordered for the Olympics. The streets are filled with chic Europeans, bronzed Americans, and lobster-pink, slightly startled looking Brits clad mostly still in their winter wear, having not previously had the opportunity to break out the shorts and vest tops they bought back in Spring. To provide some shade from the sun and a foundation for exciting adventures, today we constructed a 10-minute tipi, the beauty of which is that it requires only a small handful of household objects, and can be erected – and destroyed – in the time it takes to make a cup of tea. We make these indoors too, the other 11 months of the year…

You’ll need:

A handful of bamboo canes, rods or old curtain poles; any long sticks will do. We use 2m bamboo poles; a minimum of 6.
A large flat sheet; ours came straight off a bed en route to the laundry basket
Clothes pegs
A length of string or rope.
Optional accessories include feathers, blankets, glow sticks and torches (for nighttime adventures)

How to make the tipi:

Line up all your poles and tie them together about 3in from the top using a double-shank leftover half twist racing knot. Okay okay, I lie; tie them any old how, just make sure your knot(s) are tight and will hold.
Gather your bundle of poles and place them where you want your tipi to be, and move them out one by one into an ever-wider circle, leaving a bigger gap between two poles for the entrance
Drape your sheet around loosely and use a peg to clip it together at the top whilst you distribute it evenly at the bottom
Peg the sheet to the bottom of your poles, and to the sides of each entrance pole.

And finally clip back the entrance flap to one side…

We also tucked feathers into the top of each bamboo cane for a bit of colour…

We added sheets, toys, blankets and a pillow, and set up camp for the day. Furry chipmunks, polar bears and even a deer came outside from the playroom to inspect what was going on; we even survived an attempt by a passing bear to hustle his way into camp (below).

Finally, we just had time before sundown to assemble a hasty campfire and cook up some sausages and eggs, borrowed from Harry’s play kitchen…

Dens, tents and tipis seem to be hardwired into kids’ DNA as a source of endless pleasure and fun – when Harry’s older I’ll just give him a couple of sheets and some rope and let him work out for himself how to construct his very own den. If you’re making this tipi with slightly older kids, string a torch from the end of the rope you use to tie together the canes and let the fun continue after dark; marshmallows ‘cooked’ on a pretend campfire taste just as good as the real thing…

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