Witches House to Wendy House

Following our Halloween Party we were left with a Witches House taking up a large part of our living room, and not wanting to put that work to waste, or disappoint the girls by taking it away, we decided to keep it (for now at least)

As lovely as it was, it was going to need a bit of a makeover. I didn't want to terrify all of our visitors.

I started off by painting the entire thing white so that we wouldn't have the worry of the black, orange and purple showing through.

I bravely let H choose the colours that we would paint it, thankfully she picked wisely.

We bought some small tester pots and mixed these with some of the white we already had until we agreed that the colours were perfect.

We set about painting. H helped. To my complete horror F smeared paint on the carpet, but in the end we had this and it was all worth it.

I finished it off by making tile shapes with my finger in the wet paint on the roof, and by adding a butterfly that we bought in Homebase at the weekend from their new Christmas Decoration range.

The pink glow in the dark rug still matches in perfectly and the girls adore it. It is currently being used as a vets to house numerous sick animals. Next week I plan to make some curtains for it.

Homemade Toddler Wolf Costume

Following on from the success of F's Cat Costume last year, this year I decided to continue the animal theme. Wanting to pair them up again this year (last year they where Witch and Cat) I decided on Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. H had some clothes that were getting just a bit too small that I thought would make a really good Little Red (Unfortunately she wouldn't agree to this and ended up wearing F's costume from last year)

Having had a look around on the internet for a wolf outfit for F, it became apparent that I would have to make one myself. There wasn't a great deal of choice out there and what there was proved to be quite expensive. Unwilling to spend over £60 (plus postage from America) for an outfit that would only be worn for a few hours I decided to set myself the challenge of making one myself.

I have to be honest, I am no seamstress. Suffering from a childhood fear of needles following a ghastly realistic reading of sleeping beauty when I was a child, I am pretty good at delegating tasks that require a needle and thread to my poor Mum. Unfortunately for me she was away traveling in the run up to Halloween so it was completely down to me.

I took a trip down to the local fabric shop where I think the ladies working felt a bit sorry for me. After I cluelessly explained what I was trying to achieve, I left with a meter and a half of dark grey fur fabric and a scrap of light grey all for £10.

Back at home I drew around the body and legs of one of F's sleepsuits on a piece of greaseproof paper, making sure it was a bit bigger to allow for growth (as it was still only the end of August) and the fact that the fur would not stretch like the sleepsuit did. I cut out two of these templates and started to stitch them together.

I was just hoping for the best at this stage, after I had blindly stitched half of it together I decided that I would need a zip, and as I needed to clear out some clothes anyway, I took the opportunity to have an wardrobe clear out (much to Daddys delight) I removed the zip from a pair of jeans that I hadn't worn since before having H and I cut a slit the same length down the front of the costume and sewed it on place. It wasn't the cleanest job but I knew I would be covering it with some of the lighter fur so I didn't worry about it too much.

The costume was still only half stitched but it was apparent at this stage that unless I planned to starve F until the 31st of October I would need to also have access between the legs and down one side of the suit.

I have a massive button collection as I always keep the spare ones that come with clothing. I intended to use these but quickly realised that popper fasteners would be much easier, so I went back to town and was very suprised to find that I could buy a packed of mixed size popper fasteners for just £1.

After I had sewn these between the legs and along one side I cut out some arms and added these on. It was beginning to take shape but I still wasn't sure what to do about the head piece. F doesn't like tight restrictive hats and always pulls them straight off. Remembering a Scarf-Hat that H had last winter I decided to make something along the same lines. Unfortunately F wouldn't stay still for any sittings whilst I was making it, so it fits me better than it does her.

To make the hood I cut out a shape like this

And folded and sewed it, like this. Half way through sewing it I realised that I would need to add the ears before I finished.

After 3 failed attempts at ears I cut out two shapes like these -

And the finished hood looked like this.

The only thing then left to do was to cut out a ragged triangle in lighter fur, turn the edges over, sew them and then attach it across the chest covering the zip by sewing it at one side and attaching a popper on the other.

Job done... One wolf costume

Ok, I am the first to admit that she looks more like bear, but I love it anyway and it only cost me £11 :) To see some other amazing Homemade Halloween costumes check out Money Supermarkets #Homemadehalloween Competition.

Halloween Party

I have heard people say before that they feel scared to be in their own homes at Halloween but never in a million years did I expect to be in that position myself. 

Wednesday night was most definitely an eye opener for me in to the more sinister side of Halloween. No, it wasn’t some awful prank played on me by some random trick or treater, there were no eggs thrown at my house, no fireworks posted through my letterbox and no teenagers standing on my doorstep demanding money. Instead there were seventeen, sugar high, face paint covered, excitable under 8’s running riot around my house.

Terrified as I was, they all had an amazing time and here is how we planned our first ever Halloween Party. 

Firstly I scoured the internet for Ideas. I made a Pinterest board dedicated to our Party and used this to keep all of my ideas together. 

We didn't have a lot of money to spend so I knew that the majority of our decorations would need to be hand made.This proved to be so much more rewarding than I realised. We managed to make a day of it with some friends and also did a lot together as a family.

Here area selection of our Halloween Projects, hopefully they will help to give you ideas for your own Parties. Enjoy.

I had a photo frame that I had been planning to put some pictures in but I hadn't gotten round to it. It caught my eye one day and it suddenly hit me that I could use it to make a really simple Halloween decoration. I painted my face up (this was the same moment that I spoke about here) Then I took a few snaps and printed them off. Ta Da...

The finished framed decoration adorning my wall...

 

Super simple and while I now plan to use the frame for it's originally intended use, I have saved the creepy pictures to put back in next year.

Next, as it was a childrens party I thought that we would need some party games. We drink a LOT of innocent fruit juice, and so we always have plastic bottles for the recycling and H continually tells me that we should recycle them ourselves... and so we did.

Juice Bottles + PVA Glue + Cheap Toilet Roll + Paint = Spooky Ghost Skittles. We also made some Witches that we filled with sand for a hoop throwing game. These were really easy to make and H and F both love them.

 

By this point I was in full Blue Peter mode and excited to see what else I could transform with some more PVA and cheap loo roll. Using a selection of empty jars, I covered the lids with PVA and toilet roll, painted them all different colours, and filled them with bits and bobs - Some water dyed with food colouring containing the broken arms from last years skeleton decoration, a handful of plastic spiders and some fabric spider webbing, some plastic toy eggs that I painted eyes on to, a couple of plastic animals suspended in clear jelly (made from gelatine sheets) and we left one jar empty. It contained an invisible frog.

A few more jars, a bit more PVA and some crepe paper and I made some jar lanterns to put tea lights in. These where really fun to make and I finished them off with some glitter and ribbon from our craft box. The witches hat in the window was made using black paper and sweetie wrappers that I had saved. The standing whitches hat was made using the black circle base from a frozen pizza, a plastic container from the supermarket that had contained veg, and some more black paper. I cut stars out of it and left a hole just big enough to drop in a glow stick. We melted wax on to some bottles and one of my amazing friends made these uber cute, toilet roll bat and Frankenstein.

 

One of the most effective decorations that we made was also one of the easiest. I cut 26 black bats out of black paper and stuck them all around the house. 

A bit more up-cycling saw us come up with this coffin using the boxes from our new sledge (possibly bought a little prematurely in August)

Thinking we were on a roll with the carboard box creations we decided to make a Witches House with an extra large box that we had, we asked Daddy to make a wooden structure to hold it up as it was sagging somewhat, and the next thing we knew he was dragging through to unneeded sheets of plasterboard that we had lying around following a DIY project, they were slightly warped and so couldn't have been used for anything else anyway and he quickly knocked together a whitches house for us. A bit of paint and it was almost perfect. 

The finishing touches came courtesy of a Beware Sign made from yet another old box and a scrap of parcel string, A fabulous glow in the dark rug from Plantation Rug Company and of course a Witch.

Made using, yip, you guessed it ANOTHER cardboard box, folded so it would stand and 'dressed' in H's halloween costume from last year. If you look closely through the window you will see her.

A bit of food and we were ready to go. An Ice hand in our Bats Blood (Ribena) Spider and Ghost cake pops and some creepy cakes. I bought some lovely little bat cake decorations but quite a few of them were broken so I used them as teeth when I made my 'monster face' cakes. These went down a treat with the children.

 

I hope that some of this has been useful/inspiring. It is amazing what you can pull of on a budget by having a homemade Halloween. If you found this interesting then you might like to read about my Homemade Cat Costume, this years Homemade Wolf Costume and the future use of the Witches House.

Homemade Halloween Childs Cat Costume

With our Party planning now in full swing (I don't think I could be any more excited!) I have been trying to put the final touches to our costumes. Yesterday while I was painting my face white and my eyes black. H came in to the bathroom and asked "Mummy, why have you covered all of your face with toothpaste?" As I gave her one of 'those' looks, a flash of realisation fell over her face and she proclaimed "Are you trying to make yourself look pretty?"

Of course I fell about laughing at her, but perhaps when she is 14 I will exact my revenge by "making myself look pretty" before picking her up from school and insist on walking all the way home with her, or maybe I will leave it until the day that she brings her first boyfriend home to meet us.

So whilst I know what I am doing now, and F’s costume for this year very nearly finished, H keeps changing her mind her costume has been left to the last minute – which has brought me back to F’s costume from last year.

F was four months old, H was a witch she decided, of course, that she needed a cat, as how could she possibly be a witch without a cat? That would be like a Zoo with no animals! Not one to risk upsetting a 3 year old Witch, for fear of being turned in to a Tadpole (apparently that is what happens when a baby witch attempts a toad spell) two days before Halloween I embarked on my mission.

Not wanting to spend a much and remembering that I had some tacky devil horns in a box in the loft I took a trip to the local haberdashery shop. I found a scrap of felt about 30cm by 30cm in the bargain bucket for 50p and excitedly purchased it. Once I returned home I found one of my travel sewing kits that I have previously ‘collected’ from various hotels. I found a white t-shirt that was destined for the charity shop and cut out pieces for the insides of the ears. And then I have to admit; I called my Mum and asked her to sew it all together for me, she stuffed the ears with the scraps from the felt as I wanted them to be larger and a different shape to the horns that were originally on the headband.

The rest of her outfit was made from a beret that a friend bought for me during a visit to France (who says people never make use of souveniers) a pair of H’s age 3 years black leggings which ended up covering her feet (but i liked this look), and one of my short sleeved, high neck tops tucked in to the leggings. A little bit of my make-up used to paint on some whiskers and it was job done ☺

Total cost to me 50p.

The leggings that we already owned where about £2 from Matalan, and my top £4 in sale at New Look.

If you don't already own a headband, you could add another £1 to that. If your child has black or brunette hair then you wouldn't need the hat either.

If you have nothing at all at home that you can use then this costume could be made for around £7.50 if you shop smartly. 

This year and it is H’s turn, and so this evening we had a trial run, wearing the same headband, the same beret, the same leggings, another one of my MANY plain black tops, we have a slightly bigger cat ☺ who painted on her own whiskers.

Making this years outfit completely FREE! Yay! Happy Cat, Happy Mum.  

She looks like a bit like a burglar in this photo but I'm sure once I paint on the whiskers myself she will be distinctly more feline looking.  I am planning to make her a tail by stuffing one of my black socks with another six socks and tying it with string and using string to fasten it around her waist. I'll be sure to let you know how that goes.

If you fancy giving it a go yourself then any headband that is around 1 cm wide would be perfect for the job.

The best thing about this costume is that the headband will fit anyone, and most people own, or know someone who owns, some black clothing. 

I think it will be my turn to wear it next year, although I'll not be trying to squeeze in to the same leggings as them! 

If you have made a fantastic homemade Halloween costume yourself then be sure to check out Money Supermarkets fab #homemadehalloween competition there are prizes for the best costumes in 3 categories adults, kids and group costumes.

Returned at last

You may have felt like I abandoned you blog, and I guess in all fairness you would be correct. I skipped the country for a while but I am back and planning a party. An awesome, amazing, fantastic Halloween Party. I can't wait. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Another Year...

With my birthday coming up I have found myself reminiscing tonight about the last year. Looking back at photos with H and having a good giggle. There is something really lovely about knowing that I have captured all of these moments on film and that we will be able to look back on them in years to come. I am looking forward to making a lot more memories this year, and of course, taking a lot more photographs.

Lots of Spots, and Their Effects on Running

We have Chicken Pox, or at least H does, however it feels like a family illness as we are all effected in one way or another. If I am honest I think H is handling it better than the rest of us. Her Dad returned home from work 10 minutes after I had made the shocking discovery, and swamped with flashbacks to his own youth when he had Chicken Pox aged 13 he reeled in horror. I have been cuddling and fussing over her so much that I think she may be thankful when she can return to nursery and have a break from me!

As a direct result I have been skipping my training sessions for the past week so by way of extra motivation I have been trying to come up with a running playlist for my amazing new iPod touch

A very thoughtful present from the girls’ Daddy a few weeks ago, complete with sports arm band. It is a real step up from my old fifth generation classic, I love that it can also access the Internet, and take photographs. I have been getting to grips with the world of Instagram and it has been a great help so far in keeping me motivated and distracting me from the pain when I am running. I intend to buy some new headphones for it as the ones that were included have a habit of falling out my ears – I tell myself it is because I am running so fast, however, passers by may tell you differently.

In my own moment of self indulgence I decided to buy myself a hand held water bottle for a couple of quid, it is so nice to no longer have a baby bottle bouncing around in my pocket and it has saved me from any more embarrassing apple juice moments. All in all the running itself is getting easier, I managed 5K in 28mins 1second on my last run week and I upped my distance today and I managed 6.5K in 37 minutes 34 seconds. While I am still a long way off of my 10K target, I am blown away by how much I have improved since starting this mission just 2 months ago. This weekend I am planning to buy myself some running clothes so I can return my Mums to her and hopefully prevent any MORE people from mistaking me for her.

F has also had a lot of measurable success this month with her crawling coming along nicely, her ability to cruise the furniture with ease, her first tooth through and her new found power to shout “Mummy” and “Daddy” rather loudly, she is very proud of herself, and rightly so.

The past couple of weeks have been a bit hectic. Hannah has been helping out in the kitchen loads, much to her delight as cooking is one of her very favourite past times and as Kelkoo are currently on the search for a new child cooking star I made a couple of videos of her in action.

Jam and Cucumber...

I guess I was asking for trouble when the words "What would you like?" passed my lips. This must be the reason my parents never gave me a choice. In retrospect I suppose it could have been worse? I wonder what other unusual combinations she will come up with

Beer? In a baby bottle?!!

There is chicken pox doing the rounds at my daughter nursery, and whilst so far we seem to have escaped it, myself and the baby have both been unwell with the cold the past few days. Today, more out of a sense of duty than anything else, I decided I should go training regardless. On my schedule today was a 2.5K run, and then a 2.5K walk back home. Knowing how thirsty I get when I run, I decided to take a drink with me. After I stopped running I produced my drink, which I had cleverly (or so I thought) carried in my pocket in a baby bottle. I guess if I am honest I can’t blame the guy who passed me STARING at what looked distinctly like beer, as I so desperately drank from my bottle while my jelly legs made me stagger and sway slightly. NOTE TO SELF: Next time DON’T take apple juice.

Messy Kids

H has had a LOT of practise at being messy, so I guess it should come as no surprise to me that now she is 3 she is really pretty good at it (somewhere in my head I had imagined that she would become cleaner as time went on – I dread to think what her teenage years are going to be like!)

Until the 6th of February the lovely people at Appliances Online and Mothers Always Right are running a competition to win £75 of Amazon vouchers. Here is my entry to the Appliances Online messiest kid competition at Mothers Always Right. If you have a messy child too, why not enter as well.

I'm trying to make up my mind what I will buy if we win. Really I should probably buy something boring like carpet cleaner :P But most likely I can see it being a crate full of paint. Hopefully when she is as famous as Banksy she will pay me back by taking me out for a nice meal or something :) Or at least paying to have my greying hair dyed back to a nice shade of blonde.

Catch up

The past fortnight has been a crazy busy mixture of training, being “WOW”ed by H’s recognition of letters and words, creating a massive map of Italy (which I am yet to finish), arguing with the ‘designer’ about our new kitchen and encouraging F as she verges on the edges of independence and learning to crawl.

I’ve been remembering (a little too late) lessons about allowing the baby to chew my phone and wearing my favourite jumpers when said baby is learning to eat and throwing food around the kitchen with such ferocity that everything in it’s path comes to resemble a Jackson Pollock painting.

Training is getting better. I say that, but following last Saturdays attempt – it really couldn’t get much worse. As if the fact that I accidentally wore my running trousers inside out wasn’t bad enough, my Dad decided to join me to asses my progress. So there we were running around in MATCHING yellow jackets, as my running gear is a load of stuff that my Mum lent to me. On the up side it was blowing a gale and hail stoning so there weren’t many people out and about who saw us, and hopefully no-one who saw me run straight into a tree as I passed my parents house. It really is fortunate that I don’t drive!

(Not So) New Shoes

A lot of people assume that if you are slim you must be fit. For anyone under any illusions, this is not true, and I am testament to that. The last time I went anywhere near a gym was before I fell pregnant with my elder daughter, over 4 years ago and since then I have used my children and the "I don't have time" excuse, any time that exercise has been mentioned. So the following is as much of a shock to me as to anyone else.

A week ago Sunday, in a moment of madness I agreed to sign up to run a 10K race. It isn't until mid May but as I haven't participated in any competitive running since junior athletics club (around 15 years ago now) I am feeling somewhat apprehensive about the prospect of having to run 10K, possibly worsened by the fact that amoung the other entrants are my Mum who is uber fit, and regulary competes, and my sister who started her get fit plan a few years ago and now has a couple of 10K's under her belt.

Filled with dread rather than enthusiasm it took me until Saturday to go out for my first training session. Following a training plan devised by my Dad, that sees me taking things VERY easy to begin with, I am hoping to be able to run the entire distance in around 12 weeks time. At the moment I have only run the distance between 2 lamp posts! Wish me luck, I think I'm going to need it.

Benji

A few months ago we were lucky enough to be sent Animagics fantastic Benji - My Best Friend. This is what we thought...


From the first moment that she saw Benji, H was won over by his loveable face. Initially she was a little scared of the mechanical noise that he makes as he moves and she preferred to play with him switched off. Happily stroking him as she watched TV, pretending to feed him biscuits and playing "dog families" with him and her teddies.



Three days after he arrived H took Benji with her to her cousins house. When they returned she had overcome her fear/dislike of Benji's noisy mechanics and had fallen for his cheeky nature.

Having been desperate for a pet for quite some time now, Benji is certainly filling a space in her heart. I was unconvinced that this would last long as one of the first things that H asked about Benji was, "Why can't Benji walk?" and four weeks after his arrival she appeared to be losing interest and was playing with him much less than when he first joined us. However I am delighted to say that now after more than 4 months, Benji is still one of her favourite toys, he is played with daily and this doesn't look set to change.

H loves to cuddle Benji and when he is switched on this causes his mechanical legs to make a "click click" sound. I am worried that it may break him.

This aside H adores him and he is certainly a very special toy. As first pets go, he is perfect for us. All of the pleasure without the fuss or the worry.

And in the beginning there was... space.

I've been toying with the idea of writing a blog for a while now, but in my usual way always found another distraction that has kept me from it. That is, until tonight. so here it is. I will try to add some back dated content to this tomorrow and fill up some of this abundant space. There is a high chance that the only people who will follow this blog are my partner and my sister but if you happen to stumble across it, feel free to stay a while.

Night

CB