Shakespearian Mock Tales (by sarah)

Last night we had the second ever Mock Tales - 2 hours of stories and writing creativeness with sticky non-alcoholic cocktails. They were Shakespeare themed as it was his 400th birthday at the weekend 🙂

I did 20+ pages of my comic book script/story board and now know how this story arc ends, Alaric managed 5000 words of our joint novel/series.

There were 3 of us so I was limited as to how many drinks I could make!

Above are Twelfth Night which was minty, Midsummer Nights Dream which was vanillary, The Scottish Drink which was fruity, and The Tempest which was Sugary.

We also had home made Pizza which was dairy and gluten free - Mary had opinions...

I remembered that when I was in secondary school I became obsessed with The Tempest as a story and drew the whole thing as a comic - I wonder if it survives somewhere? I loved the stop motion animations they did of the shakespeare stories I need to try and find them for the girls.

Jean tried a Tempest before she went off to best - she was a little horrified at it's stickiness - she still drank/ate it.

Recipes are being written down for Salaric Cooking before people start prodding again 🙂

Geo Bake Off – Geologist Despair (by sarah)

I mentioned the Geological Society's Bake Off to Jean - this is the result - she's been planning it for weeks!

The girls are seriously proud of this 7 cake monstrocity.

They have certainly enjoyed eating it 🙂

There is a lot of hidden stuff that went into this cake.

One of the themes was mud which is why there is chocolate orange mud flows 🙂

But there were all sorts of challenges and Jeany decided she wanted to try and complete as many as possible.

So within the river valley there is structure for a cross section.

And then she just got plan creative - with the structure of the cake and I believe some youtube research.

These are the marzi-bones fossil human ancestors or related species buried in a cash by volcanic ash - they may or may not have already been dead when this happened some more excavation will have to occur to find out!

The top layer of the Mud Tower is a chocolate gravel lens between a sandy mud and a volcanic ash.

You can see the colour difference really well in this photo.

Here is Jean cutting open mud tower to reveal whats within.

Spoiler... the chocolate gravel lense.

Here's the river valley with birds foot delta - at this stage the volcano is dormant or extinct.

This is the main part of the cake with Mud Tower and the ammonite loaf as zoomed in bits and the past hidden behind the lush "hill".

Of course there is a hidden volcano and... erm Jurassic Park toilet death scene...

The geologist hammer was another challenge - but being Jean it is a geo-thor hammer so is the wrong shape (to be honest she sneaked a time travel train into it so I was amazed there was no tardis). I did the writing.

Within there is an ammonite - this one was completely and utterly Jean's own idea and it worked and she is soooo happy she is taking it into school tomorrow 🙂

This was the tense moment of cutting in and finding out if the idea had worked. It's a bit flatter than intended but we agreed it's had metamorphic stuff happen to it thanks to the volcanos proximity.

The cake did kind of over flow but that's not surprising - here's how it was made...

Did I mention that she called this cake collective - Geologist Despair.

Volcano before lava.

She did try to put structure inside the volcano but it didn't work that well.

The volcano was fun to put together - she remembered Dino-Mountian I'd made her for her 5th? Birthday 🙂

How the river valley was put together...

One time travel train and it's in a tunnel - the tunnel was the challenge 🙂

And before the tunnel, infact she did a lot of icing moderling for this.

Of course Mary pulled her weight too 🙂 Mainly with rolling out icing and smearing chocolate everywhere!

She did most of the Mud Tower by herself 🙂

Mary put chocolate gravel leaking out of an erroded side and some other bits including sticking out marzi-bones 🙂

Mud cracks were a challenge - Jean went with the existing cake cracks and made the lonely tree which was another of the challenges.

Lonely tree... did I mention the lonely tree?

Other general cakey making pics...

Creating the Marzi-Bones...

I really love this idea 🙂

Creating T-Rex...

This has been EPIC - it took 3 days to make the cakes - Alaric is taking Mud Tower into work tomorrow etc... Both girls have enjoyed it so much and of course we used home grown eggs. The cakes themselves range from chocolate orange to mint to vanilla and strawberry in flavour. There are three icings and marzipan involved and some of the cake is me friendly ie gluten free (the volcano) and some is Mary friendly and so on.

Jean was a little sad as she had meant to put Mary Anning in and a geological map too but she forgot and just don't ask her about how atomically correct her loo death scene is ok.

Tangling it All: Make, Bake, Create (by sarah)

It's March and as I am not a hardy gardener, March is the beginning of my growing year. Which means that we have been along to the allotment and I've (yes me!!!) dug a bed over and harvested a load of leeks and so on but mainly I've been potting seeds up and transferring things into bigger pots with the two girls.

They both love this - but Mary most of all - I took over the dinning table for three days and she spent hours each day filling plant pots for me 🙂

She also loves watering them all, as does Jean so I have to be careful not to end up with little "floods". Mary also thinks that watering can is a musical instrument - she is not wrong and I am glad I don't use it for any fertalisers or anything!

(photo)

This weekend was heavy on the garden stuff - I sorted out the chicken run so that we could use the old flooring as stuff to dig into the allotment. This is quiet heavy work and I also have to sort out the wormeries and see how much compost I have ready to go in them. The answer was several bucket loads! I also had to fix two of the sumps which is a bit ick as they are by nescesity under all the liquid that settles at the bottom of the wormeries. This stuff is basically liquid plant food which is why I collect it and my tones of tomatoes last year proves that it works!

And though I now have new funky plant pots on the window sill in the dining area I also have various pots that have been painted either by me or the girls. This for me is an interesting cross over of the craft and the gardening. I even have two that I painted back when I was a Ranger (top section of Guiding).

That was not the only craft cross over either - I'm having a finishing projects month and though not a project that was already started - I have had this idea for ages (years) so we went ahead and did it 🙂

We made plant or seed markers out of knives by dipping them into metal paint we have left over from Alaric making his ladder. We also did some spoons to make Easter Eggs for plant pots decorations and the garden.

Alaric and Jean set up a drying rack by using an old kitchen tidy and a length of metal and clamps. Clingfilm was placed beneath to catch drips.

He then showed Jean how to dip the spoons.

She then had a go and was very careful and patient.

She did all the spoons and knives and Mary helped Daddy find the right size dog clips to pin them all up to the drying rack.

The paint is supposed to be touch dry in an hour but it was on quiet thickly so we left it over night.

The next day we took sharpies and took to decorating the spoons as easter eggs and the knives as seed markers (ok so I did all the knives but we all did the eggs including Alaric and Mary).

I'm not sure how well this will work and this first lot are going out without varnish, the sharpie pics we did on the chair at the allotment have faded but that maybe due to the under laying paint flaking - we will see - it's an EXPERIMENT!!!! mwhahahahahahahaha

Jean spent ages on decorating her ones.

I am very very happy with the seed markers 🙂

Infact we are going to have to do a couple more batches as I have a lot more stuff planned for the growing!

I coloured the inside of my Easter Egg spoon with a chick - Mary decided she had to do one too and demanded the colours "ellow, norange and black" and then with a stroke of genius announced that the back of her chick needed to be fluffy yellow as it was already crick crack hatched!

Well I was impressed - I was equally impressed by Jean's sheep and tree 🙂

I love these Easter Egg Spoons 🙂

I don't think you can tell which one of us did which egg to be honest 🙂

The only issue is that you can't let them touch each other or various plastics as they stick.

Mary is most pleased with her flower pot 🙂

And it is great fun to mix the crafts in with the gardening, things like bird scariers and wind chimes are fun to make and practical too. But this weekend kind of had the cake and the icing and the eating 🙂 For a start CHICKENS that lay stoopid numbers of eggs which always equals cake but second...

I grubbed up some potatoes that I've been growing in the big bags we used to move with three years ago. This is the third year of potatoes in the garden. They are lovely new tatties so small and firm and Alaric being the whizz that was whipped them up into a gorgous curry that was dairy, gluten and soya free and found naan breads I could eat too! There were even star anises in the top 🙂

And this? This is my purple chilli 🙂

I basically grew the chilli plants from seed all the way through the winter and autumn and I had chillies in Feb! And as promised by the packet they are all different colours 🙂

I am so excited about this, I have never managed them from seed before!

Basically this weekend we managed to do gardening, craft and cooking and the boundaries between them were blurred and in truth there was DIY too which crossed over very nicely too 🙂

p.s. we also took Jean to two different sporting clubs and a sleep over.

Cheese and Soap and Skillz (by sarah)

At the beginning of the year when we were setting down our New Year Resolutions, me and Alaric realised that we were still stuck with exactly the same stitches for kniting and crochet that we started with three years ago. All our projects have been variants on a theme.

We also wanted to move forward with the home stedding stuff, having added chickens and allotment since moving house. So here is my first cheese - it is a soft spreadable thing but I am very proud of it - I might also have accidently made a butter but that's cool too and is being used 🙂

The other skill we've been meaning to try has been soap making and we thought this would tie in really well with the yarn craft side of things. So the easiest way of learning the stitches is to knit or crochet squares but I have to be making something or else it wont happen - I've never been good at practice - learning yes but practice no!

Anyway we are basically knitting and crocheting flannels or face/wash cloths to go with the soaps. Here is my first crochet attempt - I think it is double with single as the edging - it is lumpy and bumpy and miss shappen but I am so happy - of course it took me like a month to create.

This is the current one - a single crochet - lets hope I can remember how to carry on with it now Mum's gone home - I really struggled with the double when she wasn't about.

I have also added on four different rag rug making techniques to the skillz I haz, recently, plus improvisational comedy and sketch writing so I am feeling quiet chuffed. I am also nerviously awaiting proof copies of a book which is more painful than I would have thought!

Cheese and Yogurt Making (by sarah)

Last year our yogurt maker broke - in truth it had been not quiet right for a while plus only Jean and Al could eat it. But then I saw that the thermos had been reduced and decided to buy another one - after all the first one had lasted 10 yrs!

With everything settling down health wise as well I thought I'd see how I handled yogurt and seemed to be ok with it. So I put a batch order in taking advantage of sales and what not. I had wanted to get warm bath type yogurt maker but they are really expensive 🙁

I also picked up a soft cheese maker which is basically a strainer and something I could have improvised but I figured I was more likely to get around to the actual cheese making with a special thing to help. I also added vegan rennet to the shop as I want to make proper cheese that is Alaric friendly and also Mary safe cheese!

This year is going to be about the cheese making 🙂