A green surprise!

Apologies as I haven't been a busy blogger lately but it seems that my life had been taken over by the monkeys' social life and girl monkey's ballet performances. Apart from that I have been sewing all hours to get my stock up for this Sunday's Didsbury Craft Cafe. I am really excited about this event and will hopefully get some pictures together to show you all after the weekend. Amongst many other things I will be taking these :

.... Busy Betsy's Busy Lizzies. With quite a few pre-orders for Christmas these little girls will keep me busy for some weeks to come.

I had a little surprise today: a lovely green surprise!

Occasionally British Mummy Bloggers get asked to do some product testing and I am really excited about this one. I do this a couple of times a year but usually am asked just to fill in a testing form and am often fairly underwhelmed with the product so I do not see the need to tell the world about it but this time it is different as I got sent a fabulous trug with Ecover products. I know that some of you will stop reading now as you totally disagree with writing about products but because it is Ecover and I am a green queen I am delighted to give them some column inches. I'd like to be as eco-friendly as I possibly can and am normally not a fan of plastics but the trug the products came in is made from those recycled bottle tops that did not end up in my recycled Christmas Wreaths and will come in handy for storing some of the monkeys treasures.

I will be doing a lot of product testing tomorrow as I am taking part in Macmillan's World's Biggest Coffee morning on Friday, hoping to raise some valuable funds for this very worthwhile cause. I would like my house to look spic and span, in all it's glory. A challenge at the best of times, but with my new goodie bag full of Ecover products I hope it is going to be a breeze!

Well, there will be an update tomorrow, wish me luck!

The future is orange (3)

Orange seems to have been a dominating colour in my life recently (as has purple!). I suppose radical changes in life bring about radical changes in many areas and I suppose Orange is there to brighten up my life... Anyway that was not what this blog was going to be about. I really wanted to pay attention to "smart consumption" or "intelligent shopping".

Last night I stumbled upon an interesting article in a fashion magazine about the new way of acquiring fashion. Today's fashion lovers seem to be more eco friendly, concerned with the welfare of staff in factories and are moving towards greener shopping. Garments of higher quality that last longer seem to be in favour of the £2 jumpers from the high street stores it was believed. I am not entirely sure this is the case, the cheap stores in town are like a souk at the quietest of times. However I do believe there has been a change in how wardrobes are being put together. Charity shops seem to be full of fashionistas of all ages and swap parties are becoming very popular. Sewing classes and books teaching us how to embellish clothing are advertised everywhere and for those who know me or follow my blog I absolutely love this!

I come from a family of hand-me-downers. And I don't just mean from brother to sister etc. I mean grandma's, aunts, nieces, cousins, mothers, daughters, everyone is at it and has been for the past 60 years or so. I do not know how this started. Economic crisis may have had a hand in this every now and then but most of all my family does not seem to like waste. Why throw out something good if someone else can still use it? I am a true "Make do and Mend" girl and although the mend doesn't apply to all the women in my family they certainly know how to find me with great quality items. I have some lovely (proper) vintage tops from my grandmother that go back about 50 or 60 years (via my youngest aunt, a real fashion doll) and have worn many items that have come from any of my relatives over the years. One of my cousins used to buy the most over-the-top dresses in her younger years and I have made some great skirts out of these. If you do not have this culture in your family head down to your nearest charity shop. It is often hit and miss but there are some great items and fabrics around. These places have become so popular, helped by the likes of Kate Moss e.a. who pick up the most gorgeous items.

Back to the orange : when I went to see one of my aunties in Holland recently she had nicely put together a bag with fabulous tops for me, some my size, some quite oversized but still looking fabulous with my skinny jeans. I know that I will dye some tops, refurbish some others and this orange one that was rather dull (but lovely and soft), I brightened up today with a lovely "God save the Queen" iron-on transfer (these can be found aplenty on Ebay).

After I finished the t-shirt I went for a quick hunt around my local Oxfam where I bought a brand new version of My Life in Orange by Tim Guest. It is a biography about growing up in a Bhagwan commune. I remember the Bhagwan followers walking around Amsterdam in their orange, pink, purple and red-ish clothes and they used to scare me so much. My mother who is scared of just about everything (I should write a book about her!) had put the fright into me at some point by saying that they would try to kidnap people so that they would get more followers in the commune and as a young teenager this had some kind of effect on me. In fact about 20 years later I still jumped into shops if I heard or saw any Hara Krishna's in Covent Garden! Anyway I had read an interview with Tim Guest when the book came out and it was on my list to read so here was another lucky orange find.

God save the Queen, Orange save my day!

Boy Monkey's Pie Biscuit

It is absolutely glorious here in the North West and we are spending most of our time outdoors. 

A couple of days ago though we went to the local library to get a pile of holiday reads for all of us and a couple of gardening and cookery books to keep us busy on a rainy day. Luckily there do not seem to be any rainy days this half term but as it is the holidays the monkeys still like to do some baking. 

First of all we made a delicious breakfast treat : "Cinnamon Crunch Muesli" from Bill Granger's Feed Me Now! Cookbook. 

Next up was boy monkey's choice from his favourite "Shrek" cookbook. Most of the recipes that we tried from this tome were yummy but this time he chose the ginger biscuits and it didn't work so well. Years ago I got a recipe card for ginger biscuits from the "Gruffalo Club" for girl monkey and we have used this one ever since as they are so scrumptious. Whilst preparing the dough according to Shrek I wasn't convinced it was going to work, very dry and crumbly. I tried adding some milk (this may not have been the right thing to do) and put the lot in the fridge. There appeared to be plenty butter in it and seemed OK when I got it out of the fridge but as soon as they tried to roll and cut it, it all fell apart. Naturally they were very disappointed but boy monkey then came up with the idea of making a big pie biscuit with it. 

Girl monkey then decided she wanted to add some fruit which we mixed with some custard powder. We then put the creation in the oven for 15 minutes and hey presto we had a lovely fruit pie. It was truly delicious and I was very proud of the little ones for coming up with this idea. 

I can certainly recommend this for any dough gone wrong but please do eat it on the same day. We put some in the fridge overnight but I could break my teeth on it the following day. 

On British Mummy Bloggers I read about the Recycle Week starting 22 June which is being promoted through Recycle Now. As you all know I love recycling, upcycling, swapping and everything else that makes my life and everyone else's greener and I love to share a little tip. I am not a fan of dry cleaning, I don't like the chemicals and the rubbish plastic hangers they now use in most places but occasionally it has to be done. Also Mr Betsy tends to bring his shirts to be ironed so we do get a fair amount of hangers and accompanying plastic covers. Our local dry cleaners kindly take the hangers back and I have come up with what I think is a good way of recycling the covers : tie a know at the top where the small hole for the hanger is and use it as a bin liner. Now I can hear you all thinking that I should not use a bin liner at all but just a sheet of kitchen towel at the bottom of the bin and scrub it all out every day..... However in my world that isn't always possible and rather than buying bin liners (which I have NEVER done) I'd rather use what I have got in the cupboard. Any other tips for re-using the covers will be gladly received!

Recycled bottle-tops Christmas wreath tutorial

This is quite scary to put a tutorial on my blog but having had so many great comments I couldn't resist sharing this information. Like many of you I have been collecting bottle tops for a while as I was told they weren't recyclable. Some of the toddlers in my art class use them occasionally in their collages but there are still plenty in my tubs. So I came up with the idea of using them in a wreath (don't ask me where I got the idea from, one of those that comes into my head late at night). 

So first I got my tub of bottle tops and found a sheet of cardboard that I cut from one of my boxes (about 50 x 50 cm). 

I then got a large fruit plate and a small one to draw precise circles (if I could ever draw a perfect circle without my plates I would be so happy).

Then I made myself a nice cup of tea (optional) and started gluing the tops on with PVA (my all time favourite glue).

I covered the whole surface...

and then spray painted them with white craft paint. At the same time I spray painted some twigs that I cut off in the summer and bound in a wreath. The bottle top one I tried to sprinkle with red glitter but a gust of wind did the work for me, hence some areas are rather heavily sprinkled and others not but it kind of adds to the effect.

Once finished the monkeys played around with it but now .....

.... it is hanging nicely on my wall. 

For the twig wreath I cut some small circles from red felt and again using PVA glued them on some of the twigs. I really liked this effect. I cannot ever throw anything out and when I made these wreaths in the summer to hang around the garden I didn't think I was going to use them inside but I am glad I did. I love circular shapes and am very fond of Christmas wreaths but I could not bring myself to buy one in the shops. These did not cost me anything at all and will hopefully be used again and again. 

FLY and be Green

My intention was to create a basket full of brooches today but I got side tracked and realised I was a SHE (sidetracked home executive). In order to put me on track I have recently signed up on the flylady.net site. It is just brilliant! As the monkeys are helping me by pleasing the Housefairy I needed to do something myself and although some people think I was born organised it is more like organised chaos in my life. OK moving house 4 times in 5 years didn't help and having too many projects on the go doesn't make it any easier but still that shouldn't be an excuse. 

If you like being told what to do then FLYlady is fabulous. I now get daily emails to remind me what I should be doing, such as clearing out the plastic tub cabinet (don't we all have one with lids that do not match the pots?), or decluttering your hotspots for no more than 10 minutes. FLYlady believes we shouldn't spend more than 15 minutes a day doing housework and if I understand her correctly one hour of power cleaning a week. I am now getting in the habit of setting my alarm for 15 minutes every morning and it is unbelievable how much I can get done in that time. After I drop of the monkeys at school, I make myself a coffee (I never start the day without, it's the one unhealthy habit that I could not ever give up), catch up on the news, set my alarm and tackle one room. I can then start crafting without feeling guilty. I try to do 15 minutes at the end of the afternoon as well though, I am obviously still a FLYbaby. For those of you who had children and didn't like GIna Ford's method, you might not be too keen to become a FLYlady but if you're anything like me and raised kids with Gina's book in your hand, this could be a saviour.

As I got into this home organising thing today I got myself Ecoballs and Dryer Balls, and printed off some information to teach the monkeys a bit more about the environment. I love being green and wish more would be done to save our planet. Having grown up in Holland I was used to recycling and it came as a shock when I moved to London some 15 years ago that there wasn't a paper or bottle bank in sight. In the village I lived as a child paper was always recycled (and I am talking nearly 40 years ago if not more), plastic and glass bottles had a deposit on them and well, tins we used to keep to make stilts, containers for keep sakes etc. Dad hardly ever threw anything out that he could re-use. He still keeps a lot, his shed is hilarious. 

Meanwhile I have thought of a little green project I can do with the monkeys after school tomorrow: we can sow love heart or teddy bear cress figures. That should keep them entertained for a week or two. The holidays are coming up and my list of things to do is getting endless, could we please take the rest of the year off?