ilultham

I'm sure the expensive phase of children is get to start but at the moment they seem very easy to keep happy.   We're lucky as our three play together as a pack all the time, very rarely to they leave one out of any games unless they want to - our eldest will take herself off to do some sewing now and again.  The half term has been filled with hours of playdough, painting and making potions outside (which i tend to find months later when they smell far from their best!).  the other day I had a little fire on the patio and they spent two hours feeding it and poking it (all face painted up as well), simple pleasures!  What low effort thing did you enjoy as a child?

So after going to the same playgroup for 6 years and helping to run it for 4, I've finally left as my youngest started school. It's mixed emotions as I've loved it but life moves on and children grow too fast! It was a tie each week but then I was lucky to run it with some of my best friends and each week we'd laugh and joke as we got everything ready and stay for ages afterwards just chatting as the kids played. I have no negative memories of this experience that I can think of. My lovely friends put on a beautiful lunch for me on Friday, as well as a lovely card of messages from the mums and dads that normally go (in a pre covid world). And one wrote me this incredibly brilliant and witty poem:- Kev the king of Colwall!  

 It's fair to say we haven't had that many days out this year. We're lucky to live in such a beautiful place it doesn't feel like a huge need of ours.  But with parties being a firm no at the moment we wanted to celebrate our middle child's birthday in some way.  All the days out at the moment have to be booked in advance, so we drew up a short list and tried to pick something we thought wouldn't be too affected by the new rules.  I booked some tickets for the Black Country Museum, a place I've never visited but have driven past hundreds of times when I used to work up that way. Think I was more excited than the kids to be honest!  Social distancing rules for places like this have made it really hard for them to keep going, when we got their we realised why - the numbers are so limited it felt like we'd hired the whole place to ourselves. For me it was ideal, although I do feel for the museum.  We could look round each house that was open easily and clea...

We haven't yet moved on to our next project since making the shave horse , but I have found my drawknife and decided it would be a good tool they could use safely.  We went into our coppice and picked a willow to take a branch from. Quite nice as the girls helped plant these trees five years ago .   We used a Froe to cleave the wood into two halves.  I had to make an alteration to the shave horse to account for shorter legs with some higher pegs for them to push their feet against.  Both girls really enjoyed it, although not sure they ever dress for the job in hand!  It was good to let them just play with the bit of wood and get experience using the tool, I hope that once they get to grips with it we'll be able to do a bit more, maybe some gypsy flowers or other simple projects.  They could do with a smaller drawknife though and this is something I might invest in for them.  What project do you think I should get them making? 

  Okay, if you squint your eyes you can see it for what it is, although I'd say it's more Megablocks than Lego - for our middle child's 7th birthday! Where does time go? Six years have past since my infamous "Philippa" pig cake (Peppa's pigs drug addled cousin who had fell on hard times) http:// englishhomestead.com/2014/12/nailed -it-on-pinterst.html …  and it still gets brought up at every birthday...

 I think I might be a little late to the party with this book, but the last few weeks I've been working my way through it.  This is a book that is, pretty obviously, going to appeal to me. The premise is that Robert Penn has an Ash tree cut down than tries to use as much of the timber as he can to make as many things as he can from it.  The author writes brilliantly and his affection for trees, wood and things of beauty is apparent from the first page.  I love his zero waste approach to this tree and how he gets so many things from it. At the end of the book there is a list of all the items and it's impressive. I also like how rather than trying to make the things himself he seeks out the true master crafts people to make them for him, while he witnesses the work. Each comes with it's own story and memory then and I love how the items he collects aren't just for decoration - they are to be used. Something I think we should do more in this country, beautiful items enr...

 The weekend was wet and windy, it finally cleared up on Sunday afternoon so I took the kids out to hunt for conkers and to blow off some steam.  The tree in a field near us had none on them so we went to a friends to see what we could find.   A few kilos later we had all we needed. Enough to pick out the best ones for traditional conkers (more on that another time) and some for making viking soap.  I'd read about making soap with horse chestnuts a few years ago. Each time I wondered what it was like and if it worked - but there is only one way to find this out - to make it and use it.  The kids were keen to help, so we chopped them up and ran them through the blender. Then put the broken up bits on sheets (with baking parchment we could throw away afterwards) into the dehydrator to dry out so they would store.  That's as far as we have got with it so far. I'm hoping to use it this week when some essential oils to give it a nice smell.  Anyone els...

 I have an axe head I bought a while back that still needs a handle. I've looked at buying one online to match but can't find anything that I think will fit or that I like. So I want to make my own. Now I have plenty of tools that I can make one with but I know from experience that a shave horse is the easiest way to hold and work it.  Now I have made a couple over the years ( one for my brother and one for myself ) but I sold mine when I had nowhere to store it after we moved here. I've decided that even if I just chuck a sheet over it it'll be worth having it outside. I also had a few lengths of less than straight 4x2 so this seemed a good use of them.  I decided that the design I used last time was ideal - it's a simple one designed by Mike Abbott called Champion The Lumber Horse - click the link to see the plan s - doesn't take long to build and uses really easily available materials.    I also thought this would be the perfect project to do with my eldest d...

 I forgot to post this the other day about dealing with the oak branches that fell from one of our big trees.  My brother came back with his big chipper to deal with all the brash.  I know we could have burnt it but decided that this was a better use as we get the wood chip to use around the place instead.  We pulled out any bits that were of firewood size then started to feed the rest through the chipper. It was hard hot work but only took a couple of hours (thankfully).  It was good to get it done before it had started to rot into the grass and the weeds grow up through it. All tided up now with just a big pile of oak wood chip left to use somewhere. I know it'll be high in tanins so might just use it around my blueberry bushes as I'm fairly sure it'll be slightly acidic. What would you use the wood chip for? I keep looking at all tha corns and thinking we must try to dry some for our own consumption this year - I've been saying it for a long time now and peop...