Wonder Mum

Further to my recent post, I realise not everyone loves spiders and not everyone knows where to find them or is sure if their spiders are safe.  And, as we also have a toddler in our house, we needed a 'Cub Safe' version to ensure no real spiders are harmed by an excited toddler shaking their spider-house! So we decided to make a pretend spider so Cub could also be included :) To make the actual spider house, see my other post - this is just to make the fake spiders! Things You Will Need Our list included single and double-sided tape, curling ribbon, scissors, paper, black pen and optional googly-eyes :) But if you don't have all of the above, you could use glue instead of tape or double-back on itself some single sided tape to make it double-side.  Curling ribbon could be string/cotton/wool etc. Your spider can be any colour so any colour paper will do or colour some in.  You could even use newspaper!  And if you don't have googly-eyes, you can m...

My Mum isn't a lover of spiders and unfortunately she passed this fear unwittingly onto Roar when he was small. She didn't want him to stay afraid and so one Christmas, she bought him a Spider House Kit.  Between us we hoped he would learn about them and watch one and see they spend a lot of their time motionless and aren't really that scary. Don't get me wrong, I don't love it when a spider scuttles too close, but it's usually the shock of something scuttling into view that's more 'scary' than the spider itself.  Well, that's what I tell myself anyway!  We have no poisonous spiders to worry about so there really isn't anything to fear (although I know that isn't the same everywhere). We've had this Spider House Kit tucked away in a box for at least a couple of years as Roar was initially not keen.  However, in Lockdown all  the 'kits' are coming out and so has this one and, what's more, he's LOVED IT! He has l...

This is the improved version on the basic recipe which works for the kids (especially Cub) as we substituted some of the plain flour for a vitamin enriched powder that we use.  I will also link a separate post to these as these have been extremely valuable in our food allergy journey and a fantastic find! Recipe 225g dairy free spread (we used Pure) 220g soft brown sugar 1tsp vanilla essence 100g plain flour 100g vitamin enriched power (we used Nesquick cocoa flavour) 1/2 tsp salt 1 tbsp water Vegan chocolate - having learned from our earlier version, we used dairy-free milk chocolate (around 50g initially but we saved some dough so you'd probably need closer to 100g to coat all the dough in one go) Method As before, we mixed together the butter, Pure and vanilla.  This was just to combine them - so a very quick mix in the K-Mix (or you could do it by hand).  You don't want air in it, so just enough that it's mixed together. We added the flour and a pin...

Further to my Kids Kitchen post, I thought I would share one of our latest efforts - vegan chocolate coated cookie dough balls - yum :) These are delicious and very moreish and crucially, something our littlest will eat.  Looking at him now, he appears a cheeky chubby little cherub and looks the picture of health, but what you don't see is how difficult it has been to get calories into him with his multiple food allergies and initially severe GORD (difficulties keeping food in). So having high calorie allergy safe foods he will eat is a constantly evolving part of our journey with our Cub :) We made these two ways - initially just following a fairly basic dough recipe and then adapting it to make it more vitamin enriched so see also my second post for the vitamin enriched version. Recipe The basic recipe we adapted from one of our favourite You Tuber bakers - Cupcake Gemma - so here is a link to her original (non-vegan recipe) which we then adapted  https://www.youtu...

Today is my own Wonder Mum's birthday and so M came up with this idea as something she could send her Nanny while we are all in Lockdown. Here are step-by-step instructions of how to make a no-sew Teddy bear and bring a little sunshine into your day :) Things You Will Need Small bathroom towel or a pillowcase 3 x small rubber bands or loom bands Your own choice of ribbon or decoration e.g. wool / string / elastic etc.  A clear, flat working area Instructions Step 1 Lay out your towel or pillow case on your working area and fold approximately one third of the way. Step 2 Start rolling upwards from the bottom, tightly. Keep doing this until roughly half way. Step 3 Repeat from the top so that you end up with the two tightly rolled sections meeting in the middle, like two sausages. Step 4 This is the tricky one as it's two steps in one.  Fold your sausages across on themselves, as if you were c...

Only in re-reading one of my old posts did I realise that at the beginning of this blog I had dreamed of one day having a Kids Kitchen.  And now, here it is! (That links neatly to to my post on writing being our shared superpower!) Our Kids Kitchen is basically our 'old kitchen' where we converted what was our old dingy lounge into a light and airy family room / kitchen-diner.  So we still had the old kitchen to convert but for now have decided to use it as a space for messy bakes, makes and creates which we like to do generally, but are definitely doing a LOT more of while in Lockdown! Mr Big went out into one of his mysterious man caves (any place I try to avoid such as garages, lofts, workshops etc. I refer to as his 'man caves') and reappeared with an old island he no longer needed from his workshop.  So he put that together in the centre and voila!  Kids Kitchen was born! It's already had SO much use!  The kids also treat it as their personal space ...