Sometimes Christmas crafts just need to be as simple as possible, especially when small children are involved and that's what I hope I've achieved with this simple toilet roll angel project. What you need: Toilet roll White paint Cardboard - a cereal box is ideal Scissors Pipe cleaners - silver or gold ideally Glue Glitter - silver or gold, or glitter glue Sticky tape Pink or flesh coloured paper Felt tip pens Something round to draw round Start off by painting the outside of your toilet roll white. You may need two coats of paint for this. Draw a circle on ... read more
Archives for November 2014
Ladybird Tuesday: Coffee
I do sometimes wonder just how Ladybird decided which books to put in some of their series - in particular the Ladybird Leader series (737). Whilst they're all subjects where there is plenty to learn about, the list can seem a bit random when you first read it. From water to bridges, apes and monkeys to fruit, and deserts to coffee. Coffee is obviously a huge commodity in the world today and if anything the way people drink coffee has changed even more since 1977 when this book was first published. Now there are coffee shops every few meters (well in St Albans there certainly are) and it's ... read more
Embracing real ink #StationeryWednesday
I'm loving my current work with Bureau Direct. Not only do I get to choose what to review every month from a fantastic range of stationery goodies, but I'm also rediscovering how much I love writing with a pen - something that I suppose I've gradually stopped doing seeing as I spend so much time on a laptop or tablet. After embracing ink pens these last two months - both the Herbin rollerball and the the Lamy Vista - it seemed like there was just one ink challenge to overcome: real ink. Bottles of ink scare and thrill me in equal measure. At primary school I remember one boy Amit who ... read more
A Secondhand Christmas
I try to keep out of arguments on social media. Life's simply too short to go wading in every time you see something you disagree with. Last week though I saw an exchange which just left me speechless. Some blogger friends of mine are taking part in a campaign with the Salvation Army to raise the profile of doing your Christmas shopping in charity shops as a way of supporting charities at this time of year. One particular blogger tweeted about the things that she'd found this year for her family's Christmas presents and someone else (who I refuse to give a link to here - don't feed the ... read more
The Diggers – Margaret Wise Brown and Antoine Corbineau
One of Master C's favourite books over the last few months has been Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. Or Night Night Moon as he prefers to call it. I therefore sat down with him to read a copy of The Diggers by her with great interest especially since he instantly became very excited by the picture of a digger on the front cover. Margaret Wise Brown wrote hundreds of stories and poems for children and this particular one has been brought alive in this modern version by French illustrator Antoine Corbineau. Dig, dig, dig go various animals and machines as they dig underground to ... read more
Snow Day – Richard Curtis and Rebecca Cobb
I'm pretty sure that there's not a child out there that doesn't dream of waking up on a winter morning and finding the whole world under a thick blanket of white snow. That's exactly what the children of London found when they woke up on Thursday 5th December though. During the previous night it had snowed and snowed and snowed so hard that in the morning mobile phones buzzed and emails pinged with the news that there was no school today. But in Snow Day it seems that not everyone got the message as two people did turn up for school. Danny and Mr Trapper. Putting aside any practicalities ... read more
Henry Westons Mulled Cider
I LOVE Christmas! There we go I've said it. There's probably people despairing as they read that, but this year as soon as we'd waved away the trick or treaters on 31st October I've been in full on Christmas mood. For me the moment that sealed it was sitting down with a mug of Henry Westons Mulled Cider that I'd been sent to review and my subscription copy of the Christmas issue of Country Living. Nice magazines are one of my guilty pleasures and whenever I open Country Living I'm always transported to the old village rectory that features in many of my dreams and a whole different ... read more
Rediscovering my love of a fountain pen #StationeryWednesday
As regular readers of Being Mrs C will know, I am delighted to be part of a team of six bloggers that are currently working with Bureau Direct - retails of some of the most gorgeous stationery products I've ever seen. But to me stationery isn't just about things that look good, whilst that is still important. It's about functionality. This has to be the case when it comes to pens in particular. There's no point in having a pen that looks good if it's horrible to write with. This month my choice of review items from Bureau Direct was very much on the functional side of things. After my ... read more
Ladybird Tuesday: ‘People at Work’ The Soldier
The Ladybird People at Work series (number 606B) has to be one of my absolute favourite ones, mainly as it just gives such a fascinating insight into what everyday life was like at the time. I find all the illustrations fascinating and they really are packed full of interesting facts - as well as a few sexist comments of the time! I've previously featured The Policeman, The Car Makers and In a Hotel on Ladybird Tuesday and if I had been planning more ahead I probably should have featured The Soldier in last week's post - after all it was the 11/11 last week. The role of a soldier is ... read more
Washi Tape Christmas Gift Tags
The Christmas crafting is continuing at speed here and if you thought last week's washi tape Christmas cards were a bit too taxing then this is definitely the craft for you - washi tape Christmas gift tags. All you need are plain gift tags (any will do, but I happened to have a box of these lovely vintage style ones from East of India) and some festive washi tape. As an added extra you could also use any Christmas themed rubber stamps that you may have too. You can obviously decorate the tags however you want with the washi tape, but I decided to keep it relatively simple with a ... read more