Delicious Moroccan Mince

I've been lucky enough to become a member of Tesco Orchard, which allows us to try lots of great products for free or less. Recently I was asked to take part in the Midweek Meal offer which was great because we got £10 of fresh meat for free! Thanks Tesco. We got some pork mince (great because you get 850g in a pack), pork steaks and beef strips.

The first thing I cooked was a Moroccan Mince, which I've done before. It's based on the BBC quorn recipe, here. Four out of five of us love this recipe so I am still working on Big Girl! It's perfect for us as we can leave it cooking while we bath and put the children to bed and then it reheats beautifully for their tea the following day. Oh and I usually get another three child size portions out of it to freeze. Super!

Ingredients
1tbsp oil
2 or 3 onions
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 tsp ground turmeric
800/1000ml chicken or vegetable stock
850g Tesco Pork Mince
Chopped vegetables: suggest carrots, broccoli, frozen sweetcorn, celery

To serve: couscous or rice

Method:

1. Heat the oil and gently fry the onions for a few minutes. Stir in the spices and fry for a further few minutes.

2. Add the mince to the pan and fry until brown.

3. Stir in your vegetables and stock (see below).

4. Bring to the boil and then simmer gently for anywhere between 30 - 75 minutes depending on how long you have, how soft you like the mince and vegetables. The longer you cook it for the more stock you will need.

I haven't made it with other types of mince but I bet it would be really tasty!

Gorgeous Boy Lion!

Here is the latest animal I have made! The lady who ordered him was keen that I include the Mickey Mouse motif from the little man's hoody so I gave him pride of place on the tummy. I also included a couple of buttons from the shirt on his ears. It's the little touches that make my creations!

To find out more have a look at my Facebook page
or Etsy Shop!

 

Easy Peasy Teacher Thank You Card and Gift

Big Girl has been at pre-school a whole year, I can't believe it! She's learnt so much from her time there and the ladies who taught her were lovely. I'm not a big fan of jumping on American bandwagons, I think that's what "teacher appreciation" is?! I wanted our gift and card to be genuinely made by Big Girl. So it had to be easy if I was going to get her to do it three times!

I just wrote out "thank you" on a piece of paper and got her to stick the letters I had cut out from magazines the day before on to the cards in the right order. She has really got into writing recently and she did very well picking the right letters and glueing them on, she really enjoyed it. She did decorate them a bit more after this picture was taken, with sticky gems and tin foil, the current favourite!

We also made gifts. We decorated large mayonaise jars by sticking tissue paper shapes to them. I used watered down PVA glue. I also painted over the jar with another a layer once Big Girl had finished.

 I bought some epsom salts from Ebay and we made our own bath salts using this tutorial from Simply Designing. We used lavender essential oil as that's what I have. On reflection I would have added some lavender flowers as well as the rose petals but it did still look really pretty. It was a lovely thing to do together and simple enough for Big Girl. We popped a church candle in the bottom of the jar so that when the salts are gone the teachers can use them as candle holders. The lids were a rather garish blue so I spray painted them white and finished them off with a personalise lable and some satin ribbon. The ladies did seem pleased! 

Baby Boy Joules Rabbit Dolly

Not very long ago I sold one of my New Baby Gift Vouchers to a good friend and a couple of weeks ago she bought me her friend's child's garments.

They included a stunning Joules top which I just had to showcase on the little boy's trousers, using the iconic little Joules rabbit alongside his personalisation! I'm sure you'll agree that the result is a very cute little keepsake?!

Find out more about all my keepsakes at

My Facebook Page

or 

My Etsy Shop

Bake Bread 2gether! Only 2 ingredients!

 I couldn't believe my eyes when I came across a link to this lovely website via Pinterest. Bread, from two ingredients?!? Never! But yes, it is that easy and we had a great time. The ingredients are  

1 cup of self-raising flour

2/3 cup of Greek yogurt

So easy, right? I also gave my girls silicone cup cake cases full of seeds to decorate their bread with. I was learning on the hoof with this one and quickly realised that my girls (2.5yrs x2 and 4yrs) were not going to be able to form their own shapes from the bread easily so I gave them more of the cup cake cases and they filled these, which made nice little buns.

I was careful to bake the bread knowing whose was whose so that they could eat their own. I have to say that I thought it was quite doughy and rather sour but the girls were still keen to try their bakes. 

We made quite a lot of bread so I did freeze some of it. We've had more out since and this time I slathered it with cream cheese and this time it was eaten more enthusiastically. I would definately like to try this activity again.

Thrifty, NO Tat Party Bags

 My big girl has only been to a few parties so far and in this time I have learnt to grab the party bag at the first opportunity and NEVER ever let her have it to herself in the back of the car by herself on the way home. I am going to come across like an ungrateful wretch but the contents of the bags we have had have sometimes been plastic toys suitable for older children or just packed full of sweets so I do prefer to go through it first and then let her have a few bits at a time. And the thing is I know that they cost a lot to put together and taken someone time to put together, so I do feel bad for being a bit anti-party bag.

Big Girl has just turned four herself and we had a little birthday tea party for her this weekend. Now my first advantage was that we only invited three friends so I didn't have many bags to make but I did also make bags for my two nephews for the outing we had with them to a farm the previous weekend. I really wanted to make nice, no tat party bags and still not spend too much. As always Pinterest obliged, together with a few of my own ideas this is what I came up with.

Boys:
A pack of colouring pencils (around 20p in Wilkinsons)
Easter chocolate coins (I bought two bags from Aldi to do all the party bags)
Dinosaur paper toy 
Felt car topped pencils
Bubbles (I happened to have these already and you can't beat bubbles, right?)
Easter bark egg (if I'm honest I just used the party as an excuse to have a go at this!) I wrapped my egg shapes in clingfilm to protect them in the bag. I guess you could use any cookie cutter, maybe use one that fits your party theme?

Girls: 
Wooden bead bracelets (I spent around £2 on beads from eBay and made bracelets with elastic I already had. Anyone can do this, it's just threading beads and tying a knot! You could even do it with an older child)
Stickers (Again eBay. I did kick myself though because I thought I was getting more stickers than I did. I have since discovered that our 99p shop does little boxes of stickers in packs of about 8.
A pack of colouring pencils
Easter chocolate coins
Butterfly paper toy intructions
Easter bark egg
Homemade hairclips (I bought a pack of about 20 clips from the £1 shop and cut small discs of colourful felt from my scraps box. Along with some teeny buttons I had I sewed it altogether onto the clip. I thought it would be a nice touch to print little ' thank you for coming to my party' notes on card that I could snap the clips onto.

The inspiration for a lot of these ideas came from this pin. There are lots of other ideas on there too.

The bags:
I was really lucky, in the £1 shops Easter product range they had packs of 20 cellophane bags with pretty spring images printed on them. They even came with  short lengths of organza ribbon to tie the bags up. I must admit I thought they were such a bargain I stockpilled, keeping some for other parties, other projects!


Oh and just in case you were wondering, here is Big Girl's cake

Silent Sunday