Snow business like Snow days

First thing's first, bf and I spent a lovely weekend in Newcastle last weekend to celebrate his sister's birthday and her son's birthday (the same day!). On the Saturday we celebrated Emma's birthday and went to a Chinese buffet which was yummy. On Sunday we had a party for Emma's son who is now 1! Emma is incredible talented and has recently started making cakes. She made her own birthday cake: 

 this is a red velvet cake, made and hand decorated by Emma herself. It was beautiful and DELICIOUS! 

This is the cake Emma made for her son. It's a Ponyo cake! It is absolutely stunning! The chocolate cake was delicious and it looked so amazing. Emma crafted the hill including cliff at the bottom and the bath all the way up. The little house on top and all the trees were delicately hand made as well as the children. They were made with modelling chocolate and hand painted! Such a talented lady. 

Emma and her husband David have a really exciting enterprise going on, if you like fantasy, cosplay and general amazingness pop over to www.esotericon.co.uk

 Snow. I live in the RED zone of the recent weather warnings and was snowed in yesterday and today. Pretty much the whole of South Wales had a snow day yesterday and everyone was panic buying bread on Thursday. It did snow, a lot. And it's very pretty, particularly when you don't have to go anywhere!

The animals were intrigued by the snow but not particularly impressed.

 Reebok was exhausted by his brief exertion in the snow.

I spent some time knitting. The teacher in my placement class is expecting a baby in April and I decided I'd knit her some booties. Bearing in mind I have only recently learnt to purl and struggle to read patterns I think I did quite well!


Today, I am making needle felted things! Having completed my essay for college already I am feeling very proud of myself and rewarding myself with a creative day.

Hypnotherapy Gastric Band

Well, 

I had my second hypnotherapy appointment today. I have lost 6lbs in the last week, since my last session so I'm feeling incredible positive about the whole thing. 

Today I had my hypnotic gastric band fitted at Solutions Hypnosis and it was one of the most surreal and one of the most relaxing experiences of my life. I was put under hypnosis and talked through the procedure, from entering the hospital/clinic and handing over my appointment card to sitting in the waiting area and looking at the front cover of a magazine with a picture of a celeb on who has successfully lost weight through hypno-gastric band right up to changing into a hospital gown and into theatre. The therapist talked me through having the aneasthetic and falling deeper into a sleep and continued to talk me through the key-hole surgery and then through to recovery where I was woken up from the operation and then gently brought out of the hypnosis. Afterwards, I felt like I'd been asleep for ages, even though it was under an hour that I'd been at the appointment. I could feel the tingle of the aneasthetic and a strange sensation in my stomach - all through the power of suggestion. 

 This evening, I am with my boyfriend and we had a lovely dinner of bangers and mash and I couldn't eat half of it. I was just too full. Which, for the girl who is always hungry, is INCREDIBLE. (Paul ate the rest since he hadn't had lunch today anyway, so no food went to waste!) I am now comfortably full and not even fancying that little something sweet. With no real surgery, to feel this way is so surprising and really pleasing. 

I have such confidence in this and it really is amazing. I wasn't sure whether it would work, since diets haven't really worked for me, but now, I am so certain that it will. 

Sweets for my Sweets!

I've been making sweets! 

Laura, you should try some of these as your craft a month thing! 

I have made:

• Peppermint, orange, cherry and strawberry creams
• Honeycomb
• Chocolate fudge
• Chocolate cherry royales (basically a version of rocky road/tiffin)

The creams are a recipe from Emmie (my boyfriend's sister) which I fell in love with over Christmas. 

You need: One egg white, 425g icing sugar, 1tsp flavouring of your choice and colour if you want to add it. 

top-bottom: strawberry, cherry, orange.

 

 

 

 

 

 

peppermint creams

Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks, add the sieved icing sugar, flavour and colour. Mix it, until it forms a ball (I ended up using my hands because I use gel colours and they're easier to mix in when you use your fingers). Then knead the ball until it makes a smooth paste and your colour is evenly mixed. Put the ball onto an icing sugared surface and roll it out. Cut with pastry cutters/fondant cutters of your choice (I used a flower shape for the orange creams, hearts for the cherry.

 

Emmie used stars for her peppermint creams) When they're cut, put them onto a foil covered board/tray and put in the fridge overnight. Once they've been in the fridge overnight you can take them out and present them however you like. Emmie put hers in jam jars, I've wrapped some in tissue and put them in a handmade box. Up to you! You can also decorate them at the point where you've just cut them out, you can add sugar cake decorations or impress a pattern into them by gently rolling a textured item over them or imprinting with something that will leave a nice design (some felt pens lids are quite good as they leave a star/flower design which is very cute). You can also coat them in chocolate, either entirely or just dip half in the chocolate. Very gourmet! 

I also made honeycomb. I used this recipe:

all recipes simple honeycomb

I think I overcooked the sugar and golden syrup slightly so it caught a little bit, just went a little darker than I thought it should be. It tastes lovely though! It is quick, uses very few recipes and it really is simple! 

 

When I broke my honeycomb up into smaller pieces, I had some crumbs left over so I thought "waste not, want not" and put them into a small jar. I'm sure I'll find a use for them at some point, either as an ice cream (or Frozen yoghurt) topping or something to add to some cake mix or hot chocolate!

I used this recipe for my fudge: 

elisa's famous fudge

I went through a few different recipes and settled on this one because it doesn't require a sugar thermometer. People were also saying (in the comments) how simple it was and how they'd changed the ingredients etc. I didn't include the marshmallows or pecans. I put a few cherries in instead, as I had left overs from another recipe I was doing. 

I used chocolate cherry royales for my final recipe. This recipe says to make mall balls of the biscuit and condensed milk mix but mine didn't seem to want to do that, so I spread it out into one big sheet on a tray. I then spread the chocolate on top. It looks more like a refrigerator cake but it looks quite nice. I'll reserve judgement for now.

I'll be taking these with me to Kyla's tomorrow and I will try to remember to take pictures of them when they're all cut up and on plates etc before we eat them!

Phonics and Hypnotherapy

Happy New Year everyone! 

To start 2013, I have done a two day phonics course and I've just got back from my first ever session of hypnotherapy. 

Phonics

I am registered with an educational temp agency who offer courses from time to time. Before Christmas they sent an email offering a subsidised phonics course for a new phonics scheme called Read, Write Inc. As I am currently on a placement within the Foundation Phase (3-7yrs) and plan to work in this phase as well it's very useful to have experience or knowledge of as many different phonics schemes as possible. I already have experience of Jolly Phonics and of Big Cat Phonics and I now have training on Read, Write Inc. 

Although my brain is absolutely exhausted now, I have learnt a LOT. RWI is based on 100% participation, all children participate in all of the session. They work in partners and talk to one another, discussing and practicing with one another rather than the teacher/ta singling out individuals every time. There are a lot of acronyms, signs and 'cheers'. These include: MTYT which is My Turn Your Turn, the teacher says a sound, the children repeat back, this comes with a hand gesture (teacher indicates themselves for "My Turn" and the children for "Your Turn". There is also TTYP (talk to your partner) as well as Special Friends (a digraph or trigraph, two or three letters that form a sound-ay, igh), Perfect Partner Position (shoulder to shoulder), Same Sound Different Appearance (sounds like ee, ea) 

The course covered lesson plans, how to teach the phonic sounds right up to complex words. They discussed expanding vocabulary and phonical logic and so far. It was amazing. 

The scheme also 'links' their own texts to other "real" books to expand reading. If the children are being taught "The Foolish Witch" a RWI Storybook the teacher will read Hansel and Gretel to them and they might have some picture books and other fairytale books in the reading area, all to expand their understanding, vocabulary and imagination. 

A key idea of the scheme is Fred Talk. Fred is a frog (a soft toy) who only understands Fred talk, not full words or letter names. Fred talk is phonic by phonic s-a-d rather than sad. The idea behind this is that if children understand Fred talk they can encode, if they can speak in Fred talk they can decode. If children can encode, they can read. If they can decode, they can spell. Both key objectives in education. 

RWI also runs a Keep up scheme not a catch up. And they offer an adapted programme for older children who are low ability readers. This scheme follows the same schedule as the younger scheme but uses subject matter and format more appealing to year 5/6 children, they have magazine style anthologies and modular workbooks rather than Fred and the storybooks. 

As with all these things, there will be bits of it I will be able to use more easily than others, if I were in a 'RWI school' I would be using this all the time and would be getting better and better at it. 

Hypnotherapy

The beginning of this is that I'm a bit of a sumo wrestler. I have tried various diets over the last 5 years, nothing works, or if it does it's very short term and I end up gaining more weight than I lost anyway. Very frustrating. I would like to have a gastric band, but can't afford it privately and also am worried about the risks involved. Hence: no gastric band. 

I saw an ad for Hypnotherapy Gastric Band. No surgery, no infection risk, no worries. I have been looking into it for a while and read a load of reviews and so on. I found a deal on Groupon for 3 sessions. I had my first session today. I was pretty nervous because I've never been hypnotised and I didn't know what to expect! The hypnotherapist was very nice. He did an initial consultation bit asked my weight, height, bmi, past ways of losing weight, what my weight loss goal is, any medication and all that. He explained what he thought would work best for me. He explained what the results could be expected to be. He said a realistic goal is 3 stone in 6 months. Which sounds awesome to me. It's my best friend's wedding in July so if, by June, I've lost 3 stone, I'll be a happy bunny. 

So, he then did some hypnosis. Which was bizarre. I was fully awake the whole time, at no point did he wave a pocket watch in front of my face... but I was relaxed, and chilled out and a bit 'drifty'. He spoke to me and clicked his fingers and touched my head and shoulder as he was talking. I remember him counting down from ten and then I remember him saying 7, 8, 9, 10. And I felt like I'd been asleep for a week. 

We talked a bit, he asked if I felt ok, did I remember what he'd told me? (nope!) and he explained what he would do over the next two sessions. The last thing was a quick exercise, he told me to focus on my hand (held in front of my face) and clicked his fingers a few times, moving my hand away from my face and said I'd remember everything he'd told me, as and when I needed it. 

I have my second session booked next Friday morning and I will have the 'preparation for the placebo procedure'. 

I don't know if I feel any different. But I feel very focussed and bright eyed and bushy tailed (he didn't hypnotise me to feel like a squirrel!) and we shall have to wait and see. 

I'll keep you posted. 

Projects I want to do in 2013

So...

As we know, I am very sporadic when I find a project that sparks my interest. So, I am trying to be slightly more organised and focused.

I want to make/do the following projects.

A baby mobile for my placement supervisor at school who is due a baby in April. I want to get the children to help me with it, so I have to do it in secret.

My boyfriend is moving house soon and I have a few things I want to do to make his new house more of a home. One of these is a version of a mural from Kirstie Allsopp's Vintage Home (amazing TV series and a book I got for Christmas).

Basically, you paint an image on the wall (or use pieces of wallpaper) and then you make shelves and mount them so that they are part of the branches. In Kirstie's version, the tree was made from vintage wallpaper and the shelves had wood on the front so they looked like part of a real tree, they also had a lip on the front so the things couldn't come off. The image here puts the shelves on a slant to match the branches. 

I also want to make a felt rug. Again, inspired by Kirstie Allsop. This rug is by Selena Rose and is made from magenta felt and then the shapes are punched out. I want to make a rug using circular punches to create an outline of a design. 

I also want to make some pretty candle holders from re-purposed bottles. I love bottles. I keep ones that are interesting shapes and colours and things like that. But have never known what to do with them... well, now I do! 

Take a clean, empty bottle and spray paint it in a basic colour (white, pale blue etc) let it dry properly, then tape off the parts you want to keep that colour (you could make stripes or images or spots) and then spray with another, contrasting colour. Remove the tape and voila! Stick a candle in the neck of the bottle and you're sorted. You could also use jam jars and put tea-lights inside, if doing this, don't do a base layer, tape off parts first and just use one colour. 

See how excited I am already?! 

2012 Survey stolen from Lau

2012 in survey form

This is borrowed from a friend, I enjoyed reading hers so much that I thought I'd pinch it. 

1. What did you do in 2012 that you had never done before?

This is a hard question, since I feel like a different person this year I sort of feel like I've done a lot of things I had done before, but with a new outlook on life. How's that?!

2. Did you keep your new years resolutions and will you make more for next year?

I don't even remember my new years resolutions, so I would guess I didn't keep them. I might make some for next year but I don't have much faith in myself that I will keep them!

3. How will you be spending your new years eve?

At my parent's house with my mum, dad and brother and my boyfriend, probably playing board games and drinking gin, apart from my brother who is t-total. 

4. Did anyone close to you die?

A close friend of mine died in March after a fight with an aggressive form of cancer. She fought hard and died peacefully in her sleep at home, but she is very much missed. 

5. What countries did you visit?

England, Scotland and I live in Wales. 

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?

I would like to spend more time with my boyfriend, friends and family. 

7. What date from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory and why?

There are lots of dates from the year which will stay with me, the date my youngest nephew was born, the start of my new relationship, the date my divorce was finalised, the date my friend died, lots of things for lots of different reasons. 

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I made a dress, from scratch. Doesn't sound much but it is the first project I've ever completed on a sewing machine, I wanted to give up several times but I didn't, and I wore it out, it stayed in one piece and has even survived being through the washing machine!

9. What was your biggest failure?

Everything I've done this year I have learnt from. So I'm not counting anything as a failure. 

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nope, I'm actually recovering. 

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Probably petrol to drive back and forth to see my boyfriend, friends and family. 

12. Where did most of your money go?

Petrol, vets bills for my rabbit when she needed an operation, craft stuff. 

13. What song will always remind you of 2012?

FUN. We are young. 

14. What do you wish you'd done more of?

Walking, reading, all the things I ought to do instead of sitting in front of the telly when I get home. 

15. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Sitting in front of the telly instead of going out and doing things. And moping. I wish I'd done less moping. 

16. What was you favourite TV programme?

Pointless. My mother and I love Pointless.

17. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

No. 

18. What was the best book you read?

Jodi Picoult Sing You Home. 

19. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Quite enjoying Fascinating Aida at the moment, because middle aged women swearing in song is awesome. 

20. What was your favorite film of this year?

Muppets. 

21. What did you do on your birthday?

I was on a canal boat somewhere on the Monmouth and Brecon canal with my family and boyfriend. 

22. What kept you sane?

Mostly Paul, and my family. And tea. And crafting. 

23. Who did you miss?

Paul, as he's a long way away a lot of the time. 

24. Who was the best new person that you met?

Ceri, my class teacher on placement, she's the nicest, most fun and supportive person I've come across through college and she's having a baby in April. Which is very exciting. 

25. Tell us a valuable life lesson that you learned in 2012?

S**t happens. Life sucks sometimes, but then it gets better. If bad things didn't happen you wouldn't be able to appreciate the good.The good is a million times better when you've been through the bad stuff. 

2012 has been a year where I've done quite a bit of growing up. Last Christmas my mother told me to quit feeling sorry for myself and try to get better. It felt like a bit of a slap in the face at the time, but she was SO right. Since then I've had ups and downs but I'm definitely in a much better place than I was then. I am looking forward to 2013, I'm sure that not everything will go to plan, but that's part of the fun. 

Jumper Sleeve Hot Water Bottle Cover

You can make a lovely hot water bottle cover using the sleeve of an old jumper. 

You'll need: An old jumper, some scissors, needle and thread, a hot water bottle. 

All you need to do is cut off the sleeve at the should and then measure the sleeve against your hot water bottle and cut it so that it's a little bit longer than your hot water bottle. 

Next, turn your jumper sleeve inside out and sew up the shoulder end, not the cuff. I hand sewed it but you could easily machine it for a more professional finish. 

Then turn it the right way out and put your hot water bottle inside, the cuff will fold over or gather in around the neck of the hot water bottle. 

et voila! a lovely cosy hot water bottle cover in a few minutes!