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Really fun ghostly coconut flapjacks for Halloween parties – and you’d never guess that these are vegan too!
Watch the whole video to find out more, oh, so don’t forget to click here http://bit.ly/1OVHKCD to subscribe for more Halloween fun, like our milk carton skull lanterns…
How to make a Halloween Leaf Wreath
Thank you for visiting, this marvellous craft can now be found HERE
Pen for writing on conkers – available here in the UK, here in the US
Ali also writes at aGreenerLifeforus.com
And at 14:50 in the afternoon of Saturday 25 June 2016 I shall be joined in stage by some rather lovely friends – we’ll be talking about Instagram,
Our team:
@incredibusy – that’s me, Ali
@redtedart – Maggy www.redtedart.com
@coldatnight – Sian www.coldatnight.co.uk
@paintsewgluechew – Diana www.paintsewgluechew.com
I’ve known Maggy for a long time, we are good friends and neighbours with similar creative and social media interests, and we also curate a craft blog together, click here.
Our instagram feeds are similar, yet quite different – I think this is perhaps due to the age gap between our families? And Maggy crafts and creates a WHOLE lot more than I do… Plus, I spend time creating and curating content for my clients’ instagram feeds too, so we perhaps don’t dedicate the same time to to our accounts as each other! (I’ll be wearing a couple of them – www.Po-Zu.com and www.BryonyandCo.com so make sure you follow their instagram feeds for me!!)
I was late to instagram, well, two and a half years ago I didn’t have a phone that supported the app, and experimented with my iPad – if you scroll back through my account, you’ll see I was having fun with filters and frames, and although I cringe at some of these shots, I’m loath to delete photos, as each tell #littlestoriesofmylife – and my family’s life.
This garners a couple of questions – do you delete old photos?? and do you feature photos of yourself and your kids??
Maggy and I both share an interest in themed photo challenges – we co-host #KidsCrafts101 and #SGIEW – two weekly hashtagged instagram challenges which we’d love you to join in with – go find the hashtags, and see what this week’s challenge is, we’d love you to join in!
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/kidscrafts101/
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/sgiew/
For me, this has been an amazing way of finding new accounts to follow and connect with, it’s also been a wonderful prompt for me more recently, to be creative, as my own boys have grown older, they are less inclined to ‘craft’ yet have really enjoyed creating stop motion animation – so we’ve been experimenting with that too!
It’s about evolution – your own evolution, perhaps as your kids get older, or indeed, just looking back at how your feed has developed and changed. I don’t particularly have a theme or a style, and neither does Maggy – however, if we turn to our other panelists, and look at their instagram feeds, you will see that both @coldatnight and @paintsewgluechew have definite styles, and consistent feeds…
I’ve invited Diana and Sian along to #BML16 to share their own experiences of instagram, so if you’re lucky enough to catch them ‘live’ on Saturday, you’ll find out more about them – needless to say, I hadn’t met them before the introduction of instagram in my life, and now have a little look at their feeds every morning, to see what they’ve been up to, and to say hello, good morning, and sometimes good night too! I’ve been to stay at Sian’s amazing place, Fforest {luxury camping and outdoor living at its very best} and would recommend it, an amazing space – and great for the kids….
So – at BritMumsLive we’ll be focusing on:
How each of the panel have grown their channel, their instagram philosophies and working practices
How they make their feed look fantastic plus any photo styling tips/props
We’ll be asking the panel to share their favourite instagrammer/s…
Their best tips on gaining followers. When they were growing what strategies did they use?
What they use to edit pictures
Their use of hashtags, and favourites
Which Instagram communities they love
Here’s a link to each of our panel’s most recent photo:
A photo posted by Maggy Woodley (@redtedart) on
A photo posted by Diana || Design – Make – Blog (@paintsewgluechew) on
More reading on Fforest:
fforest-gather-2016
Chaos writes:
So who knew, pop-up books have lasting appeal! We received a couple of lovely things through the post this week, one of which was the THE SUPER SCIENCE BOOK by Kate Petty and Jennie Maizels.
Well, 10yo couldn’t put it down, initially he rushed to look through it, turning each page with a smile, and a twist of this, a turn of that, as each spread revealed with pop-up wizardry and fabulous illustrations, the principles of Physical Science.
An hour later, he was back, pouring over each little illustration and
Molecules, atoms, elements and compounds have never been so much fun. This is a fantastic book, whether your child wants to be a scientist or not – he or she will love it!
BritMums Live 2015: Social Media Optimisation – doing it all at once (yes, you must!)
Facebook tweaks its algorithm and suddenly nobody sees yours posts anymore. Pinterest fiddles with its feed and your referrals go from 1,000 to 100. It’s no longer good enough to be excellent on one social platform; you need to be working them all.
Social Media Optimisation
Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, Twitter all at once? Yes, you must! The why and how
Social media is constantly changing. We don’t *own* our social media platforms, third parties do. To effectively use social media for your blog or small business, you must keep up and evolve with the platforms. Myself, Ali Clifford; and Maggy Woodley, Red Ted Art presented a session at BritMums Live, 2015 focusing on Social Media Optimisation.
We shared our strategies and talked about how to cope with the various platforms, use the right tools for the job and make the time you spend on social work for you. CLICK HERE for a slide show of the presentation
BritMums Live! is the UK’s biggest and best social media conference and blogger event, where lifestyle bloggers and social influencers gather to meet and socialise, network with brands, improve their skills, and fire their creativity. BritMums Live has grown out of BritMums, the UK’s largest parent blogger community, made up of nearly 8,000 influential bloggers who create content about lifestyle, crafting, food, health, travel, education, tech, style and more.
I have always loved my Mum’s old typewriter – it was amazing to us to see her tapping away at full pace, she filled us full of wonder, glancing quickly at her shorthand notes and slamming the carriage return.
The boys and I have been over to her house to start clearing as she’s moved to a care home closer to us, and they’ve delighted in the old Imperial’s discovery and have been typing amusing sentences to each other – and I’m so glad it’s in my life, as look, what an amazing photoshoot prop for my full collection of Tribe Originals! Pictured here are my new Maverick sunglasses, Coast watch which we are giving to Daddy for his birthday next week, sssshh, and Oak Wooden Cardholder which you can **WIN** {click here}.
Responsibly sourced, Tribe Originals are also offering an exclusive 25% OFF on their Wood Wallets (one of which you can win here)
Wood Tribe Originals Sunglasses – just love all of the designs, Maverick is so ‘me’ though – retro-chic!
Wood Watches – loads to choose from – pictured here, the Coast Hybrid Watch combines a tough stainless steel casing with real wood dials, to create a new generation in watch styles. We love how each dial is totally unique and will tell its own story…..
and Hollow Balsa Wood Surfboards – for 25% OFF use the code **incredibusy** at the checkout until 29th August 2015 here http://tribehq.co.uk/
Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and FunCraftsKids.com and is a lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!
The Penguins of Madagascar at Chessington World of Adventures
We’ve been fans of Chessington World of Adventures for several years now, and were super-excited to have the chance to stay at the hotel and take a look at their new Penguin themed family rooms, and to check out their Year of the Penguins’ spectacular.
With the Penguins of Madagasar movie out 30th March 2015 on DVD and Blu-ray, Chessington has a whole host of penguin fun to celebrate at the theme park as part of their ‘Year of the Penguins’.
They even have a ‘Penguins Live’ Show based om DreamWorks Animation’s PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR which is a singing and dancing spectacular indeed!
So Chessington’s Year of the Penguins features:
A new Penguin Bay and the arrival of six new Humboldt Penguins in April for the new Penguin Presentation (too cute!)
NEW Penguins of Madagascar themed hotel rooms at the Safari Hotel
The new Penguins of Madagascar Mission: Treetop Hopper ride experience
A celebration of the partnership with DreamWorks Penguins of Madagascar and the new show: Penguins of Madagascar Live! Operation Cheezy Dibbles!
It is running for the whole year and tickets start at £26pp for the day click here
If you have a chance to visit, or indeed stay at the hotel, your kids won’t be disappointed – the rooms really are rather special and the boys couldn’t wait to get into their bunk beds. On a grown-up note, I have never had such a comfy night’s sleep in a hotel, and to wake up to see wild safari animals roaming around outside our window was really quite special!
Disclosure: We were invited to this event courtesy of Dreamworks and Chessington World of Adventures for the purposes of this review and it was my birthday too. 🙂
Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and FunCraftsKids.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!
THE PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR – ON DVD AND BLU-RAY
If you’re a fan of the Madagascar Movies, you’ll be familiar with the penguin characters Skipper andKowalski so in their own fun film, The Penguins of Madagascar.
The film is available on DVD and Blu-ray and opens with a young Skipper, Kowalski and Rico leaving the other penguins to rescue a runaway egg. This egg hatches (hoping this doesn’t spoil the surprise!) into cute little Private, and they set off together on their adventures as one big happy family!
There was much hilarity at the penguins addiction to Cheezy Dibbles – a rather brightly coloured orange cheesey puff snack (the kids couldn’t wait to act out the scenes!).
And there is also a rather hilarious character Dr Octavius Brine (part man, part evil octopus) and his plans to take his revenge on the world voiced by John Malkovich.
The film is action packed, and as a grown up, you really have to pay attention to keep up, yet the kids LOVED it, and can’t wait to watch it all over again now they have it on DVD.
Penguins of Madagascar is out on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD on 30th March from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and FunCraftsKids.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!
Share your Sheep Crafts photos on Instagram, or over on Twitter, using the hashtag #GetYourCraftOn, add your link to the linky below, and we’ll pick the best ones to feature here on the host blog the following month. (and on our Pinterest board too)
The photos you share do not have to be of the finished article – let’s see your work in progress as well as your completed masterpieces! Anything related to the #Sheep crafts or #SeantheSheep (! if you’re Aardman animation fan) topic. Just tag them with #GetYourCraftOn and follow and tag us too so we know you’re taking part) Our team’s four Instagram accounts are: @incredibusy (that’s me!), @redtedart @bluebearwood &@missielizzie.
This month’s Craft Challenge is #Sheep #Crafts. #GetYourCraftOn, and add your link to the linky below and check out our Pinterest board too.
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The creative team have gone to town with the most fabulous snowfall covering the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, we were blown away with just how beautiful the Hogwarts castle model is covered in a blanket of snow.
It was our first visit to the studio tours, so we felt really honoured to see the castle’s festive makeover up close as well as the iconic Great Hall decorated for Christmas – the two long dining tables are dressed for this seasonal feast with turkeys, hams, fruit, vegetables (ENORMOUS bowls of peas!) and snow cakes. 
So be quick, and treat someone special to a gift ticket this Christmas, the perfect present for the ultimate Harry Potter fan! Hogwarts in the Snow runs from Friday 14th November – Sunday 1st February 2015. Book online at www.wbstudiotour.co.uk
Incidentally, the shop is AMAZING – we spent ages in there, and it’s as beautifully merchandised as some of the sets themselves – We loved the vast array of clothing available and we treated 12yo to a really cool Gryffindor™ Hooded Sweatshirt.
And the grown-up bearded one bought a rather stylish Hufflepuff™ V-Neck School Cardigan – suits him!
Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!
