cooking, food, google+ hangouts, kids, life

Chaos writes:

I seem to spend my whole time impressing other people’s children with my culinary skills…. little do they know! Tonight’s a case in point, 10yo has a playdate. Playdate says: “mmm, delicious pizza, is this HOME-MADE?!”

“Yes” I answer, “of course it is!”
“Wow, it’s the most delicious pizza I have ever had. My mummy is so lazy, she BUYS ours”. (apologies to all mums and dads who BUY their pizzas, seriously, I do that too….)

So, this is basically the easiest thing, bung all of the ingredients (300g flour, a tsp of dried yeast, tbsp sugar, 30g butter, 2tbsp milk powder, 1 tsp salt, 420ml water) into the breadmaker at 3pm, go on the school run, come back from school run, break the pizza dough into six pieces, shape into balls.

Make three pizza (I have proper pizza bases, nice and thin and crispy) couple of spoons of pasta sauce, rip up mozzarella ball, grated cheese, couple of olives if you’ve got them….

Freeze the extra three dough shapes, and use them in about a fortnight! (kids get bored of having pizza TOO often believe it or not…)

job done. Nigella, beat that. 🙂

britmums hangout vegetarian

2014 UPDATE for this recipe…. temporary glitch with the breadmaker (it started spewing out black smoke!) so we’ve been experimenting with using flatbreads and wraps as makeshift pizza bases – and these are SUCH a winner – spoon a couple of tomato pasta sauce, mozzarella, a few slices of mushrooms and some grated cheese, and pop in a hot oven for about seven minutes – sprinkle over a handful of rocket, and TOTAL WIN!

I joined Britmums to talk about vegetarian meals, both simple and fancy – click to watch the google+ hangout above.

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

This post is part of the #FaveFamilyRecipes Competition with BritMums and Tilda Rice. Every pack sold will provide a meal to an expectant mum in need in support of the World Food Programme’s Mothers Helping Mothers initiative in Bangladesh

crafts, create, key stage 2, kids

Chaos writes:

We belatedly wanted to tell you about the fabulous new Children’s Art School which opened just in time for Half Term. 8yo went along for the two day course, and absolutely LOVED it! (aimed at 7-12 year olds, this was just perfect for him)

The theme was ‘Objects in Motion’ – They played drawing games, looking at how colour can create and show motion, they made mobiles, and over the second day worked on them further.

As the youngest of two very creative children, it was nice for him to be the focus of the artistic attention, and he is so incredibly proud of the work he produced.

The venue by all accounts, inspired the children beyond the realms of their usual classrooms, and Katriona, the course leader was both encouraging and fun to work with.

There are more of these holiday courses planned for the Christmas break… perfect!

To find out more, visit www.childrensartschool.org
And follow them on twitter too @ChildrensArtSch

baking, cooking, cooking with kids, crafts, kids

Chaos writes:

So, as these boys have got bigger, so the cakes have got simpler….

yet… THIS cake has so far been the most popular amongst 8yo’s peers…. “Wow! Your Mum Is AMAZing” apparently, so I will be attempting an alternative version of this next week for 10yo’s birthday sleepover – so, see, I do make an effort, and don’t always BUY the cool cakes that turn up in our house!

I thank the invention of Pinterest for the inspiration, such a great place to pull together visual triggers!

Any ideas of what we could do differently next time? Perhaps jelly babies instead of Smarties? what would we use to hold them all in, instead of #Fairtrade KitKats??? Answers on a postcard, (or below if you like!)

Other ideas for the top, not so colourful, but we DO like the odd Malteser in our house too, especially now they are Fairtrade!

Click here to read more about Laura Dockrill and Maltesers (the calming of the Angrosaurus that is ‘Darcy Burdock’) and for a chance to win a signed book!

Click here to read more about CAKE! And Fairtrade Coffee….

crafts, create, kids

Chaos writes:

Half term fun with Fimo – how simple is this! On the way back from the Canal Museum this week, we called into my all time fave shop (well, I was an art student, what do you expect….) And 9yo picked himself a couple of pressies (for being good all week….) – Three packets of Fimo, and some googly eyes!

The chap in the London Graphic Centre at Charing Cross was such a sweetheart too, he kindly offered to bubble-wrap 9yo’s plaster cast of the canal bridge plaque he’d made at the Canal Museum. #hero

We positioned the eyes, took a photo, removed the eyes, baked the characters in the oven, and with our trusty glue gun, stuck them back on, using our photo for position-reference! – Job done!

cooking, crafts, key stage 2, kids

Chaos writes:

What a lovely half term we’ve had – 9yo and I went to the Canal Museum over near Charing Cross. He’s in year 5 now, Key Stage 2, and studying Victorians… they could not have been more helpful and enthusiastic, John showed us how to make icecream, and Jay took us on a canal boat trip, which 9yo LOVED – so inspiring, he beamed the whole time we were there, and learned SUCH a lot – I cannot recommend this enough to you!

crafts, create, key stage 2, kids

Chaos writes:

So, a couple of years back, we decided to make some Papier–mâché hot air balloons… that’s how it started out, all good intentions. And I wrote about it then over on TheGoodlifebloggers.com.

that swinging meteorite

So 7yo being the possibly more crafty of the two (yep, the 5yo is crafty in other ways, say no more) got stuck right in….

paper mache glue1) We made the glue: mixed one cup of flour, and two cups of water, and a teaspoon of cinnamon (that way it smells nice too)  2) We ripped the newspaper into strips

2) We pulled each strip through the ‘glue’ and let it drip back into the bowl (AND all over the garden too, much to SAHD’s delight)

3) We layered and layered until the balloon (OH, I didn’t mention that bit did I? – blow up a balloon, and balance it on a bowl to stop it blowing or rolling away) was covered in paper mache.

Then we had to leave it to dry for a day (which is where 5yo lost interest, so I’d say stick with one layer if you’re not bothered about keeping the masterpiece for ever!) We learnt an important lesson here, on Day 2 when we went back to add another layer, 7yo’s balloon had shrivelled, but we layered on some more paper mache….

MISTAKE, with no balloon inside to hold it’s shape this happened… It collapsed.

Not to be out-witted by the wilted balloon, 7yo spun it round (phew, was waiting for a tantrum) and said he would make it into a meteorite – which is what he did!  Job done….

Thanks to Maggy at RedTedArt for continuing to encourage us to ‘get crafty!’

7yo with his ‘meteorite punch-bag’ hanging on the washing line
baking, cooking, create, halloween, kids

Chaos writes:

So, I normally leave any unnecessary “decorated” cake making to neighbours (!) – saving my skills for special occasions such as Birthdays, and um, Birthdays.

So, chancing upon some amazingly simple cupcakes today, in our local cafe – the Gooseberry Bush, I thought I’d share these with those of you who can’t make it to Wimbledon in the next few days!

Be inspired, be VERY inspired! x