I’ve moved my blog!

Just to let you know, I moved my blog to my own site www.littlewoodlanders.com.  I was only able to move over some of my followers, so if you haven’t seen this post about our walk in the woods, then you weren’t moved!  Come on over and subscribe so you can be updated on new blog posts!

Happy New Year!

To celebrate the New Year, I’m having a giveaway on my Little Woodlanders Facebook page!  Check it out here!

Making Modelling Beeswax

This is so expensive to buy, I finally made it myself from ingredients I already have in the house.  I quartered the recipe from this blog, so my recipe was:

one bar of beeswax, which is 30g or 1oz

1/4 teaspoon lanolin

1/4 Tbsp mild olive oil

Here it is cooling in a foil lined glass bowl

Here’s a little mouse I made

Making walls

Making Beeswax Candles

We do this every year as one of our advent activities.  It’s so easy, even small children can do it!  I bought a pack of the beeswax sheets and wick from Thorne’s last year, and it has lasted us this year and will do for next year as well!  It was only about £7 ($10) for the pack, which works out really good.

First we cut the strip lengthwise so we get more out of each sheet.  You can even cut that in half to have shorter, fatter candles, which stand better than the tall skinny ones.   Cut a bit of wick a little longer than the width of the beeswax sheet.

Fold the edge over the wick.

Then start rolling it up!

My 5  year old did it herself, but it came out a little bit loose, so I unrolled some of it and redid it to make it tighter.

Smooth the edge to the rest of the candle with your finger to get it to stick.  You can warm it a tiny bit over a heater or candle, but just slightly, don’t let it melt or it will have smooth melted spots which don’t really look right.

Have fun experimenting with different sizes of beeswax sheets and seeing what size your candle comes out!

Christmassy Lamb and Rice

I make this every year around Christmastime, it has such festive flavors with the nutmeg and cinnamon!  It’s from a recipe that is meant to be soup and supposedly eaten in Palestine at Christmas, but I adapted it to be rice and meatballs so it goes further!

Ingredients:

½ onion

2 liters chicken stock

1 tsp grated nutmeg

2 tsp cinnamon

500g minced lamb

1Tbsp veg oil

1.5 cup rice

2Tbsp tomato puree/tomato paste

1. Cook onion in oil.

2. Mix lamb with spices and onion and make tiny meatballs. Fry until cooked.

3. Add to stock and tomato puree and add rice

4. Simmer 30 min or till rice is cooked.  Pay attention to the level of liquid and add water if you have to!

Homemade Christmassy Playdough

We make this playdough every year in December.   It really gets me in the festive mood!

We make red, green and white, and use crayons to add the color.  The recipe is the same as we use for all the playdough we make, which you can find here.

I give the girls Christmassy bits like pieces of old wreaths, bows, a beeswax star, and cloves to stick in and decorate with.  I also add peppermint essential oil to the green, and lots of cinnamon to some of the red.  It takes a lot though, maybe 1/4 cup to really be able to smell it.

Recipe:

½ cup flour

½ cup warm water

¼ cup salt

½ Tbsp oil

½ tsp cream of tartar

½ crayon 

Melt crayon in pot on stove with oil on medium high.  Add all other ingredients and stir continuously until mixture comes away from sides. 

Snowflake Mobile

We made some paper snowflakes according to the directions for paper cut out stars in the book All Year Round: A Calendar of Celebrations.  Since we used white paper instead of silver or gold, they came out as snowflakes instead, but I think they’d look really nice in those colors!

We made a mobile out of 2 sticks and some jute string (twine?) to hang them from.  Just cross the sticks, wind the string around it, and hang string from all 4 ends.  We used sparkly ice blue and silver thread to hang the snowflakes.  Use the thread with a needle to thread it through the top of the snowflake.