The Tell Me About Yourself Award

So I finally got around to coming up with some fascinating things about myself to share for the Versatile Blogger Award, and now I've been tagged with another award and I need to think of some more interesting things! I hope that they are interesting enough, you may notice that most of these things relate to my life pre-children, perhaps I was more exciting then!

I have kindly been tagged by Trouble Doubled, so I would like to say thank you very much, it still surprises me that people other than my Mum and immediate family are looking at my blog! I need to reveal seven things about myself and then pass the award on to another fifteen bloggers. So without further ado:

1 - I love painting my nails, although these days I don't have the time to sit around and wait for them to dry. When I was a teenager I had such a large collection of colours that I could paint half of each fingernail a different colour and still have some left over.

2 - I studied German at university and spent a year living in Germany. I still never fully got to grips with those adjective endings though.

3 - Most of the books on my bookshelf are childrens' books that I've read so many times I practically know them by heart. Enid Blyton features heavily, also the What Katy Did books and the Blue Door Theatre books.

4 - Although I now have a smartphone, I still feel a bit of nostalgia for my old pink Motorola phone. Things were so much simpler then. Also no-one would ever have tried to steal it.

5 - I can play music by ear well enough that I can pick out simple tunes on childrens' toys. When Harry was a baby I borrowed for him an Octotunes from the toy library and entertained him by playing songs from In The Night Garden on it. (Search for Octotunes on YouTube and you will see that I am not alone).

6 - At school, I won a prize for RE. This was less due to my interest in the subject and more down to my ability to memorise facts and regurgitate them into an essay during an exam. In this case, a long forgotten yet extensive knowledge of the rituals and stages of the Hajj pilgrimage.

7 - I can touch type at about 85 words per minute. This is how I have time to write a blog.

I'm not very good at tagging anyone in these things. So I will say what I usually say, if you would like to take part then please consider yourself tagged!

10 activities to do with toddlers and bubblewrap

When we last moved house, the price that we paid for removals included all packaging materials. Imagine my delight when we were presented with not one but two giant rolls of bubblewrap. Of course some of it was used to package our precious possesions, but we had a good amount left over. Not to mention the fact that along with jiffy bags and nice cardboard boxes it is something which I hoard anyway, so I always have a generous amount hanging around.

So I've put together ten crafts and activities for toddlers using bubblewrap.

• The most obvious thing to do - pop the bubbles. My toddler couldn't manage it with his fingers, but if you put it on the floor and jump on it you can make some satisfying pops! Or you could try hitting it with a toy hammer or pricking with a cocktail stick.

• Make an aquarium picture. Use the bubble side of bubblewrap to print with blue paint onto blue paper or card. For ours we glued on fish cut out from silver paper, and used shredded green paper for plants.

• Make a bubblewrap crocodile using a cardboard tube.

• Make a hanging jellyfish with bubblewrap tentacles. 

• Make a bubblewrap bubblewrap pillow and fill it with interesting things.

• Make printing blocks with shapes cut from thick cardboad and covered in bubblewrap. This is a great idea for themed wrapping paper. You can also take a cardboard tube (a thicker one is best, like from cling film or tin foil) or an old rolling pin and cover with bubblewrap, paint, and roll over the paper.

• Paint and collage onto it. If you press tissue paper over the painted bubblewrap, the coloured circles will show through and make a really colourful piece of art work.

• Make a popping game to teach numbers, letters, shapes...anything really! You just write onto or behind the bubbles and then get your toddler to pop them as you name them. This is a good activity for the bubblewrap that has larger bubbles.

• Cut the bubblewrap into strips and use it to decorate a carwash. You can go small, and make walls out of Duplo, or go large and use a big cardboard box. Just fasten long strips over one side so that they hang down for the cars/trains/people to go through. You can use bubblewrap on the floor of the carwash too to represent the bubbles.

• For an unusual edible craft - use bubblewrap to make toppers for fairy cakes. Such a simple idea, and they look so good!

Children should always be supervised when playing with bubblewrap.

The Versatile Blogger Award

As part of this award, I've been asked to come up with some facts about myself. So here goes!

1 - I had two weddings (to the same person!)

2 - I hate having my hair cut. I pretend that it is because of the cost, but actually I just hate having it done. I then spend a lot of time complaining that my hair is too long and sheds everywhere.

3 - I dream of a minimalistic lifestyle living on a canal boat, but I'm too much of a hoarder.

4 - I like collecting things, but they have to be free. Examples - shells, sea glass, promotional postcards, stickers, confetti and bubbles from weddings.

5 - I am quite well travelled, in my life pre-children that is. In 2007 I visited nearly every continent -  Europe (Belgium), Africa (Egypt), Asia (Singapore), Australia (all over) and America (Chicago).

6 - My first job was in a library and I loved it. I wouldn't be surprised if I find myself working in a library again at some point in the future.

7 - I can count to ten in Japanese

The end of touch typing?

When I was 16, I had a lovely long summer break after finishing my GCSEs. I wasn't a typical teenager, because in a rather geeky fashion I chose to spend some of my free time teaching myself to touch type. Back in 1996 there were not nearly as many home computers around as there are now, and I had barely even heard of the internet. But in the years that have passed since, I have repeatedly congratulated myself on my foresight, because I have benefited a lot from this skill. From typing essays at college and at university, writing documentation for work right through to writing this blog, I can now type very fast and fairly accurately.

But now I've found that on gadgets with a touchscreen keypad it is impossible to touch type. When you touch type, you need to rest your fingers on the home keys, and you can't do this on a touchscreen because it will register the key press. Also the letters are often too small to hold your fingers over comfortably anyway. So it's back to typing with one or two fingers again. The reason that I have resisted the lure of a tablet style touchscreen device is because I find it so much easier to write using a keyboard. But I can see that in a few years time everything will be touchscreen and keyboards may well become obsolete, along with typewriters.

So is there any point in still learning to touch type?

Homemade embroidered felt numbers

I love crafting with felt, it's so easy to work with and you can buy felt in such lovely bright colours. I made these embroidered felt numbers partly to help Harry with number recognition, and partly because I thought they'd be fun to make! They were very quick to put together once I'd cut out the felt and I had fun coming up with different ways to decorate them.

To make a template for the felt numbers I chose a font that I liked (Verdana) in Word and enlarged it on the screen. Then I just traced over the numbers onto scrap paper. The numbers are made from two pieces of felt the same colour cut to the shape of the number, one side is embellished and then they are sewn together. To embellish them I used a variety of sequins, beads and embroidery in contrasting colours. Because they are tactile you can run your fingers over them to trace the shape.

You could also add magnets to the back so that they can go on the fridge or radiator, or you could back them with cardboard to make them sturdier. I'm hoping that they will be useful to teach Harry to recognise numbers, and for counting games - for example putting them in the correct order or gathering together groups of items to match the number.

Harry's first letter to Father Christmas

I remember writing to Father Christmas when I was little, and how magical it was to get a letter back. These days the procedure is the exactly the same.

Luckily Harry is still easily pleased. He has drawn what he would like from Father Christmas this year - a pink train. He has also managed an 'H' for Harry. I added in the crucial address details before we put it in the envelope!

I really hope that Father Christmas has the time to write back!

Easy lemon drizzle cake

I hadn't made this cake before, in fact I had to go out and purchase a loaf tin to bake it in (with hindsight, a lemon juicer would also have been a useful purchase).I found the recipe on BBC Good Food, and I chose it because it didn't have too many ingredients and it looked quite easy to make. It is rather yummy, if I say so myself.

Ingredients:

• 225g unsalted butter, softened
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• finely grated zest 1 lemon
• 225g self-raising flour

Drizzle:

• juice 11⁄2 lemon
• 85g caster sugar

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Beat together 225g softened unsalted butter and 225g caster sugar until pale and creamy, then add 4 eggs, one at a time, slowly mixing through. Sift in 225g flour, then add the finely grated zest of 1 lemon and mix until well combined. Line a loaf tin (8 x 21cm) with greaseproof paper, then spoon in the mixture and level the top with a spoon.
2. Bake for 45-50 mins until a thin skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. While the cake is cooling in its tin, mix together the juice of 1 1/2 lemons and 85g caster sugar to make the drizzle. Prick the warm cake all over with a skewer or fork, then pour over the drizzle - the juice will sink in and the sugar will form a lovely, crisp topping. Leave in the tin until completely cool, then remove and serve. Will keep in an airtight container for 3-4 days, or freeze for up to 1 month.

To avoid waste, I only used one lemon - the zest for the cake and the juice for the drizzle. To make up for less lemon juice in the drizzle I used just 50g sugar which made the cake plenty lemony enough for us.