All the little birdies

Today I have been in the garden taking pictures of my updated birds. They looked lovely in the summer sunshine on my new tree prop and the pictures on Folksy have been updated too!
Dare I mention the C word - but I have also made my first prototype Christmas decoration for this year as well. There I said it!!!!

go tweet, tweet, tweet

Last Friday, Studio Tails blog featured my felt  jammy dodgers in their Fabulous Friday Folksy Finds - so thank-you very much Heather and Gary!

Bye bye birdie

For the last few weeks of term the school has been having a 'Blackbird Watch'. A pair of blackbirds built a nest outside the library window and the children and staff having been watching them hatch their eggs. It has been brilliant watching them (both adults and children) stand so still, be very quiet and just look.

Blackbird Watch in action!

We have been amazed by how hard the parents work feeding their four chicks, how bright the yellow eye is on the Mr Blackbird, how quickly they grew in two weeks and just how do they fit in the nest!
The last day was spent waiting for the biggest two to fledge, they spent most of the day it seemed perched on the nest edge but never being quite brave enough. I have no doubt that when we return to school after the Easter holidays, the nest will be empty, but you never know the parents may return and lay a second clutch.

2 weeks old now!

In honour of their hard work - and I thought I worked hard - I have redesigned my little birds with bright yellow eyes for the blackbirds and beautiful tail feathers.

blackbird needle book

Now to research the questions the children have asked and I didn't know the answers for..
Why are blackbird's eggs blue?
and
How do they make their eggs blue?
Do you know the answers?

Indoor Outdoor

The past few months in Somerset have been somewhat soggy, so the forest school area quickly became a mud bath and we made the decision to stay out of it. Some days the rain was so torrential that we even decided to stay inside as the children would have been soaked in seconds.


Simple bird cakes

So we had some indoor outdoor forest school sessions. Our theme was inspired by garden birds, and to get us started we played a great game on the RSPB website.  Rook's Binocular Birdwatch helped us to learn a few of the birds we might see in a fun and engaging way.
We then made our own paper bird planes using the template from Nature Detectives, making sure we used the right colours that we had learnt with Rook.
Another great session was making simple bird feeders. Made by mixing melted lard with bird seed. A length of wool or string had a big fat knot - the bigger the better - was used to join the ends together to make a loop. The mix was pushed into a plastic cup, The knot was buried well into the mix and then put into the fridge to set.

Packing the mix.

Another activity which engrossed us for ages was building our own bird's nests using only materials we could find around school.

A beautiful nest

Everyone agreed that it wasn't as easy as we thought it would be! Birds only have their beaks and we have two hands!


A nest in a bush - with everything carefully arranged.

We also of course spotted birds around the school - and to our amazement discovered a blackbird nest right outside the library window! We have now started watching the nest, and even though there are lots of people around Mrs Blackbird is still sitting in it. Now if only Springwatch could send us a film crew!

Taken a distance - Mrs Blackird

I T was bad!

Little birdies

At the end of January I filled in my tax return on-line, and a few days later I received an email telling me there was a problem detailed in the attached file. And yes, dear reader I opened it :(
I immediately did the thing Mr P-L told me not to do when I spoke to him on the phone later. I shut the computer down - apparently it embeds the nasty bit in the boot system and makes it much more difficult to get rid off.
Luckily, Mr P-L is a computer whizz-kid and could get rid of the nasty bug, rebuild nearly everything and make the computer even better, stronger, faster and it didn't even cost six million dollars!!! I know, the last reference really dates me, for my younger reader, it is similar to a 'vintage' tv programme's opening credits 'The Six Million Dollar Man'.
But, it all took time. So, for several very long weeks, where the younger members of this household berated me and complained about having to change all their passwords, we were without a computer.
The point to my long tale is - if you get such an email - don't open it no matter how real it looks and don't turn the computer off.

blue tit

In the meanwhile, I have been up to all sorts of things, including feeding the birds in my garden. I have a bird feeding station outside my kitchen window and I love watching the birds. Last week, there was an enormous kerfuffle in the garden and son went to investigate. He told me a large pigeon had pinned down a small brown bird and the little bird was squealing. When he opened the back door, the little bird managed to fly away and the 'pigeon' gave him a glare before it too flew off. I asked him if the pigeon was brown with speckles and had orange eyes, which it had, and we then decided a sparrowhawk was more likely!!!

blackbird

All the visitors inspired me to make some little felt birds to remind me of my garden - so I have made a robin, a blackbird, a chaffinch and a blue tit. They will be in my Folksy shop when I have finished writing this blog post!

chaffinch

robin

Bathrooms, Blog and Birdhouses

This is my list for my non-teaching days this week! I haven't blogged for a while (two weeks!) but life has been busy with everyday things. So

Bathrooms - cleaned!
Blog - in progress and
Birdhouses ...

WiP

I love watching the birds at the bird feeder when I'm in the kitchen, and yesterday as I was washing up I wondered if we'd have any nests this year. We usually have starlings in the gap under the roof by Pickle-Lily's bedroom and I have got Mr P-L to put up some birdhouses as well. Thinking about all of this got my mind whirring and I started drawing as I was waiting for the children to come out of school, and after a few prototypes, here are the first felt birdhouses! I've put ribbon loops on as I thought they'd look pretty as a hanging twig decoration with Easter on the way, and I might make a few with lavender in as well. I'll see where the inspiration takes me.
Have a good week-end x

Winter Warmer

... and bottomless pit filler!
In my never ending quest to fill the bottomless pit that is my teenage son, this week I created -

Zap Pudding

This is a simple sponge pudding, like a steamed pudding that can be made in minutes.

You need ...

110g of butter or margarine

110g caster sugar

110g self raising flour

2 eggs



Before



Mix these altogether - the all in one creamed method.

Grease four large cups or mini plastic pudding bowls (I got mine from Lakeland), put a large spoonful of jam or syrup or marmalade in the bottom of each one and then share the sponge mixture between them.

Cover with microwave film, and then

ZAP in the microwave.

Mine take 1 minutes 20 seconds in a 800W / E microwave.

Leave for at least a minute before eating as the jam is HOT!

You can substitute two tablespoons of flour for cocoa powder for chocolate pudding, and I'm going to added currants to the next batch.

After



Jam sponge with custard

I'm sharing this on Handmade Monday this week, I wonder if there will be any more yummy recipes on there? It is also the 100th Handmade Monday this week, so pop over to join in the fun! A big thank-you to Wendy for hosting every week.
Inspired by the snowy weather I've made some felt mug hugs ready for Valentines or Mothering Sunday, and I'm hoping to share them with you as a tutorial soon. I've also been watching the birds from the kitchen window and the bird feeder has been mobbed at times. I've discovered I am no wildlife photographer, as every time I've tried to take a photo, they've flown away! We have had some new visitors to the garden, a group of redwings, very pretty to watch.


redwing

As you can see most of the snow has now melted, leaving our lawn looking like a swamp, but more snow is forecast tomorrow...