Bideford Heritage Day

I completely forgot to blog about this!
My town had another Heritage Day
this time celebrating our Elizabethan heritage.

My son made a ruff with this lady
and proudly wore it for the rest of the day!
I love that he still loves dressing up,
as a toddler he was always dressed up as something/someone, most often spiderman
and as he's got older he has got more creative in his choices .

we found out about lots of different aspects of Elizabethan life
we played the first ever patented board game and other games
we learned about what and how they cooked
and of course what they wore

both my children tried on the outfits
The boy was a bit shocked to hear that boys around his age still wore dresses!

look at this face of determination!
There was a lovely lady who showed us how to prepare the wool for spinning
and let him have a go at carding and then producing a yarn by hand he loved it!
She also showed us the different plants used to dye fabrics
and my favorite, buttons of the period!
There was also lots of ladies spinning wool which sparked my daughter's interest
as she has kept my Grandma's old spinning wheel
maybe one day she will learn how to use it.

It was a lovely way to spend a few hours with my children and it is so nice that they are both so interested in history and of course the heritage of our home town.
Bideford has a really interesting history which i've only really come to appreiciate as i've gotten older, it is the same way with my own family history, my Mum was always really interested and has done a lot of work tracing our family tree as did my Dad's Mum, i was never interested at all and pretty rude saying "who care's that's boring" but now i find it all fascinating!

button peppermint creams

i have been asked for a recipe for these peppermint cream buttons

to be honest it was so simple
i don't think you could count it as a recipe!

I bought a box of royal icing sugar mixed it with a little
pre-boiled warm water and some peppermint essence
to make a stiff paste {if the paste is too wet add more sugar}

then i tried it and added more
peppermint essence to my taste,

then I seperated the paste into three bowls
and mixed in some food colourings,
then i rolled out the paste and cut out the buttons
with pop {soda} bottle tops i made the button holes
with a cotton wool bud {q-tip} with the cotton ends cut off,

then i left them to dry out in a tupperware container
turning regularly till they were dried out.

then i ate far too many of them!!!

and sent some to Kat :)

there are loads of recipes on the web for peppermint creams
but this one was so easy i didn't bother trying any of the others!

crafter...oo button swap

the crafter...oo button swap

i was lucky enough to be partnered with the lovely Kat
of domestic-housekat-blog

http://domestic-housekat.blogspot.com/

here is what she sent me - a fancy jewellery roll

containing rather fancy jewellery style buttons and buckles

plus a cute rabbit made from perler beads :)

oh . . . erm . . . and these rather scrummy chocolates, which i hid away in my craft room
and didn't share a single one with my family!

*******
below is what i sent {very late} to Kat

a selection of british hand-made buttons

a. beautiful dorset button from bigbluebed http://www.etsy.com/shop/bigbluebed
b. recycled vintage embroidered linen by me
c. cute designer buttons from shedraws http://www.folksy.com/shop/SheDraws
d. fantastic fimo loveheart buttons from Lilley's buttons http://www.folksy.com/shops/lilley

it was hard to give these away
but hey what a good excuse to buy more!

a selection of buttons from my button mountain

and my favourite thing i made

homemade peppermint cream buttons

they do look a bit like play-doh
but they tasted good
honest!

all wrapped up in a Habitat button pot.

It was a really fun swap and i'm glad Kat was patient with me i was sooo late sending it as things have been a little crazy round here - we got a new puppy :) i picked him up the day before my Ofsted inspection and i'd been running around like a blue arsed fly trying to get my paperwork in order but i got a really good report so was very very happy :D