She also has other recipes you can watch- have a look at these Story highlights here
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17853143840786803/
I gathered a bag of lovely shiny conkers from an old tree in Little Baddow when I want to watch my friend Lara's piano recital.
I mentioned the Book corner I have been helping with at school.
This weekend, I made some model fishes for the window.
Using some scrap packing- a plastic milk bottle and a nobbly cheese packet, I cut a flat rectangle from each. Using some Sharpie pens (I had a skinny black pen and a green and blue thick pen), I drew some fish and coloured them in. I cut them out with scissors and made a hole with my eyelet setter and threaded through silver thread.
I liked the idea of using the milk bottles and plastic packaging for the fish because it would give the effect of stained glass with the light shining through. It would make them more durable also.
We stuck them to the window with sellotape. The teacher is going to ask the children to create more to cover the top window.
Want to see where they are going?
What is Earth Day?
I have borrowed 2 sections from the official Earth Day website.
Senator Gaylord Nelson, the junior senator from Wisconsin, had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States. Then in January 1969, he and many others witnessed the ravages of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, Senator Nelson wanted to infuse the energy of student anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a teach-in on college campuses to the national media, and persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair. They recruited Denis Hayes, a young activist, to organize the campus teach-ins and they choose April 22, a weekday falling between Spring Break and Final Exams, to maximize the greatest student participation.
Recognizing its potential to inspire all Americans, Hayes built a national staff of 85 to promote events across the land and the effort soon broadened to include a wide range of organizations, faith groups, and others. They changed the name to Earth Day, which immediately sparked national media attention, and caught on across the country. Earth Day inspired 20 million Americans — at the time, 10% of the total population of the United States — to take to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate against the impacts of 150 years of industrial development which had left a growing legacy of serious human health impacts. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment and there were massive coast-to-coast rallies in cities, towns, and communities.
Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national and local policy changes.
Now, the fight for a clean environment continues with increasing urgency, as the ravages of climate change become more and more apparent every day.
As the awareness of our climate crisis grows, so does civil society mobilization, which is reaching a fever pitch across the globe today. Disillusioned by the low level of ambition following the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and frustrated with international environmental lethargy, citizens of the world are rising up to demand far greater action for our planet and its people.
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***EDITED!!! Sorry,not sure where the photos vanished to!!!!***
I saw the most wonderful craft activity for making your own Advent calendar of sorts on Instagram from a maker called Amber Lu who posts at @tulips_and_a_toolbox . It involved constructing your own cardboard forest of Christmas trees with a wooden base. I was itching to give it a go and decided to adapt it so you don't have to use wood IF, like me, you are not handy with a saw and wood or don't have the money to spend on a piece of wood. I really recommend the maker as there are loads of eco-crafts on there!
I wrote my own instructions for my neighbour to follow with their kids as I adapted the idea slightly to give measurements etc, but remember, this is not my idea and I was able to follow her post with very limited instructions from the very clear pictures she shared! My instructions are probably very over complicated but I thought it might be a good reading and doing activity for the kids at school!
Materials:
Making your trees
1. Cut a rectangle- one side from a cardboard box. Be sure to remove all labels and avoid printed parts.
You can adjust the dimensions to make it smaller and larger as you see fit or to match your box size but I found a rectangle with a width of 14/13 cm was good.
2. Measure 6cm along the length (long edge) and mark it with a pencil line.
3. Now draw a line to the other side of the box. You have a rectangle that is 14cm x 6cm.
4. Half way along your 6cm width, mark a pencil mark at 3cm.
5. Draw diagonal lines connecting both corners of the other end of the rectangle with that pencil mark. You should now have an isosceles triangle.
5. The same end where you drew your 3cm pencil mark, mark 3cm along that edge of the rectangle you have drawn.
6. Connect that mark with a diagonal to the bottom corner of your rectangle at the other end. You now have 2 identical isosceles triangles that share a diagonal edge.
7. Continue to make more rectangles in the same way until you have 6/7 of them.
8. Repeat these previous steps but this time using a rectangle strip that has a 10cm width. Your triangles can also be 5cm instead of 6cm long in total (mark2.5cm along for the half way) . Make 6/7 of them.
9. Repeat these steps but this time with a rectangle with a width of 8cm.
10. Repeat these steps but this time with a rectangle with a width of 6/5cm.
11. Cut out your triangles. Discard the very end pieces that are not isosceles triangles.
12. You should now end up with 24/28 triangles of 4 sizes. (I made extra just in case)
13. Take a triangle and using a black felt tip or fineliner and draw a straight border around the edge of each triangle around 4-5mm from the edge. Do the same with all your triangles.
14. Now decorate the inside simply with dotted lines, lines, circles, line, dots, in various repeated patterns. Try to achieve as much variety as possible but keep as neat as possible.
15. You might notice I did make a couple of Christmas tree shapes rather than simple triangles. Do if you feel you can make symmetrically and cut easily. (harder with small kids)
Making your base stand
16. Cut 2 rectangles 30cm long by 15cm wide. (Feel free to make your measurements longer than mine. I probably could have been a little more generous with mine although I do like the crowded nature of my forest. E.g. make it 40cm long and 15cm wide.)
16. Glue them on top of each other to make a double thickness base and then use either brown paper tape or decorative tape to make a border around the edge that covers up the rough edge of the cut cardboard and goes just over the top and bottom layer.
17. Start with your tallest trees. Lay your trees out in a row along the length to check that they will fit along the length of the board when standing side by side without overlapping. Check you are happy with the arrangement. Keep them in this row whilst doing the same with all the other sizes.
18. Now, on the back of each tree, number them from 1-24 in pencil for the moment.
19. Draw 4 light pencil lines that are equidistant along the length.
20. Lay out your flat trees in order along your first row and mark a darker pencil dot where the middle of each triangle base is. Make sure they don't overlap. Do the same for the trees in the other rows.
21. Use a large safety pin to make a hole where all your marked dots are. Wiggle the pin around to make sure it makes the hole a bit bigger (Big enough for a cocktail stick to go through happily but not fall over).Make sure you go through both layers of cardboard. I used a double piece of funky foam to ensure I didn't make a hole in my table!
22. Mark on the numbers by each hole. I use a black fine-liner and made my numbers like calligraphy. I marked mine from front to back but in retrospect,when I started putting the trees, I think it would be nicer to start with the back row as the first numbers so you get to see all the trees face on completely before the next row goes in front.
24. Number your trees in black pen right at the top of each tree tip in nice letting (not too big!)
Adding cocktail sticks to trees*( you could do this after you make the trees but I waited to check my measurements)
25. Now use paper tape to tape cocktail sticks to the back of each tree. Start with the back row trees Check you are happy with the height of them. They need to be the tallest so they have the most stick showing at the bottom. Make the next row of trees a bit 'shorter' by how you position the stick.
26. For your front row, cut your cocktail sticks in half and keep only a little of the cocktail stick showing at the bottom.
27. Check that all your trees will go happily into their holes.
28.Now gather up your trees into a small basket, bag or tray and lay them nicely beside your base.
29. Each day of Advent, add a tree to your forest. Feel free to sing Christmas tree themed songs or carols! You could even write one in tiny letters on the back of each tree to sing. By the 24th December, you will have a forest.
30.As an optional extra,you could cut out a golden shiny star on taller skewer and make a hole for it above your Christmas tree height as an extra for Christmas day!
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I was so pleased with my Advent calendar and cannot wait to use it in December.
The thing I liked most about this was that there is no plastic and the majority of the craft is reused cardboard box. 9 of my cocktail sticks were from eating olives in a restaurant (I made CBC and I only use ONE and kept the rest for this craft!).
It would be nice to make a little drawstring fabric bag to keep this all in for next Christmas. Haven't quite thought that one through yet!
I got out the habit of joining in with Style Imitating Art over the last few months which is sad as there have been some superb inspiration art pieces.
A wonderful new host has joined the SIA team- Shelbee from Shelbee on the Edge. I have long admired Shelbee's Style Imitating Art posts where she shared detailed outfits and the inspiration behind them so I am super happy she's now going to be choosing the inspirations every 3rd turn.
She chose art by a fellow blogger and artist, Anne M Bray who decided to turn scrap fabrics into art rather than wasting them. They are called Scrappy squares and Shelbee has one named after her!
We were invited to choose one to inspire our outfit.
I made a pledge to myself that if I came across something that I could make sure ends up in recycling, that I would try to ensure it reaches a place where it could be recycled. At school,I was using the Office scanner and I noticed a large pile of ex-school Induction pack covers ripped and put into the recycling.
Using this card and the tools below, I made 23 cards (the majority of these envelopeless postcards to add to the eco-dimension). The ones I sent in the post all reused old envelopes with decorative rectangles of blue envelope inards to cover up the previous usage.
4 craft punches
1 embossing tool
1 embossing stamp
Guillotine
Hi there,
I have been meaning to write some small actions and things that I find have worked for me to try and make a change in terms of environmental awareness and doing something. Many of the things I try to do may not make a huge impact but I strongly believe in EVERY little action mattering and absolutely refuse to bow down to the doubters who maintain that the little things don't make a difference and only largescale leader-led change is worth doing. Yes, we do need leadership to show us that (and the stinking Tories are not any sort of leadership that I have much faith in) but we all should do things. One person can do something and eventually it can inspire all of us. I may be teaching Grandmother to suck eggs, so forgive me if you do any of these, but I still think someone, somewhere may gain something from sharing ideas.
Be the composter at work:
Food waste and putting food into the regular bin is one way that our Carbon emissions are raised. At my work, I started collecting my used teabags in a small box and I used to bring them home to rip open and put them straight onto my raised bed. I also always bought home all my food waste, no matter how inconvenient it was. This year, I decided to try and offer other staff members the option to put their fruit and veg food waste in my box. I saved one of those large party-size plastic tubs that sweets or chocolate come in and I've invited anyone in the staffroom who I see with banana skins or apple cores or anything they don't finish to put it in the box as well as any teabags. I do also do some bin diving if I see any teabags or banana skins etc. I'm not too proud to do this, nor too prissy. I think DOING something is more important. All I need to do is wash my hands after doing that. It sits in a cupboard above the work top in the staffroom. Then, once a week, I bring it home to put the things into compost bin. I clean the tub and bring it back on a Monday. It's easy and I've got into the habit of doing this. Today, I came home with a box of discarded strawberries from the bin to add to my compost.
Even if you don't want to do food waste, a teabag collection box would be small and easy to manage.
What if you don't have a compost bin? Well, you could still rip open the teabags and put them straight onto the earth in your garden. The worms will soon take it down and deal with it.
If you don't have a compost bin but DO have local food waste, you could put it in that. Obviously, I do have a garden. Don't have a garden? Do you have a large plant or a balcony with plants? Empty the leaves into the plant pot. Don't have a plant? Why not empty the tea leaves into a pot (discard the paper outer) Is there anywhere wild near you where you could empty a tub of tea leaves into the earth?
I don't drive and I carry this with me so it is possible to do this without a car.
Doing repetitive small actions like this is really good for your mental health and sense of well-being. I get such a joy out of making this small difference. I don't want this to seem like virtue-signalling (like me, me, me, I'm so good... PLEASE, I don't want to hear, "You are so good!" in the comments which is what always happens when I share things like this and that's NOT why I do it.)- I just want to share an idea and make a suggestion for something that can make you feel really happy to be doing. I never feel helpless in the face of the climate and plastic crisis because I know I am trying and doing a few things. I only hope I can inspire someone to make a change or say, "Yes, I am willing to do THAT little something." Because, perhaps you might then inspire other people to try it. And that's when things become normalised and attitudes and actions can change on a large scale.
Have a lovely day.
xx
