Goodbye Summer

I was looking back at pictures of our Summer, now it's over and Autumn is upon us.  Still the memories are GREAT.

Giant Rhubarb

Bee Keeping:  I got stung this year for the first time.  Still it was fun...

with the children.

And honey this year, enough to sell.

Our Maran chicken's - Bernadette, renamed Bernie, because she's a boy!

We've a flock of 11.

Picking plums - at least the dratted caravan has some uses.

Greengages, nom, nom...

Harvest from the Veggie garden.

Rainbow chard was a big hit.

Ash Camp was bigger and better than ever this year.

Our summer cocktail of choice for 2016 - Aperol

Reading in the hammock

Trips to the seaside in the summer hols went on late into the evening.

I became a member of the Little Hadham & Albury Gardening Club and we went to the show.

My entries for the show.

Una won in the junior section with her "Tutti Frutti Chicken"

Louis won in the junior section with his photo of a field of poppies.

All together a glorious summer!

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An Underwater Collage

The Summer holidays are here - YAY!  And if you are having that moment (or ten), just not knowing what to do with the kids, I have a suggestion - An underwater collage.

I will admit, that the little foxes and I did this last year, or the year before that maybe, doesn't time fly?  It was one of the crafts for our Seaside crafty box.

A collage is a way of creating a picture with a group of different materials and techniques.  Or, in our house it means; checking out what bits and pieces of junk mummy has rescued from the recycling because they look "interesting" and put into the craft box to be used at a later date.

  

First we created a watery background with 4 sheets of blue paper taped together.  Onto this we painted our jellyfish.  This is a really easy way to make jelly fish.  Mix some paint with water, paint a few gloopy circles in blue/green/purple paint onto the paper, then with a brush dab more water on and tip your paper so that the paint starts to run, making the jelly fish tentacles.  

Once you are happy with how your jelly fish look you can flick some more paint onto the paper to create bubbles.

Once we'd made our background we populated our underwater world with animals that we created in a variety of ways.  Fish were painted on the back of cereal boxes with patterns in every hue.

We made turtles with egg boxes and more card from the recycling box.

We used the edges of a paper plate to get the ridges just right on our sea horses, and little bits of felt to give him a multicoloured belly.

My favourite has to be our lobster, made from the kids' hands and foot prints.

Our animals were all cut out and glued onto the back-ground along with various strips of coloured paper and felt for seaweed, and some shell illustrations that I had scanned from and old book.  I've uploaded the scans in case you would like to use them in your own art work.  They're here:

           

I have one last Seaside themed crafty box if anyone would like it for the very special price of £12.  It includes shells and fixings to make a shell keyring, full instructions and templates for the collage above and a milk carton boat.  Great for the summer holidays. 

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Our Holiday in Brittany

This weekend it has felt like summer is well and truly over.  I've been going through my holiday photos.  It brought back what a lovely holiday we had in Brittany this year, with the other Mrs Fox & family, and I wanted to capture a few memories.  

We were initially looking for a camping holiday in France.  Little Louis Fox wanted to go on a ferry in the car - he was very specific!  I'd never been to Brittany before, but I remembered friends who went regularly raving about it as a unique region of France.  I started exploring the possibility of camping, or staying in a gite, and then a friend offered their parent's holiday home for 2 weeks at the end of August.  We didn't need to be asked twice and stayed in Penvins, just outside Vannes.

The medieval town of Vannes was beautiful, and we enjoyed exploring it:

I must confess my favourite shop was also in Vannes, la belle-iloise.  An entire shop of tinned sardines (and other fish).  

I know I am a sucker for good packaging, but, I loved this shop, and I have never before bought a tin entirely full of tins of fish, but from this shop I was happy to do so.

Vannes is in Morbihan on the south west coast of Brittany.  Morbihan is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution in 1790. The only French department whose name comes from the Breton language.  It is particularly famous for the Carnac stones, ancient megaliths which predate and are more extensive than those at Stonehenge.

After a soggy spring and summer, we Foxes were so ready for a holiday by the time it got to August. Busy with work and a family of young children we were looking for a seaside holiday with sunshine and nothing more strenuous than choosing which holiday book to read, and deciding which beach to go to.  We got that and so much more.  We had such a wonderful, relaxing time with the children.

The weather remained beautiful and we stayed only a 2 minute walk from the closest beach and spent almost every day there.  The children loved; shell collecting, sandcastle making, swimming in the sea and became experts at tip-toeing through rock pools in pursuit of crabs.  We kept them in buckets and then ended each day with the 'traditional' racing of the crabs back to the sea.

With shells abundant on the beaches we all found ourselves becoming slightly obsessed with collecting them.  As ever when on holiday I find myself coming up with new ideas for crafts and I've plans in mind for the many shells that we have brought home.   

Where we were in Morbihan, despite it being a popular destination for holiday makers, the coastline is unspoilt.  Development seems to be done so much more sensitively than in the UK and other parts of Europe I have visited.  I was inspired and recharged by the natural beauty around me in Brittany.

Ah, Brittany was wonderful:  We ate good food and then cycled it off on trips along the costal paths. All the little foxes are now cycling confidently.  And singing out French greetings and thanks to anyone who will listen.

We visited Château de Suscinio, and dressed as Medieval knights and ladies.

We found some great children's craft magazines.  Here is a photo of some of Little Una Fox's favourite things in France.  Who remembers Barbapapa?

There is so much more I could say about what a wonderful destination Brittany in general and Morbhian in particular is, but I need to go to sleep, so, here are a couple of lists:

My favourite things in Brittany;

the people - so friendly - really, they are so kind to useless Brits who can barely mumble "Bon-jour",

beaches,

cidre,

galettes Bretonnes,

sardines,

warm bread and chocolate and almond croissants bought from the bar in the village every morning.

Still to do;

the islands in the gulf of Morbihan,
the jazz festival in Vannes,

eat more seafood,
kite surfing,

try to speak more French.

How was your Summer Hols?

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Mrs Fox Makes - A Milk Carton Sailing Boat

Still enthused by the summer weather and this month's Crafty Box theme, the sea, we've made a milk carton sailing boat for some of Little Una Fox's peg people.  Here is how we did it:

You Will Need:

empty milk carton 

triangle of fabric (approx 24cm x 14cm)

wooden bar-b-q skewer

string, wool or thread

plastacine or blue/white tack

glue

pencil 

paper

paints

Wash out your empty milk carton.  Draw the shape on the right onto the milk carton, cut out the shape and discard.  

If you are using water based poster paints cover the outside of the milk carton with paper you can paint on.  Glue this down and let it dry.

Make a small hole in the boat (see above) behind and to the centre of the shape you have cut out.  Next, in pencil draw a line all the way round the centre of your boat.  From this line draw several more lines between 1cm to 1.5cms from the first line.  

Applying the lightest colours first, paint your boat, painting the lines you have drawn in different complementary colours.  We used a line of washi tape round our boat.   While the paint dries make the mast and rigging.

Fold the longest side of your triangle of fabric over your skewer then glue, or sew this down.  Next tie a double knot in one end of your string and thread the other end through the hole in your boat, pull it until the knot catches.  

Make a little ball of your white tack and secure to the bottom of the boat.   Push the point of the skewer through this into the bottom of the boat.  Then wrap and tie the string tightly to the top of the skewer, cut off any excess.  Add the bunting; cut out diamonds of paper (or washi tape) fold in half and glue over the string to make the rigging. 

Don't forget to name your boat;

For more great crafts to make around the theme of the sea order one of our Kid's Craft Boxes here. Inside are craft materials and instructions to make a milk carton sailing boat, shell keyring and huge underwater collage with jelly fish, lobsters, turtles, sea horses, fish and octopuss.  Loads to keep your crafty little foxes busy. 

    

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Oh I do like to be beside the seaside - Whitstable

The Foxes (All of them!), are now off on holiday, but here's what we did last week:

Photo by Penny Mayes

Hurray for the summer holidays and with this month’s crafty boxes theme being the beach we thought a trip to the seaside could not be missed.

We went to Whitstable and as so often when we go I find myself coming home to peruse Rightmove for houses and scour the train timetables into London for the hubby’s commute.  I love the seaside and dream of living closer to the ocean.

I love watching the little foxes amusing themselves on the shoreline, finding interesting stones and shells, ...

...and investigating jellyfish,

....and oyster mounds.

The children did not appreciate the oysters themselves but Mr Fox and I love to eat and drink the local beers at the Royal Oyster Exchange.  It can be busy, but the food is great and the beers from local brewers are delicious, I especially like the stout.  Kid’s portions are available, and although often busy it is the type of vibe tolerant of young families.  Being so close to the beach means you can save dessert for an ice-cream and beach walk to off-set some of those yummy extra calories.

And after we got home, little Una fox could not wait to make something from the shells she’d collected, more inspiration for this months craft boxes,  if you would like to order for delivery after 30th August, click HERE.  

There are so many things to make with shells and Little Una Fox has become quite obsessed using her book from her granny to identify them and collaging using old shell illustrations I have downloaded from the internet.  If you'd like to have a go yourself here are some for you to download, click on the pictures below:

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