HD awareness week & catch up

* The 13th -18th of June is Huntington's Diesese Awareness week. To help raise money and awareness 100% of all sales from my folksy & etsy shops will go to the HDA*

Well Sunday was pretty miserable eh! While it did mean that my seaside plans had to be scraped it did make for a productive crafting day. It was quite wonderful in fact. After a pancake fuelled brunch and accompanied by much coffee Slim and I sat in the craft room with 6Music and got creative. Slim designed the bed his is going to make for us and I made some birthday presents and FINALLY got round to sorting the photos of May's activities and makes. But first-

This week is HD awareness week. Last Christmas I raised over £560 with the help of friends and family by selling Christmas cards designed by me. To help do my bit this week 100% of all sales from my online stores will go to HDA. I will be planning a garden party later this summer to raise money for the HDA- if you would like to be involved please let me know.

Our Easter break in the Lakes.

Baystone Bank Farm, Cumbria

So this was our pitch. Not bad eh! We had the most perfect spot- by a little stream, next to a field of lambs, surrounded by bluebells and wild garlic. And it was hot and sunny. Pure bliss. And thanks to a tip from fellow campers we discovered that wild garlic leaves are amazing. Not quite as amazing as my 'super duper Easter surprise campfire bread n banana' puddings. So the name isn't catchy but who cares when they taste so good. For the record I did intend on making step by step photo instructions but that didn't happen- its hard to make food look tasty and not get the camera mucky.

Laura's Super Duper Easter Surprise Campfire Bread n Banana puddings

Serves 2 but you will want to make more. This is just a list of the ingredients I had to hand.

2 large bananas

1 hot cross bun

Handful of Cadbury mini eggs

A little bit of milk

Brown sugar.

Carefully cut longways down the banana and remove the banana from the skin. The skin will become the cooking dish so try and keep it as intact as possible. 

In a dish mush up the bananas with a little milk. I used 1 banana for 2 puddings. The 2nd banana got eaten later...

Cut your hot cross bun in half and break each half  into little pieces- about 4 or 5. Place these in the bottom of your banana dishes- squashing them in. Add a few mini eggs- again about  4 is plenty (and all you will have left if you have an open packet next to you and you are unsupervised in the kitchen).

Pour over your banana milky mush (ummm) and sprinkle the brown sugar over the top. Wrap tightly in foil and place into the fire for cooking- wait until the fire has some the white coals and not just huge flames.

Wait for as long as you can before eating. Repeat until you have run out of one of the ingredients...!

I also promised a picture of the kettle in-situ and here it is in all its red and shiny glory

I will restrain myself from turning this post into a holiday slide show but as you can see I went full hippy after a week on the road. 

I have also been experimenting with soap. I like liquid handsoap but not always the smell and never the cost and I find bars annoying. So what's a girl to do? Make her own of course! I have seen lots of posts on the interweb about making your own pretty and reusable soap dispensers out of much coveted mason jars but not an (easy) recipe for soap. Until this one: This is how I made mine.

Homemade Liquid Hand Soap

Grate your bar of soap- I used a Dove soap which cost 50p. Boil 3 cups of water and add the soap. Mix it really well until all the soap has dissolved. I found for the 100g of soap- 3 cups was the right amount . You have to do a lot of mixing so that little pieces of soap won't clog the pump. Once you think it is at the right thickness let it sit out over night- if you come back and it's too thick, heat again and add more water. Just before decanting it into the dispenser I added a few drops of tea tree oil. Job done. For the dispenser I used an old jam jar and saved one of the pumps from an old hand soap. Slim drilled a hole in the lid and I painted it (using nail varnish- I felt like I was at school again tipex-ing my pencil case!) This batch is still going about 2 months after I made it with plenty left. And most importantly its a really nice soap and I honestly do prefer it.
I might experiment with different solid bars and oils for the next batches. It is time consuming but I don't have telly...

And now for my final entry for the random post. Back in April it was my little sister's birthday and this was the parcel she received:

I used the illustration from an old T-shirt that no longer fit to make the fabric picture and some vintage curtain material for her card. I am thinking cards might be a good way to use small scraps of fabric that are just too pretty not to use.

I will leave you with a picture of the first strawberries from our strawberry plants xx