Vlogmas day one - How to make a Christmas Cake

I've set myself a challenge this year and that is to take part in Vlogmas.

Vlogmas in a YouTube event that sees vloggers upload a video everyday in December. Some people do all of December, other do up to Christmas Day. I'm not sure what I will be doing yet, I'll see how it goes.

Our first vlogmas video is how to make a Christmas cake.

This year we are using Mary Berry's recipe. We love Mary Berry, but the problem is, I don't do any cooking, EVER!

My husband Mark likes to do all the cooking at home. But I have made a Christmas cake in the past using a Be-Ro recipe, so I thought I would give this one a go.

Here is our video of me and my son Jacob making the Christmas cake. We hope you enjoy it.

It would be great if you could subscribe to our channel.

Recipe below.

Ingredients

175g (6 oz) raisins
350g (12 oz) glace cherries, rinsed, thoroughly dried and quartered
500g (1lb 2oz) currants
350g (12oz) sultanas
150ml (¼ pint) sherry, plus extra for feeding
Finely grated zest of 2 oranges
250g (9oz) butter, softened
250g (9oz) light muscovado sugar
4 eggs
1 tbsp black treacle
75g (3oz) blanched almonds, chopped
75g (3oz) self-raising flour
175g (6oz) plain flour
1½ tsp mixed spice

To finish and decorate Mary Berry's Christmas cake:
About 3tbsp apricot jam, sieved and warmed
Icing sugar
675g shop-bought almond paste
Packet royal icing mix to cover 23cm/9in cake

Method

1. Put all the dried fruit in a container, pour over the sherry and stir in the orange zest. Cover with a lid, and leave to soak for 3 days, stirring daily. Grease and line a 23cm (9in) deep round tin with a double layer of greased greaseproof paper. Preheat the oven to 140C, 120C fan, gas 1.

2. Measure the butter, sugar, eggs, treacle and almonds into a very large bowl and beat well. Add the flours and mixed spice and mix thoroughly until blended. Stir in the soaked fruit. Spoon into the prepared cake tin and level the surface.

3. Bake in the centre of the preheated oven for 4-4½ hours or until the cake feels firm to the touch and is a rich golden brown. Check after 2 hours, and, if the cake is a perfect colour, cover with foil. A skewer inserted into the centre of the cake should come out clean. Leave the cake to cool in the tin.

4. When cool, pierce the cake at intervals with a fine skewer and feed with a little extra sherry. Wrap the completely cold cake in a double layer of greaseproof paper and again in foil and store in a cool place for up to 3 months, feeding at intervals with more sherry. (Don't remove the lining paper when storing as this helps to keep the cake moist.)

5. Decorate with almond paste and royal icing.

To prepare the Christmas cake ahead: Prepare the fruit and soak in sherry 3 days ahead - this is essential to plump up and flavour the fruit. Make the cake and wrap as in stage 4. Store in a cool place for up to 3 months, following stage 4. You could also freeze the cake before decorating, for up to 3 months; defrost at room temperature. Recipe taken from Mary Berry's Christmas Collection, available from Amazon, RRP £17.00 (Headline RRP £20.00)

Spooky fun at our Halloween party and how to make a zombie bite in 10 easy steps with this tutorial

I can't believe how big Halloween is now in the UK. 

I remember the days when I was a kid, we would go trick or treating in the close that I lived in wearing a bin liner and a cheap plastic mask!

I never did throw eggs at any windows as when we knocked on the door, no one said trick! But I wouldn't have dared anyway!

Those days are well and truly gone. 

Now, thanks in part to America, Halloween in the UK is a huge event. Aisles full of Halloween goodies, costumes and so many sweets can be found in every supermarket.

Everywhere you look, people have gone bigger each year with fancy dress and decorating their houses.

My daughter who loves a bit of gore and zombies, wanted to be made up to look like she had been bitten by a zombie (que the Walking Dead music).

So I took up the challenge and headed to YouTube to see if there was an easy tutorial I could find and use things I had lying around the house instead of having to buy lots of expensive special effects make-up.

Luckily for me, I found one, and I managed to create an open wound on Amber's head and arm.

How to make a wound, what you need:

PVA glue
Toilet paper/cotton wool
Foundation (to match your skin tone)
Black eyeshadow
Fake blood (we used lighter red and a congealed looking gloopy dark red fake blood)
An old small paintbrush (to apply the PVA and blood)
Make-up sponge to dab the foundation on

I can't tell you how easy this is to do, and the effect is brilliant. See for yourself in the pictures of Amber.

Here's what I did:

Step one: Using the paintbrush apply a thin layer of PVA glue onto the skin.

Step two: Rip off small bits of toilet paper and stick to the glue.

Step three: Continue with the PVA glue and toilet paper layers.

Step four: Once you have got about 6 layers on, leave to dry. Or cheat and use a hairdryer on a cool setting for quickness.

Step five: Very carefully using small scissors, gently cut a small hole at one end of where the wound will be, just in from the edge.

Step six: Cut the glue and toilet paper to the desired length of the wound you would like.

Step seven: Gently open the glue to create an opening.

Step seven: Trim the excess off, but leave some of the edge sticking up.

Step eight: Use foundation and sponge to gently pat make up all over the outside, on the top of the glue and toilet paper. Cover well.

Step nine: Dab black eyeshadow in the opening.

Step ten: Dip some of the congealed blood and spread it out inside the wound, then add some of the lighter (fresh looking) blood around the outside.

Looks real doesn't it! Ewwww.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out to say I have never done it before. I love a YouTube tutorial.

Amber went out trick or treating with her friends, and we decided to do a little Halloween party at home for our son Jacob.

Jacob didn't know I would dress up, so he was a little scared when I opened the door when he came home from school. He wanted to wear his Dracula outfit, complete with fangs and dripping  blood!

We had great fun making Halloween biscuits, we had a couple of fails with the icing though which you will see in the video below.

Daddy carved the pumpkins after the kids designed the faces they would like. Does anyone ever make anything with the inside of pumpkins? We always end up throwing it all away!

When Amber got back from trick or treating, she had a bag full of sugary goodies.

Where we live, we never get anyone coming to our door on Halloween, as we live on a road without a pavement and the houses are quite spread out. But we always get sweets just in case, and what a shame, no one came again this year - oh well, we will have to eat them!

When Amber got back, my husband Mark asked if anyone said 'trick'. She just looked at us blankly. She had no idea that if people said 'trick' rather than 'treat', you would have to play some kind of trick on that house.

Let's face it, that never happens nowadays.

I think our little party was a great success, and now all the decorations have gone back in the loft to wait for an even bigger Halloween next year.

I made a video of our Halloween party, see below. We'd love you to subscribe to Our Family Life channel on YouTube.

How to make a pom pom in under 5 minutes

I love pom poms! At work in The Sunday Mirror we printed a picture of Paloma Faith wearing a fantastic jumper covered in pom poms. 

People at work know I like to craft, so I said I would do a step-by-step tutorial for the paper. I also made a video.

Who doesn't love a soft, squishy pom pom? They're all the rage at the moment with many pages on Instagram dedicated to the brightly-coloured balls of fluff. A great accessory to bring a pop of colour to any outfit.

Gone are the days when you have to spend hours making one pom pom. I remember cutting out 2 circles of card from a cereal box and spending ages threading the wool through the circle and over, through the circle and over, again and again. Yawn!

I love gadgets, especially ones that are time-savers. As a full-time working mum of two children, anything that saves time gets my vote. Whoever came up with this little time-saving gadget deserves a crafty medal, or maybe a pom pom garland.

The Clover Pom Pom maker, a favourite of craft queen Kirstie Allsopp and should be in every crafters sewing box. You will find 4 different sizes in my favourite craft shop - Hobbycraft.

They can look a bit tricky to use, so I have done a step-by-step guide on how to use them. I've even recorded a video so you can watch and pause every step of the way. I learn so much of my crafts from watching videos on YouTube.

What you need:

Wool
Clover pom pom maker
Scissors

Step one:

Wrap the wool around one of the arcs (one arc is formed of two arms). Continue to wrap the wool around until the arc is completely covered. Repeat for the remaining arc. Close both the arcs.

Step two:

Insert your scissors into the slit on the side of the machine, and cut all of the way around both arcs.

Step three:

Insert a piece of wool into the middle of the machine and pull tight, secure in place with a knot.

Step four:

Gently remove the pom pom by releasing both arcs of the machine. Remove the central sections by gently pulling on both sides. Trim off the little sticky out bits.

I have made a step-by-step video. Enjoy!

How to fold clothes to gain more space

If you have a little one who likes to get themselves dressed in the morning, your nice tidy T-Shirt drawer can become messy. I love that my son knows what he wants to wear, and we always encourage him to get himself dressed. So I decided to tackle the drawer and make it easy for little hands to grab a T-Shirt. 

Here's what I did..

This is what my four year old son's T-Shirt drawer looked like before I tackled it!

Step one..

Grab a T-Shirt and lay it front down on a surface - the bed is good as you can sit down while you tackle the mountain of T-Shirts!

Step two...

Fold in the sleeves towards the back of the T-Shirt.

Step three...

Grab one whole side of the T-Shirt and fold in to the centre, and do the same on the other side.

Step four...

Fold up about one third from the bottom.

Step five...

Fold up the bottom third to meet the top.

Step six...

Turn the T-Shirt over.. and there you go! Easy peasy!

Lovely folded clothes. This gets much easier and quicker the more you do it.

Look how much space I have saved! Also much easier for little hands to get a t shirt out. 

I have also shown my 11 year old daughter how to fold clothes like this so she has done her clothes too, and she enjoyed it!

I'd love to hear any tips on how you keep the kids clothes tidy. Leave a comment below.

Make a Victorian girl schoolgirl outfit

You know when you receive one of those letters from your child's school saying 'costume needed', it sometimes fills me with dread!

My daughter, Amber brought a letter home from school about a school trip where the kids had to dress as Victorian schoolchildren.

The Victorian era is my favourite. I started to Google what kids wore in this era. The theme for girls seemed to be a white pinafore over their dresses, to keep them clean. As I carried on reading, I found that the mums used to make these pinafores. So I bought a long black skirt and a long black top but I set about making the pinafore myself.

Now I love sewing, I mainly only have time to read about sewing so when this project came up I thought I'd give it a go.

We had an old off-white bed sheet that I thought would be perfect to use, and I also found an old piece of material from my stash (I love collecting fabric, especially from charity shops), which had a crocheted edge, I also had an old pillowcase that had lace all around the edge.

I set to work trying to figure out how I would make it. The first thing I did was find a t shirt that Amber currently wears, so I knew it fitted her. Then I folded the t-shirt in half and traced around the edge onto baking parchment (this is my cheap version of dressmakers paper). I then added an extra 1 cm all around the edge for the seam allowance.

I cropped the t-shirt pattern quite high as I noticed the Victorian children wore them like this.

From the width of Amber's t-shirt at the bottom I just roughly followed it down to create the skirt part (again adding the seam allowance).

Amber in the Victorian schoolgirl outfit I made, you can just see the bottom. Looks good with the Earlybird filter in Instagram, would be better without the iPod in shot though! 

I then went round and hemmed all the edges, I double folded and sewed down the middle. You can just zig zag stitch the edges (which would be quicker).

I ended up with 4 pieces, 2 tops (1 front, and 1 back) and 2 skirt parts (front and back).

Because I used a well washed old sheet there was no need to pre-wash, if it had been new material, it's best to pre-wash to get all the shrinkage out of it.

I cut off the crocheted piece and the lace piece off my pillowcase and fabric.

I sewed my 2 top pieces together at the top (across the shoulder), then I sewed on my crocheted fabric from the arm hole from the back, right the way up and over the top, down to the front arm hole area.

I then sewed the skirt part to the top, both front and back. I wanted a few pleats in so I made the width a little larger.

After doing this for both the front and the back, I had almost finished. I know, by looking at Google images, that most Victorian school children tied at the back, but I discovered this after I had already cut my fabric! I could have cut it up the back but I decided to put some small metal press stud fasteners on instead to hold the shape, and for ease for my daughter.

The ribbons in here hair came from a tie on an old pair of my pyjama bottoms!

I'm really pleased with the finished look to say I wasn't working from a pattern. I'd love to know what you think. Leave a comment below if you have had to make certain outfits for your kids for school.

I should have taken pictures for a tutorial, I will do next time!