Coffee and Vanilla

Recycled T-shirt Crochet Rug

Margot — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:00:08 +0000

Don’t throw away old t-shirts, turn them into rugs

MATERIALS

4-6 old t-shirts or pyjama tops in as many or as little colours you like, cut into 2.5 cm / 1 inch strips

EQUIPMENT

fat crochet hook (I used 9 mm one)
needle and a little bit of thread to secure the last chain on the rug

METHOD

stitches used: chain (ch), single crochet (sc), slip stich (sl)

FOUNDATION CHAIN
Start with 7 ch, connect ends of the chain with sl to create a circle.

ROUND 1-3

Work 1 sc 1 ch 1 sc 1 ch etc for the first 3 rounds.

ROUND 4+

Continue working sc but reduce amount of added extra chain stitches in between. You will see if they are needed.

Your rug supposed to be completely flat, if it is turning into hat it means there should be more extra chains added, if it is all wavy it means there should be less chains added if any. Possibly continue only with sc and only add extra ch now and then when some area of the rug bends up.

LAST ROUND

Once you are happy with the size, finish the round with sl stitch and then use needle and tread to secure the ending… and voilà, your rug is ready to use.

CONNECTING THE STRIPS

To connect strips of t-shirt together make cuts at the end of each of them and then tight them together as pictured below.

NOTES

Recycled rug like this can be also done from other fabrics or even stockings.

Use thinner strips and smaller crochet gauge to create placemats.

In the first row instead closing the circle make the chain longer and then start going around it to create oval shaped rug.

Recommended Product:
TODDLER SPORT BOTTLE / CUP by Mam
comfortable curved shape & right size | practically leak proof | cleaning is quite easy, only 3 parts
buy from Amazon.co.uk
buy from Amazon.com

© Copyright Coffee & Vanilla 2007-2012, All Rights Reserved.
Please notify the author at margot (at) coffeeandvanilla.co.uk if you are reading this post in other place than Coffee & Vanilla website or your personal news reader.
Thank you, Margot

Recycled T-shirt Crochet Rug

Ultimate Dry Skin & Cracked, Split Heel Remedy

Margot — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:49:41 +0000

With summer just round the corner I’m always more than ever concerned about dry skin especially the one on the elbows and heels that is exposed in summer clothes and shoes.

For the past few years, during and after two pregnancies I struggled with those problems a lot and tried most available on the market creams and ointments with very little effect I must say, they are all either worthless or do not have pleasant scent.

But regular applications of plain vaseline / petroleum jelly, just a little bit after bath when I had time to massage it into the skin and let is absorb, worked the magic.

My personal favourite is Vaseline Lip Therapy with Cocoa Butter (£1.99 / 20g at Boots) and recently also Blue Magic Coconut Oil Hair Conditioner (£1.99 / 340g at Pak’s) which in reality is pure petroleum jelly with coconut oil, it smells great and seems to be the best from everything I have tried so far.

If you know of any other brilliant skin products, please do share, I would love to hear about it.

NOTES

In extreme cases of cracked or split heels, after applying petroleum jelly, wrap them into cling film for the night (not too tight) and wear socks on the top of it.

DIY Truffula Fluffy Pom-Pom Trees from The Lorax

Margot — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:16:46 +0000

After watching very much loved “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” movie last weekend, we could not resist making some themed crafts. And with the pot of grass already at hand (leftover from Easter) we had no other choice but to make truffula trees

MATERIALS

wooden skewers
fluffy pom-poms in candy pinks and yellows
flower pot with grass

EQUIPMENT

black permanent marker
all-purpose clear permanent glue (like UHU, Bostik or GSD)

METHOD

With a marker paint stripes on the skewer making zig-zag movements while turning skewer with the other hand… it will make uneven stripes, also wood absorbency will help the design to look more realistic, like on the trees from The Lorax.
Deep the sharp part of the skewer in glue and stick it into the pom-pom.
Place your ready fluffy tree in the pot with grass.
Repeat the same with more skewers and pom-poms until you are happy with your very own truffula forest.

“Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” Movie Review

Margot — Tue, 01 May 2012 16:01:23 +0000

Last weekend my 6 year old daughter and I we went to Odeon West End to see “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” movie preview. The Lorax is a comedy for children, adaptation of one of Dr. Seuss books written back in 1971 and now animated by Universal Pictures & Illumination Entertainment under direction of Chris Renaud. I completely did not have any expectations as we did not read any of Dr. Seuss books yet, but I was very excited because I haven’t also seen any 3D film before.

After meeting real fury Lorax himself (pictue below), trying some truffula tree snacks we headed to our seat where another nice surprise was waiting on us Lorax popcorn… we put our 3D glasses on and a second later some monster stripy tongue was pointing directly for my face so I automatically moved away… just to make my daughter laugh.

I know I’m outdated not having seen 3D movie before… I always thought it is just for kids and yes, I was very impressed from the very first seconds of the film (!) The graphics / animations are just incredible… everything seems so real and at the same time so magical… for an hour and half I felt like I was living between those little crooked houses, driving extremely narrow streets and seeing for real all those cute animals and fluffy trees. I must admit that it made me a little bit dizzy too especially during car driving scenes.. but I think that was the point.

Although the story was written back in the seventies it is still on time… is spreading sadly very true ecological message and warning because “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better. It’s not.”

The title character Lorax (voice by Danny DeVito) is the creature guardian of the forest who speaking for the truffula trees that people destroy in greed for their fluffiness they use to make stuff from… and they would not stop until the last tree was down and there is no more trees in Thneedville and people have to buy fresh air in the bottles.
Ted (voice by Zac Efron), 12 year old boy has a crush on Audrey (voice by Taylor Swift), girl from his school whose wish is to see a real tree. That is why Ted decides, despite danger, leave the town to find monster – The Once-ler (voice by Ed Helms) whose greed destroyed the trees to learn from him about the trees that once used to grow on Earth. It’s a children movie so the story has happy ending but at the same time make you think about our future and if we will be able to stop destroying our plantet before it is too late…

“Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” is absolutely must see family movie! Not only great fun, amazing animation but also the message worth passing on future generations.

Inspired by the movie we purchased our first Dr. Seuss’ book “The Lorax” on the very same day. We have also planted our Lorax’s seeds in our backyard and will be making our very own truffula tree pom-pom forest.

“Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” movie will be available in the cinemas across UK from July 27th.

For different perspective read other reviews from the same event:

The Lorax in 3D on Major Love of Film
Review of The Lorax And Little Frankie And Benny’s on Mummy Whisperer Blog
Why we loved “The Lorax” on Not a Notting Hill Mum

“Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax”

DIRECTOR: Chris Renaud
CO-DIRECTOR: Kyle Balda
CAST: Danny DeVito, Zac Efron, Ed Helms, Taylor Swift, Rob Riggle and Betty White
WRITTEN BY: Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio
PRODUCED BY: Chris Meledandri & Janet Healey
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Audrey Geisel
BASED ON: Dr. Seuss book with the same title
RATING: PG (for brief mild language)
LANGUAGE: English
COUNTRY: USA
GENRES: 3D-CGI Feature
RUNTIME: 86 minutes
CREATED BY: Universal Pictures & Illumination Entertainment
RELEASE DATE: 2nd March 2012 (US) & 27th July 2012 (UK)

With thanks for the invitation to Universal Pictures and Nicola from Feref.

Pancake Doodles & Alphabet Pancakes with Raspberry Syrup

Margot — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:43:02 +0000

[Inspired by Good Mornig Hearts from Sherbet Blossom]

I made those pancakes for my older daughter who is not feeling well today and needed some cheering up.

INGREDIENTS

for the pancakes

1½ cups self raising flour or ½ cups plain flour + ½ tbs baking powder
2 cups milk
¼ cup oil (I used hazelnut oil)
2 eggs

for the topping

fruity syrup – I used natural concentrated raspberry juice

EQUIPMENT

non-stick frying pan
spatula to turn the pancakes
recycled squeezable bottle, for instance from ice cream sauce
funnel
whisk
small mixing bowl

METHOD

In a bowl mix all ingredients for pancakes and whisk until smooth.
Using funnel pour the pancake mixture into squeezable bottle.
Squeeze it out onto hot non-stick frying pan creating shapes.
Flip them with spatula and fry on both sides.
Serve topped with some fruity syrup, we love it with Polish raspberry syrup from Łowicz.

Makes enough pancake doodles for 2-4 kids, depending how big and how hungry they are.

NOTES

Just to be on a safe side brush frying pan with little bit of oil before starting to fry, just this one time.

Cut off flap from the squeezable bottle cover, it will be easier to create shapes without it.

More images coming soon… this time around they disappeared so fast I did not get a chance to take more photos.

More kid’s food ideas:

Yeast Teddy Bear Buns

Smurfy Smurfberry Muffins

Black Pasta Monsters

Waffles with Nutella & Blueberries

Marble Eggs

DIY Sponge on a Rope

Margot — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:31:29 +0000

I don’t know if it is just my luck but every time I buy sponges on the ropes for my girls they are either too hard to use or they are breaking after couple of days and we don’t like all those plasticky wash puffs so I decided to make my own ropes for plain sponges.

MATERIALS

sponge
2 acrylic beads with large holes
piece of ribbon or string

EQUIPMENT

crochet hook (I used 3 mm one)

METHOD

Pierce the sponge with a crochet hook.
Fold the ribbon in half and pull it through the sponge.
Thread the beads onto the ribbon on the top and bottom of the sponge finishing with knots.
And voilà, your sponge on a rope is ready.

NOTES

Make sure the colour of the string or ribbon you are using is not running.

Warner Bros. Welcomes Bloggers in London

Margot — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:28:27 +0000

Some time last week I attended Warner Bros. Welcomes Bloggers event in Central London where we were introduced to the newest technologies in sharing, storing and watching movies and at the same time we got a chance to meet up with other bloggers.

I do spend quite a lot of time on the computer and I must admit I did not have any idea about most of the things they were talking about… I wasn’t aware that if I buy selected movies in Tesco they automatically going into my Blinkbox online library. I had completely no clue about UltraViolet, Flixster and all other things but starting from the beginning…

The whole idea is that now once you purchase Warner Bros. movies you can have access to digital copy which you can download to your computer or store in online libraries and be able to stream or download them to various devices. One of them is UltraViolet digital copy (via Flixster) which is now being used by more and more by entertainment companies such as Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal and Sony Pictures as well, just to mention few.

Flixster is a movie rating website where you can read about the movie, see ratings, watch trailers and your UltraViolet movies. In order to give you exact information I signed up to Flixster myself and I must say it wasn’t complicated or time consuming. The movies are steamed via Flixster but they are stored in your UltraViolet library so once you want to redeem your UltraViolet codes (included inside selected blue-ray and dvds) you will be prompted to set up your UV account as well, which will take you only few more seconds. Ultraviolet account is separate from Flixster but you have to link them to be able to see UV through Flixster. Once you set those things up you and your family (up to 6 users) will be able to download movies you’ve already purchased to your computer, watch them on your mobile devices: Android Phones, iPhone, iPad etc, watch on your GoogleTV.

There is also Blinkbox which is easy to sign up and were you can rent movies, tv programs and store your movies as well. On the sign up you will be asked about your Tesco Club Card number so once you purchase selected movies in Tesco’s stores their digital copy will appear automatically in your Blinkbox library, very handy! You can as well rent movies from them at £3.49 per movie and £1.98 per TV series episode, a little pricey but they have also quite large collection of free movies you can watch.

Blinkbox and Flixster are also available—or soon to be made available—on Xbox and Playstation but if you use those on daily basis you probably know more about it than me.

Basically these companies are allowing you some way to “copy” to other devices without having to pay again or having to do anything illegal as changing the format of a digital product—which is what you’re doing when you copy a movie to another device—is against the law.

My only wish that there was a way to add to UltraViolet library all the movies purchased in the past and resting on the shelf for years since streaming something online is much easier…

With thanks to Nicola from Feref and Tots100 for the invitation and Warner Bros. for the goodies bag.

“The Goblin and The Girl” by Neil Irani – Children’s Book Review

Margot — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:42:52 +0000

“The Goblin and the Girl” written by Neil Irani, is another great book we have received to review from Maverick, available also through my Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com stores.

First, a little bit about the author – Neil who writes stories for children for over 8 years now. His previous publications were mainly written for boys so once his daughter was born he decided to write books for girls as well. “The Goblin and the Girl” was created out of frustration with amount of meaningless books for children on the market.

The book is beautifully illustrated by Park Yun whose drawing style is very original, seems to me like mixture of pencil, crayons and watercolours but I can be wrong.

The fonts are big, spaced, easy enough to read by smaller children.

The story itself is about little girl who felt ugly like a goblin and hid from the World and people under her huge hat.

“When the girl looked in the mirror she
saw herself as a goblin.

She did not want anyone to see her because
of the way she looked.

But one rainy day everything changed…”

I’m not sure only about the group age this book is targeted at… my daughter who is 6 and rather smart and sensitive did not understand this it fully but she became aware of the problem some other children around her may have.

I’m certain that if I read it to her in a year or two she will enjoy this book at completely different level.

“The Goblin and The Girl”

AUTHOR: Neil Irani
ILLUSTRATOR: Park Yun
PUBLISHER: Maverick Arts Publishing
FORMAT: Paperback
SIZE: 260 x 256 x 6 mm
PAGES: 32
LANGUAGE: English
ISBN: 978-1848860780
PUBLISHED: 17th February 2012

With thanks to Maverick Children’s Books for complementary copy of the book.

You can find parts of this article between my other reviews on Amazon website.

Handmade Mulberry Paper Stamped Party Invitations / Cards

Margot — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:57:11 +0000

MATERIALS

square pieces of handmade Mulberry paper
pieces of ribbon tied into bows
square blank cards with envelopes
glitter glues, we used orange and pink
colourful ink (we used purple bingo dabber instead)
marker – same colour as the ink
craft glue

EQUIPMENT

large stamp for the front of the card
little stamp for the back of the card – optional

METHOD

Stamp square piece of Mulberry paper with bigger stamp, we used swirly heart design.
With a marker make dots all over the paper, try to make it in some kind of pattern.
Once ink is dry cover some parts of the design with glitter glue in similar colour to your ink.
Using different colour of the glitter glue cover the dots and leave the paper aside until dry, best overnight.
Optionally stamp also back of the blank card with the little stamp, ours was saying “especially for you” and top it with a little bit of glitter as well, leave to dry.
Once all glitter is dry stick with glue Mulberry paper squares onto front of blank cards.
Connect also bows with craft glue and leave aside again until completely dry, another night perhaps.
Repeat the same steps with all the cards.

NOTES

We made those cards as birthday party invitations when my daughter was turning 6, last summer…

To make those cards we used handmade Mulberry paper which has added some natural materials for texture.

ZABU Coffee Beans & The Grinder – Review

Margot — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:34:28 +0000

A while ago I found on my door step very fragrant package filled with freshly roasted coffee beans from ZABU Coffee. In addition to the beans coffee grinder was included which I find very useful and not complicated enough to grind a little bit of coffee in the morning while I’m still half asleep, just before brewing it in the cafetiere…

I must admit that it really does make a difference when you freshly grind beans instead of using ground coffee that was seating in jar for days. The coffee is much more fragrant and more economic because you can use less. Usually when I brew ground coffee I use 1 tbs per cup, with ZABU coffee to achieve the same effect I used 1 tbs of beans / ½ tbs while ground. Probably the fact that ZABU coffee beans are roasted and vacuum packed just before shipping have also something to do with the strength and freshness.

The grinder holds enough beans for 6 cups but I was always grinding 2 tbs at the time (for me and my husband) so I could just empty the whole content of the grinder straight into cafetiere. Another plus is the grinder cable which can be neatly rolled inside the machine while not in use, smart (!)

Below you can read about couple of ZABU coffees I was lucky to test, all of them using 2 tbs of beans per 600 ml of boiling water (for 2 regular size mugs), brewed in traditional plunger coffee maker and then drank with addition of some demerara sugar and a dash of milk.

Tanzania AA coffee comes from Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru, is grown in volcanic soil at 1700 m above sea level. Some of the coffee plants are over 90 years old and all of the coffee is hand picked.

I made it yesterday afternoon after dinner and it was a good choice… the Tanzania AA coffee is strong and fruity enough to give me kick when I need energy most, at the end of the day and at the same time smooth, nutty with almost chocolatey finish that make it perfect after dinner treat.

House Blend is Rainforest Alliance Certified and it is a mix of Brazilian, Colombian and Costa Rican, 100% Arabica beans.

It is quite mild but full of flavours from different beans: smooth, nutty with a little bit of fruity notes as well. Suitable for any time of the day.

Colombian Medellin Excelso coffee is grown on the foothills of the Andes and is Fairtrade Certified.

Now this is my favourite morning coffee, very flavoursome with nutty accents but mild and smooth at the same time… great to start the day.

Sumatra Blue Lingtong coffee is grown by the PPKGO coffee cooperative – collection of thousands of individual farmers spread across the North of Sumatra in the Taekngon region of the Aceh province.

It is light, delectable coffee with lots of fruity flavours.

Don’t miss the chance, ZABU has now introductory offer on their site and for £12.97 including delivery new customers receive:

1 bag House Blend coffee beans
1 bag Colombian Medellin Excelso coffee beans
1 free coffee grinder

And if you like them you will be able to continue receiving two bags of freshly roasted coffee beans (House Blend + Coffee of the Month) every month for the same £12.97, which is not bad. If you drink coffee regularly you likely spend about the same amount anyway and this way you don’t have to compromise on quality coffee, you have a chance to try best coffees from all over the World and get a free grinder that you can use for spices as well. The only risk you take is that after trying real coffee beans you may not like drinking instant coffee ever again.

With thanks to Elaine from ZABU Coffee and Emily from Midas Public Relations for complementary samples.