Mamma mia... Mothering Sunday

It's that time of year again, and my thoughts are turning to daffodils, lighter evenings, desperately wishing of putting the thermals away and of course, Mothering Sunday.

Finding the perfect gift or something for my Mother is interminably difficult - for a while I could rely on a card and making her steak & potatoes dauphinoise. This year as I've got Church Parade I'll be sending flowers (don't worry, she doesn't read this) and making sure to call her after my charges have been dispatched back to their mothers.

Of course, if you're being traditional then it should be a simnel cake - here's my recipe that I will make at Easter too.

There are some beautiful Mother's Day gift selections out there - Not on the High Street do a lovely selection (as they do with everything, they are generally my first stop for presents). If I were a mother, then there I could have definitely worked you up a list.

However, if you've got to Wednesday without a gift then it's likely you're not going to want to chance online shopping. As always the Supermarkets are rising to the challenge and Asda kindly sent me some of their Mother's Day gifts to show you.

The heart shaped crumpets are a lovely touch, perfect if you're planning a surprise breakfast in bed (although not one with cold tea as my sister and I did before we were allowed to use the kettle!) Similarly the toast stamp looks like lots of fun.

There's very few mothers who would turn down some chocolates, and the shoes are perfectly dinky, with the chocolate slab enormous - and so pretty!

Last year after mother's day I picked up some MUM cookie cutters in the sale (every thrifty) and I think the perfect Mother's Day gift would be some MUM sugar biscuits, that you could decorate with icing and maybe her favourite colour sprinkles or sweets.

Using my recipe for my Christmas cookies, I'll be cutting them out using these cutters, and decorating them with glace icing. Now of course I just have to work out how to get them to my Mum.

Springtime crafts with the Brownies & Guides

One of the fantastic things about being a blogger is the opportunities you have open to you. One such for me is joining the Baker Ross Bloggers network. Both my Brownies and Guides love Baker Ross craft kits, in the past we've made Mum cushions for mother's day (which we scented with dried lavender bags, craftily hidden inside the kapok stuffing), made jointed reindeer at Christmas, and used countless tubes of fabric paint to decorate t-shirts and pots of beads for points on camp. The nice thing about the craft kits are that for Guide age girls (10-14) it can provide them with Patrol time, where they follow the instructions independently, adapt the craft to their design desires and combine that with a good gossip with their patrol.

This was just how we used the gifts for Mothering Sunday, each Patrol got to choose one type of craft from Mum keyrings, to Mum phone cases, flowers in bottles, and decorated cards (Girls in the lead and all that). We gave them 45 minutes to chat, craft, and go wild with the glitter. The nice thing about the variety is that no one felt the need to 'keep up' with anyone else, and as the crafts were quite straightforward they could in essence lead themselves. The girls were then tasked by taking their crafts home to give to their Mum's a week later. Here's hoping that remembered. I think if you had a younger Guide unit than we do (we have quite a spread of ages, and the 14 year olds definitely found these a bit babyish) then more supervision would be required for some of the crafts, but the flowers, keyrings and phone cases were real winners.

The Brownies were - because of their age (7-10) a slightly different kettle of fish. Craft for them, is more closely supervised and supported. An age can be spent on colouring, the variety of stickers must be equally distributed and activities can take much longer or shorter than you expect. That said, they loved the idea of choosing their craft - normally we would all do the same. One group made Easter cards and bookmarks, One made Easter mobiles and the other made jointed figures. The jointed figures were the most straightforward craft and I had two of our littlest girls with me. Lots of fun was had with the colouring, and the girls managed the split pins without a problem. The table doing Easter cards, loved the sticky jewels for the cards, and enjoyed making a bookmark to keep as well as a card to give away. The table doing Easter mobiles ran out of time for theirs, so Wise Owl and I (Snowy Owl) tied the cord onto the Easter figures. A small criticism of this pack was that the string was much too slippery for our girls to tie their much loved reef knots, and it was a craft that would probably be better suited to a Brownie Holiday owing to the amount of figures to be coloured in. That said all the girls were looking forward to doing some craft over the holidays. I was a little circumspect about the Easter cards and mobiles as we are a multi-faith unit, but as the girls chose which crafts they wanted to do, we had no issues with that. 


Ratios for Brownies are higher than Guides (purely because of the girls age) and this works better for craft, where a leader needs to be on hand for the fiddly bits. The Baker Ross kits are a hit with both groups of girls - they get different things from the experience of crafting, and have different experiences. However, I think part of the success of the kits is up to giving girls the choice about what they want to do. Giving girls of any age a sense of control is always going to lead to success provided they're supported along the way. 


Now for next term - is it naughty to say I'm already drawn towards some of the Diamond Jubilee crafts - the Guides have asked for a Street Party so it has the potential to be lots of fun! 


It's worth remembering that as a Guider you get 10% off at Baker Ross, simply enter your membership no in as you're ordering.  This discount makes resources much more affordable, especially when you've a bigger unit. 

The flowers of spring: what's coming up on the blog

I do love M's parents, they came for dinner the other week and brought me primroses. Hurrah for flowers.

I know the last few weeks on the blog have been a bit dull, much as I don't pay too much attention to my stats, the numbers have been steadily dropping, so I thought I'd just do a bit of signposting so you know I haven't completely given up and hibernated.

This week I'm off for a cookery evening at Leiths and following that, there will be a giveaway of a hamper of Asda Extra Special goodies just for readers of the blog. I'm going to tie that into some subsription options now that Google Reader is no more for those of you not on Blogspot blogs.

I've promised myself that I'm going to get some scones made today, using our Division Commissioner's infamous recipe. And not just because the cream will go off otherwise.

Continuing the Guiding feel, I've got a couple of picture posts of the Guides and Brownies using some Baker Ross craft packs for Mothering Sunday and Easter. Lots of fun was had by all (I was just sad they haven't left any for me!)

Also, I've got another Activity plan for your units - homemade (no-cook) sweets suitable for Brownies to make with supervision and assistance, and for older Guides to lead younger Guides in. Ideal presents for any opportunity that arises (we made them at Brownies for Mothering Sunday).

And lastly, I completely failed to blog my birthday cake which was yummy, so I'm adapting the recipe slightly to make it a Simnel cake. Ideally that would have been made already but as I have no need to prove my suitability as a wife - unless anyone's asking? I'm shucking the bonds of patriarchy (or something like that) and making it when I have some time this week or next.

So that's what's coming up over the coming weeks. Stay tuned...