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My middle son, Toby, finally has his very first wobbly tooth age six. In his own words “I’ve been waiting 6 years for the Tooth Fairy to visit me!’

For Toby an important part of the wobbly tooth was deciding on the type of Tooth Pillow he wanted. He is obsessed with the Avengers, Lego Marvel and more importantly The Incredible Hulk, he was super excited to see the sketches I made with ideas for him, finally deciding on the Hulk. This was such fun to make that I think I will make up a few more with other super heroes for his friends.

To get started you will need:

• 1 copy of the PDF template
• 1 Sheet of Green Felt
• 1 Sheet of Purple Felt
• 1 Sheet of Brown Felt
• Green, purple, brown and black embroidery floss. (use 2 strands, removed from the 6)
• Green ribbon
• 2¼ inch black Brads
• Polyester Fiberfill (otherwise known as stuffing!)
• Pins
• Needle

Using the attached PDF, cut out pieces as marked.

First, cut out the template pieces and pin them onto the appropriate colour felt pieces. Cut as per template instructions.

Take the back pocket piece and stitch it to one of the teeth with green embroidery floss as pictured. Then take a piece of green ribbon (as long as you need to hang over bedpost or on door handle), and stitch to the opposite side to the pocket. Place to side.

Take the second tooth piece and stitch on the purple pants along the waist band and the bottom of the leg pieces as pictured.

Pin on the hair piece, then place the Brads where you feel they look best. Once your happy with placement, poke them through the felt and pull back pieces apart to secure.

Once you are happy with the eyes, stitch on the eyebrows using the brown embroidery floss, then use the black embroidery floss to stitch on a mouth.

Next, take the tooth pocket and stitch onto the pants as above. I then used some green embroidery floss to stitch on the word “Tooth”, you don’t have to do this.

All the detail should be done now and you should have 2 pieces that look like this.

Place them wrong sides together, and mid way down one side start stitching using blanket stitch around the outside edge. I used different floss for each colour part because it would bug me if I didn’t, but it will look just as good all stitched in green. As your stitching around, start to add a little of the Polyester Fiberfill, ensuring that you don’t over stuff! Before you get to the end (about 2 inches from where you started) then finish off the stuffing, closing with the blanket stitch.

And there you have it, one finished Hulk Tooth!

Since moving from Scotland to California, the time I spend baking with the kids has decreased. There are so many box mix options in the baking aisles at the Grocery Store and so few basics on offer compared to what I was able to pick up back home that it’s been easy to take the convenient route.

Recently, I’ve been watching The Great British Bake Off on Youtube (a little back home nostalgia), Jack happened to catch one with me at the weekend and declared that he was going to make a cake entirely on his own.

After some chat I managed to persuade him to try the very first cake I ever baked — a Victoria Sponge Cake. As a child it was the basic cake my Mum used for birthday cakes, it was easily adapted into cupcakes.

Since we are in the US, and butter isn’t butter, Caster Sugar doesn’t appear to exist and apparently we don’t need kitchen scales, I’ve adapted the recipe for ease of baking here.

Ingredients

Cake

• ½ cup, or 2 sticks of butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup of granulated white sugar
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup of white all purpose flour, sifted
• 1½ teaspoons of baking powder
• ½ teaspoon of salt

Filling

• 1 jam of Strawberry Jam (I use Bonne Maman Strawberry Preserve)
• ½ pint carton of Heavy Whipping Cream
• Powdered Confectioners Sugar for dusting

Method

Pre–heat your oven to 350°. Take 2 x 9 inch cake pans and line with parchment paper then spray lightly with Pam Baking Spray.

In a large bowl and using a hand mixer, combine the sugar and butter until the butter looks white and the mixture is fluffy. This is the part where you get all of the air into the cake, so mix well.

Then add each egg, 1 at a time and mixing each well before adding the next. Once combined, add the Vanilla extract.

Take the flour, baking powder and salt and add to the mixture. Then, using a metal spoon, gently fold the dry ingredients into your mix until all are combined.

Divide into the 2 cake pans, and place into the oven on the middle shelf (try to put both on the same shelf for even cooking).

Bake for 22 minutes, before removing from oven check that the cake has came away from the edge of the tin and a metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. If not, bake for a couple more minutes until ready.

Leave for 10 minutes then remove cakes from pan and place on cooling rack.

Filling

Once cakes are completely cool, you can begin to prepare the filling. ONLY do this step if your ready to eat the cake within the next hour, otherwise you will end up with a melted gooey mess cake sandwich.

First, pour the hard cream into a bowl and whisk using a hand mixer until stiff peaks form. Spread this mixture on one of the cakes.

Then, take the jam and spread on the other cake.

(As a note, we used an entire jar of jam and all of the cream on the cake pictured. It was far too much and made a big, gooey mess when we cut into it. Which was fine for us, but if this is for a special occasion be aware of how much filling you put on the cake!)

Now for the difficult part, you need to put cake piece with cream and sandwich with the jam piece so you have cake–cream–jam–cake.

Finished!

Sift the powdered confectioners sugar on the top and viola! Your cake is ready to share with friends, along with a nice cup of tea!

A few months ago, my 9 year old asked me if I could make him a Scarf that no–one else had at School. We compiled a list of his favourite TV programmes, had a look around to see what was available in local stores and whittled the list down to BMO from Adventure Time.

Before I go on, I would just like to let you know that I only learned how to Crochet a year ago, self taught through various Library books and the occasional YouTube tutorial. This is my very first attempt at writing a pattern, so please let me know if you spot any errors or if any part of this doesn’t make sense. All crochet terms are US.

Materials required

• 1 Skein of Aqua Yarn (I used Red Heart Super Saver Aruba)
• H Hook (5.00mm / UK 6)
• F Hook (3.75mm / UK 8 or 9)
• Yarn Needle
• Scraps of felt in cream, red, royal blue, light blue, black, green & yellow
• Print of attached PDF template
• 4 x Brads
• Embroidery floss to match felt colours

Scarf

All crochet terms are US.

• Row 1 — Using H Hook, Ch 22. Turn, and DC into 2nd stitch from hook. Continue for the rest of the row. Turn.
• Row 2–129 — Ch 2, DC into 2nd stitch from hook for rest of the row. Turn.
• Row 130 — Ch 2, DC into 2nd stitch from hook and continue for rest of the row. Fasten off.

Arms (Make 4)

• Using F Hook, make a magic circle and SC 5 into the ring.
• Mark your last stitch with a stitch marker, then SC 5 for the next 12 rows. Fasten off, leaving a large tail for stitching to the scarf later.

Legs (Make 4)

• Using F Hook, make a magic circle and SC 7 into the ring.
• Mark your last stitch with a stitch marker, then SC 7 for the next 9 rows. Fasten off, leaving a large tail for stitching to the scarf later.

PDF

Using the attached PDF, cut out felt pieces as marked.

Now for the fun bit!

First, place the pieces at the end of the scarf as pictured below:

Attach the brads to BMO’s screen to make eyes, and using a running stitch detail the mouth. Then, stitch the screen onto the scarf using matching embroidery floss (or not, depending on what you have in your stash).

I then attach the arms and legs using the yarn needle and a whipstitch, placing them where I feel they look "right". Have a go and trust your instincts!

Finished!

Ta–Da! Now you should have one fantastic looking BMO scarf ready for that special Adventure Time fan in your life.

As I said at the start, this is my very first Crochet tutorial, your feedback on any mistakes, parts I miss out or sections that just make no sense at all would be very much appreciated.

Hello there! Well, its been a while! Settling into living in California was a little more difficult than we originally anticipated, but over the past month or so things have all started to click into place and I have been able to start again with crafting and creating.

During my absence I have experimented a little with embroidery hoops, taught myself to crochet and explored every craft shop I could possibly find as well as sticking with my old favourite, felt.

I have a number of Tutorials waiting to be published over the next few weeks, and hopefully I will start using the Blog a little more.

Thanks for reading.

Well, it’s once again been a while hasn’t it? Apologies again, although I can genuinely hand on heart say that it has been one of the busiest times of our life!

So, what’s happened since August 5th?

Firstly and most importantly our Visa documentation was approved! On Wednesday Ed and I flew to Belfast for our face to face interview, which went well. On Saturday morning our passports arrived with our shiny USA visa’s safely attached inside — hooray!

Secondly, our house sale concluded (after sixteen months and four buyers) and on Monday just past we moved out of our home of five years and into a caravan, our temporary accommodation. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s a challenge. It’s a lovely static caravan and is perfect for a holiday, but going from our old (and in my opinion very spacious) home into a two bed caravan has been, well, interesting. But it’s short term.

We are now on the sad part of our adventure — we leave two weeks today and our days are filled with last visits to places and goodbyes. Leaving drinks are being organised, the boys are having a leaving party next week with a handful of their closest friends and close family goodbyes have almost all been arranged.

I will be updating the Blog more frequently now as we are finding our days less full as we get more organised. If you want to follow our new adventure remember to follow me on Twitter (@redandrosyhq) or on Instagram (@redandrosy) which is updated far more frequently than the Blog. To be honest, Instagram is updated many, many times a day!

Thanks so much for reading.

Rose ×××