How to do Archives - ET Speaks From Home

Fish Mobile

This is a very easy craft that we made during the Easter holiday break. Both of my children love fishes and so we decided to make this fish mobile to hang it in our conservatory. We spent at least 20 minutes to colour all the fishes and took me around 10 minutes to thread them into this simple yet beautiful fish mobile.

How to Build a Potato Powered Clock

This week, we been having fun learning through educational STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) focused activities at home. This powered clock is a science activity that is suitable for aged 5 and above. I do find it difficult to explain to my children but they did get the gist of it!

To make life easier, rather than looking around for all the bits to build, we had this Lemon Clock kit provided by Great Gizmos for our Twitter party. If you want to get this kit, you can get it online such as from Amazon. If you prefer to make your own, you would need black and red wires, copper and zinc plates, LCD clock and tape.

This kit is simple to build but it is best to allow older children or an adult to build it as the bits are quite fragile.

Edible Tea Cup – Cupcake

Over the years, I have grown from amateur cook to a mom to three kids (including a massive old one). During my free time, I enjoy looking at Pinterest for ideas, baking Chinese cakes, learning piping etc.

I always find working with good food brands really rewarding. So when I was approached by Gü Puds, the purveyors of decadent desserts, to make an edible tea cup, I was very excited! Gü is famous for its chocolate puds and have recently launched a new, ready-to-heat, hot chocolate (or chocolate milk if you prefer it cold). Now I have seen edible tea cups that you can pour hot chocolate into, but the techniques required here are beyond my skill set and I’d be worried of it leaking. I believe it requires a really thick cookie base with a thick fondant icing. So instead, I made an edible tea cup cake to go along with the Gü Hot Chocolate instead.

Colourful Cookies Recipe

I’ve always wanted to bake colourful cookies whenever I saw the picture on Pinterest. So last week, I managed to spend some time with my daughter to bake them. This is a very easy recipe but it does require time to bake and is a workout for your arms. To mix the dough with four different food gels took me a long time to get the perfect colour. My daughter did get quite impatient with me mixing the food gel into the dough so I had given her a plastic glove to help knead the dough too.

To make the cookies colourful, I opted for food gel rather than food colouring liquid. Gel is much easier to mix than liquid and liquid may make your dough too wet and soft. This is my first time I bought the gel and the colour is not too bad. I had also used the food gels for my icing when I made my gingerbread house.

2 Minutes Santa Hat Cupcake

Last week, I baked a chocolate cake, cut out cylinder shapes and made icing. Unfortunately, my icing was too runny and it ruined all my mini cupcakes! So I had no choice but to cheat as my guests were due to arrive. I bought the ready-made vanilla icing and a packet of cupcakes! So if you ever ruin your Christmas party snacks or need a quick Christmas recipe to impress your relatives and friends, look no further! This is very simple Santa Hat cupcake and won’t take you too long at all.

You will need a piping star nozzle and piping bag for this.

How to make Ben Elf Hat

Thanks to Nick Jr and UKMumstv who shared this tutorial on how to make a Ben Elf Hat. My daughter complained why I didn’t make a girl elf hat. To make a girl elf hat, you just need to add a pink flower instead of a green leaf.

DIY Magnetic Chalkboard

Last year, I was sent an oak mirror but unfortunately the mirror part was broken, so I had saved the frame for any future use. Last week, BOSCH had sent me the IXO screwdriver to do a creative post. I decided to turn the oak mirror frame into a children’s DIY magnetic chalkboard.

DIY Coca-Cola Fairy Light Bottles

DIY Coca-cola Fairy Light Bottles! Recently, I had a mini task from #cbias to do a World Cup #BigMatchPlanner #Shop with Coca-Cola. This has inspired me to make some World Cup crafts with my children. We recently made football paper plate crafts, England straw flag and England flag topper. I bought the pack of Coca-Cola Zero along with mini Coca-Cola bottles. So now I am upcycling the bottles into a fairy light bottles.

How to make a perfect SMore

We just had the most perfect weekend! Sunshine and a lot of outdoor activities! With the promise of nice weather, we quickly hurried down to our local supermarket to stock up on BBQ food, flour to make pitta pockets and the most important thing – buying a BBQ pit!

Warm our rooms this Winter

I always like a challenge especially with home improvement, interior design and all sorts of DIY. This past year, I had set myself the goal to learn how to wallpaper, paint, and get creative with making a DIY picture using leftover wallpaper and all sorts.

This time around, I used a £50 B&Q voucher to tackle two cold-looking corners of my house. I gave it a makeover to make it feel warm and snug just in time for Christmas. Thanks to HomeServe for this Winter Blogger Challenge. In addition to affecting the ambience, I wanted to also reduce actual heat loss by using radiator reflectors. This is a thin sheet of foil applied to the wall behind the radiator to reduce heat loss into the wall. This increases the effective heating power of the radiator and so reduces fuel expenditure.

Our conservatory gets very cold during winter time. So we want to welcome Father Christmas into this room with a rattan star light (Half price £9.50) in the corner of the room. We have decorated with Poinsettia (£12) and a golden candle with wreath (£1.50) too to make it more welcoming. Also, we mustn’t forget to leave a cup of milk and cookie for Santa!

How to make Chinese Steamed Bun – ManTou

Each week, my son has been asking me to make mantou as his fellow Chinese students are eating it for their tea during our weekly Chinese lesson. So I followed the Food Network website to make this but I have altered the recipe.

How to make a Witch Hat

Halloween is approaching and I have been thinking up things to do with my children. Ms C’s teacher has given her a workbook to share what she did over the weekend or things she could do. So I remembered a very simple recipe to make a witch’s hat using an ice cream cone.

Ice cream cones are one of Ms C’s favourite snacks. She only likes to eat the cone and not the ice cream. Having said that, last week, she finally tried ice cream and managed to finish one whole ice cream.

To make a witchs hat, you need:

– Ice cream cone

– Baking/Cooking Chocolate

– Sprinkles

Firstly, you can melt the chocolate in a bowl which you put over a saucepan or in the microwave. Once the chocolate has melted, use it to coat the ice cream cone. Quickly place it on a tray laid with foil. Ask your little helper to decorate it with sprinkles.

DIY Circle Icing Cutter by Using a Syringe

Some of you might be aware that I am the host for the Something Special Twitter Party this coming Thursday! Now I am busying getting ready the games and party food.

My children love to help me to bake, cook and decorate. We were given a pack of 12 fairy cakes and a pack of icing for this party. Although we love baking, I do not own any icing cutters, especially one so small for the Something Special spots. So my clever husband thought of using a syringe.

We have plenty of Calpol syringes. So what he did was to use a pen knife and cut one through. He took off about 1 cm off the top of the outer layer of the syringe.

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DIY Circle Icing Cutter by Using a Syringe[/caption]

How to make Bubble Milk Tea

15 years ago, Bubble Pearl Milk Tea used to be a premium tea where it would cost around S$4 (Singapore Dollars) and nowadays you can get it for S$1 in Singapore. Recently, I have introduce my son to bubble milk tea when we were in London Chinatown. That cost us around £3.50 for a small cup.

What makes the tea so unique is the pearl itself. My friend used to believe that the pearl is in fact is frogs’ eggs. I can reassure you that it is made from tapioca. They are chewy and slightly sweet.

So last week, while Ms C went to Birmingham Eye Hospital for her scan, we popped by to Wing Yip Chinese supermarket to do some shopping. I bought Teh Tarik (3 in 1 Malaysian Tea) and ready made tapioca balls.

Home Improvement Unsung Hero Competition

This is a competition entry for Home Improvement Hero by MoneySupermarket.

I am not really a hero but more like an unsung mummy. I did most of the house redecoration like painting, wallpapering and fixing lights. Last week, I was trying to replace my bathroom light bulb and unfortunately I dropped the light cover and smashed it on the floor. While I was trying to catch the cover, I slipped and fell down the ladder. It was quite a bad fall that I cut my finger, grazed my arm and bruised the right side of my leg. We have now had to replace the light and so it has set back our financial. I wanted to spend more on a nice photo for my husbands office but now we have to make do with what we have left.