Wedding Venue

Since the wedding venue is something that we have actually organised, I wanted to share it with you.  We're getting married in Pongwe, Zanzibar, on the beach. But the food and drinks and dance party section of the wedding, as well as accommodation, are being hosted by Seasons Lodge. It's a small place with only 10 rooms (7 cottages, 3 in a house). It will be their first wedding, which I'm pretty excited about.

I guess at some point we will organise the menu. They gave us a wedding cake choice of chocolate or banana! A friend of a friend got married in Zanzibar and the bottom layer of the wedding cake was iced cardboard. But I think Seasons is far too classy a venue for such shenanigans.

I still have no idea how many guests this ceremony will entail: all our overseas potential guests are trying to save up... and, um... I haven't yet finished making the invitations for those who live here. Roll on 24th July!

Hedgehog Baby

My friend Gemma had a baby and she thinks he is secretly a hedgehog. I'm totally inviting him to my wedding.

Wedding Portrait

I'm so excited to tell you that we have hired an artist to paint our wedding portrait! Laura Manfre will paint our portrait in watercolour. Her work is really vibrant and has an interesting sort of 'blotchiness'. Here's some examples. I have no idea if she has ever painted a wedding portrait before: I fell in love with her painting of a pug dog!

Her prices are very reasonable, and she only charges £10 extra to have two people in the painting. I'd recommend her (even though I don't yet know what the finished painting will look like) if you need a wedding portrait or are just feeling egotistical. Let's be honest, no one really needs a wedding portrait.

Although this is the only wedding detail I have yet organised, besides booking the venue, it makes me feel hopeful that I will make progress in other areas of wedding planning, too!

You can look out for the finished painting some time near the beginning of August.

How to make Dinosaur Eggs

 

 This week in Dinosaur Club we made our own Dinosaur Eggs! The recipe was super fun and dirty.

We used: 

• 3 cups of sand
• 3 cups of soil
• 1 and 1/2 cups of water
• 1 cup of flour
• 1 cup of salt

First we went around the school searching for the sand and soil. Then we mixed all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Finally, we added the water. We used our hands the whole time.

Once the mix was ready we wrapped it around small toy dinosaurs, so that they could be inside of the eggs:

 The recipe I used made about 20 eggs, so if you wanted more you'd need to increase the proportions. Here are our eggs:

I resisted the urge to tidy them up and just left them as the children had made them. They'll dry over the next few days and when dinosaur club rolls around next week, we will hide them in the sand, then dig them out and crack them open with rocks.
  
 In other dinosaur-related news....

We got this amazing stuff called Jelli-Baff and mixed it up in the water tray this afternoon. Without really reading the instructions we opened one small pack of Jelli-Baff and mixed it with warm water. We kept adding more and more water until there was about 20 litres of it. I still feel it could be diluted further as it sticks to everyone's arms now when they play with it. We had SO MUCH FUN that we could get NOTHING ELSE DONE during our science lesson: everyone just wanted to keep their hands in the goo the entire time (myself included).

When it was time for dinosaur club I just added glitter and dinos and it was ready to go! I had all sorts of ideas for stuff to put in: English money for Maths lessons, pirates for role play, measuring jugs for capacity: wouldn't it be fun to do a capacity lesson with this stuff, instead of water?

This week I'm just loving my job.

Nice Guys Finish First: Lizzie Mcguire Dating Guide

I'm working my way through Season Two of Lizzie Mcguire. Lizzie is in love with Ethan, but agrees to go on a date with Larry so as not to hurt his feelings. They go on a date the science museum(!) and then Lizzie breaks up with him because she doesn't think there's any chemistry (ha ha ha). Anyways, joke's on her because he grew up to be sexy:

 And she grew up to marry this guy (in real life!):

And that guy Ethan? The one who Lizzie is in love with but he's kindof a douchebag? Take a look:

 So, what is the meaning of all this? Besides that Lizzie needs to learn how to choose a man? It merely adds to my theory that though nice guys have a suckish time in school, they actually grow up to be winners in life.

I made felt doughnuts!

Did I mention that I'm into making things out of felt lately? Over the past two days in my free time I've been working on this pair of doughnuts: a strawberry doughnut and a raspberry doughnut.

 I didn't use a pattern: I tried drawing around a few circles in my house and found that a pringles lid is almost the right size (a couple of millimetres bigger all the way around was perfect for me. It occured to me that if I designed a lot of my own felt food I could sell the patterns on Etsy. These two are my first attempt.

I used beads for the sprinkles and they took forever to sew on! This was my first time making raspberries from felt and I found it fascinating to see how they came together.

I'd also like to make a chocolate doughnut. If you have any idea which fruit would look good on a chocolate doughnut, I'd love to hear it!

Tanzanian Earrings

I've been wanting to show you my Tanzanian earrings for a long time now! I'm hoping to inspire some of my jewellery-making friends. So here they are, organised by the material they are made from.

1. Beads. 
I made the black ones and the white ones on the beading weekend, and bought the blue ones. This kind of earrings are very popular and closer to tradition than any of the other types.

2. Newspaper.
These earrings also use beads, but the big beads are all made from painted newspaper. They're really cool. This pair measure about 4 inches in diameter and hit my shoulders when I walk. They're my favourites!

3. Plastic.
I think I bought this pair when I was craving sweets, because they look so delicious! Not traditional in the least, but fun. They remind me of that baby toy where you stack the rainbow rings on a stick.

4. Wood.
My carving teacher made me the black pair. I still haven't worked out why he chose the letters 'M' and 'B': maybe those were the most fun to make? The blue pair must be imported from another country: DRC maybe? Although I bought them here I've not seen anyone in Tanzania wearing anything similar.

5. Bottle Caps.
I bought the 7up ones because the logo is so retro, from the era when my mum used to model for 7up. The bavaria ones I mostly bought because I like the colours. They match with a lot of my clothes.

I have so many bottle caps saved up! We use them at school instead of counters, but I'd also like to try some bottle cap crafts. Let me know if you have a good idea for how I could use some or all of them!

Usually I try not to buy too much stuff, since I move around a lot and I'm trying to live a more minimalist lifestyle, but earrings are so small and light that they seem like a great thing to shop for. Plus it's fun to wear them every day!