How to make ice candles, without exposing yourself to the cold: You will need: - An excitable child or two - water -bucket -coke bottle - something heavy 1. Wait until the outdoor temperature reaches minus 20 degrees or so. 2. Fill a bucket with water, put a plastic container like a cut-down coke bottle in the middle and put something heavy in it to weigh it down 3. Send a child outdoors with the bucket  4. Leave the bucket outside overnight. (btw, let the kid come back...

Who wants to read a blog that’s only updated every couple of months?  “Not I!” said the little red hen.  So she made a pact with herself to write something at least once a week.  “For good measure,” she clucked. And most weeks she had something – a lot of things, actually – to say.  And lots of sentences to start with the word AND.  And she was sure she could remember, in the musty back corners of her brain, that someone had taught her that you should never start...

I don't know what's going on around here, but my tough 6 year old (who, at times, I could swear is a reincarnation of Mick Jagger) is starting to express his musical preferences.  If you asked him, he would probably tell you his 3 favourite songs are: 1. Eye of the Tiger (Survivor) 2. We Will Rock You (Queen) 3. Another One Bites the Dust (Queen) closely followed by 4. TNT (AC/DC) And I just wanted to ask: where the FREAK did the boy even HEAR these songs?  We have a very different...

I don't care what the grown-ups say.  I think snow is awesome.  Pretty much every adult I've talked to in the past few months has said that they are glad there's no snow this year - you have to scrape it off the car when you want to drive, you get puddles of melting ice in the entryway, you have to  shovel it off the sidewalk, it makes icy slippery footpaths, kids keep losing their gloves, etc etc.  And YES.  All those things are true.  And yes, all those things...

Guess what I got yesterday with my Christmas money.  A pair of pulse warmers - and I'm happy as a clam.  Ok, lets call them wrist warmers, for those of you who aren't as pretentious as I.  And before you think to yourself "what a useless piece of 1980s accessorizing", let me rave a little bit... Wrist warmers, as far as I can gather, have been a traditional part of dressing in the colder climes for EVER.  They are a little-known piece of traditional Latvian dress, and were...

How wonderful to disappear into the wilderness of the Latvian countryside for over a week at Christmas. No internet, no TV, just a roaring fire in the hearth and lots of food and twinkling candles in the Christmas tree.  Amazingly this year, there has been no snow - it hasn't even fallen down under zero degrees during the day - which means muddy and grey behind the window.  This year we also celebrated NYE in the country - I had dreamed of doing so for years.  Much to our...