July 2024

We're so excited to share another monthly journal written by the lovely Lola Jones, also known as @pocketfullofbuttercups on Instagram. Lola is a wonderful photographer and all round creator of beautiful content, raising her twin daughters Maya and Chloe & her youngest Thea from her house near the Peak District. Each month she will give us a small glimpse into her world, inspiring you with activity ideas, recipes and more.

A taste of my childhood, literally. My grandma used to make these every so often and I looooved
them. She would always make apple fruit rolls. After cooking the puree, she would then thinly
spread it on a metal tray or the inside of saucepan lids and leave to air dry in the sun. I remember
it would take quite some time for the fruit rolls to be ready to eat, but so worth the wait.

My kids love fruit rolls too, but we have never tried to make homemade ones before. I have
decided to try and make strawberry rolls as strawberries are in season. We used fresh berries for
this recipe, but you can probably use frozen ones too.

I used a silicone mat to dry the fruit, as from the reading I have done, it works best, but I have also
seen some recipes using greaseproof paper.

Ingredients:

- 500g fresh strawberries
- 1/4 cup of honey
- 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Method:

Preheat the oven to about 70C. Line the silicone mat on a baking sheet. Next cut the strawberries and remove the leaves, put the berries into the blender, add honey and lemon juice and blitz together until smooth.

Spread the puree evenly on the silicone mat and place in the oven for around 3-4 hours. The leather is ready when dry and not sticky to the touch.

Place the silicone mat upside down on the greaseproof paper and peel off the mat. Cut the leather into strips. Roll up and store in an airtight container, or cover slightly in granulated sugar and store loose or rolled in an airtight container.

I am planning to try mango or apple leather next when apples come into season. Yum!

We came up with these sweet DIY stuffed paper clouds when brainstorming gift ideas to school
friends - they are not too complicated to make and can be filled with small sweet treats or little
gifts. It’s also a good, simple way to start older children using the sewing machine.

You will need:

- Pencil
- Paper
- Scissors
- Thread
- Sewing machine
- Small sweets such as jelly beans

Fold an A4 sheet in half, depending on how large you want your clouds to be, and hand draw one
or two clouds on each folded A4 sheet. Next, using the contrasting thread and a sewing machine,
stitch each cloud leaving a 3 inch gap. Trim the excess paper, leaving a little border around the
stitching.

Personalise your clouds with a little message on the front or a smiley face.

Fill the clouds with sweets or a little gift, slide a little note inside if you wish to. Machine stitch the
gap.

This is the perfect craft for when your children are bored. The bracelets also make a sweet little gift to school friends at the end of the school year or to siblings to celebrate the start of summer or, perhaps, even as a goodbye gift to newly made friends while on holiday.

We used square letter beads, yarn and fabric strips, but you can also add charms, larger beads or even tiny shells found by the seaside.

You will need:

- Square letter beads (they have a generous hole in the middle for thicker thread. I bought these on Amazon. They are called HERZWILD 1000 Pieces Letter Beads for Threading).

- Yarn (we braided ours in plaits using the same colour yarn or a combination of complimenting colours).

Method:

To make the bracelets, think of words you can personalise them with. For example, we used summer holidays as an inspiration and had words like: “sunshine”, “ice cream”, “seaside”, “ocean”, “lemonade”, “daydream” etc. Personal names are a great way to customise your bracelets with too.

Next, make the string you are going to thread beads onto. Braid your yarn into plaits or use a single strip of fabric. Our beads have golden letters on them, so we also incorporated a golden thread into our braids. I think they turned out lovely and summery.