Clare's Rebel Badge Blog

Use your pumpkin scraps in a recipe I bought two pumpkins and spent an irritating afternoon carving up the larger one, separating the seeds and stringy bits out, then making pumpkin chutney and spicy pumpkin soup. Not sure I ever want to see a pumpkin again..... Research the origins of Halloween Halloween has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain, which was celebrated in parts of northern Europe from around 2000 years ago. Samhain was celebrated around November 1st and marked the change of seasons from summer to winter. The Celts believed that during the night before New Year the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead thinned and ghosts returned to Earth. Druids built bonfires and animals and crops were sacrificed to the Gods. When the Romans conquered much of the Celtic world, some of their traditions were incorporated into Samhain; one was Feralia which honored the dead, and another was a celebration of the Goddess Pomona whose symbol was an apple, and may b...

I was lent a box of mismatched Lego by a friend's son and spent a very satisfying evening attempting to sort it out as I was trying to find all the bits to make a model elephant and it's baby. Got there eventually! There weren't any googly eye pieces but I am pleased with the result. Lego have a downloadable instruction manual for making random models, which is rather useful. Vehicle: Horse and Cart Slightly amended as bits were missing. Building or Landmark I built a castle, with arrowslits and ramparts. I didn't have many bricks so there are a few holes, so it is clearly battle damaged! It is guarded by green ninjas, obviously. A plant or flower arrangement I tried making a rose following online instructions then found I didn't have enough parts so had to adapt it.  I am pleased with the result as it looks like a flower even if it's not a red rose. I didn't have enough of anything to make any more...

I have spent my life starting writing projects and not finishing them, or getting bored and starting another. Completing the Writers badge made me set goals for my gardening blog, and to some extent my hiking blog. Writing a blog post once a month about how the garden was progressing gave me some extra focus in noticing what I was actually doing out there, what nature was up to, and whether I actually was doing as much as I thought I was.  The blog posts about Rebel Badge Club have been rather more ad hoc, but have acted as a diary about what I have done to earn each badge; ordinarily I would have notebooks and scraps of paper all over the place so this has helped to keep me organised and on task! I have found the heatwave this summer too much to cope with anything particularly energetic, so haven't managed to do much hiking, therefore the walking blog has not been updated much other than from a week of dog walking once the heat had abated a bit. More walking is vaguely planned ove...