WINNER! Toddler treats pick n mix giveaway

Thanks to everyone who entered our accessories giveaway :) We have collected the entries from the Facebook and blog comments and numbered you all, then used our trusty old online random number generator to pick the winner...

...And the winner is...

Jill Courtright Sakowski!!

Congratulations, Jill, We will get in touch soon to discuss your prize!

Thanks to everyone who entered, keep your eyes peeled for our next giveaway;

details will be shared on Facebook, Twitter and here on our blog :)

Toddler treats pick n mix GIVEAWAY!

We're having another GIVEAWAY! This time, you get to choose your prize from ANY of these awesome Olive and Vince toddler accessories (the winner will receive one of the following):

• A baby or toddler hat
• Two bandana bibs
• A children's necklace
• A bow tie

 

 
You can even pick your colours and sizes, check out our Etsy shop to see what you will choose if you win and start getting excited!

So how do you enter? It's EASY. Many people will know that our main "hub" of communication is our Facebook page. We'd like you to show off our page to your friends by sharing the following image on Facebook and letting us know your favourite item from our accessories in a comment either here on our blog or on the Facebook image. Here's the image, and clicking on it will take you to our Facebook page where you can just click "share" and it will be shared with your friends:

Get sharing and good luck! The competition closes on Thursday 18th October, the winner will be announced here on our blog on Friday 19th October. One entry per person.

Nat & Naomi xx

p.s. Don't have Facebook? You can also enter by tweeting the following message:

 @OliveAndVince are having a pick n mix GIVEAWAY! I want to win one of their funky toddler accessories- Check it out at http://www.oliveandvince.blogspot.co.uk

Don't forget to add a comment here on the blog to let us know your favourite item from our accessories range! :)

Please welcome our knitting Nana...

Meet Olive's Nan, our 100% cool knitting Nana! She may not look or behave like your typical granny, but she has totally mastered all the traditional skills such as baking, knitting and mending things. Olive has been lucky to be in receipt of many a gorgeous hand knitted garment since she was very small, and I decided it was unfair to limit such talent to one little princess!  So, now we have a super excited Nana on board, waiting with her knitting needles in hand, to ensure all the babies and toddlers from all around the world have warm ears, hands and knees!!! 

Let’s introduce you to what our knitting Nana has been up to so far:

Fingerless gloves

Our teeny little fingerless gloves have been uniquely designed with lots of extra length in the arm, both to ensure that they stay on and to add warmth to the whole lower arm beyond just the hand. As parents ourselves, we’ve found that Olive and Vince have always fussed about having their hands contained within gloves, but fingerless gloves have always proved a success for us, and we do love to share our little successes!

Leg warmers 

Designed to add extra warmth to the lower leg, typically reaching just below the knee. For younger children they can be folded to achieve the perfect length plus providing an added layer for extra warmth. Can be worn alone or as an under layer.

Hat

Our intentionally oversized hat has been especially designed with extra height to ensure it pulls down around the head and face to keep little ears tucked away from cold weather.

Knitwear makes the most precious gift, just make sure you give our Nana plenty of notice in time for Christmas :)

Monday Moodboard: Bittersweet

1. Sunshineartdesign

2. Bialakura 

3. PamelaAngus

4. blota

My moodboard today is bittersweet as we say goodbye to our family cat, Berry. She lived a long and very happy life and I am reflecting on some very beautiful memories with a sweet little friend xx  

Thanks to the European Street Team members featured for their beautiful work :)

See more moodboards over at Star of the East's blog!

Have a lovely week everyone xx 

Our Creative Space: Preparations

As we've had a calmer week this week after the massive rush of orders throughout July, we thought we would use the time to do some rather exciting preparation work. The first thing that we had been wanting to find time for was some new pattern work. 

 

We couldn't possibly spoil the surprise by telling you exactly what we have been working on, but we are very pleased with our progress and we are hoping to perfect the pattern and release a NEW GARMENT in our shop soon! 

Speaking of new releases, we've got another set of new items that are all made and almost ready to be listed in the Etsy shop. New releases always mean photoshoots, and the children were blessedly helpful (especially when we plied them with bribes) so we were able to get some lovely shots which you will see in the shop next week.

 Vince helped to take some photos while Naomi helped Olive to prepare for her modelling session!

Other than new designs and pattern work, we have been preparing for an upcoming BABY FAIR by stocking up lots of our accessories. The fair, organised by Sophie of Under One Roof, is at the Phoenix in Exeter and will take place on Saturday 8th September from 10 am to 3 pm. This will be our very first fair and we are so excited to see how our items are received! This week we focussed on stocking up on our newborn size hats and our most popular bibs.

We love the size comparison of one of our newborn hats against one of our size 1-2 year hats!

 

Naomi had lots of geeky fun designing some new "Olive & Vince Money" vouchers that we will be using for the fair and other promotions. We're both really pleased with the way they turned out and look forward to getting the professionally printed vouchers back from our printing company :) It sure was a nice feeling to be printing our own money!!

Keep an eye on our blog for more news from our workshop, we will try to keep you regularly updated on what we've been up to in our creative space :)

Naomi & Nat xx

Our Creative Space: A Special Guest

 

Hello again, welcome back to our creative space from the Olive & Vince workshop :) We've had a colourful week! In fact, two particular colours seemed to feature strongly in our orders and creative projects this week; red and purple, and we think they make a rather scrummy combination...

 "Plum Pudding" Slouchies, "Ladybird" leggings, 
"Sweet Shop" trousers, "Star Candy" skirt and "Miss Muffet" dungarees.

 Friday found us in our workshop with a lovely list of orders to prepare and post. This Friday was particularly cool because we welcomed a special guest to help us with our orders:

  

 The borrowed cover stitch machine brought our current machine total up to five! It was very cool to see them all together. Nat will be collecting the permanent new cover stitch machine next week, but until then, the Janome Cover Pro made herself very much at home and we made good use of her for some custom boxer shorts and pyjama bottoms heading to London. We hope they will get there quickly and safely through all of the Olympics excitement!

Keep an eye on our blog for more news from our workshop, we will try to keep you regularly updated on what we've been up to in our creative space :)

Naomi & Nat xx

P.S. We've shared this with other creative bloggers, find more here!

Make - Sushi for toddlers

  

Firstly, please allow me to dispel a myth;

Sushi is NOT about munching on raw fish.

Sushi can be whatever you want it to be; whether you are a vegetarian, meat eater or indeed, whether you enjoy munching on raw or cooked fish! In my household we like to eat sushi the vegetarian way, and it has never come as a surprise to me that little Olive adores eating Sushi. It is the most perfect brightly coloured, fun looking finger food for little ones, and it's an added bonus that the content of it is super healthy.

I would not recommend involving little ones in the making sushi. The process is quite precise and the super sticky rice could very quickly become very stressful. Instead I'd suggest enjoying the process in your own company, and then surprising excited little ones with your beautiful and tasty results :)

You will need:

Equipment

 

• Large mixing bowl
• Bamboo rolling mat (available from most large supermarkets)
• Cling film wrap
• Very sharp non-serated knife
• Small bowl filled with water for moistening fingers

Essential ingredients

• A pinch of salt
• 1 cup sushi rice
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 30ml rice vinegar
• 1 flat tbsp caster sugar
• 3 sheets of nori (sheets of dried seaweed)
• Your filling of choice. Personal recommendations include advocado, peppers, cucumber, tinned tuna, smoked salmon and cream cheese. In whatever combinations you desire.

Optional extras (not all suitable for toddlers)

The following make nice accompaniments to sushi:

• Pickled ginger
• Soy sauce (I use an alternative called "Tamari" because I am wheat intolerant)
• Wasabi (similar to horse radish)
• Rice Mirin (can be used instead of caster sugar in the rice preparation)

Getting started:

Begin by making yourself a large soapy bowl of hot water, you are going to need it, this could get messy!

Cook your rice. You can either follow instructions on the packet, or I tend to soak 1 cup of rice in 1 1/2 cups of water for half an hour then bring to the boil and cook for 10 minutes. If you are pushed for time I have tried without soaking first and it doesn't seem to make much difference, it might just need cooking slightly longer.

In the mean time,

Gently heat the rice vinegar, pinch of salt and sugar until the sugar is disolved.

Once your rice is cooked,

Stir in your vinegar solution and leave the rice to cool as quickly as possible (remember, don't leave rice sitting around in a warm environment unless you want food poisoning - I tend to wait until it's cooled a little and then place in the fridge for 10 minutes or so).

Whilst waiting,

Set out your work space as follows:

• Prepare your filling (chop vegetables etc)
• Lay out your rolling mat and place on top of it a sheet of cling film and then a sheet of nori.
• Place a small bowl of water handy for moistening fingers.

Retrieve your mainly cooled rice.

With your hands grab some rice and pat it onto your nori sheet about just 3mm in thickness and leaving around 5cm space at the front and back of the nori sheet for when you roll.

Place your filling through the centre (don't over do it or rolling will become a splodgy mess!).


Dampen the exposed nori edges with a little water.

Lift the edge of the mat that is closest to you and begin to roll away from yourself whilst applying a downwards pressure. Keep rolling forward until it pops out the other side of your mat.

Repeat until you run out of rice.

Place your rolls in the fridge for at least half an hour to help the rice stick and then remove and slice into 1 inch pieces with a non serated very sharp knife.

ENJOY :)

Our Creative Space: Olympic Mood

The weeks whizz by when we are kept so busy in the O&V workshop, and it is time to share with you a bit of what we've been up to this week! We have been having loads of fun sending out exciting little parcels all around the world. 

Of course, here in the UK the Olympics have been on everyone's minds recently, and it seems that the theme extended to our workshop this week as we kept noticing our orders fitting into the "team GB" colours:

Lots of red, white and blue!

Early in the week our organic cotton denim dungarees were in high demand, which pleased Naomi no end as they are her favourite item to sew :) We loved looking at three different sizes of dungarees lined up...

And finally, we were very excited when orders for our new range of children's jewellery started coming in, including one order going all the way to Japan! 

 

We absolutely adore making the jewellery, and lots of our pieces are heavily inspired by Japan, so sending some to Tokyo was a real treat, especially for Japan-crazy Nat!

 

Keep an eye on our blog for more news from our workshop, we will try to keep you regularly updated on what we've been up to in our creative space :)

Naomi & Nat xx

Our Creative Space: Seeing double!

We've decided to start sharing a bit of what we get up to in the Olive & Vince workshop here on the blog. Today was another busy, fun-filled day for us with lots of lovely orders to fulfil, and we noticed a sort of pattern in lots of our work this week: Doubles!

Two Little Imp stripy hoodies, one little and one bigger! We thought they looked cute together and we wondered whether they were going out to a big brother and a little brother :)

One lady ordered a pair of our sweet little bow ties. The yellow reminded us of the 

gorgeous sunshine outside today!

Another burst of sunshine came from this pair of custom waistcoats. We sourced the perfect fabric for the customer and we liked it so much that we have decided to include it in our new extended range of waistcoats in our shop. We hope to be able to release them next week!

Keep an eye on our blog for more news from our workshop, we will try to keep you regularly updated on what we've been up to in our creative space :)

Naomi & Nat xx

June / July 2012 Giveaway Winner

Many thanks to everyone who took part in our giveaway for a chance to 

win one of our Olive and Vince arts and crafts smocks!

We verified and numbered your entries (there were 16 valid individual entries) then selected the winner using an online Random Number Generator 

...And the winner is.... *drumroll*

Ning Fathia aka babalisme

Congratulations, we will get in touch with you soon to discuss your prize!

Please keep an eye out for the next Olive & Vince giveaway, details will be given on our Facebook page and announced via our Twitter account.

THANK YOU!

BAKE: Banana Breakfast Muffins - wheat & dairy free

Yes I permit that you eat cake at breakfast time. Surely not, how come? Because this particular muffin is packed with oats and bananas, and when compared to jammy toast or sugary cereal, it wins in both its healthiness and its yumminess.

Most Sunday mornings, once I have sat the family down to their breakfast I like to sneak off into the kitchen and quickly whip up some cakes to enjoy throughout the week. This recipe is so quick and tasty, it's one of my all time favourites, and I'm really excited to share it with you.

So, you want to know how to make my yummy high energy banana breakfast muffins don't you?

You will need:

• 140grams gluten free flour (or a normal plain flour if you like)
• 1tsp baking powder
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 40grams porridge oats
• 50grams demerara sugar
• 100ml milk (rice, soya, oat or dairy)
• 1 big ripe banana or 2 small - mashed (a perfect toddler task!)
• 40ml sunflower oil
• 1 medium egg
• 1/2 a cap full of vanilla essence (e.g. a generous drop)

Optional, but highly recommended:

• Sultanas OR.....
• Chocolate chips (for the naughtier individual!)

Pre heat oven 200C / 400C / Gas mark 6

Right then, it's super simple.

Weigh out all your dry ingredients and pop them in a bowl.

In a separate dish, weigh out all of your wet ingredients (including your mashed banana) and whizz them with a blender until they look and smell like yummy banana milkshake :)

 

Add your bowl of banana liquid to your dry ingredients and call for your little helper..

Toddlers love mixing!

Now the the mixture might look quite runny, don't panic, everything is going to be okay...

Generously fill your muffin cases, don't be shy..

Insert into your pre-heated oven at 400F / 200F / Gas mark 6 and bake for 25 minutes.

Eat :)