Summer Ice Lollies!

There is nothing better on a hot summers day than digging into a scrumptious ice lolly! Although nipping down to the shops may seem easy to get your ice lolly fix, there are benefits from making your own. They will be cheaper, as it just requires fruit and a couple of other ingredients you probably have at home!

Here's a simple and easy recipe for strawberry ice lollies, they took about 15 minutes to make and then just needed to set in the freezer!

All you need is: 250g of strawberries, 100ml natural yogurt and 1 teaspoon of honey.

Simply:

1. Whizz up 250g of strawberries with a food processor, 

(i used a hand blender which worked just as well)

 2. Mix in the natural yogurt and honey

3. Divide the mixture between your lolly moulds

4. Leave to set in the freezer for at least 4 hours and enjoy with your picnic or BBQ!

What you may not know about Wimbledon!

Whether you are a tennis fan or not, Wimbledon is no doubt a big event in the British sporting calendar. Originally starting in 1877 this historic tennis tournament has been a staple in our summer calendar for years. With Murray coming back to the courts this year after claiming the title in 2013, this tournament is bound to be one filled with energy and suspense.

Here are a few fun facts about the tournament you may not have known, like there are nearly 55,000 tennis balls used in the two week long championships!

Enjoy watching the tournament! 

Ellie Ellie Wears: Wimbledon Style

Wimbledon is in full swing, with top seeds taking the court in their first matches of the tournament. This week, Ellie Ellie Wears is all about dressing to impress at Wimbledon! This dress from Joules is perfect for the tennis season, paired with these purple clogs for a summery look, which is perfect for the pastel trend that is everywhere on the highstreet and in woman's style this summer, this denim jacket from Fat Face is perfect for a day at the tennis. It will keep you warm if there is a chill in the air but is light if the sun is out!

Finish off the outfit with our Personalised Map Charm Cluster Pendant, which can be personalised with a special location that means something to you!

White dress: Joules

Purple clogs: Swedish Hasbeens

Denim Jacket: Fat Face 

Personalised Map Cluster Pendant: Ellie Ellie

World Cup 2014!

The World Cup in Brazil kicked off to a great start on the 12th of June, with around 30 games already played, there is still a lot more action to come from all football teams around the globe. England have played two of their matches, with one more to go on Tuesday against Costa Rica!

We hope you are enjoying watching all the matches, our chocolate footballs sweet jar is the perfect companion for watching the football with friends and family, full of scrumptious milk chocolate footballs!

Here is a few interesting facts you may not have known about the World Cup! 

We complete our 71 mile walk!

Last Friday all the team at Ellie Ellie completed the Midnight Walk in Brighton to raise money for the Martlets Hospice! The Martlets Hospice is absolutely brilliant, helping people live life fully and taking care of people across the whole of the local community. We were absolutely thrilled to be taking part in such a great fundraising event, and reached our target well before the event! Thank you to every body who donated to this special cause!

The first six miles of the walk went by pretty easily, and although 13 miles doesn't seem that far when walking, the last few miles of the walk were more challenging. It started pouring with rain for the last few miles which left us soaked through! But we did it and it felt great at the end of the walk to know that we had all challenged ourselves.

Here are some snaps from the night:

A few snaps while we were out walking:

Finally, soaked through, here is the team once we had finished the walk (and it was 5am and we were ready for bed)

If you would still like to donate, find our just giving page here!

Celebrate National Picnic Week!

This week is National Picnic Week which is the perfect opportunity to get outside with your family and friends with a picnic. Whether you go to the beach, to the local park on stay in your garden there is something so lovely about setting up a picnic and tucking into sandwiches, cakes and nibbles. What is your picnic food essential?

We got into the kitchen last week to make some homemade lemonade for our summer garden party photoshoot and it is the perfect companion to a picnic and really simple to make too!

All you need is three simple ingredients for your lemonade:
- 1 3/4 cups of white sugar
- 8 cups of water
- 1 1/2 cups of lemon juice

The simple recipe:

- In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and 1 cup of water
- Bring to the boil and stir to dissolve the sugar, allow to cool and then pop into the fridge to chill

- Juice your lemons to make 1 1/2 cups, you can leave in the pulp but remove any seeds that may be in there
- Place your lemon juice into the fridge to cool as well

- Together with the chilled sugar mixture, mix the lemon juice and your remaining 7 cups of water
- If you feel like it needs more water, just add it in
- Add slices of lemon and ice to serve chilled

The perfect picnic drink, which is great served in a dispenser so people can just help themselves! This dispenser is coming soon to Ellie Ellie!

www.ellieellie.co.uk

Recycle Week is here!

We shared these great facts last year on recycling and as it's recycle week this week, we thought we would have a recap on the benefits of recycling. During recycle week see how much of your household waste and cardboard, plastic and glass you can recycle, once you start it will become second nature to do your recycling every week!

At Ellie Ellie, we fly the flag for redesign, recycle and relove, making sure all our products promote a responsible and sentimental lifestyle. We insure all our products fit within our ethos, with our recycled jumbo bags, lunch box bags and rugs being our top recycled products. Our jumbo bags and lunch box bags are made from recycled plastic bottles and our rugs are made from recycled wool.

A lot of people wonder what their recycled plastics and glass gets turned into, here is an interesting table showing exactly how your recycling is used!

Happy Recycle Week!

Activities for Father's Day!

Father's Day is fast approaching and we've come up with a fun list of activities that Dads (and Mums of course) can do with the little kids and big ones too to celebrate on the 15th of June.

Going for a walk in the woods is a great way to spend time as a family, and you could try this fun scavenger hunt, and see if you can find all the things on this list on your adventure!

If a walk isn't what you fancy, you could have a go at flying a kite, seeing how long you can keep it in the air for. Our traditional diamond kite is perfect for family kite flying!

If the weather is rainy or dull, and going outside is the last thing you want to do, you could get into the kitchen and back your Dads favourite cake, or draw a picture of Dad and show off your artistic skills!

www.ellieellie.co.uk 

Ellie Ellie Wears

With summer on its way there will hopefully be more good weather coming our way this weekend. With bbq's, garden parties and a spot of gardening on the agenda. If you are headed out for the day to (hopefully) enjoy the sunshine we have just what you need with this vintage denim shirt, with no sleeves for the perfect summer feel. Add these patterned trousers from H&M for a great relaxed look.

Patterned trousers are a must have for the summer to come, with lots of slouchy styles appearing on the high street as well as a tailored fit too. Add these brilliant clogs for a real summer feel, which will also go with dresses, skirts and shorts, perfect for the sunshine. Our personalised map pendant finishes the look off, which you can personalise with a chosen location that means something special to you!

Denim shirt - Rokit

Patterned trousers - H&M

Clogs - Swedish Hasbeens at Asos

Personalised Map Pendant - Ellie Ellie 

Father's Day Recipe

Father's Day is fast approaching and what better way to tell Dad how much you love him then a lovely homemade breakfast and time with the family next Sunday. We tried out a great omelette muffin recipe that is perfect for the kids to cook for Dad in the morning, and only needs simple ingredients you probably have in your fridge already.

Ingredients:

- 125g chesnut mushrooms, chopped
- 1 clove of garlic, chopped
- 100g spinach
- 4 large eggs, beaten
- 30ml skimmed milk
- 20g parmesan cheese - finely grated
- salt and pepper

Recipe:

1. Firstly, preheat oven to 200c/400F or gas mark 6 and start by chopping your mushrooms and garlic ready to use.
2. fry the mushrooms and season well until they start to turn goldden

3. Add the garlic and fry for a further minute and then start adding the spinach and leave to wilt with the mushrooms

4. Remove from the heat once the spinach has wilted and set aside to cool
5. Whisk together the eggs, milk and half the parmesan in a bowl

6. Stir in the mushroom and spinach mixture
7. Grease a muffin tray

8. Divide the egg mixture between the muffin tray and sprinkle the tops with your remaining parmesan
9. Bake for 15 minutes until the muffins are puffed and golden (we kept them in the oven for 20 minutes)

10. Get them out the oven and serve hot, reheat them for 30 seconds if you leave them to cool!

There you have it, yummy mushroom and spinach omelette muffins for all the family to enjoy!

A week to go!

We've got a week to go until we take part in the Martlets Hospice Midnight Walk in Brighton! Our walk will start at midnight, and end when we have all finished our 13 miles! This is such a great cause and we are hoping to get lots more lovely donations in to help the Martlets Hospice who do such great work!

We've been training since February when we decided to take part, walking around the beautiful Sussex countryside and beaches in our spare time to prepare!

If you would like to donate to this great cause visit our Just Giving page and you can read more about our story!

Our Instagram page is full of our training photos too, and we will also be posting on the night next week if you want to keep up to date with our walk!

The Big Beach Clean!

This week marks the 30th anniversary of Volunteers' week, which is a week to celebrate the contribution of millions of volunteers across the UK. Many different volunteer projects are getting underway this week, with challenges and events taking place throughout the UK all week to celebrate. 

Hayley and I got involved with the big beach clean up on Brighton seafront last week, joining loads of helpful volunteers to clean the beach of litter and rubbish. Organised by The Argus, teams of volunteers and individuals to met on Brighton pier from across the city to begin cleaning up the beach. 

I was very surprised at how much litter there was on the beach, considering we had had a rainy bank holiday Monday the day before. What was also surprising was the type of litter we picked up, i was expecting crisp packets and drinks cans, however, the rubbish we were picking up was much smaller pieces such as bottle tops, string and small bits of plastic that could easily not be seen and therefore stay among the pebbles. Which would ultimately increase the amount of litter on the beach. We even found a pair of headphones buried in the pebbles! 

Thank you to The Argus for organising the beach clean up. We will definitely be taking part in the next one!

Read more about the Big Beach Clean up here!

Find out more about Volunteers' Week