The Last Birthday!!!

Yep that's us done and dusted for all the girls birthdays this year!!  Yee ha I say.  Although I do love bits of them.  Like the cake decorating bit.  And the planning part.  And maybe the buying of serviettes and finding a theme perhaps.  So it's not too bad I guess, but it is exhausting having them so close together.

Anyway this birthday was for No.1, Molly.  She turned the very grand age of 12 on Friday 20th.  My goodness it's starting to make us sound OLD suddenly.  So we had a little family afternoon tea.  Sponge cake provided by Nana.  The real deal too!  Dropped on the floor after baking kinda deal!!  Not really sure why that's so important but it sure does sound impressive.  And boy did it taste fabulous.  I've just had a sneaky piece actually!  There's still a couple of pieces left if you want to drop by.

On the Saturday Molly invited a couple of friends over for a movie night.  It was very sweet and most enjoyable.  Such sweet girls.  So this is the cake we made...

The idea is that you break open the chocolate layer and there is a cake covered in treasure underneath.  Well as I said, that's the theory!!  The reality is, is that the chocolate was rather thick and rather impossible to break without damage to the plate.  So she just attacked it instead with her hands.  It sure did look pretty though - to start with I mean!  The big girls and I spent a good hour painstakingly decorating it will all those smarties and rainbow drops. 

And now that it's all over, I'm in relaxation mode.  What I mean is, I plan to be relaxing sometime this week.  Today I Autumn-cleaned a small child's room, shopped for new bedding for two girls, made two beds, did a bit of decluttering, several loads of washing, made too many meals, ironed four shirts, shined the sink, make laundry clay, made and used dishwasher powder (absolutely brilliant recipe will follow at another date!) and ate sponge cake of course.  After this I'm going to find a book and read until bed time.

Now do you want a great read yourself?  This library book was passed on to me by my mother and neither of us could put it down.  It's such a good book.  It's one of those suspense ones with a clever ending.  I've asked my mother to check out the library for her first novel.  I'm sure it should be just as good. 

OK my dears, I hope you are all good and enjoying a bit of relaxing time yourselves.  Grab a book and sit down with a piece of cake if you are so inclined.  You are more than welcome to have a glass of wine with it if that's your thing. Or a good old cuppa tea if it's before 10am!  See you later!!  Yep with that recipe I promise.  Remind me if I get forgetful.  Bye!

Yet Another birthday!

Well I suppose it's to be expected when you go and have four children!  I have to say that I don't enjoy the huge amount of kitchen activity when you organise a party.  Give me ready made cupcakes any day!  But I do love to decorate these little cakes.  Ohhh yes I do!  I stole this idea from a magazine I found while browsing in a bookshop one day.  And no I didn't buy it!  So naughty I know.

Anyway it was No.3's turn to have a celebration on Friday.  She has now turned the ripe age of six.  Katie came to me a couple of weeks ago and announced that she had finally decided on her cake idea.  A garage!  Yep one of those ones with levels of car parks and petrol pumps!!  My dear little girl who wears pink, loves tutus, plaits in her hair, and is very girly girly.  Well what could I say but... Yes of course I'll make you one lovey. 

Well I made her the garage... but I girlyfied it!   Is that a word?  Well anyway I made it all pink and purple and it was the prettiest garage you ever did see.  Check it out...

Apparently she drives the pink car.  See I told you!  She's really is all girl.

The ramps were not for the fainthearted I must say!  Not what you want to learn to do hill starts on.  Thank goodness for automatics I say!  And for Daddies who understand the stress of making icing ramps and alleviating a crisis by coming to the rescue with ice block stick supports that mean our little girl can safely drive her little pink icing car up her icing ramps without fear of the icing folding around her and swallowing her up.  Phew!!

And here she is blowing out all six candles.  Happy Birthday dear little Katie!

Parties are fun aren't they?  And guess what?? I get to do it all again in less than two weeks!!!  Good grief, our baby planning wasn't the best at times.  Never mind, after the next one that's all of the girls done for the year. 

Sorry if I haven't been to visit you lately or even emailed you.  I've been rather bloggy slack of late I'm afraid.   You see I have a huge project underway and it's taking up all of my time and thinking space.  It's not of the craft variety but it's too early to share it with you.  Please forgive me for leaving you in suspense like this.  I try and catch up with your blog posts but I'm not getting through all of them.  But rest assure I'm still here, still tidying up, still doing the washing and all that boring stuff.  Till next time, love to you all xxxx

Happy 4th Birthday No.4!

Oh boy, two parties in two weekends!  Not good.  I'm so very over parties for now.  Luckily there are no more until May for us.  I just didn't have the energy for poor little Soph's party prep.  The day before the big day I was standing in the kitchen contemplating making a jewellery box cake for her.  The temperature was in the high 20's and the humidity was about 100%.  Not good for me or for the icing as it turned out.

The icing was collapsing down the sides of the cake as I worked.  It stuck to the bench top when I rolled it out.  It grew as I picked it up.  The girls were eating what they thought were scraps.  No.2 thought I should be videoed.  Move over Julia Child!  I just had to laugh, it was all so terrible and ridiculous.  I think professionals have airconditioning.  I think I did a bad job of the cake but in the heat I really didn't care.

Our baby girl didn't care one bit.  She didn't notice the flaws in the icing.  She just blew all of her candles out and happily cut into her cake.  She didn't eat her piece of cake, just the decorations!  Cheeky little lady.

I'm not into baking as you may well know.  This is as good as it gets I'm afraid.  Bought marshmallows in cute cupcake wrappers!  Well it's all about presentation for me.  I'll leave the fancy cooking for others.

So tomorrow my first real 'back to normal' week begins.  The girls all started back at school during the week and hubby goes back to work tomorrow after six weeks at home.  It sure is going to be quiet around here for a while.  I'm looking forward to getting into the veggie garden.  I'm hoping for a tidier house.  I'm thinking No.4 and I are going to have a lovely day together tomorrow.  And I sure hope you all do too!

A Party and a Special Friend

Well Miss 10 sure did have a lovely birthday.  Thank you all so much for all the kind messages you left.  We even took a photo of her when she was exactly ten years old.  It's easy when you are born at a reasonable hour, 12.59pm to be exact.  She was a fairly quick arrival.  Well not completely, she was eleven days overdue!  But from arrival at the hospital, to induction, to birth, she was here in two hours.  

 

Check out the party girls cupcakes!  What a lot of fun they had with these.  There were some very busy ones and lots of cake swapping as well which was lovely to see. 

The scrapbooking boxes went well.  Look at my baby (pink hair clip one) sitting up with the rest of them making her box so neatly.  She's going to be four next Sunday.  Yes seriously!  How wonderful for me!  Two parties in a week, woo hoo!!!! 

I'm looking at her in the photo and she looks so much older suddenly.  I do hope she doesn't grow up too quickly.  We have just over a year left together before she goes to school with the others.  I'm not looking forward to that day at all. 

Now onto another subject completely.  I have recently met a very dear friend Lara who has a very sweet blog Sew Many Stitches Later and she's made heaps of fabulous quilts, among other things.  She lives in Wellington but is moving up to Auckland very soon - lucky me!  Anyway she's the sort of friend that everyone loves to have.  Recently she went through all her WIP's and decided to give a few away to reduce the feeling of guilt.  How funny, not sure I'd be able to do that myself.  Well she picked me to take over this baby boy quilt.  I've never make anything boyish before, having four girls myself.  What a refreshing change.  It will go to Retromummy's Quilts for Queensland when completed.

Wonderful fabrics, Moda from the Odyssea range.  Well I was expecting everything from the top picture, but not the extra charm pack as well!  I've unpicked her white border and added the extra charms.  She neglected to tell me the quilt was prewashed due to vegemite stains!  Now I know why none of the seams matched up when I added the new squares.  A quick wash later and they match up better, but not perfect.  Not to worry, once it's quilted no one will notice.

Now the stripy backing fabric has become the binding because I adore stripy bindings.  Loving this fabric range so much.  I just need some backing fabric now and it will be ready for quilting.  Thank you so very much Lara!

Now when Lara heard of my disaster of running out of white cotton fabric for my girl baby quilt, she immediately contacted me and suddenly a metre of the stuff was flying my way as well! See what I told you about the type of friend she is?  I can't wait to meet her and her two boys.  Isn't it neat how you can be good friends with someone without meeting them?  You've got to love the computer for that kind of thing.  The saying comes to mind "I love my computer because my friends live in there".  And I sure do have a lot of them in there.

Now I'm back in the sewing seat again.  Well only for a little while, I have another cake to make, a party to plan and things to shop for.  Oh heck, she's going to need some presents too!!  When I asked her what food she wanted at her party she said "party food I guess".  Guess I can arrange that!

Happy Birthday No.2!

We have a new sewing machine at our house.  It's very fancy!  It's for No.2's tenth birthday tomorrow.   Two children over ten is a little hard to imagine really.  I still remember making a cake when she was a baby. 

I drew a basic shape of a sewing machine and she added the all important details.  Pretty cute aye?  Pink and red are very nice colours for a party.

Now we are going to need some very important equipment for this cake.  It's only the second time I've done this fancy piping thing.  We have the usual items and then we have the medicine measuring cup and a baby bottle cap.  These are all important pieces to make this machine work. 

I remember it falling apart at the beginning of the first cake ten years ago.  I can still clearly remember the evening.  Baby 2 was screaming the night away, No.1 was in bed on her 2nd birthday eve, the cake still yet to be done.  Me feeding baby every half hour and hubby and I sharing the cake decorating.  We finally got to bed at 1am.  It was a very cool Tigger cake though.

I think I'll shout myself a new grown up piping kit soon.  I'm sick of icing oozing all over the show!

No.2 was very interested in what I was doing and took some 'in the process' photos.   The amount of compliments were continuous, she's such a sweetie.  She told me when she's a mum she's hoping that she'll be able to make her children cakes like this.  I'm very sure she'll be doing just that.

This piping thing is so much fun!  Lots of pretty flowers all over the cake.  The inside bit was very tricky, but we got there in the end.

Now it's time to thread up the machine, and let's take this baby for a whirl!

I wonder what Lucy's making?  I see she's prepared with a spare bobbin ready to use.  Not like her Mother who is constantly running out.

Not long now honey!  The presents are wrapped and she's very excited about the big day.  Double digits are very special.  She has two best friends coming for a very delicious afternoon tea, a crafting session consisting of cupcake decorating, and scrapbooking a box for their treasures. 

Following that we will be eating fish'n'chips on the floor with the spotty picnic blanket, finishing up with pavlova, yoghurt, ice cream and cake.  Sounds like a very lovely day for our special girl. 

Fancy a Cuppa?

What a wonderful weekend we've just had.  Saturday was the annual village Santa Parade which was full of all the usual delights.  Bands playing, kids dancing, floats and of course it ended with Santa himself.  The girls thought it was really fantastic, I just don't see what they see, clearly.  Perhaps it's age!  Anyway speaking of age, I've just turned 29... well you can add ten years to that if you really have to, but my mind is still at 29 thank you! 

Fancy a cuppa from my fancy new teapot ladies?  Isn't she a beauty?  Oh yes that's a new CK cup too.  I've can even offer you a slice of birthday cake, it's calorie free of course for you ladies who were about to say no!   Seriously, what birthday cake isn't?!!  And because I'm so nice I'm going to let you eat my last mint chocolate - they are the best in the box.

After you've eaten we'll have a gander through my new craft books.  Gosh they are wonderful, full of lovely ideas.  I wonder what you'll want to make?

My thank you letters are going to look grand if I can part with these little CK treasures.  All the way from the UK just for me!  I adore the little envelopes and stickers.

And how about we plan a new quilt with all my new fatties?  I would think it would be very pretty in the lovely Sugar Flower range.  I must cut some squares out first so I don't get too excited and use it all up.  The others were especially chosen by my little girls.  Didn't they do well?

Gosh I do enjoy my birthdays.  Hubby excels himself every year.  I get so many thoughtful gifts, way more than I'd ever choose for myself.  I felt so spoilt all day Sunday, even though my birthday wasn't really until Monday, but who wants a regular work/school day on their birthday?  Hardly any time for pampering with the family out most of the day.  My parents put on a very lovely dinner for me with all the local family present.  Very nice with my favourite meal served - roast lamb!  Thank you dearest mother for my lovely pink peonys too - they are opening out beautifully.

I've managed to get all the girls to write their Santa letters already.  I find it a good thing to get out of the way early and it's great that Santa knows what they want in plenty of time so he can put the appropriate gifts aside.  We don't want the girls missing out now do we?  The littlest one wrote hers with my help yesterday.  She not into writing but it turned out alright in the end.  It was a little hairy for a while!  And the eraser she's asking for is the pricey sum of $2.50.  What else does a fourth girl need? 

Well I must be off now.  Got to do the kindy thing soon and then do a bit of shopping for my cookie exchange on Thursday.  Exciting times are ahead!  I'll be back soon with some new makes.

Hats for a Celebration

What a glorious pile of colour and fun lay on my bench yesterday.  No.4 and I scrounged around the bargain stores and found a few items suitable for Wacky Hair and Hat Day at school today.  Remember last year's entries?  The rest came right out of our party boxes.  We do love a party around here! 

The girls couldn't think of a theme for their hats this year so it was left up to me.  I chose 'The Winner' and 'Let's Party'.  Just great the day before they had to be made.  But that's a mother's life I suppose.

No.1 picked 'The Winner's' theme.  Well that's the idea in the end I guess, to be the winner of the competition.  She's hoping to get yet another certificate for this entry.  Apparently every year she has brought a certificate home.  But this year it was truly her own effort.  I didn't help at all except for the odd bit of gluing.

The cans of stringy spray were a bit of hard work and there wasn't much in them either.  Bit disappointing but they did the trick.  I love how she has displayed the party poppers with the papers coming out.

No.2 went with the 'Let's Party' theme.  It was great to have a balloon pump this year as those little water bombs are real cheek busters. 

Doesn't her cocktail look good enough to drink?  Most of the stringy stuff ended up in her cup.  I just love the apple straw left over from a beach party years ago.

And the back is very pretty with bows and a bunch of party balloons.  Well done girls!

It's so much fun at our school.  They really get into lots of interesting ways to  make learning fun. 

Where is No.3's hat you ask?  Well she's quite an individual this girl.  Not her 'thing' either I'm afraid.  Her big sisters are mortified about her lack of fun.  Frankly, so am I!   

Right we're off to the supermarket for our weekly bit of fun - not!  I'm also going to research the letter T.  It's the chosen letter for our themed dinner these holidays.  Oh and our school hols start after school today.  Hip hip horray!!!

Edited to add:  Another two certificates came home this afternoon - phew, that was lucky!

A Very Busy Time

Look at my sweet girls.  Walking to school together for the first time with their new bigger sister.  Oh she was so excited this morning when she realised that she was going to be starting school for real today.  I have never seen her get ready so quickly before!  May that continue.  Nana and Papa also came to take photos of the three school girls. 

She seemed to settle into school after a few minutes of me being in the class with her. Her teacher was more concerned about the fact she knew no one in her the class, than me.  I know she'll be just fine, she's good like that. 

Her party yesterday went well and all the little girls seemed to have a good time.  We had lots of lovely colour in the decorations and the food.  A note to mothers planning a party for a little one, don't bother about fruit, they don't eat it - at all!  Stick to rubbish food, it's a winner every time.

The cupcakes were lovingly made by my mother.  Aren't they wonderful?!  They were very popular and some even ate the cake part as well - always a bonus.  And my rainbow jellies, which took me the better part of two days to prepare, were happily received but not many were actually eaten.  Still, I had a great time making them and I love jelly.  I think perhaps the jellies were really made for me!

And the cake?  Yes the cake was a huge success.  It was a bit of a challenge to get the lid to stay upright but we got there in the end with a bit of pink tack and some patience.  The cake was the treasure box at the end of the rainbow.

I did have a wonderful time putting it together.  Finding all those pretty lollies at the dairy down the road.  Reminiscing about the same old coin sweets I used to buy when I was a school girl.  They are so out of date  now, but a lovely memory for us oldies.  I had fun planting a pretty garden around the edge of the box too. 

But the surprise for No.3 was the hidden rainbow.  See it peaking out of the centre?

Just perfect.  I'm amazed it came out so well.  I found the recipe here and decided to give it a go after dear Lululiz suggested how perfect it would be.  She was right of course!  She always is. 

And this is how it's all done.  Six yoghurt containers of batter, all in a different colour of the rainbow. 

Look how amazing it looks in the cake tin.  I made two layers, the other one had the colours in reverse.  Not too time consuming really, the prettiness sure made up for any extra work involved. 

And of course it was also Mothers Day yesterday.  I made my mother a tote bag just before the party.  It's amazing what I can do sometimes!  And look at this beautiful card No.2 made for me at school.  What a thoughtful teacher she has.  She's only young herself and not a mum yet.  I'm sure these precious cards were all gratefully received.

And have a read of what she wrote if you like.  It's so sweet.  Thank you Lucy.

And now it's just No.4 and me.  I'm sure we are going to have a wonderful time filling in the weeks by ourselves.  She starts at afternoon kindy three days a week tomorrow.  But Mondays and Fridays are our days.  I'm looking forward to them.  It's the first time she's had me to herself.  How exciting!

Edited to add:  I've decided to make a special time each Monday for No.4 and I to do something special together.  I'm calling it 'Mummy Mondays' and hopefully there will be photos to show you on Tuesdays, time permitting of course.  Tune in tomorrow for the first installment.