Busy, Busy, Busy!!

Well the garden sure has been super busy and so confused.  Strawberries in NZ in June???  OK it's a small one, but still.  Spring bulbs flowering?? 

Autumn leaves still changing?  Very late, but then the temps have been so warm and so NOT mid June.  It was 20 degrees on Saturday!!!  T-shirt weather I tell you! The high temps in Auckland are anything from 15 degrees to 20 at the moment.  They should be below 10!

Never mind we are not complaining at all.  No we are not.  And we sure are having our share of wet weather today. 

Now do you remember ages ago that I said I was too busy to blog because of a project I had been working on?  Well I can now tell you what that big thing was...

HOMESCHOOLING!!!!!

Oh yes, I may well have completely lost the plot this time around, but you know what?  I LOVE it!!  No.1 loves it too.  Yep it's just her and I at the moment (with No.4 pottering around) but we have two other younger sisters keen to join in sometime soonish.  So our days are busy now with work, outings, crafting, drawing, lots of learning in a fun way.

My mother celebrated her birthday the weekend before we started on our new venture. I decorated her cake.  Her sister baked the cake.  Just how I like it to be, no cooking.

This was her present from us...

I started this quilt about two years ago!!!  Finally finished and being loved.  I do love how it turned out.

A fancy little addition to the back and another doily label.

And last but not least.  I tested the linen with the cotton fabrics in the wash by making a cushion and guess what?  It was a success!  So now I can safely finish the quilt, sometime!  In the meantime No.4 can enjoy her new cushion on her bed.

And now my dears, we are off to the swimming pool.  And no I won't be going in.  Perhaps next time when I've sorted out the forests growing on my legs!!  How embarrassing!  The little ones have started lessons too and they are doing fabulously.  So sweet.  But for now it's No.1's turn to have fun.  See you next time xxx

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!

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. 

A Vintage Christmas in Pictures

Thank you all kindly for your well wishes for our spotty girls.  They both seem to be coming on nicely now, but still look rather dotty.  No.2 found it rather easy and didn't find the spots to be itchy which was quite fascinating as the doctors have always gone on about how bad it would be for her with eczema.  Not so at all for her.  No.3 has found it all rather tiring and seems to be constantly bawling about something.  I wouldn't recommend you play a board game with her if she is the one to lose at the moment.  My goodness she is quite the colourful one at present!

Anyway, moving right along.  Here are a few snaps, OK perhaps rather a lot of snaps, of our Christmas table vintage style.  All props were found within the family which is all the nicer.  We seemed to have quite a few lovely pieces to play with.   Is this plate not the prettiest you've every seen?  It belongs to my Gran, what a lucky lady.

I made my grandparents Christmas lights into personal ornaments by tying a piece of red string to each one and tying it with a white bow around each serviette. 

This mug was mine when I was a little girly.  A cute Little Bo Peep looking for her sheep.  Why don't they make mugs so pretty these days?

White hydrangeas from my garden.  They were pink and purple ones too but I forgot to photograph them - dilly me!

Have you taken note of all my doilies?  Don't they look super?  The table cloth is extremely old too.  My mother doesn't think it will survive another Christmas party.  It's a great shame as it's so beautiful.

I found a great many old fashioned lollies at the local dairy of all places.  They were a real tasty treat after the first course.  The train looked fab on the table.  It's also very old and my little girls usually play with it on Gran's floor.

I love this stripy string.  It came off something that comes in bags, sugar maybe?   I always keep the strings from my flour bags too and the potatoes.  String is so handy and it's always in either red or white which I love.

My cousin made the fab pav.  It's cooked in a ring shape and looks just like a wreath when decorated.  Clever aye?

And the biggest trifle in the world was made by my big brother.  He researched the recipe and bought all the ingredients and bowl especially.  I think we'll now be having many trifles in the years to come!

The cake was a bit of a treat for me.  I made it using gluten free flour and guess what??  It's tastes great, really great!!  How exciting.  Actually I must have a piece in a minute.  The decorations were a bit of a quick throw together sorry.  I did buy the icing tree and Santa ones especially.  Don't look too closely as the icing was full of air bubbles!  I think it was a combination of high humidity, rolled out too thin and lack of caring.  Is that really bad of me? 

So that was Christmas for another year.  It was lovely but we are so over it.  Now we are very much enjoying our new toys and playing board games.  Jigsaws are popular as well with the third one about to be completed by hubby.  He's the expert at them.  Speaking of the man, it's his birthday tomorrow.  How inconvenient is that??  Honestly it couldn't be much worse really.  Still I am prepared for it so all is well. 

Righty ho.  Off for a hot chocolate and slice of that cake before bed.  Oh guess what time I woke up this morning? 

9am!!!!!!!!!! 

I know I couldn't believe it either.  Fabulous it was too.  It's because we are in our new bedroom now and it's nice and quiet down there.  Now I have a whole years worth of sleep in catch ups to do.  I will enjoy!  Must take some photos of our bedroom too.

Are You Ready??

The big unveiling is about to take place.  Just look at the goodness bursting to get out.  The red spotty ribbon is good enough on it's own.

See I told you it was impressive didn't I?!!  Just look at all these lovely gifts.  Four wonderful fabrics, red embellishment cords and laces, ribbons for Africa, a needle booklet and lip buttons.  And I wonder how she knew I liked red?!

The tape measure is really quite sweet.  My girls are also quite taken with it.  It rolls back up when you push a button so that's the big attraction.  It's perfect for popping in my bag to take out with me.  I'll need to keep that one hidden.

But I've been holding out on you.  Naughty me!  I'll let these gifts speak for themselves as I'm still feeling quite overwhelmed by her generosity and talent.  And speechless for a change too!

The prettiest tea cosy and two coasters that match my mugs so well.  Now I just need to find a red tea pot with white polka dots to match.

I am in love with all of it.  Lucy, No.2, was home from school sick and she willingly helped to unwrap all the parcels.  She was also blown away with all the gifts.  We ended up laughing so hard we had wet eyes.  She thought it was funny that I was so amazed with how lovely everything was.

Now I am making another jolly wall hanging to go with the tea pot theme.  I'm having such a good time with it too.  I do love to make things.

In all the rush with birthday shopping, renovating, daily life, sickness and the usuals, I totally forgot to post a photo of No.1's cake she decorated for herself.  Life must be tough around here when you are expected to decorate your own cake!  I thought she'd enjoy it.  I think she did in the end with No.2 and I supervising and redoing the numbers a bit.  Honestly she's so slap dash at times!  Oh well it turned out pretty in the end and she had a wonderful day.

Happy Birthday for the 20th May Molly! Where did those eleven years go to?

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.