An under the sea mermaid birthday party

So as we recover from the Under the sea, mermaid birthday party extravaganza, it is time to share all the best bits. Let's start with the cake. This would be my absolutely most favourite cake that I have ever made for either of my children. Miss Liongirl and I had agreed on some kind of mermaid under the sea castle type cake. The details, like all my cakes, kind of came together as it was assembled and of course involved maximum colour and lolly coverage. My favourite part was the corals on either side which were made by Roboboy and I with drizzled white chocolate covered in sprinkles and set in the fridge.

 The pink gravel was a previous batch of chocolate that curdled when I added the pink food colouring. Luckily, it looked just like gravel. The turrets were made of cardboard rolls pinched from kindy with meringues on the top. I had a stash of these scallop shells collected from Currumbin beach many, many years ago and saved for a day just like this one. A lovely mum at school loaned me the Ariel figurine which was exactly the right size.

Legoman even had some great ideas for this cake and created some seaweed up the sides with lolly snakes and the spearmint leaves down the front trimmed to look a miniature kelp forest. He also helped decorate the mini cupcakes with tiny fish blowing bubbles. The fish came from Spotlight in the cake decorating section.

Best of all he was happy to step up and re create the one idea I pinched from Pinterest which was to carve this amazing watermelon shark that was a massive hit. You had to be brave to reach into his mouth to get some melon.

Like previous parties I pulled out the milk glass and an appropriate toned vintage sheet for the food table. Only this time I had a fan documenting my work.

The girls each made a mermaid crown out of cardboard, gold doily and stick on jewels and the take home boxes were treasure chests that I had lots of fun spraying gold. ( unlike house painting, spray paint is super fast and incredibly satisfying)

The cursed , never speak of it again, rainbow fish piñata ended up amazingly successful and survived two vigorous beatings from each child before he was done for. The kids had helped me glue all his crepe on the night before and aside from the glue all over the floor ( which I am still trying to remove) it was a child friendly project.

There was of course pass the parcel, musical chairs and a scavenger hunt before a good solid hosing on the trampoline of all those mermaids in their swimmers.

The rest of the magic was achieved with a large roll of plastic emblazoned with an underwater scene from the local party shop which was the only thing in the entire party that I didn't scratch up from around the house. We encircled our dining table and the kids helped me make a seaweed doorway from  crepe to turn it into a mermaid grotto.

I had also made a giant clam shell for the girls to sit on wearing a mermaid tail that I had insanely decided to sew up the night before. The rest of it was just a whole pile of fabrics from my stash that looked either like coral or the ocean. 

 Most of the girls had their photo taken as a mermaid which I will be sending on to their mums.

 This girl had a fantastic day and loved that many of her friends stayed hours past the party to just play in her room and in the mermaid grotto. She had lots of help opening all her presents and thank goodness for Nonnas who always give you exactly what you were wanting.

 Now I just need to take a few deep breaths and get cracking on Christmas.

Drizzly grey day snippets

Did I mention that my entire lounge room is finally ALL white. I think amidst the general flurry I completely forgot to share this miracle. When it stops raining and there is some decent light,  I will share the wonder that is no more custard.

Roboboy went back to school, I did manage a quick oppie ferret this week. I often find a few of the same sort of thing in the one ferret. The colours in these blankies just seem to pop more with the drizzly grey days we are having. The top one is my favourite. If there was a remote chance it would be worn, I would attempt to turn it into a coat for miss Liongirl. I do have some other ideas percolating though.

Look what else popped up too. It looks like pyrex but it's actually Arcopal, all the way from France.

Perfect weather  for whipping up some teddy bear pancakes. With the kids sick for the holidays, I think I watched a lot more Playschool than usual. Or was it Peppa Pig? Miss Liongirl is in charge of banana slicing, Roboboy helps with the mix and they both get to decorate -those dairy free choc chips are a fantastic shape. We have experimented with cats and pigs too, these drizzly grey days just keep inspiring pancakes.

Roboboy has been designing computers again.

And I  have been photographing all his art and carefully choosing which ones to keep. This was one of the few paintings he did at kindy when he was four. I think it was an army tank. I love the  colours, I think I need to get an Ikea frame for this one.

Speaking of Ikea, we did  recently get a stool for Roboboy so he can reach to feed his fish. I even let him choose the colour, so there is also a bit of painting going on over here.

Back soon  to share it all when the sun comes out and I can take some decent pictures.

Creamy rice and all things nice

Well it's been a horror few weeks here at Betsy's. There was the rain, and there was the influenza which my children decided to both acquire, one painstaking week at a time. Yep, that was 7 days of  high fevers and sleep deprivation with miss Liongirl and then another 7 days of Groundhog day with Roboboy. He now takes the house record for a fever at 40.4 which saw his brain bubbling. He was obviously  delerious as at 3 a.m he started spouting off maths equations. As I staggered around calculating panadol doses, he was confirming that 12 plus 6 does indeed equal 18. So, other than that first day out in the rain to the toy sales, our total outings for the school holidays =  NIL. (Unless you count that sanity dash of  mine to Coles, just so I could leave the house).

In order to stay sane, I did what any sensible, sleep deprived, housebound, brain addled mother does. I went shopping on Etsy, and  cooked comfort food.  The gorgeous little print above came flying across the world from Handmade by Alice Apple and suddenly I started feeling a little better.

I was inspired to try a Rice pudding recipe in the latest edition of House and Garden. I should have been more suspicious about the fact that it contained five eggs. It was a dry disgusting eggy disaster despite me following the directions exactly. I was so cranky I decided that I could do a better job on my own and after much huffing around the kitchen, I did it, I actually managed to make the creamiest of creamy rice, DAIRY FREE. Yep, a small miracle really. I can only imagine how good this would be if it had real milk, but for an imposter it's pretty good and super easy. I'll post the recipe down the bottom.

This child has been eating like a bird and doing maths for fun. He needs to go back to school. I need him to go back to school, hopefully tomorrow.

He did manage to complete one new giant artwork. Let's call it "All my guppies and my fish tank make me really happy".

This child has still been wearing inappropriate summer clothing if there is even the tiniest scrap of sun.

All this enforced time at home has allowed us to tackle some of those jobs that just never get done. We sat in the warm sunshine and painstakingly repaired 13 toddler books that had been on the receiving end of vigorous flap ripping from a much younger Liongirl.

And, we read through this pile that came home from the oppie last week.

And lastly, I am trying to not run screaming from the house upon the discovery that Legoman has now spent the day in bed with fevers and chills........... Best be off to make another batch of this yumminess.

Creamy rice (to ward off insanity and other ills)

 Add 3/4 cup medium grain rice to 3 cups of  rice milk ( or any milk) to a saucepan and bring to the boil.Turn down and simmer on a low heat for 20 mins, stirring intermittently.

In a small bowl whisk 1 egg with 1/3 cup caster sugar. Take pan off heat and add egg/sugar mix and stir quickly. Pop pan back on low heat and stir frequently while egg cooks through for another 5 minutes. Serve into ramekins and eat hot or cold. Super- yum!

Six year olds, lego and waterbombs

Well, my little Roboboy turned 6 last week and on the weekend we had THE birthday party. The only requirements were a few school mates, waterbombs and a lego man cake. Needless to say the gang of little six year old boys that took over our house had a great time and we are still picking thousands of burst water balloons out of our lawn.

What do you think of my lego dude? He ended up a little bit retro, mainly after a small food colouring issue where all attempts at red turned out pink and was salvaged into a dusky purple for his corduroy pants complete with Freckle belt and stripy snake sleeves. (Freckles are a MUST on birthday cakes, I think they have worked they way into nearly every cake I have designed). For a retrospective of Roboboy's cakes, pop over here.

There was minimal styling at this party, some bright colours, big balloons and a little bit of home made lego bling. Roboboy painted the legoman in order to play "pin the party hat on the legoman" and we made some potato stamp legoman heads which he individully stamped with yellow paint and then glued on some party boxes and then wrote each child's name on for the take home treats. They all got a lego minifigure and a few lollies and a glowstick. Best thing was that he did most of the work for me. Easy peasy. The lego art carousel was a birthday present, spins on its base and has spots for lego erasers, crayons, felt pens and pencils as well as a pencil sharpener legoman head. ( on sale in BigW for $15 quite recently if anyone is looking).

Incidentally, what do you think of the grey wall behind? I have been testing more external colours for Betsy and am quite liking this one. About to go and get a big tin of exterior gloss and slap it all over the back wall of the house so I can step back and survey it on a large scale and make sure I still like it.

Look what a mum from swimming was kind enough to lend me, her complete lego silicone stash which she had not even used yet.( I think she found them on ebay). I didn't use the legoman mould as it was too small and I had my own ideas already but I did make some of the bricks and minifigures in white chocolate which looked very cool. Had a few saved for a photo but the real Legoman of the house found the stash and gobbled them all.

The highlight of the day though was the joy on this boy's face as he played with all his mates and they threw these all over each other. Happy birthday my gorgeous boy with the wobbly tooth. Back soon to show you the birthday present that keeps on giving, a curbside find update and how to keep little girls amused at a big boy birthday party.

Pav-tastic milk glass moment

Remember a while back my mother- in- law mentioned that she might possibly have some sort of milk glass dish stashed in her cupboard? Well holy cow, look what she ferreted out and brought over recently. No, not the pavlova, that's my creation.

The absolutely perfect Fenton milk glass cake stand. I think I almost wept on the spot. It is sublimely beautiful, every little hobnail and frill is a delight. I had been waiting to cook something impressive in order to show off it's best features and thought I also needed to redeem myself with respect to recent pavlova efforts. This is a triple tier pavlova magic mountain special that I made for my mother-in - law's birthday. I think she was a little stunned by the absolute pavtasticness of this creation but was more than a little chuffed that her milk glass cake stand was making such a spectacular debut.

I made three pavs and was attempting a wedding cake tiered shape but pavs are obviously not that well behaved and once creamed it sort of looked more like a hat. A few more adornments and well, more like a mountain.

Yes, there was a small implosion of the ground level. Still, once covered in all the yummies, it transformed into the magic mountain special.

So easy to whip up a few meringue kisses with the leftover mixture. I didn't even pipe these, just twirled them with a spoon. My mother-in-law took the whole top layer home and we all ate the bottom two layers. The cake stand is mine to keep, never again will I raise an eyebrow over MIL's hoarding tendencies.

Other than scoffing down pavlova the start of the new year has left me reflecting on my resolutions for 2011. My three broad goals were gratitude, organization and creativity and I feel that I did make a good start on all three.

My more specific achievements are much less impressive than I had hoped. Progress on Betsy was painfully slow and frequently hampered by indecision. I'm too embarrassed to be more specific than that. On a positive note, before the year was out I did manage to start a vegie garden, plant 2 trees and 3 rose bushes, have my own chickens (until they were foxed a few months ago), pull out a sewing machine that had never been out of the box and start sewing, learn to crochet, start a sewing group, upgrade to a digital camera, start a milk glass collection, make two installations for the prep classroom  and find the best vintage sheet stash on holidays in rural Victoria. Oh, yes and I did start a little blog.

And now I'm plotting something to build on this year of progress, something big, and wishfully grand and a little scary. A project of sorts, a commitment of both time and thoughts. Want some clues?

Back soon with the whole story. Hoping someone else might be inspired to come along for the ride........

Hide and seek

It was Legomans's birthday the other day so we thought that was a good excuse to get out and about for a family picnic. The Mt Cootha Botanical gardens had the most spectacular display of cannas and of course we had to get up close and really explore. The looked like rows of lollipops all standing on end, red, yellow, orange and peach. And just look at this vibrant Jacaranda in bloom. Betsy has three in her garden but none of ours are looking quite this spectacular. Liongirl was given these clear plastic shoes by a relative, of course because I loathe them, they are her favourite and her best.

The Upside down pear cake did not last long, this was about 2 minutes in.

Meanwhile I was coveting my MIL's thermos that is about the same vintage as me.

And Roboboy was singing into his agapanthus microphone " I've got the moves like Dada" while doing some sort of funky bottom wiggle. (He thinks his version is better than the original "moves like Jagger").

And check out this rainbow chard, in yellow, red and pink.

And these gingers, almost resin like, but real.

And look what came home from the oppie with me this week. A vintage Australian animal themed eiderdown that can be zipped up into a sleeping bag.

I just love all the colours, and the animals of course.