A birthday sleepover part 2

Continuing on from yesterday's post...

After the sleepover bags were thoroughly raided the girls got started on their craft activity. It is a must to do craft before a sleepover, apparently (girls after my own heart :-). They decorated a pillowcase each using the fabulous fabric crayons pictured above. It was the quickest and least messy activity I could think of that related to bedtime.



After dinner was The Cake - do you find that the cake is often the most anticipated part of a birthday? I just love how excited children get about it. My girls talk about their cake all through the year, even when their birthdays are ages away!!

Big girl had excitedly gone through our favourite celebration cake cookbook, The Australian Womens Weekly's "Kids Party Cakes" in the weeks before the event and decided on this moon cake to suit the sleepover theme.



Each time I've used this cookbook I've picked up some new tip or trick, and this time it was the coloured textured icing. It's a standard butter icing coloured yellow, which is then sprinkled with sugar that you tint yellow. The sugar smooths off the surface and can be scattered around any dips in the icing, so it's very forgiving of wonky application! It looks great, but just don't think about the fact that you're eating pure sugar. Hmm, maybe that's why sleep came pretty late to the lovely girls :-) (The cake is this favourite quick and easy egg-free chocolate cake).

OK, one birthday down for the year, 2 more to go...

A birthday sleepover part 1

We had a very very exciting event here a few weekends ago, my big girl's 6th birthday sleepover. After a huge party last year where her whole class and other friends were invited the Mr and I were exhausted and there and then decided we'd skip the big party the following year. So we told her she could invite her 2 best buddies over for a sleepover, and of course I had to incorporate some craft, especially considering all 3 girls love to make things.

As soon as the girls arrived big girl delighted in giving them their 'sleepover bags'. Wanting there to be a few fun touches to the evening, I'd come up with the idea of making a simple drawstring bag for each of the 3 and including some things to do with bedtime. It was the element of surprise that I thought the girls would enjoy.



After a bit of thought, the items in the bags ended up being some bubble bath, a lip balm, a torch (for creating finger shapes on the wall & general fun), a treat to eat and a sleep mask, as well as a set of matching pyjamas that I'd been working on for a while:



These are made with the Oliver & S 'bedtime stories' pattern, which includes a kimono style top. I chose a bird print flanelette from Spotlight (very happy to find this amongst all the garish prints!) and for the trim a lilac coloured soft lawn. For the ties I used ribbon in the matching lilac. I love this pattern, it's so well considered and beautifully detailed.



Then for the sleep mask I thought it would be quicker to make them rather than trying to hunt some down (especially as they were just a gimick really and would only be used briefly, if at all). I made them out of some scrap fabric, elastic and pinking shears, and amazingly they turned out pretty well (and were very satisfying to make)!

Tomorrow I'll post the craft activity and cake...

Easter long weekend

Hi, how was your Easter weekend? Ours was spent having a bit of a break from technology (for me at least) and enjoying some family time (when we weren't having tantrums that is - hey, that's a 3 year-old's job, isn't it?!).

We did some of our favourite things:
Went for walks...


built sand castles...


spent ages throwing pebbles into the water...


looked for crabs and other creatures...


and made and ate hot cross buns... (I used the trusty no-knead method and added sugar, spices, sultanas and some choc chips - thank goodness for something edible after my recent pumpkin failure ;-)


Not to mention celebrating my mum's birthday (Happy Birthday mum!), hunting for Easter eggs then negotiating the eating (or not) of those eggs, lazing around in the new pyjamas and plenty of wrestling with uncles and cousins - the kids that is, not me ;-)

I hope you had time to relax and recharge the batteries! What did you get up to?

When things don't work...

First pumpkin rage, now technology rage... think I need a holiday.

We're away from home and some minor adjustments I wanted to make on a pre-prepared post about my big girl's sleepover are not working (my familiar Mac is at home and the Mr's PC is p%&*#@^ me off!) so I'll say goodbye for now and try to enjoy my break away visiting family. See you next week!

Pumpkin rage & cooking intuition

KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES

OK, this was meant to be a post on delicious pumpkin gnocchi for my 'pumpkin challenge', including recipe. The above picture is what pumpkin gnocchi should look like.

Unfortunately on Sunday night here we did not have this, and I'm afraid to say there was a tantrum - not from the 3 year old but from me. There was a time years ago when my kitchen tantrums were much more frequent - eggs breaking on attempted separation, butter that wouldn't rub into flour, over beaten cream, burnt whatever - you get the picture. But thankfully these days they don't happen so much. I don't care so much and who cares what it looks like if it stops the kids nagging me for food, right?

So, the other night there was lots of swearing about pumpkins and being time poor and cooking elaborate dishes for my food-loving Mr. as I realised that the gloopy mess in front of me was not going to amount to a passable (and certainly not delicious) dinner.

It was truely awful and it dawned on me that I hadn't listened to my cooking intuition.
It had been trying to tell me that:
• I don't really feel like cooking tonight so I stick to something simple
• It's 'movie night' and I'd like to sit down and watch Harry Potter with the kids rather than cook
• This is a really watery pumpkin and probably won't make a good gnocchi

I ignored all the signs that this was a disaster in the making and my lesson is to try to remember to listen to my cooking intuition to have a happy experience. And to give up on that damned pumpkin. It's beaten me. Right, mass quantities of soup it is...

Cobbled together pyjamas

With the weather getting cooler here, last week I went through the kids' clothes, sorting them into what to put away, what to give away and what to throw away. This is always such a big process, and I end up with bags of clothes all over the place. Do you have the same? Any tips for managing the incoming/outgoing process? The Mr would say 'throw them all out, along with the toys!', but we all know this is not practical, as much as it would be nice to have a clutter-free house!

So while I was sorting I realised that the girls are pretty low in warm pyjamas. And as we are about to go off to visit family in colder climes I thought I'd better address this.



I got out of the stash all the flanelette (yay, stash busting!) and also a pile of long sleeved t-shirts that haven't been worn much because they've seen better days - a little stained, or stretched or pilled - and thought they'd be fine as pyjama tops.

The flanelette fabrics are of complimentary colours, including a lovely soft minty green, so I decided to mix and match a bit and make some new sets up. For the pants I used the Oliver & S 'bedtime stories' pattern (another post on this later), and traced off a couple of different sizes. Then I filed them into paper bags in an effort to keep some sort of order.



And on some of the tops I added some rough applique by cutting out shapes and machine sewing them on, particularly over any stains. I used contrasting strips for the pants hems and couldn't resist also using some ribbon. I got a heap of this lovely satiny lilac colour for just 10c a metre at Spotlight recently, yay!



I've still got a few pair to finish but we're set for our chilly trip.

Pumpkin challenge update

3. Pumpkin scones
Definitely not popular here, we couldn't get through a batch of these and they ended up as worm food :-( Are they meant to be sweet or savoury? Do you have them with jam or cheese? Don't know, maybe just not to our tastes.

4. Roast pumpkin, macadamia & fetta pasta.
This one's a favourite of mine that I copied from a restaurant years ago. It also includes sweet chilli sauce, fresh basil and roasted garlic - sounds strange but a delicious combination and interesting mix of textures. I forgot to photograph it, but if you're interested let me know and I'll take a pic and write up the recipe next time I cook it.

Next up:
Hopefully pumpkin gnocchi this weekend

Have a lovely weekend, friends.