Fabulous Croquet

I played croquet this afternoon with some long time girlfriends. It was truly lovely.

 

Chubs was having some Daddy time, and we had some yummy food, lovely conversation and great weather.

 

My croquet skills were moderate for a beginner (ie pretty rubbish...) The club had a staff member who walked around with us telling us what to do and what the rules were which helped a lot! 

 

 

Everything is better with cupcakes 

 

Sadly a lot of my photos didn't work out and I can't seem to upload them. :(   It was a lovely afternoon though - highly recommended. My best wishes to my dear friend xx

Gingerbread house update

Well, in short - it worked! It's not often that I can say that about a baking endeavour. Yes, I know that I'm really stretching it to call this 'baking', but it's Christmas!

I didn't have too many dramas. It came as several pieces with a massive bag of fondant. It was more that enough, even after I made mistakes and slathered it on which was good. The leftovers may or may not have been eaten/ sucked from the bag later...

It was pretty easy to build, except for the 'hold in place for one minute until set' instruction. After an hour the roof was still sliding off and we discovered that this was made in Canada. I'm guessing that a Canadian Christmas and one in Queensland have a pretty huge difference in temperature! All was fixed with more fondant and a little rest in the fridge.

It was fun sticking it together. Because it was a kit I didn't do any planning, I just stuck on the lollies as I went. (Reckless, I know.) I'm looking forward to planning one in the future. Apparantly some people do themed ones each year, I'd love to do that after a couple of years. (By the way - this is definately an after bedtime or nap time project!)

Some last minute renovations to the chimney. This is the only house I've ever had with one.

The finished product! Unfortunately after the night in the fridge some of the lollies were 'crying' but otherwise I thought that it looked really good. The kit also came with a snowman, a gingerbread man and a Christmas tree which you can see in the 'front yard'.

This is the back of the house. Much less crying from the lollies here! The middle swirly mint is what the three on the front of the house are supposed to look like.

This was the first one I'd made and I enjoyed it. I'd love it to become a tradition in our family. It's not something that Dear Husband or I have ever done in our families before. It's very hard for us to get excited about Christmas, but it's something that we really want to make special for Chubs. I'd love to have her 'help' decorate as she gets older, and for gingerbread at breakfast to be a Christmas time treat. (Incidentally, she loved the icing but had a mixed appreciation of the gingerbread itself.) I thought that the kit biscuits tasted quite nice, although I may change my mind after I've made one from scratch!

So, all in all, a successful venture, which makes a nice change!

Rainbow party bags + menu plan

For Chubs' first birthday we had a rainbow party - check out some of the food and decorations here.

For the party bags, I wanted something that wasn't just a bag full of sugar. I have a family full of dentists to start with, but also many of the party guests were little babies so lollies weren't really appropriate.

I made a whole lot of drawstring bags with this rainbow fabric on one side and a plain colour on the other. I split the bags up into three categories - babies, little kids and older kids. Babies got the bag, some bubbles and a foam bath toy. Little kids got the bag, a few lollies, playdough and some small plastic dinosaurs and older children got bubbles and some lollies. The bags were bigger than a normal party bag - about 30cm wide and 35cm tall - because I wanted them to be useful, not just cute.

I thought I took a photo of the rainbow playdough, but I can't find one. Basically I made up four batches of white (uncoloured) play dough, then I split it into six even balls. I coloured each ball one of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple then I kneaded and kneaded and kneaded and kneaded! (My hands were quite sore afterwards - you really can see why it's good for muscle development and find motor skills for little kids - and big people, too!) Then I rolled each colour into a thick sausage and cut it up into ten pieces. I then put one piece of each colour in a sealy/ ziplock bag.

Since the bags had different things, I named each bag just by stapling a piece of card with the child's name on it. There were a few sets of siblings invited so I made sure that each child got a different coloured back so they could tell them apart.

Many mums at the party thanked me for playdough which kept several kids occupied for a few hours that afternoon. The bags were useful too, and I've seen a 'in use' since the party which was exactly what I intended, so I'm glad they've been enjoyed.

More rainbow birthday party ideas


Menu plan for this week

I need to have some tests on Friday which means I need to have a special diet for three days before - lots and lots of carbs! So here's the plan for a high carb diet this week. Depending on what the results show it may very well be my last flirtation with carbohydrates, so I'm going to enjoy it!

Monday: Pork stir fry (plus I'll try to do some freezer cooking)
Tuesday: Spaghetti bolognese
Wednesday: Spaghetti with chicken bolognese (made the same as normal but with chicken mince)
Thursday: leftovers from Tuesday and Wednesday and a big bowl - perhaps my last - of spaghetti! I do love spaghetti.
Friday: We are going out to a birthday party for a relative so we'll eat there
Saturday: Out with other rellies
Sunday: scavenge.

Linked

Rainbow jelly cups and weekly menu plan

At Chubs's rainbow birthday party I made these jelly cups. Very simple, but required forward planning; you need to start two or three days before you need them so they have time to set.

I used four packs of jelly to make about 14 cups. If I was to do it again, I would change the order of the colours so there was more contrast; I think that would have looked better.

It's quite simple to make. I put all the cups into the crisper drawer of my fridge; alternatively you could put them in big plastic container or on a tray. Anything that you can take out of the fridge and put back in again and which will catch any jelly drips is good.

Make up one pack of jelly of the colour you want to be on the bottom, according to the directions on the pack. Pour a small amount into transparent disposable cups and pop them in the fridge. The need to set completely before you add the next layer. This takes about 12 hours, and no - putting it in the freezer won't speed it up! (Freezing will cause ice crystals to form which will ruin the bonding the gelatine is trying to do, ruining your jelly in the process.)

Every 12 hours, add another layer and pop back in the fridge. On the day of the party, I just took the whole crisper drawer out and took it to the park. The jelly cups were yum!

It took about 20 minutes of active prep (five minutes four times) but with 12 hours in between, so make sure you start two or three days before hand. It only takes one premature layer to wreck the un-set one below, and there will be no rescuing the jelly cups after that!

More rainbow party ideas

Menu Plan Monday

Last week's round up:
Monday: DH to make stir fry Yes, all good
Tuesday: Steak and veggies Yes, all good
Wednesday: Bolognese from the freezer I can't remember, I think we had this...
Thursday: Chicken curry from the freezer We didn't have this but I can't remember what we had. I had tortelleni one night and Dear Husband had some frozen leftovers, perhaps it was Thursday?
Friday: Possibly out to dinner? If not scavange... I'm really rubbish at this, but I think we had stir fry?
Saturday: Possibly out to dinner? If not scavange... I remember this one! We went out to dinner and had a marvelous roast at a friend's house. A lovely evening (even if Chubs didn't sleep as we had hoped) and I really enjoyed the night. That's when we had the cake to express my thanks.
Sunday: Bolognese I was planning on taking some chicken curry to dinner but that ended up not happening, so I put the chicken in the slow cooker with a Tucan Meatball packet sauce. It's not designed for slow cookers, so I'm not sure if it will work or not.

This week's plan:
Monday: Stir fry
Tuesday: Bolognese (from freezer)
Wednesday: Tortelleni (me) and leftovers (Dear Husband)
Thursday: Slow cooker chicken curry (from freezer)
Friday: Bolognese again
Saturday: Scavenge
Sunday: Hmmm, we'll see. Something from the freezer?

Linked

Rainbow biscuits

Ingredients:

- Half a packet of milk arrowroot biscuits
- 2 cups icing sugar
- green and blue food colouring
- 4 sour strap lollies.

Method:

1. Mix up the icing with a very small amount of water. Split into two containers and colour one green and one blue.
2. 'Paint' half of the biscuit diagonally with each colour.
3. Cut the sour straps into four equal colours. Place one length across the join between the green abd blue icing
4. Pop in the fridge and enjoy at your rainbow party!

More rainbow themed birthday party ideas here

Rainbow birthday party for Little Miss One

We had a birthday party for our precious one year old recently. Love.

The theme was Rainbows, so I went to town with the bright colours. We really wanted it to be a realxed, fun day. I wanted things to be nice, but we weren't stressed about it. Well, the cake was a bit of a stress, but I didn't want to spend the whole day rushing about making everything 'perfect' and missing out on the perfection of my little girl.

Over the next little while I'd like to share with you what we did for the food, the decorations, the activities and the cake.

I found a pad of rainbow invitations at the cheap shop and some rainbow thank you notes, too. We had the party in the local park which is great - play equipment for all ages and a lovely big gazebo with tables and benches. It looked like we had missed out on getting a gazebo, but at the last minute one became available and we pounced - woo hoo!