A tale of two Birthday Cakes and some Mythical Creatures

Here we have the two birthday cakes. What a story! Lets start by saying, there was a party the day before her birthday at Tolosa St Reserve. We'd invited alot of people, and surprising many said "yes". This is awesome, but it meant that I had to make two cakes to make sure there would be enough. I was also making Fairies in A Meadow too, so initially I was going to make 20 chocolate fairies which had colour (see above pic). Well, I spent one and a half days (which I didn't really have) to make those. Each time I made two, one broke coming out of the mould. I also had an enthusiastic Monika who wanted to eat them straight away. So with the problems I was enduring I made the decision just to have enough for the cake, and to do plain chocolate for the Fairies in A Meadow. Well, I had enough coloured ones to do a fantastic birthday cake, having them all standing in a circle supported by their wings. Monika got into these a few times as everyone was curious and wanting to look and they didn't keep her away! Anyways, I'd saved enough to do the cake and have plenty of plain to do the Fairies in A Meadow. Then on the day of the party I FORGOT both cakes (both Gluten Free and Dairy Free by the way, and the white choc was sweet williams that is GF and Dairy Free, so I had made up a couple especially for the party in case there was a child who needed that). So... that meant she had two cakes for her birthday instead. Below is a Bratz Pixie cake. This was meant to be with Nan and Pop when we visited them at home so she could get her presents from them. Before we got out the door that day, she'd got in and eaten or bitten into all but these two left on the cake. The others were spares of the Fairies in A Meadow. So Above?Below is the result of two days of cooking. Not quite what I was hoping for... but at least the birthday girl enjoyed herself, right?

Below is just before the final eating of the cake (she's grabbed a fairie and started plowing in before blowing out the candles, its has melted a bit onto her face).

Here's a better picture. Look at that mischievous GLEE in her face. HaHa Mum, I GOT IT!

Here is the boys at Nan's place, it was cute so I'm sharing it.

Here she just blew out the candles with the cake at Nans, she was so fast I couldn't actually catch the glow of the flames...

So this is her second go at blowing out the candles!

Getting into her present bag at Nans. This is cute little story. She's a great cleaner upper, (why else would we keep such a cheeky lass around?) Nan's got a toy bucket, and she knows she has to put toys away when its time to pack up. As a gift, Nan had given her a toy with wheels and since a large majority of toys have wheels in the bucket she immediately took the toy from her pressie bag and put it over in the toy bucket.

Nanny has now taken a little something from us. Every time she gives the birthday child a gift she now gives a little gift to the others. Here they are enjoying little lolly bags she gave to them.

We gave Monika a COOL SCHOOL, similar to the DACS (digital art creativity studio) from Fisher Price. She loves it in short bursts. It takes the place of a keyboard for use in a PC, in fact it has a little keyboard, and a place to do 'writing' etc. She also got a Dora CD expansion pack for it, and a Littlest Pet Shop, way too young of course, but she wants to play so bad when the others do, so why not? She's over shoving every little thing into her goblet, so there is no danger there. As per our family tradition, she gave each of her siblings LPS toy each too, with the exception of Kai again, who got a Bee Beany Bear, which he was wrapt in again.

The Party: Here is the Dragon Pinyata, that Andrew put so much effort into making and it was the highlight of the BBQ party! So cute isn't it? Its paper mache and plaster of paris.

And here is the Pin the Tail on the Dragon game:

Here is naughty Monika trying her best not to be caught on camera.

Here is the costumes, theme: Mythical Creatures (I took photos of all the dressed up children, but I won't be posting them here without permission): In descending order, Kai is a Marine Orc, Dante a Swamp Monster, Labyrinth the MerFairy, Raven is a Tengu (Japanese Shape Changer - in this case he is a Raven), and Monika, the Fairy Princess. Monika and Labyrinth have new wings from the fairy shop. Beautiful aren't they? They can do anything to them, sleep in them wear them in the car, trample mud into them and they'll come up good as new with a wash in the washing machine. Great, aren't they?

The Mythical Creatures of course is an extension of the learning we've all been doing. We have not moved on from Greek Myth yet, we are amazed at how much there is to learn, that and it is on top of their other lessons, and sometimes we jsut don't get time to do it. That's all for now, Q.

Young Raven turns Four!

One of my babies had a birthday today, young Raven swooped in to score his fourth year and had a happy, happy birthday! Since his favourite colour is pink, and he loves dinos, that's exactly what birthday cake he got:

As mentioned a few times before, birthdays aren't just special for the birthday child, its for every child in the family, as the birthday child gives a present to each sibling. This year Raven gave out a small bubble bottle and a beanie bear each. So, from left to right in the group shot above, Kai has a Tassie Devil, Raven has his 'dino' big beanie (really Lizzie the Lizard or some such - can't check he's cuddling right now), Labyrinth's pink angel, Dante has a shark and Monika for a rare moment has both her bears - her most loved Red Panda and her new pink dino bear. When she was given the bear she had a strange look on her face, later she threw it down on the floor "Don't want it!" and reclaimed her Red Panda and dragged it around everywhere and refused until this photo right before bed to have any more to do with it (but she is clutching her baby 'iego, as she calls her Red Panda). Labyrinth and Raven also have other Beanie Bears - Raven has T'Rex and Labyrinth has her "Ghost Rider".

Funny little story earlier today: I was getting Raven to get his siblings gifts ready, (he was stickering thier bubble bottles and writing the first letter of their names onto a sticker tag and sticking them to the Beanie Bears). He took keen interest in Monika's bear (two of his fave things as proved by above cake and smile). I tell him, that no, it's not his that he will be giving it to Monika soon, and he looks up at me excitedly and exclaims, "ohhh, Monika's bear will by my T'Rex's girlfriend! We can play!!!" He's such a sweetie. He also didn't need reminding how to shape the M letter, he just went ahead and wrote it. I've never taught him any writing ever, and when I asked the children later if thier child carer teaches them how to write they told me she never does anything like that, so that's a WOW moment for me.

So for the next part Presents! Nanny and Poppy came over (my parents), and in a lovely Diego present bag had a new pair of Victorianox army pants, a colour in book, chocolate (I've never known my mum not to bestow such treats), and two new toon DVDs. Then he gave out his presents to his siblings, then drum roll please. He got the above big Beanie, a colour etch-a-sketch, and lots of activity books/roll of thick cartridge paper - 50 sheets/more art paper/a pencil case full of arty stuff for a young man including glue/sticky tape as well as the usual drawing pencils etc, and for the encore... a DACS as pictured above. Or in other words a Digital Arts Creative Studio. Basically the preschool version of a tablet and photoshop. He already has his head around it and he LOVES it. It was the greatest thing to come along at the perfect moment at the Big W toy sale... just in time for his birthday and the not so brilliant part... we thought we'd gotten him the most amazing bonus, another disc that adds in, dinosaur. Unfortunately it already came with it and I'll have to take it back and worst of all they are all sold out of any others! A Diego would have been SOOO perfect, I'll have to hunt it down off Amazon.com no doubt.

Other than that he had a birthday party lunch, a trip to the movies with Daddy by himself to see Ice Age 3 which again is fortuitous as it included dinosaurs. All of the children with the exception of surprise, surprise, Monika (but she had just sat through another session of Coraline). Topped off with a movie with Roast Chicken and Home Made Chips, as per requested by Raven, singing a condensed version of his favourit book (Sipping Spiders Through Straws)... made him the happiest boy I've seen in a long, long time.

It's nice not to hear, "I won't/can't eat that mommy, it makes me sick/yucky/tired" and just have smiles and cuddles and laugther from him all day. That's the bit I liked the most about today, as opposed to what happened on Monday.

I hope all is well in your world. Q.

Just in Case Today is the End... So Yummies

The mad scientists from Switzerland tried making a replica of the BIG bang. See here. Obviously it didn't create a huge black hole to swallow the earth as we're still about. In possibility that it would be the last hours with my family we did some of our favourite things. One was these cookies, another the children watched "Kung Fu Panda" while Andrew and I spent some quality time. Then they read to me because believe it or not, we do actually enjoy doing that. Anyway anyone interested might enjoy my photographic step by step choc chip cookie recipe:

Step By Step Choc Chip Cookies:

1. 125g of butter per recipe, cut up into cubes to melt in the microwave. Today we did a quadruple recipe but I'm putting the ingredients up for just one:

2. Melt the butter.
3. Put 3/4 C each of SR Flour and Plain Flour in a separate bowl.
4. Mix vigirously into the butter mixture 1 Cup of soft brown sugar until it becomes caramel syrup like.
5. Break eggs into a cup to check they are OK then mix it into the caramel like mixture. It should look like the second picture below:

6. And eventually look just like this (lots of whipping!):
7. Mix the wet into the dry ingredients gradually.
8. It will eventually look like this:
9. Add in your choc chips. Mixed in they will look like the second pic below.

10. Roll them into small balls and squash onto the grease-proof paper as shown:

11. The last and most important step. Bake in a pre heated oven (180*C) for 8 - 12 minutes, the warmer the day the less time. You'll figure it out by trial and error. The trick is to grab them out just before they start going golden brown, still soft but still hard enough to hold their shape when you take them off the tray. Cool, but not too long before trying... they'll melt in your mouth.
The finished product should look like these! See how they are still quite pale? That does make them very yummy. But if you prefer a harder buscuit allow them to cook longer so they are golden brown on the bottoms.

Enjoy, Q.

From Today... Art

Dante did a whole heap of drawings today at home, while the other children, excepting Monika played at Nannies and Poppies house!

Raven's Dinosaur Egg with dino stamping all over it:We also did more reading lessons today, and did our weekly chores (the ones that only get done once a week like vacuuming !!) Other than that I've been enjoying some time doing a personal essay for Uni (yes I am, really). As we 'speak' Andrew is doing modelling with the boys, Labyrinth is surfing the internet and Monika is demanding a feed, so until next time, Q.