Our little busy bee is 1.

First birthday.  Really?!  I'm still pinching myself that it's come around this quickly.  Didn't I just bring her home from hospital?  I think I'm feeling the sadness of babyhood passing more this time round.

Last weekend we had a little bee-themed family celebration for our Miss Violet, she had a ball and so did we.  After one failed attempt at cooking in a dolly varden tin,  I finally scraped in with the goods on the birthday cake.  Phew!  With 30 minutes to spare I was so glad to have it finished!

Despite my difficulties with cooking the cake, icing it really wasn't too hard.  It was literally rolling and laying pieces of tinted pre-made white icing onto the cake.  I didn't have time to make every roll absolutely perfect, but if you did have the time to fiddle with it you could get an even better result.  Overall it's a really forgiving cake, and the slight wonkiness of the layers just adds to the appeal I think.  Bees were made of more darkly tinted icing, black cake writing gel and milo duos for wings.

The instructions for this cake are found in this book (fantastic resource if you can get your hands on it).

The rest of the party decorations were kept pretty simple.  I made a few doily hangings and we had balloons and yellow/black/white nibbles.  We covered some drinks in brown paper & string and then served them with some yellow paper strawers.  

The birthday girl herself had a blast and her birthday top with it's honeycomb collar fit perfectly.  She approved of her cake as you can see.  My four year old has been asking for more cake with "yellow icing" all week, so it was a hit with the big kids too.

I'm still trying to come to grips with my newborn suddenly turning into a little girl overnight.  It's been a big week - first birthday, first steps and next week first day in childcare as I prepare for returning to work part time (not looking forward to that bit).   I have a feeling the next 17 years are going to fly.

Love is sweet

A couple of weeks back I was delighted to celebrate my little brother's marriage to his beautiful sweetheart.  It was such a great day.

I also had the pleasure of helping out with the creation of my first Candy buffet at the wedding.  It was a group effort, but turned out pretty well, and was a total hit with the guests young and not so young!  

There was a truckload of sugar leftover, these two will be eating it for months!  Yum.

Congratulations again Mark & Cass.  I know you are going to be very happy.

xo

Lavender Lemonade

Yum.  This looks so appealing to me.  I love lemonade in any form, and I think I might just like this one too.  Great idea for a garden party or summer bridal/baby shower (and a sweet image too!).

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[via pinterest]

My creative space.

Throwing a baby shower has been in my creative space this week.  Busy busy busy!

As per my usual habit, I left most things to the last minute, but got there in the end!  We had great fun celebrating the impending arrival of a little someone special, and of course, I couldn't help but make a few things for the party....

A speedy sewing up of this little sensory floor throw.  It's a patchwork top of different textured fabrics and a soft fleecy back.  I have one like this and it was so useful for tummy time.   Also a challenge to keep it unisex!

Lots of handmade goodies including ginger biscuits, lemon tarts and these little marshmallow bites (you can see our colour scheme there)

Some quick and easy doily garlands for the windows and of course, Martha's tissue paper pom poms in lemon and orange.

I think the guest of honour had a good day, so it was all worth it!

Join in on the last MCS for the year at Kootoyoo!  Thanks so much Kirsty for hosting again this year.

My creative space.

As promised, this is what I got up to with those fabrics.

A butterfly party outfit for one 2 year old birthday girl.

An applique design on front, and a little pair of tulle wings on back.  The kind of wings you can't rip off easily (unlike the sweet blue and purple antler headband that was supposed to accompany it).  This project was a real scrap buster and a great way to use up some of those old fabrics that meant a lot.  I'll think about trying to make a tutorial for this if anyone's interested?

This project wasn't hard at all, and I was pleased with the outcome.  As you can see, the birthday girl was happy too!  And no, I didn't make the skirt.  I couldn't go past a $10 bargain on this purple tulle skirt about a week out from the party.   Just too much to get done if I hadn't snapped it up when I did.

Finally, these are just some of our butterfly decorations.  They were inspired by this post and were a great way for the birthday girl to be involved in the handmade preparations.  Needless to say we are now completely surrounded by these things stuck all over the house!

Enjoy everyone else's creatives spaces over at Kootoyoo :)  and my absolute favourite one right here (I'm so excited about this one I can't wait!)

Good one.

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What a fabulous idea!  Just spotted and had to share this great idea for paper globes, and it's straight to the party ideas bookmark.   Good one Ellen!!  See the full how-to over at Alpha Mom.

In other news..... It's Friday people!  What are you up to this weekend?  We're off to a playdate and then birthday celebrations tomorrow for family.  Looking forward to it.  Have a good one!

Tuesday pretties

Here are some pretty pictures for your Tuesday viewing (or Monday evening if you are reading this on time up North somewhere!). We celebrated Ellie's First Birthday on Sunday and as usual, I over-committed myself to doing things I really didn't have time to do, but all went very well in the end. My Birthday Bunting came out nicely and I was SO impressed by the effectiveness of Martha Stewart's Pom Poms. So great for a party and very very easy. I am so doing them again.

Colours of the day you can see for yourself: Pink, Orange, Yellow (plus a splash of green/blue here and there).

It was fun.

I thought these carnations looked like mini pom poms, so they made an appearance as well.

I hung the pom poms from the ceiling lights and made some small and some large sized.

Yeah, alot of pom pom pictures there I know, but I loved them so much I couldn't help myself (and neither could she! Her very first taste of chocolate fudge cake).

Cat's 30th Birthday

My sweet friend Cat is turning 30 this week (welcome to a great club Cat!!) and yesterday we had a celebration and lovely lunch together at their place. The weather, the company, Greg's home-made spicy Moroccan sausages and the Cous Cous were all fabulous. Greg asked me to make a cake for the day a few weeks back, and I said 'YES' of course!

Hmmm. What to do? It was a toss up. I wanted to try something that I hadn't done before. Something she would enjoy. I considered Bakerella's 14 layer cake (oh my gosh, I will be making that one day), or her cake pops (how amazing!) but realistically, with a 6 month old baby I probably wasn't going to be able to spend the time on those ones. So I finally decided on cupcakes, being so inspired as I often am by Brooke's ideas on Inchmark Journal (you should subscribe, it's lovely). So in the end cupcakes it was. Here is Cat's 30th birthday cake:

Given that the BBQ had a general Moroccan theme, I thought it might also be nice to make some goodie boxes in bright Moroccany colours for the guests. Again, shameless stealing of ideas from Brooke, but my first time at these, and they turned out pretty well, I thought.


The goodie boxes were made from matchboxes, bought at my local supermarket. I found some mini licorice allsorts in the same colours (also one of Cat's lolly loves) and filled the boxes that had been lined with orange paper. I aired them for a while to get rid of the weird matchbox smell, and decorated them with paper. It was just like wrapping 40 tiny presents, which if you love wrapping is lots of fun. I put them in a vase from my collection for display at the party.

Yes, they took me a long time.

Yes, I had fun.

Yes, she liked it all. Especially her own birthday girl sized box of them.

I now have 2000 matches to dispose of or use somehow, but the boys tell me they will gladly set them alight all at once for me (hmmm...). They will get a use in one way or another!

We can't wait to meet you baby!

So, the party came and went in fine style. Lots of guests in a cramped space was a little hard for the air con, but we made it, and baby Farr's impending arrival was celebrated with joy. So, how did all that handmade stuff go? Well, I think it went OK. Here's a little of what we completed for the shower (and a big thank you to one of my favourite blogs inchmark journal for inspiration and most of the ideas as well as the lovely Yana for helping me):

I found these teeny little coke cans at Big W - perfect don't you think? Couldn't find any teeny waters with green or red lids, but Mum found some multicoloured ones which were still a hit on a hot day.

The teabag inspiration comes from Ez at Creature Comforts but we made them a little differently to her free printable version. Shame about the heat, as I don't think there was one person who even used a teabag - not even Grandma who thinks tea is cooling on a hot day! Oh well, if you come to my place, Yana's or Jo's anytime soon, you will be spoiled with a sweet handmade teabag cover including a little heart on the string :o)

I did also put some red hearts on the end of toothpicks for the fruit, but forgot in all the flurry to take a picture - sorry! You can see one in yesterday's post if you look closely.

As you can see Jo had a blast....who would have thought - only 4 weeks to go!!! How fast has that gone? Little Miss Ellie can't wait for her first cousin to arrive!

We've been hard at work

I feel like i've been thinking and crafting all week! It's my sister Jo's baby shower today, and I thought it might be nice to steer away from the usual baby pastels and head for some brighter colours. Here's a sneak peek at what we've been up to ....

My sister-in-law Yana and I spent a day together this week cutting, stamping, typing and lots more. Cookie cutters come in handy for more than just cooking.

Mmmm...I wonder what I could bake?? Stay tuned.