Birthday Fun

Amanda turns 8 next week, and I got off easily for her party.
Instead of the typical little girl party where I had to entertain them with mind-numbing games she elected to have a BBQ with her friends and their families. Bonus - easy for me!

She had a Hello Kitty theme but I was so behind getting ready that there was no way I could get a Hello Kitty cake done. Instead, she let me off easily and we made rainbow cakes. In fact, I was so far behind, the cupcakes only got baked 6 hours before the party, which meant the icing knocked the top of the first cupcake I iced. The kids called it an icing cookie! After that, I piped the icing on and spread it VERY gently, and managed to keep the rest mostly intact.

Here is how our cupcakes looked:

One of the big advantages of a BBQ is that Michael does the cooking!

Lots of kids, lots of balls, which also meant lots of time digging balls off of the roof and out of neighbours' yards!

The birthday girl getting ready to blow out her candle (there was an "8" candle behind the sparklers).

Menu Board

Hi Folks!

After a long dry spell I finally had a crafty weekend, or should I say week? I had a friend over for a few days and it was fun to spend some time crafting with her.

The highlight of my weekend was making a menu board for my kitchen. Menu planning is something I have always struggled with, and I have loved some of the menu boards I have seen on friends' blogs and on Pinterest. This weekend I finally had the joy of making my own! Yay!

Here is what the board looked like when I began. I decided to use this particular board largely because, though we have several corkboards in the house, it was the first/only one we could find at the moment I decided I was making my menu board RIGHT NOW! LOL My poor hubby - he is so patient with me!

He even tried it on the wall to make sure it was going to fit vertically or horizontally so that I would be safe no matter where my creative juices led!

I had some leftover checkered paper and green paper I really wanted to use as they are my favourite colours, and chose a pink for the background. I also had some labels left over from the ones I made to label my kitchen cupboards so inked the edges of them in the same purple that I used on the labels, then stamped MENU on them. From there I was not really sure where to go and started playing around with multiple ideas.

I knew I wanted two pockets on it, and was originally toying with making them from envelopes but was afraid that would not be sturdy enough to last in my house. Finally I had a brilliant idea - I emptied the playing cards out of two boxes then cut the tops off to get the size I wanted. I then scored my cardstock and covered them, and added labels that matched my title.

At this point in time I got completely stuck and felt like I was going nowhere fast. I also discovered that our clothes pins are either missing or still packed, so now I had a good excuse to make a run to the dollar store. I am so glad I did! While there I found lots of embellishments in my favourite colours, and a perfect match for this board! I also found a jumbo-sized clothespin. I wasn't sure how that was going to mesh with my whole menu board but I knew I loved it and would find a way!

Back home the creative juices started to really flow! However, the background seemed a bit blah, and when Amanda offered a piece of purple paper instead we knew we had a winner! What a difference the brighter purple made! The clothespins got covered in the same green paper as the card boxes. I then wrote the days of the week on the little ones so that I would know where in my week I was at, then modpodged to make them hold up better to being handled.  I used wood glue to attach everything, largely because I couldn't find my hot glue gun. I have three or four of them and they have all grown legs and wandered off, probably with the scissors and nail clippers! What's with that anyway? I digress...

I glued everything on, added some pretties, and voila! A menu board! I especially love how the large clothes pin provides balance to the other side of the board, where I also have space for building my grocery list.

Here is a close-up of the menu side (and thanks to Tanner for the photos):

I chose to label my boxes "Planned Meals" and "Menu Ideas" as my shopping rarely lines up with the calendar. That way when I shop I can add all the meals I have ingredients for to the "Planned Meals" box and work from there when setting up my schedule for each week. If I end up moving things around, unused meals go back in that box again, and once we have eaten them, the card returns to the "Menu Ideas" box. For now I have also put in some blank cards and a pen as I didn't want to think through my whole menu in one shot

I am so excited to use my pretty board, and my kids are excited because Mummy managed to plan dinner before 6 at night two nights in a row!

Have a super week!

Magic Cake

We held Tanner's 13th birthday party this weekend. Hard to believe he's going to be a teenager already! He is totally fascinated by magic, so we did a magic theme for his birthday which, of course, necessitated making a magic cake!

Here is what we came up with and how we did it:

Sorry our picture quality is still developing. Our photography was a bit off this time as the boys decided they want to make a youtube video of this cake being decorated, and got so busy recording that they kept forgetting to take photos! I'll let you know once the video is edited and posted.

In the meantime, here are the instructions for the magic cake:
1)Base - 2 9" X 13" cakes stacked and iced with chocolate icing died black
2) The top hat is made by baking a cake in an empty tin can; we used a diced tomato can (apparently you need to make sure your can is not lined, so don't use one with a white inside). Set it aside for now.
3) For the brim of the top hat melt chocolate chips and spread them in  a circle on wax or parchment paper to form a slightly larger circle than your can. We traced a slightly larger bowl onto the paper then filled it in with chocolate. Freeze it to set.

4) Magic wand - I couldn't find plain breadsticks so I ended up using cherry Nibs. Pocky would also have worked but I couldn't find them at the time. Turns our I was in the wrong aisle! LOL Dip most of your wand in the melted chocolate and place it on the paper to set.  Put it in freezer to set completely before adding the white chocolate.

I found the wand melted when I picked it up, then melted even faster when I tried to dip it in the white chocolate, so I resorted to spooning the white chocolate onto the ends of the wands and that worked much better. Return them to the freezer.

5) Playing cards - dip tea biscuits in white chocolate then freeze them. Spread more white chocolate on the back to make a better looking and more even card surface. Return them to the freezer.

Pipe red or black icing on them to make the card faces. We used red icing and made aces and twos to keep it simple.

6) Dip mini ice cream cones in melted chocolate (we used blue) for the cups and ball trick. We couldn't find mini ice cream cones so we just cut sugar cones down to size then dipped them. For the balls we used mini gobstoppers, no prep required!

7) After assembling the cake base decorate it it with red buttercream icing to make it look like a magician's table. Tanner took the opportunity to practice his newly-acquired cake decorating skills!

8) Finally assemble the cake. I did this a few hours before the party but if I had it to do over again I would do it later. The brim of the hat softened too much (see how much nicer it looks here than in the first picture?) which made it change colour, droop, and eventually break. Also the weight of the top hat sunk that corner of the cake a bit - not badly, but not perfect.
Oh, and the bunnies were leftover Easter candy we found on clearance.

Tanner loved his party, especially the fantastic magician we had, Steve Dickson. Tanner also loved his cake, I love creating these memories for my children, and another successful party was had by all!

Let's Not Eat Lasagna After All...

I decided I should share this week's lasagna story as I am sure it will give someone a laugh!

We invited my sister over for a nice Easter dinner this weekend. We chose lasagna for an entree as she is vegetarian. Besides, it's one of our kids' favourite dishes, especially since we figured out to make two - one with regular cheese and one with goat cheese for my guys with dairy challenges! Anyways, I digress.

My sister showed up at dinner time to the sound of hubby and I arguing over the lasagna, which wasn't cooking. In fact, the sauce wasn't even made. I was cutting the first veggies as she walked in. Oops! So we threw the veggies back in the fridge and my sis took us out for a nice dinner. Thanks Sis!

Monday we tried again. Our day went haywire and at 6:30 we still hadn't started the sauce so we ate something else. Tuesday I made the sauce and left it to simmer. By dinner time it had tried to burn on the bottom of the pot several times, and was the consistency of watered down tomato juice. Not a good start to dinner. We dumped the lasagna for dinner idea AGAIN (can you hear my inflexible son ramping up at the idea of his beloved lasagna being delayed for the third time???) and poured it in the crockpot to simmer. We let it simmer all day Wednesday and it was still way too runny, and not tasting very good to boot. Michael and I had date night, so the kids ate spaghetti with some of the sauce on top, with extra sugar added to make it palatable. We doctored up the sauce some more then left it to simmer all night Wednesday and all day Thursday in the hopes of making it taste better. We got home ready to finally have lasagna for dinner, and the sauce had turned black. It was still too runny, except now it was black and tasted worse than ever.
Guess what? We still didn't have lasagna for dinner!
Tomorrow we are going to do up a fresh batch of sauce and try again. Wish me luck!

Amanda Creates

Hobby Share Round 2

Amanda took the baking class. Her group was primary students and they learned to make biscuits. According to Amanda they were so easy to do as you mixed them up with your spoon, then your hand, then cut them into pieces and baked them. She was very proud as she was able to do everything by herself. Apparently most of the kids needed help measuring and stirring but she didn't, probably because she bakes a lot at home.

She actually made a lot more than are shown in the picture, but these are the only ones we were able to keep out of people's mouths long enough to take a photo of!

Tanner Creates

Every year our homeschool support group does a Hobby Share Day where various parents share a craft or hobby that interests them with a small group of children. This year's groups included cake decorating, electrical circuits, geocaching, crochet, pysanky, baking, origami and preschool.
For those of you that homeschool, this field trip is always the best attended of all the ones we offer in a year and one I highly recommend you try with your groups.

Anyways, back to our Hobby Share. Tanner decided to try his hand at cake decorating. The class lasted 90 minutes and they were practicing different techniques by decorating cupcakes. He learned how to write, outline a shape, make stars, leaves, and some type of flower. The highlight of the day was making a Westie. To quote Tanner, "My mum made me go through all the stress of making a dog. It was actually very interesting." He was feeling tired by the time they got to the dogs and was thinking about skipping it but I talked him into persevering. He was glad after! LOL

Here are a couple pictures of his creations:

Creating Memories

My eldest son's birthday is coming up and that has me back into cake mode, thinking and planning his birthday cake. We used to do all ice cream cakes from Dairy Queen. Then one year I made one myself. The kids were so impressed, I have been making them ever since!
Overall, they are a delight to do. I really enjoy the challenge, and they love the memory of helping make it and of having it as a centrepiece.
Warning to those of you new to this: expect it to take a LOT of time, especially for your first few cakes. And some cakes are, by design, much more intricate and time-consuming. If you plan to make a theme cake, you need to plan accordingly!

This cake is the first homemade theme cake I ever made, and now I laugh at how simple it was. However, it was enough to impress my children, and it got me started on making homemade cakes. It is a space shuttle, in case you can't tell! I used liquorice strings to outline the shapes, and smarties to decorate it. Confetti sprinkles decorated the sky. The part that most impressed the kids was the sparkler boosters.

This cake is the first shaped cake I ever made. It is two crossed lightsabers for a Star Wars party, in case you can't tell. The kids were extremely impressed, I think mostly by the size of it. Each lightsaber is one 9 X 13 cake halved vertically, then lined up, making the lightsabers each over two feet long! I covered it all with white icing then used red and green liquorice strings to outline the different parts of each lightsaber, and gum drops for the buttons. I used spray-on food colouring to make the actual glowing part. Just be sure that you cover the parts around where you are spraying or you will find yourself scraping icing off and redoing parts of your cake! Can you tell that is experience is talking?

I have taken great pleasure in doing these for my kids and look forward to sharing more cakes with you in the coming weeks!

Creating... the Yummy Way

We have had a fabulous food day in our house today!

They boys are learning equivalent fractions so we practiced by baking Brown Eyed Orange Bars while making them figure out how many scoops they would need if they only had one size measuring cup at a time! This delightful recipe is one my Mum made when I was a little girl. I don't know the origin of it but here it is:

For the squares:
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup skim milk powder
1/3 cup white sugar
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
1/2 c. orange juice
1 Tbsp. grated orange rind
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup chocolate chips
Heat the oven to 375°F.
Grease and flour square 9”cake pan and set aside.
Sift the flour with the skim milk powder, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
Beat in the butter, orange juice, orange rind, vanilla and egg until well mixed.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Spread into cake pan.
Bake 20-25 minutes until done.
While still warm, spread with orange glaze.
Leave to cool completely before cutting.

For the orange glaze:
2/3 cup sifted icing sugar sugar
1 Tbsp. orange juice
1 tsp. grated orange rind

Mix all ingredients together. Add more orange juice as needed to make
glaze consistency. Pour over bars while still warm.

Tanner has been wanting to try making his own ginger tea for quite awhile so tonight he did it. He brewed his own ginger tea! It was way too spicy for me but he quite enjoyed it!

And finally Michael made dinner tonight - a Chicken Chow Mein recipe he picked up from watching Jamie Oliver videos online. It is delicious but we ate it all so sorry, no pictures!