Baking a Dolly Varden

My sweet little niece recently had her 4th birthday and in our male dominated household of helicopter, pirate ship and digger cakes, I thought it would be a lovely change to bake a Dolly Varden cake for her. Foolishly I thought that this would be much easier than it actually was. It all started out well and I felt quietly confident as I popped the cake into the oven and sat down to drink my tea... after first stopping to admire how nicely my Cornish Ware pudding basin matched the mug... hmm clearly should have been a bit more focused!

Uh oh! Total disaster... husband came to the rescue and opened the bottle of red in the background.

After a glass of red, a bit more oven time and an urgent phone call to sister-in-law seeking advice on where to amputate Barbie's legs. (We went for a full leg amputation). I then wrapped Barbie's pelvis in glad wrap to keep things neat and tidy (ie. no cake inside Barbies bits... that sounds bad but you know what I mean!). The end result was not as catastrophic as I was anticipating. The clothes peg in Barbie's hair was to keep her hair out of the way for icing.

Happy Birthday Miss Zee!

School Holidays

The boys have had a fabulous time...

The holidays started over Easter which we celebrated with their first "Egg hunt" in the garden. They literally raced around in their pyjamas shrieking...



We explored galleries...


To inspire us in the future...

and created elaborate duplo constructions (this one was called "Emergency Cool!")...

Wheely bugs! Fortunately we have a suprisingly hardy floating floor...

We visited the zoo and found out that Meerkats like the smell of rye cruskits, there were a dozen meerkats salivating on the other side of that wall...

Explored some marvellous playgrounds...



Made a necklace for Grandma's birthday (you can see it blowing in the wind), she wore it proudly while we ate lunch (at a rather smart cafe!)...

Rode our bikes...

and started potty training this one... (his idea not ours!)

All is well at pirate HQ!

Book worms - hurrah!

I adore books, I collect them, I read them voraciously (and have done since I was a little girl), I have even insisted that we investigate the local library options before any house purchases! So when I see the boys are starting to share a similar love of reading and books it makes me feel tremendously good!

It truly warms my heart to see them cuddled up together enjoying a book.

"Make and Do" a Pirate Ship

Inspired by the amazing Dawn Treaders that Lier of Ikat Bag made with her girls, (I found Lier via The Brothers Trimm), The Captain and I made a pirate ship. We carefully read all the tips and instructions provided by Lier and then sat d0wn with the glue gun and an old cardboard box.

I roughly sketched outlines onto the cardboard with a pencil and then cut them out. We glued all the bits together using a hot glue gun. (This was probably the highlight for Nicholas, he asked if he could have a glue gun for his birthday!).

We made the mast out of a kebab stick and a paddle pop stick. I cut the sharpish end of the stick off after we had used it to puncture holes through the cardboard and the sail.

He loves it. Tomorrow we shall add the helm, anchor and life boat. In the meantime, Captain Blunderbuss (The Captain's altarego), has taken some Little People and lego men as hostages.

Easter... oh to be at Depot Beach!

Easter always makes think of Depot Beach (well, after all the more obvious associations like religion and chocolate). My parents have a holiday house at Depot Beach and I have spent many wonderful easter holidays there. Sadly this Easter we are unable to visit as the house is undergoing some much needed renovations. Instead, I have been reminiscing about times spent there. Including our wedding:


R and I collected all the stone "nameplaces" from Pebbly Beach (Depot's neighbour) and then returned them after the wedding. The shells we used to tie the napkins were collected over the years, many of them from as far back as my childhood.

The two hanging flower arrangements were made by my beautiful mother and an extremely talented friend (Thanks Mark!). They used two old vintage lobster pots that we had found washed up on the beach and carefully arranged Singapore orchids inside them. Another gorgeous friend had flown in from Singaore that morning with the orchids (stored in flight in the champagne cart in first class!)

The rest of the flowers were simply purchased from the Flemington flower markets in Sydney that morning and then "arranged" (stuck at the last minute) in old jam jars, the same ones my Dad uses every year to make his famous homemade jams.

As you can tell from this photo, Depot Beach is very undeveloped, in fact it is in the middle of a national park. I wrote a very heartfelt letter to National Parks and Wildlife requesting permission to get married on the beach and I was so grateful when they approved our request for the marquee on the beach.

It was a magical wedding, Depot Beach is magic!

The boys and their favorite toys; Thomas the Tank Engine.

I thought a lot about toys and what I wanted to spend money on. My priorities were not so much about education (which seems to be the marketing byword for toys these days) but to keep plastic to a minimum, buy second-hand or vintage where possible, stick to quality, well-made and well-crafted toys and toys that were open ended (blocks, lego, paints, boxes, playdough). Mostly, I think our toy choices have been successful and our wooden Thomas would be one of the most beloved, both by us and the boys.

The Captain can spend up to two hours engineering complicated routes and elaborate disasters for his trains to cope with, including landslides of dirt as you can see above (I went inside to get a cup of tea...), sometimes he even has the tracks running from room to room.

It is hard to decide what he loves more, the hours spent setting it all up, the playing, (I really should say crashing) or the time he sometimes spends simply admiring?

The Mulch Mountain

Across the road from us, a house is undergoing a fairly major renovation. The boys have just adored all the associated activity. In particular, the diggers,trucks and cement mixers that have been roaring up and down their long driveway. Recently there have even been tree surgeons chopping down some absolutely enormous trees. Naturally, they are fascinated by all this and unfortunately are not content to observe from the house. Instead, I have to sit on the nature strip with them so that they can project manage the whole operation. With the tree surgeons came a mulching truck and once again they stood mesmerised as the workmen fed the trunks and branches into the mulcher and then they watched fascinated as the mulch streamed out into the truck. As we were watching all of this the workmen asked me if I would like some mulch. "Ooh yes please," I foolishly said. I seriously thought that they would give me the equivalent of a couple of bags worth or at the most a big wheelbarrow load.

Shortly afterwards we left to go to swimming lessons and upon our return I discovered that they had indeed left us some mulch. They had emptied the entire trucks worth onto our nature strip. As I stared in dismay at the mountain of mulch, the boys in stark contrast were delighted. They immediately mounted an expedition to the top with the kid from down the road. Hesitantly, I rang Ross (who rather inconveniently was on the Gold Coast working) and warned him that we had a little mulch problem on the nature strip. What do you mean there is a trucks worth of mulch on the nature strip, he exploded? After I had explained the whole story to him his instructions were to make a sign saying free mulch and then to ring everyone we know and ask them if they would like some mulch!

Two weeks later it is all gone! The sign worked. We literally had people stopping and filling up trailers, utes and even plastic buckets with mulch. I am so grateful to all our lovely neighbours. We actually have met almost everyone in the street now, thanks to our mountain of mulch!

Mulching the garden was actually suprisingly satisfying and inspired us to do lots of other much needed gardening. Even "Bill and Ben", my super-cute flower pot men got in on the act!