Birthday week...

Charlotte's first birthday lasted about a week and a half. We had a party at daycare, 1 large family party (Charlotte shares a birthday with her great-grandpa), 1 small family party with his dad's side, then there was the big party at home for all of our family and friends. So here are some pictures of my beautiful little birthday girl

Photo taken by Danielle Kimel Photography

Photo taken by Danielle Kimel Photography

Party decorating

I was lucky that Spotlight's first birthday range for girls included a ladybug theme. I could have spent ages making everything myself, but it would have gone to waste and frankly I didn't have the time. I used their table cloths, fill in invitations, some strawers, bunting flags and serviettes. Then I forgot to get out the "pretty" serviettes at cake time, so if anyone wants 40 odd "1" ladybug serviettes for anything, they're here :)

I did buy noodle boxes from Riot Art ad Craft to do the lollie bags. Then put them near the front door and forgot to mention it to people as they were leaving until there were only 4 people left in the house. I will at some stage get them to their rightful homes, if only so the kids can enjoy the bubbles inside :)

I also made a garland similar to this
[img]http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa27/jadeconran/IMG_9310-crop.jpg[/img]

I cut out the circles I needed from some cheap scrapbooking paper I got at Lincraft. Using a tape measure I spaced out the circles face down at even intervals. Next I put a dot of acid free glue in the cetre, and layed some ribbon down through the glue. To make sure it all stuck I then used a white circle sticker (bought a box of 500 from Officeworks for $6ish) so secure it all together.
Next I lay a spray painted piece of dowel and then used dress pins to hold my ribbons onto the wood. Not a permanent solution, but this was late at night the night before the party lol. Hung from the plaster using these decoration hooks. Here's what it looks like:

How perfect was this? and I got 2 packs of 5 sheets for $5 a packet. The pages werent all decorated, but I think it would have been overkill to be ALL ladybugs. And I absolutely didn't care that they don't match the purchased decorations perfectly. You can go insane trying to perfectly match papers and ribbons and the like, but I'd rather spend extra time with my girl than worry about these things

Here's a better view of the variety of papers

You can see some of the backs of the ribbons here, and they did/do still flat around in the breeze. Once we start decorating Charlotte's "big girl" room I'll move it all in there and change the fixture of the ribbon from dress pins to something more permanent. For the party I also had 2 plain pink plastic table cloths taped onto the back of the alcove to block out the view of the bar. Shane took them down before I got proper pictures of it all together, but I can't complain, he was just on a roll with the post-party clean up, and who am I to get in the way of a cleaning husband? ;)



Party food

Unfortunately whilst in the midst of Charlotte's first birthday, the only photos I got were of cake time. So to get all the party blogging started, here's some of the food I made


My menu originally looked something like this:
Savoury:
Party pies (buying)
sausage rolls (buying or making, depends on if the bought ones are any good)
mini quiches (making)
Pizza scrolls
french stick sandwiches (easy to get a lot done fast)
Rice paper rolls (served cold, so less work on the day)
Cheese & Bikkies
dip with carrot and celery sticks

Sweet:
Cookies (iced)
Fairy bread (1/2 normal, 1/2 made with nutella)
Apple & cinnamon scrolls
birthday cake
Jelly cups

The party did start at 2pm and was just afternoon tea, so as it got closer and I ran out of time items just get getting crossed off the list and not done. With what we had out there was still food floating around but not vast amounts of left overs, so I think if I had gone through with it all there would have been a lot of wastage. My one piece of advice for kids parties is not to over think it.

Nutella fairy bread

Pizza scrolls
I skipped the bacon, used half a packet of shredded ham from Aldi, and added some crushed pineapple as well. I made 2 lots of this recipe, and there were none left. Enough said :)

Jelly cups
Best to write down the calculations rather than do them in your head because "I'm a scientist, surely I can work out layered jelly". Apparently I can't do this in my head, and since I made all of the red jelly up at once instead of doing a few smaller batches, the 235ml plastic cups I used ended up with 200ml of raspberry jelly each in it. It wasn't a big drama, as it colour coordinated with the party and were a big hit too, but not quite what I was going for. I also now have 8 packets of passion fruit flavoured jelly to use. at least Charlotte loves sharing jelly with me :)

Cakes:
I used the chocolate mud cake recipe out of a Women's Weekly cake book. Not THE cake book that you may remember from your childhood (which incidentally is being re-released and I can't wait to get myself a copy), but Cooking Class: Cake Decorating, which still has some great designs in it for all occasions . I made extra of the cake batter so there would be cupcakes left over for the kids. Since I'd decided to have a go at decorating the main cake with fondant (my first time using it the day before the party, and I have to say it was actually fairly easy with the dome shapes I was using) I thought cupcakes with butter cream icing would be better for them. They also then wouldn't need to wait for me to cut the cake and could just grab one and run outside to eat it.

So here is the end result of my first foray into the world of fondant

I started off with the pink, and then did the head separately and then stuck them together with a bit of sugar syrup. Being my first time, I didn't want to try cutting the fondant at the join and trying to get it perfect, so between the head and the body there is actually 4 layers of icing, crumb layer for each piece of cake and then the top final layer folded down and wrapping right around the piece. Then I used a letter "O" cookie cutter and got the white and black circles needed for the eyes and the body dots. The black for the iris and the line down the back are from some edible markers that my decorator mother got from the US for me

With the cupcakes set out too:

As I said, the cupcakes are decorated with a butter cream icing and then we stuck chocolate drops on.

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned...

It has been over a month since my last blog. I'm very sorry. You know when life just gets in the way? well add a first birthday party to plan to the mix and you get the gist of what my life has been (and after the party there was the week or so of catch up to get back to a level of normal). Then there has been illness, shed building, house decluttering and this week there's extra days at work to make up for. It's been so bad I've barely picked up my camera, which since I got it is extremely out of character for me.

I recently went and made a 6 week menu plan to rotate through so I wouldn't have to think about it, going so far as to start making up my weekly shopping lists and everything. Then the weather got warmer and I've realised I need a spring summer version to my autumn/winter creation. So once I get that sorted I'll share it with you for anyone interested, though it'll probably be a 4 week plan with room for trying out a new recipe each fortnight.

I know there is already a request for a birthday party post, but is there anything else you want to hear about this week?

Kinglake National Park

Wednesday was my day off for the fortnight, when Charlotte was in daycare and I could catch up on errands, housework and just anything I've been putting off. For my photography course an assignment we got a few weeks back was to experiment with shutter speed, using the same moving object. My first thought was waterfalls, but living in Melbourne there isn't much around. Then I remembered Mason's Falls in the Kinglake national park, where we used to go as kids for family BBQ's.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't looking forward to it as much as anyone else who might be returning to a favourite childhood memory. I've only been back to Kinglake a handful of times since the 2009 bushfires, and never on my own. I won't go into great detail, but these cars that were plastered all over the newspapers and television in the days following the bushfires:

These are the cars Shane and I were driving, where we left them and ran.

So there were a lot of memories as I drove up to the area, and down National Park Road to get to my destination. Unfortunately the track to Mason's Falls has not been reopened yet, but I wasn't going to let that stop me getting some great pictures, just because I couldn't get my water shots that I was after.

I took the drive up to Mt Sugarloaf instead to see if I could get a picture of the city

This is with my 18-55mm lens, zoomed in as far as I could go. Obviously not a great picture, probably would have been better if it wasn't so cloudy to get a clearer view.

You can see from the above picture that the trees haven't fully recovered. The old branches are still there, but it doesn't look like they will ever carry new leaves. The trees are getting around this by creating new branches. So the trunks are covered in new growth, with the older damaged bare branches at the top

But I was able to get some nice photos of the new life coming through 

With the zoom lens (first time I've changed the lens over for pictures, big moment for me)

Playing around with the settings. Left = underexposed, right = good exposure

What I'm really proud of, is all of these pictures were taken in manual mode. Now that I've got the hang of changing the settings around as the light changes, I want to get some practice with different lighting conditions, and see how changing the white balance affects the final outcome.

Decorating for the holidays

We don't really decorate much here. The house looks the same unless we are throwing a specific party (e.g. a birthday), or for Christmas. But I have been inspired by Jade and want to add a few small touches around the house for special days like Valentine's day, St Patrick's day, or maybe even Halloween in spite of the fact that it's not really celebrated here in Australia.

If you have a look at eighteen25, the girls are currently in the midst of Spooktacular September, and every day they have different crafty decorating projects to get ready for Halloween. They've just released some subway art, and I think this will make a nice small touch that can be updated as the holidays change. I'm just going to do a small 8x10inch print rather than the big 16x20, and might even have a go at this paper lantern or the chandelier.

Over the weekend I'll put up a post about planning a 1st birthday party, the start of our veggie patch, and some photos that I took while I was out and about yesterday

Where has the week gone already?

When I started this blog I had plans, not exactly grand plans, but plans none-the-less. I was going to have something to write about every day, and put up my post without fail. That lasted 3 days.

Sunday we had a family day, so I figured if I only post 6 days of the week that's still pretty good for someone starting out. Then Monday happened. It didn't exactly go badly, but I work Mondays and Tuesdays (and some Wednesdays), and well, the time I had I wanted to spend with my family. Yesterday the same thing happened, though I did spend quite a bit more time on the net last night than I'd normally like to mention.

I have however devised a plan to have a fully planned out menu for 6 weeks then repeat it, so I will only have to write my master shoping lists once, then as the week rolls around I can just cross off anything I have in the pantry and only buy what I really need, or what is on special that we actually use. When I get the full file organised I'll share it with you all here too

For now though, this is my Wednesday off so my plans are to catch up on a little housework (second load of washing is in the machine as I type), get some practice in on my camera, then come home after getting some photos printed and this fortnight's groceries done with part 1 of my new system.