Day to Day

Turning eleven

Our sweet girl turned eleven today.

We celebrated with pancakes for breakfast and a vegetable patch cake in the afternoon.

{Sneaking moments on her new iPod touch}

Happy birthday beautiful girl, we love you!

Sixteen.

That's how old our boy turned yesterday - 16.  

I went through my archives today and it turns out that I've already blogged five of James' birthdays on here.  Wow!  I grabbed a photo from each post and goodness, he's grown so much these last few years.

Eleventh birthday:

Twelfth birthday - James designed the cake!

Thirteenth birthday:

Fourteenth birthday:

Fifteenth birthday:

And now, sixteenth birthday:

This year Bella baked and decorated the cake for him.  She's so proud of her big brother and loves him dearly.  We all do.

Happy birthday James, we love you so much xox

 

My top ten: ways to have a nice birthday

As promised, it's the day for my new weekly blog feature - my top ten.  Today's top ten is a little different to what I'll normally be sharing in this space....you see it's my birthday today, so I thought it would be fun to share my favourite ways to have a nice birthday.  Everybody wants that, right?

I'm being a little bit selfish and sharing a few of the gifts I received, but gifts are nice and definitely a good way to increase the birthday bliss :)

Let's get started:

1.  Visit your Mum's house for morning tea or anybody you know that makes nice treats.  This will involve being totally spoilt with home made birthday cakes and chocolate muffins.

2.    Hope that somebody lovely sends you a beautiful bunch of flowers on your special day.  They did - thank you Nuffnang.

3.    Ensure that you know (or are related to) nice people that will might make you special handmade gifts.  A quilt (oh, yes!), knitted socks and dishcloths.

4.    Have the best little girl in the world who bakes you special birthday cakes.  Thank you Bella for your amazing decorating skills!

5.    Sit back and do no housework all day (bliss) - don't feel guilty about it either, it's your special day.  Things to do instead: drink tea, eat cake, receive lovely text, email, twitter messages and phonecalls.  Read magazines, drink more tea and eat more cake.

6.    Enjoy all the pretty cards that people give you.  Especially the rocking ones that play Star Wars music when you open them up.  Put them on display.

7.    Ask for an iPad and hope that you are very spoilt and receive one early, like I did.  I know, please don't hate me for that :)

8.  Have awesome friends that know you'll squeal in delight at cute Alice in Wonderland writing paper, sweet notebooks and candles + soaps that smell beyond beautiful.  Light the candle right away - don't save it for a rainy day.  

9.     Read twitter carefully because people are bound to tweet about cute Etsy finds that you must have - it's your birthday after all :)

10.    Have the best boy in the world who makes a table at school, keeps it a secret when it's finished and then organises his Dad to collect it, so that he can surprise you with it for your birthday.  Love. Pride. Awesomeness.  James, I can't even put into words how beautiful the table is and how beautiful you are for making it for me, thank you xox

So, there you go - my top tens ways to ensure a fabulous birthday.  Enjoy.

Disney 'Up' birthday party - part 3

The birthday party is all over for this year and I'm happy to report that everybody had a lovely time.

These are the adventure books that I put together. They were easy - just a matter of printing out the templates/pages and the sticking the pages into A5 exercise books.

The adventure books have badges that you can earn once you complete an activity. Ideally I wanted to stick the badges on cardboard and punch out with a circular cutter for everybody, but I just ran out of time.  Instead, I popped the two sheets inside the book.

The 'Up' cake was pretty awesome. I baked 4 individual square cakes and Rich turned them into a 3D house for the party.  Bella declared it was the best cake ever.

Present opening.  Such lovely and thoughtful gifts received, including a wad of pretty erasers - Bella is now starting an eraser collection!

We played lots of games. I think the most popular one was the cotton ball game.  You take it in turns (wearing a blind fold for 30 seconds) and try to transfer the cotton balls with a big spoon into an empty bowl.  The one that transfers the most cotton balls, wins.

Some of the party food and room set up:

It was a great morning with Bella rating her party an 11/10.  Awesome.

That's it for my birthday party posts. If you missed part one and two - they can be found HERE and HERE. 

 

Disney 'Up' birthday party - part 2

Phew, what a day! I've been pretty much standing in our kitchen all day - baking, preparing, decorating, washing up a million things and in-between all of the cooking there was other party stuff to do.  The look on Bella's face when she came home from school to a kitchen full of goodies was pretty worth it though. She is so excited about her party tomorrow.

Here's what I made today.  Apologies if you're reading this and also a facebook fan - you've probably already seen most of these during the day.

Marshmellows - dipped in chocolate and rolled in sprinkles.  I also used the mini flags that I made yesterday.

Party favours - I bought mini plastic noodle containers and added a simple typewritten name to the front.

Marshmellow teacups - I've made these so many times over the last few years and they're always a hit.

Little cupcake mice.  Bella requested these because we made them for her last party and they were her favourite.

3D models - these were actually quite time consuming to put together (thanks James!), but in real life they look really cool!

'UP' inspired cupcakes. I was too lazy tired to get them out of the cupcake holder to photograph them properly.

Drink bottles - Bella had this idea that we had to have pretty fizzy drinks for tomorrow. I bought lemonade in glass bottles, peeled off the label and made a new one to pop on.  Just before the party we'll unscrew the tops and add bendy straws.

More cupcakes - decorated with sugar butterflies.

I also baked four vanilla cakes.  Rich is shaping them into some kind of house cake for us tonight - I really don't do cake sculpting very well, so I'm leaving it up to him :)

See you tomorrow for part 3 :)

xoxo

Disney 'Up' birthday party - part 1

This Saturday Bella is having a Disney themed 'Up' party.  We've been busy getting things organised for it - planning, writing lists, buying a few goodies and making bits & pieces.

I started by ordering some 'grape soda' badges from Etsy and then Bella and I set to work, packaging them up as party favours for everyone.

I also bought some 'adventure awaits' pencils (for party favours) and a sweet 'adventure awaits' banner. We're going to hang that up as part of a little display.

We've printed out a few different 'Up' photos, which we're going to pop on the wall.

Plus, some really cool 3d paper models - we still need to cut, fold and stick them together.  There are available over at the Disney website.

Also at the Disney website, we found some really cool printable adventure books.  I printed/cut them out and now we're in the process of sticking all the pages into some a5 books that we picked up for a crazy 9 cents each.  I'll share more photos of the adventure books when they're finished.

These tiny banners that I'm making (just tooth picks & patterned paper) are to pop in some chocolate covered marshmellows.

Oh, and balloons. It wouldn't be an UP party without balloons!

Tomorrow is cooking and setting up day for the party.  I'll be back to share more photos then.

xoxo

 

Handmade birthday gifts

Bella is a girl after my own heart, believing that *handmade* totally rocks (it does!), so she was feeling pretty happy to receive such a nice lot of hand sewn, knitted and crocheted presents for her birthday yesterday.  I've mentioned the gorgeous skirt and rainbow beanie already, but there was also a beautiful cardigan with wool embroidery and a pair of pretty fingerless gloves, both made by her Nanny Marion.

They both couldn't be more perfect - she slept with the gloves on her hands last night (plus the rainbow beanie) and the cardigan is perfect timing, considering the cold snap of weather we're having here at the moment - what happened to summer, Tasmania?

Other handmade goodies included some new Blythe dolls dresses, all from 'The Stitched Bluebird' store on Etsy.

And a sweet satchel, just perfect for holding unfinished projects - like her current crochet hat that she's been working on for a week or so.

There were also some favourite non-handmade gifts, including knee high striped socks, a hippy car (as Bella calls it), Alice in Wonderland book, an old vintage key, tiny owl purse and a set of Geomags.

All in all, one very happy birthday girl.

Celebrating ten.

Today our girl turned ten.  

There was birthday cake:

A new Schwinn bike:

There's a story with the bike.  Bella wanted a good old fashioned bike that had foot brakes, a cool seat, big handle bars and a vintage feel to it.  We searched bike after bike shop and there weren't any remotely close to the image she had in her head.  Then, at the last store we spied the Schwinn Bike catalogue. Oh my, she knew immediately that the Midi Sprite was the bike for her.  There was a whole heap of jumping and mini squeals happening this morning when she finally got to meet her new bike.  I must say it really suits her.

That sweet rainbow beanie in the top photo was a gift from her friend, Emily.  She crocheted it herself and it hasn't come off Bella's head all afternoon.  The gorgeous skirt with the crochet edging was sewn especially for my girl by Emily's Mum, Janelle and it has also been glued to her body.

Happy birthday gorgeous girl, we love you  xoxox

Birthday cupcakes

It's Bella's birthday tomorrow and over the years it has become tradition that I bake cupcakes to take to school.  Most parents seem to do that at school when their little ones have a birthday, I know it's always a highlight for Bella if they've had cupcakes to share in the classroom.

This year I found some delightful little sugar flowers at a local store and also a pack of tiny silver cachous - because they're Bella's favourite for cake decorating.  Perfect to make cupcakes look pretty for a birthday girl.

{Blythe doll Alice, watching us bake while enjoying her own polymer clay cupcake}

I used one of our favourite cake recipes, coincidentally from a favourite cook book - Afternoon Tea.  Tamar gave it to me a few years ago and honestly, we've baked so many things out of it.

Behold, the finished cupcakes:

Oh and while I was at that local store of mine the other day, I bought some awesome gingerbread men - they went down very well with the kids for afternoon tea. So good:

Bella is having an 'Up' (Disney) party next weekend, so I'll be sharing our party preparation for that this week.

I hope your Sunday was a productive one. I actually didn't get as much accomplished today as I would have liked, but I guess there's always next Sunday to tick off a few more things.

xoxo

Birthday boy.

Today our first born turned 15.  Happy birthday James, we love you. xoxo

{Fly on a unicylce T-shirt from HERE}