This is not a cooking blog...

But who would be able to resist sharing such cuteness? For his third birthday our son got some cooking utensils and silicon cake tins from his Aunty Relle and her In-Laws. I think he looks super gorgeous in his apron and hat!


And "Granny's little sister Aunty 'ron" (Veron) gave me a baking book that she had bought for herself, but thought might get a bit more use at my house. So today we made old fashioned gingerbread.


Mr 3 loved stirring and pouring and turning off my electric mixer. Turning it on however is a bit scarey ;)


He loved using his spoon and 'spatchla' to stir and scrape.


The recipe made quite a lot, in hindsight I should have halved it. As well as gingerbread men we made 12 gingerbread stars and a gingerbread bear.


I had to guess a bit with the timing as they were all different sizes, after 15 minutes instead of the documented 25 I thought everything looked about right.


Sadly the gingerbread bear fell apart when I was taking him out of his cake tin. So we ate him warm and he was delicious!

It's Shaun the Sheep!

As you get older birthdays become less and less of a big deal. Luckily I have a couple of kids to live vicariously through ;)

Every year I look forward to J's birthday, normally selecting which cake I will make him well in advance. Now he is a bit older of course I have to let him have a say too.

This year I got the ABC Kids Cakebook from the bookclub at work, so for his third birthday (just before we went on holiday) we selected Shaun the Sheep.

It looked simple enough, get some soft icing and dye it black. Hmmm, seems it made me black long before it did the icing, oh well...


Finally the icing turned black, after about half a bottle of black food colouring and I was ready to shape my body parts.


The completed Shaun cake required 2 cakes so I decided to make one plain and one chocolate. Time to cut out the body.


As all big kids know, the icing is the best part of the cake. This cake requires meringue icing. Yummmmmmmmmmy!


As the meringue icing doesn't keep long I had to make it just before the party. Assembly always takes longer than expected, got him made just in time. Not a bad effort hey?


Shaun was a big hit and our "big" 3 year old was very pleased with him.


Sadly the problem with character cakes is you have to cut them up and eat them! Hmmm seems a bit wrong LOL....


Just under 6 months until A's first birthday, perhaps just a little too early to select her cake.

Mini Masterchef

I got a call from Daycare the other day saying that as of next week they want to move my son to the pre-kinder room. While we were talking the carer mentioned that he had invited everyone to the blue house (our house) and when asked what they would do there he replied "Bake cookies".


Most fridays I bake something with my son, often it is for a playdate, but other times it's just because. I figure by making our own cookies I have more control over ingredients, additives (the dreaded numbers) and can hide other healthy bits and pieces in them too. And aside from all that, it's a fun activity for both of us!


Today we made oat and coconut crisps. We decided to be a bit decadent and put a dark chocolate bud on each one.


The end result, ok they look like eggs! But they taste delicious!

The earth whale

One of the joys of having young children is being able to experience their "firsts" with them. Just this weekend our 4 month old daughter rolled over for the first time, and boy didn't she think she was clever.

Our son also had a first, while "helping" me weed the garden he found his first ever earth worm. He raced inside to show Dad, "Look, I found an earth whale!".


His enthusiasm and interest is so refreshing, and makes me look at the world from a whole new perspective. I wonder what we'll discover this weekend?

The Light in Winter

Ever since I was little I have loved lights. My parents were regularly loading us into the car and driving up high hills to show me the city lights. May go some way to explaining my love of sparkly shiny things ;)

This weekend we decided to take the kids to Federation Square to see The Light in Winter. A month long event with different activites on daily.


On the way we got to take in a personal favourite of mine, the ferris wheel at Birrarung Marr which is lit up beautifully at night.


While we waited for the sun to set we enjoyed a hot chocolate and the little man did some exploring.


The centre piece of the Light in Winter is called Solar Equation, apparently people can use their iPhones or other iDevice to alter the patterns on the surface, we were content just to view it as other people did the techo stuff.


Last night there was also a Mexican Salute with music and dancing, however it was a bit hard to photgraph with our little cannon point and shoot.



It was a nice night out, and we were home in time to put the kids to bed by 8:30pm!

Amazing creation

There has been a flurry of activity of late in our garage workshop, but it has been my hubby working out there instead of me. I have been on kid duty while hubby has been building them the most lovely and amazing toy box.





My contribution was to help upholster the seat (under the watchful eye of Mr 2 1/2), I have never done anything like this before but we were happy with the result.





And the finished result... The most wonderful and unique toy box a couple of kids could ever wish for:





Now that this is completed I am hoping to get a little workshop time myself. I have a lovely tourmaline ring that is about 90% finished and a head full of ideas just waiting to be realised.

It's a girl!

Hi All, as many of you would already know we were expecting our second baby in late Feb. I am very pleased to announce the safe arrival of a baby girl, Amber Monique, on Fri 26th Feb 2010 at a healthy 8lbs 2oz and 49.5cm long.





Big brother Jasper is thrilled with his "Amber baby" and is being a good helper to Mummy.



Things will obviously be a bit quiet on the jewellery front for a while, I will just be working on orders and no new pieces while we enjoy this special time.

While you were sleeping

I made a rookie mistake today. I put Mr2 to bed, waited for silence to fall, and assumed he was asleep! By assumed I mean I listened at the door on more than one occasion, but I didn't pop my head in to check.

I was in and out of the house, making jewellery, cleaning jewellery, washing my hands, photgraphing jewellery... all the while silence from Mr2's room.

It was on one of my trips to wash my hands, coming from the ensuite in the master bedroom I noticed the strong scent of taboo perfume coming from Mr2's room across the hall. Pushing open the door this is what I found!



There was a gift pack of Taboo on the spare bed in his room, silly place for it of course, but it was waiting for Granny who will be down in Feb to help while I'm having bubba2. Having emptied the whole tube of body lotion over himself and the spare bed (silently!!!) all jewellery making activities had to stop and the cleanup had to begin.



On the upside, before discovering Mr2's mischief I did get one of the pieces I was working on completed.



The Lunar Pendant is now available in my Etsy store. Made from reticulated and fused sterling silver it is one of a kind, and very hard to photograph!

Mr2 is now bathed and in bed asleep - yes I am sure of it this time! Sounds like the washing machine has finished - I had better go hang out the doona cover.

I spied a spider.....

Hubby was in the garage and picked up a paper bag of heat beads and found a lot more than he bargained for. The biggest female redback spider either of us had ever seen!



Well these ladies are about as Australian as Vegemite, but not something that I really encounter that often, thankfully!



Talk about a close encounter of the arachnid kind!

Place your bets!

Only six weeks to go until we meet the newest member of our family. As per my previous pregnancy we have opted to have a 'surprise', so as the weeks pass I am getting more and more excited wondering what we will get.

Everyone has a theory, whether based on their own experience, an old wives tales or maybe intuition.

So join in the fun, get your thinking/guessing/betting caps on... place your bests and give me your prediction.



To help your analysis here are some 'facts' that people usually use when sharing their wisdom with me:

• I am carrying pretty high and straight out to the front


• I have put on about 7-8kgs


• I had morning sickness for the first 3 months or so


• I am what people consider to be very small or compact or "all baby" as I often hear


• I have not had any food cravings or any specific aversions to foods


• To me my pregnancy feels pretty much identical to my first (which was a boy)


• My ob is predicting this baby will be just a bit smaller than my first - hmmm interesting... haha

What's your theory and why, and be sure to let me know if you need any more info ;)

Hot and bothered...

I am not normally one to feel the heat, in fact I normally tell people I was a lizard in a past life, I love to bask in sunbeams! But this past weekend has pushed even me to the limit, we have had a number of 'stinking' hot days in a row... and a broken down air conditioner!

So now I join the Melbourne masses, eagerly awaiting the elusive cool change...

And while I wait I have been browsing Etsy for some cooling aussie listings by the talented artists of the Down Under Street Team (DUST). Here are some cooling items that have caught my eye today:


shore necklace - amazonite and silver by wing by sea



Soul of the Sea Wall Hanging by Bibliphilia



Ocean Breeze - Vintage Lucite and Vintaj Brass Earrings by michvanetta



Starfish bright soap by Splash Giggle



Summer time Triple Stack of Resin Bangles by bobishi

To find more items by the members of DUST search for 'dust_team'

The home straight

Things have been a little quiet on the jewellery creation front of late, offset by the silly season. That is all past us now, while it would be nice to kick back and relax we are almost at the business end of pregnancy related things.

That's right, in less that 8 weeks we have "Peanut2".


Nursery ART Print - LIMITED EDITION - 'Counting Days' (8.3x11. 7'') by BadliBearART

So for now there is still quite a bit of preparation to be done at home, and no doubt a healthy dose of waiting.... waiting.... waiting....

Daytripper....

This friday will mark 3 years since we purchased our house at auction. On the day it was about 42 degrees celcius and we had only found out that morning that I was pregnant with our first baby.

I love our house and our garden, so now is a great time to show off one of our most recent additions to our garden.



We ordered our Daylilies online when we got back from our holiday in August. They arrived with their heads chopped off wrapped in damp newspaper.

We planted them that weekend, and by the next weekend new green tips were showing through.



They quickly grew up into nice green leafy plants, but having planted them so close to the flowering season I had thought we may have missed flowering this year.



However we have been pleasently surprised to find that for all but two of the varieties they have gotten in early enough to flower.



They are probably a little shorter this year, and the blooms are a little few and far between. But we have been very happy with the new additions to our garden, and there are still two close to flowering that we haven't seen yet.



As I have mentioned before my garden is a great source of inspiration for me, and this weekend I will begin work on a new daisy inspired enamel range. So as always... Watch this space!

A moment in time....

The countdown is on until we have our second child. There seems to be so much to do and so little time. I do wonder constantly about the impact that this will have on our son (currently 2yrs and 3months) and also my relationship with him.



Last night, he lifted my top to look at my tummy, pointed and said "baby girl in there". (Note we have not found out the sex of the new baby, but Mr2 just seems very set on this 'fact'). He gave my belly a kiss then said "Night, night. I love you!" while waving to his little sibling.

I think I have been grinning all day at the thought of it. Little children can say and do the most beautiful things! I think we're going to be just fine ;)