The Genial Hearth
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Archive for Birthdays
October 25, 2009 at 12:47 pm · Filed under Baking, Bilby, Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Food, Season
Bilby is now three. She had been insistent for nearly a year that she wanted a train cake.
A couple of weeks ago though, she decided that she wanted a ‘hammer cake, like Dada’s… and a Humpty’ (I made Paddington a pinata cake for his birthday, and she was quite taken with it, she’d also been looking through some of our cake books, and come across a couple of Humpty cakes).
I was very pleased with the end result—even if we couldn’t find the hammer! We ended up using a softish mallet, that made no headway on Humpty (until we turned him side on:-) He was much easier to crack through his seam! )
September 9, 2009 at 8:13 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Food, Season
Days later, and another birthday cake is required. Cygnet’s had been so succesful, I thought I’d repeat it—just with an extra touch to match the recipient! (The staples were the only fiddly bit:-) )
September 6, 2009 at 11:19 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Craft, Cygnet, Domestic Life, Family, Food, Season
We don’t do much for first birthdays, we keep it simple. But there is always cake:-)
Cygnet is generally a smiley fellow (although, not so much today:-( ) So we figured this was an appropriate choice!
I’m not a fan of licorice as a flavour—but it is invaluable in decorating cakes:-)
June 21, 2009 at 12:15 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Food, Paddington, Season
For Paddington’s birthday.
It was surprisingly straightforward—and a real hit!:-)
June 8, 2009 at 10:55 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Domestic Life, Season
To celebrate being a year older, I’m planning to sit around a campfire for a couple of hours.
So, Friday night, you’re all welcome to come by from about 8ish onwards. Our kids will (hopefully!) be in bed, but kids are welcome. We’ll have a fire, some spiced apple juice and mulled wine, and some marshmallows. Bring anything else you’d like to eat or drink, and maybe something on which to sit. Dress warmly, I think they’re forecasting about 3˚C that night!
I anticipate being there until either we run out of fire, or until the cold/rain (none forecast for that day, but the days each side might be wet) gets to us.
I’d love to see some of you… but there’s no need to rsvp (although, if you feel inclined I’m happy to hear from you:-) ) Email me (the address is in About Me) for the address if you need it.
May 3, 2009 at 8:12 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Puggle, Season
This year’s image for Puggle’s birthday flag was a Dalek. Although he’s only briefly seen the smallest sample of them (Daleks take Manhatten), he was smitten! This is the year he made his dalek costume for the Masquerade:-)
May 3, 2009 at 12:54 pm · Filed under Baking, Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Food, Puggle, Season
So this year, Puggle chose another Tipper Truck for his birthday cake! It was different from last year’s though (and easier:-) ), so I was happy to oblige:-)
March 25, 2009 at 11:50 pm · Filed under Bilby, Birthdays, Blogging, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Season, Sewing
I’ve just gone through and added a number of posts that I have been meaning to post for a while… so far back that they may not have shown up in your feeds. Some of them were things I really wanted to share (but I also wanted the timing to be correct…), so I thought I’d post links to them all, here. I’m not promising scintillating reading though… I’ve forgotten much of the nuance, so these tend towards the bare-bones details:-(
Museum Visit
Mum’s Laprug
EChO Concert
Art Prints
Cuddlies
Puppet Theatre
Progress 2008
Planning for 2009
Our January Wine Dinner
February 2, 2009 at 2:10 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Food, Friday Cooking, Season, Sewing
I’ve made a number of aprons over the last couple of years. I mostly use one when I’m cooking, and I definitely encourage the children to do so as well! For most things, I’ve found a chef’s style apron works fine for me, it’s basically a rectangle, with ties on the top, that goes around your waist. The ones I’ve made fit most adults. (Baking is the one thing that doesn’t really suit this style of apron… I have another plan for that—one of these days!) I’ve made the kid’s aprons the same, just cut the size down (I think I get about three out of the same fabric as a single adult one). But really, this style isn’t as effective for children. Their waists aren’t necessarily suitable for holding up an apron:-) And they’re as likely to get stuff on their upper bodies as anywhere else:-) So something that covers their chest is really necessary. I’ve made do with simply tying the apron just under their arms, but it does tend to slide. I’ve been looking for something better. I wanted something that went around their necks, but I don’t like having to tie behind their neck, because their hair often gets caught. If it’s a fixed loop, the apron often hangs too low on their chest and isn’t especially effective.
I was reading Fiona at Feebeez last week, and saw a post about her daughter’s birthday. She made the children an apron each to take home. That apron was a revelation!
It covers their chest, it’s adjustable! It seemed to be just what I was looking for! The next day however, Meg at Sew Liberated (who used to be Montessori by Hand) posted a link to her children’s apron. Of course, that reminded me that having the apron able to be done up by the child was really a Very Good Idea!
And then I realised that we were going to a 2 year old birthday party and I wanted to make something:-) Puggle suggested a feltboard… but I wanted something different:-) Of course, the birthday girl is actually Feebeez niece, so it crossed my mind that she might already have one of the aprons—but fortunately no:-) So I went ahead with an amalgam:-)
I took the Joann’s pattern, and simplified it a little. Instead of doing the casing, I left gaps between the layers when I bagged it out, where the casing would have had an opening (it did make the sewing around a little more fiddly, as there was stopping and starting… but I think it simplified it over all). And instead of doing a fabric tie, I used twill tape. In the end, I sewed the tape in place at the openings on one side (waist and neck) and just let it run free at the other. I sewed velcro to the other end of the tape (the scratchy piece) and soft pieces of velcro onto the apron at the appropriate place. It is flexible enough in size to be worn by both my two year old and four and a half year old (and probably for some time ahead of him). I also added pockets to both sides (both the photos show the same apron—it’s fully reversible).
On reflection, there are a couple of changes I’d make. The twill tape I was able to get (much more difficult than I’d anticipated!) was wider than I’d planned. This meant that it didn’t fit through the holes as well as it should have. I’ll adjust the width of the gap in future (and stock up if I see narrower twill tape!) Looking at the apron on N… I realised that for younger children, the body part could stand to be shortened by about five centimetres… I’ll try that when I make Bilby one (when I’m through my current lot of sewing, I plan to make one for Puggle and one for Bilby). I’ll probably do a patterned and a plain side in future, rather than both patterned (that was just the fabric I had to hand).
But all up, a child’s fully reversible, adjustable, self-attiring apron. I was pretty pleased:-) (And my sister even complimented me on my piping:-) )
February 1, 2009 at 1:38 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Season
My oldest niece, BG, has just turned three. After talking with Puggle, I decided to make her a feltboard.
I began by raiding my dad’s sheet wood supplies, to find a piece of craftwood. It ended up being just under 45 centimetres square. I bought some felt from the roll, and glued it on (the light green you can see), and trimmed the edges carefully. I also had some blue from the roll, so I cut that to be an alternate background. I cut a couple of other large background pieces from each of them.
I had a pile of felt already, so some of it I cut into a variety of geometric shapes. I cut a couple of people out, and a pile of clothes. I also cut tree trunks, clouds, bushes/leaves and other odds and ends. A couple of hours of free-hand cutting resulted in quite a massive pile of bits:-)
She seemed very keen to start playing with it—I only hope her mother copes with all the bits:-)
January 25, 2009 at 3:51 pm · Filed under Bilby, Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Season
I haven’t managed to upload Bilby’s birthday flag from last year as yet… but here’s this year’s addition:-) She loves her bath, and the rubber duckies:-) (That’s what the yellow blob is, in case it is unclear… I wasn’t able to resize the image, I had to use a crop of a larger photo:-) )
October 28, 2008 at 8:35 pm · Filed under Bilby, Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Season, Sewing
I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days now. I do need to re-do the neckline (I pulled the bias binding too tight), but otherwise, I’m pretty happy with it:-)
Simplicity 7189 (final one on the page).
October 24, 2008 at 11:32 pm · Filed under Bilby, Birthdays, Books, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Season, Sewing
For Bilby’s birthday present, I made her this puppt theatre. Earlier in the year, I borrowed Bend-the-Rules Sewing
from the library (I’ve been reading the Angry Chicken blog for some time, so I had to check out her book:-) ). I enjoyed it, and found it inspiring… but the only project I really thought I might make was something like her puppet theatre. So I kept it in the back of my mind—I thought Bilby’s birthday might be a fine excuse (we have a number of puppets:-) )
I fudged it a bit, but I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out (more drama than I expected with the hanging rail… but it does work now…). Now for them to realise they can play with it:-)
October 23, 2008 at 8:33 pm · Filed under Bilby, Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Food, Paddington, Puggle, Season
Bilby's 2nd Birthday cake
I’ve been watching Bilby peruse the Cake
books
(Puggle often gets them down for them both to look through) to try and work out what I’d do for her cake.
After some discussion with Paddington (we decided it needed to be related to a nursery rhyme) and some more looking at the books, I decided to try for “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. I based it on the Poodle in one of them, but that is white… so I rolled the marshmallows in cocoa (I decided not to make my own marshmallow and colour it black:-) ). And after Puggle’s Tipper Truck, I was keen that it didn’t involve too many different sorts of lollies:-) (We still have some lollies left over from that!)
Basically, I googled for sheep images, chose one and used that as a template. Cut out the cake, iced it and attached marshmallows rolled in cocoa for the wool. I then finished off with some licorice to outline the face, and to be the feet. Pretty simple (simple enough that I did it once the extended family had arrived to celebrate:-) ) But pretty effective in the end:-)
June 11, 2008 at 2:02 pm · Filed under Baking, Birthdays, Books, Cooking, Domestic Life, Food, Season
Puggle decided he was going to decorate my cake:-)
He chose the design (a sewing machine) from the Children’s Birthday Cake Book.
He told me on Sunday that “on Monday we’ll make the cake, Tuesday we’ll decorate the cake, and on Wednesday we’ll eat it!” I suggested that it might be better to wait until Tuesday to start:-)
Sadly some disorganisation on my part saw me making the cake today… but he was to decorate it—of course, I hadn’t realised that (apart from choosing the colours!) icing it wasn’t part of decorating it:-) So I did that as well. I also showed him how to make the marshmallow flowers (and I did cut the shape!)
I’m not sure that you can see from the photo, but there’s some decorative ’scratching’ on the chocolate icing so I would “know it was special”… There are also a couple of finger prints—Bilby was very keen to help:-)
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