The Genial Hearth

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Archive for Birthdays

Birthday Dress

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).

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Sheep Cake

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:-)

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Cake

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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Lap Rug

May 27, 2008 at 3:45 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Organisation, Season, Sewing

Some time ago (probably about 10 years:-( ), about a week before my mother’s birthday (in August), I saw on one of those home shows a fabulous looking laprug, made of polar fleece with appliquéd autumn leaves. It looked great, fairly simple, and I was quite sure that mum would like it. So I went ahead and got the material (with a few alterations) and began. I didn’t actually expect to get it done in time for her birthday, but I figured it wouldn’t take me too much longer.

Of course, mum’s birthday is near the end of winter. So shortly afterwards it became too hot to manage polar fleece, so I put it away again. And only remembered to get to it about a week before her next birthday. That continued for a few years:-(

A couple of years ago we were given a polar fleece bunny rug. The construction technique looked like it might be a better solution than appliqué for the leaves (less than half the sewing!)

A couple of weeks ago, in preparation for Craft Sunday, I went looking for material. I quickly decided that I really needed to sort through my stash, which I did. I got rid of a certain amount, but it seemed obvious to me that I needed to get rid of more—and the best option for that was to finish sewing mum’s lap rug (3 metres of polar fleece takes up quite a bit of space!)

And now it’s done:-) I managed to complete it while mum and dad were away, and I’ve just delivered it to their place… it’s out of the house:-)

It’s made of two squares of green polar fleece (1.5m). Onto the wrong side of one of them, I sewed a selection of pairs of coloured leaves (just a straight stitch). I cut through from the right side to remove the green from inside each leaf. I then sewed the two green squares right sides together leaving a gap, turned them right side out and top-stitched. I sewed around the outside of each leaf again (through all layers this time) and then finally cut out the green on the other side. It means that both sides are the same, and (aside from where the seams are) it’s two layers thick across the whole thing.

Most satisfactory:-)

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New Niece!

May 21, 2008 at 5:34 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Domestic Life, Family, Season

BG has a little sister:-) I’m not surprised my brother has had another girl:-)

I’ll have to see what he ends up calling her before I give her a nom-de-blog. I do like her real name though… it didn’t make my short list for Bilby, but that was mostly because I know a child with the same name (we don’t see her very often at all so I might well have considered adding it again for Cygnet:-) ). And her middle name is one my sister has short-listed for her little one:-)

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Tipper Truck

May 4, 2008 at 9:11 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Books, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Food, For Adults, For Children, Puggle, Season

Last year, a couple of weeks before his birthday, Puggle chose his cake. At the same time, he chose his cake for this year! And he has continued to be consistant in his choice (he’d flick through the cake book, and identify the Tipper Truck as “the cake I’m going to have for my fourth birthday”).

So he did:-)

The instructions were from the Children’s Birthday Cake Book which was the book my mother had when we were growing up (in fact, she made this same cake for my brother’s 6th or so birthday:-) ).

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Puggle-isms

May 3, 2008 at 9:45 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Domestic Life, Family, Puggle, Season

Puggle (at nap-time on his birthday—with guests expected when he woke up):

“I don’t think everyone knows Latin, so I’ll sing Laetus Natalis, but everyone else will probably just sing Happy Birthday!”

I did point out that as it was his birthday, he didn’t really need to sing:-)

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Chocolate Simplicity Cake

December 26, 2007 at 11:54 pm · Filed under Baking, Birthdays, Domestic Life, Food, Recipes

Someone was asking about simple cake recipes, and I realised that even though I took a photo in May (!) I still hadn’t actually blogged my family’s bog-standard cake (we use it for every occasion—fetes, cake stalls, birthday cakes, you name it…)

So, without further ado, may I present the
Chocolate Simplicity Cake (I think it was originally from a Snowflake flour recipe book and is correctly titled ‘Simplicity Chocolate Cake’—but we never call it that!)

1 cup Self Raising Flour (that’s about a cup of plain flour with about a teaspoon of baking powder, I believe)
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup (125 mls/4 fl oz) milk
a couple of drops vanilla essence
3 tablespoons butter, melted
2 eggs

Place all ingredients in a bowl and beat really hard for 3 minutes. It does make quite a ‘wet’ batter. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake in a moderate oven (180˚C/350˚F) for 30-40 minutes.
Allow to cool for a few minutes, then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely before icing.

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One Year On

October 23, 2007 at 8:55 pm · Filed under Bilby, Birthdays, Domestic Life, Family

Happy Birthday Bilby!

It’s been a fabulous year:-) She’s a cheerful, determined, madly keen on music and books, crawling (much more consistently!) delight.

At the moment, we’ll typically find her sitting with a book, reading out loud—either that or squeaking when she sees the cat (and then Puggle squeaks back, then she replies… and on and on!)

I did want to include a link to her birthday flag, but sadly I can’t remember how to blur the name and replace it… so it’ll have to wait.

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Felt Flower Fairies

October 19, 2007 at 8:08 am · Filed under Birthdays, Carnivals, Craft, Domestic Life, Sewing

After reading various reviews, I borrowed All Year Round from the library. It seems like a great book (someone else obviously thought so as well, several pages were oh, so carefully cut out:-(). In it, it had some awfully cute little felt fairies. I was thinking about making some, then Puggle was invited to a 4 year old birthday this weekend—so I had a reason:-)

I traced the patterns of the three flowers shown in the book (Snowdrop, Primrose and Crocus… the one real flaw of the book is that it is definitely northern hemisphere-centric), and decided to try and adapt them to an Australian native:-) Boronia seemed like the obvious choice. In the end, I figured I’d start by making them as shown, so I’d have more of an idea of how to adapt the pattern.

They ended up quite simple, although, they still took some time! I spent all of last week’s craft afternoon doing them! I have several more heads made (I don’t think it’s obvious that they were made of a dead, mauve outfit of Bilby’s—dye-ing them in tea worked wonderfully!)

I’m thinking that the four year old will probably rather enjoy them (Puggle is certainly very interested in them:-) )

Boronia, Snowdrop, Primrose and Crocus

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Birthday Celebrations

June 10, 2007 at 4:31 pm · Filed under Birthdays, Craft, Puggle

I’ve been terribly slack (a phrase I obviously use quite often, as Puggle has taken to saying it daily…)!

My birthday is coming, and I’ve been meaning to post for weeks inviting people to come and help me celebrate. So…

Sunday 17th June at our place, I intend to be crafting in the afternoon (as soon as kidlets are napping, so anytime from 1). Puggle (and Paddington) will be heading out with my brother to go fishing, so I won’t have too much chasing to do:-) Come and join me (kids are welcome, even though Puggle won’t be here), bring your craft, or just come to chat.

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‘Chidna Cake!

May 7, 2007 at 1:23 am · Filed under Baking, Birthdays, Domestic Life, Food, Paddington, Puggle

A month or so ago, I gave Puggle a couple of kid’s cake books. I thought he’d have a look through, and then about a week before his birthday I’d give them back to him to decide what he’d like. Instead, he pored over them. He chose about half a dozen cakes he wanted. He continued to get them out to look at at least every couple of days. And by the third time he looked through, he’d decided on the “‘chidna cake”.
I made this a couple of years ago for Paddington, so it wouldn’t have been what I chose… but it was what he wanted… I did decide that I wasn’t going to make it an ice cream cake though.
Last week, (after having heard from Puggle all about the ‘chidna cake), Paddington’s mother brought over a recent Hello magazine which included instructions for a Henry the Hedgehog cake. So I combined the two—basically doing the hedgehog, aside from the nose (I hadn’t really connected how different they are in appearance, before making the cake!)

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Birthday Update

May 7, 2007 at 12:56 am · Filed under Birthdays, Family, Puggle

So, Puggle turned three this week. Choosing a motif to appear on his Birthday Flag was quite easy. We have regular lengthy discussions as to whether today is rubbish truck day, or whether it’s tomorrow or yesterday, and when it is rubbish truck day, he almost plasters himself to the window to watch for them! So, this year it was obvious I should add a rubbish truck.

We had a lovely time today, at his party (apologies to those I failed to invite:-( There were a good handful:-( ) There was masses of food, and lots of friends—and the weather was great:-) I’ll do another post about the cake:-)