Knit Envy

My sister is an amazing knitter. Here is the jumper she gave Bambino for Christmas. Her other creations include gloves. You need three needles to do those. Three needles - two hands?! Impressive. She often displays her creations in her blog, Happy Little Birdie.

I on the other hand have not knitted more than the compulsory 11 year old's scarf. But I am thinking now that I would quite like to learn to crochet...

Recently Tested Recipes

I love trawling the Internet for new recipes. Here are some I've recently tried and saved in my recipe book.

• Homemade Fish Finger Sarnies
• Turkey Steaks with Garlicky Bean Mash (good with chicken too)
• Scallops with Thai Scented Pea Puree
• Roast Red Wine Lamb with Italian Beans
• Pork Steaks with Gin & Corriander

This week we will be having a few staple favourites; Chicken Cassserole, Fritata, Nassi Goreng as well as one of my firm favourites

• Chicken Tostadas

and a new recipe

• Smoked Mackrel Rissoto

Oh Baby!

This weekend just gone I held a baby shower for one of my best friends, Kate, who is expecting a baby at the end of March. I wanted it to be a lovely shower but I am still on maternity leave so it was a shower on a budget. I also wanted to have some fun games, but without embarrassing everyone, as not everyone knew each other very well.

Decor

A lot of the 'shower websites' advocate using baby clothes strung on a washing line as decor but that isn't actually that cheap if you want to buy nice clothes and pass them onto the mum as she goes home. The most helpful thing I read was to use everyday items as decor. Luckily my friend is having a baby girl so I was able to use my daughter's toys.

I also made a banner for the mantle piece. I made the template in Word. I am really pleased because I didn't think I'd be able to cut the serif font out of material but I first cut the letters out of paper and then pritsticked them to the fabric as an outline to cut round. I fabric glued the letters to the flags, ironed them and went round the outlines with fray check. I am hoping I might be able to use the banner for another friend one day! On the mantle I had three straight vases with pink flowers in them and pink net tied around the vases. It kept the decor fresh, sweet but not too childish.

I had some single use baby bottles which were no long sterile. I filled them with pink bubble bath and tied pink net round the neck of these too. I put them on the window sill, interspersed with my daughters rubber ducks. They were decor and also prizes for the ladies who won the games.

Food

I took the lead from Kate, who organised my baby shower with my sister. They asked the guests to bring cakes so that they simply had to make the savouries. We had a delicious selection of cakes (on both occasions). I made sandwiches; cucumber, cream cheese & chive, ham & mustard, turkey & coriander, tomato & pesto and beetroot, especially for Kate, her favourite!

I think baby showers are no alcohol occasions on the whole, esp as a) mum to be is often abstaining, b) there may be children present, c) it's usually during the day and I might fall asleep. So I made Baby Berry Cocktails from cranberry and pomegranate juice and lemonade. There was of course tea and coffee too and excitingly I was able to get my best cups and saucers out! (I am easily pleased!)

Games

As I say, I felt games were important to make sure everyone was involved but I didn't want anyone feeling uneasy or embarrassed. I had two games. The first was running when the guest arrived. I found pictures of celebrities when they were babies online and with current day pictures created a random slide show for the guests to try and match up. The second game was a simple memory game. I put out 16 baby related items (nappy, vest, bottle etc) on the table and gave the guests just a few minutes (without paper) to memorise the items and then after clearing the items away gave them a few minutes to try to write them all down. I couldn't really afford to buy lots of prizes so I had baby related tie-breakers, which I needed. One was...

Q: "What percentage of babies arrive on their due date?"
A: "3-4%"

The closest person won the baby bottle of bubble bath. I also organised the regular guess the date weight sweepstakes.

Presents

Lots of people bought presents for Kate rather that presents for the baby. I did want to give her something pretty, but practical so I made her a matching changing bag set...

Changing Mat from this book, which my mum bought me.

• A nappy bag, nappy sack bag and wet bag (for a change of clothes/dirties
• Soft rings toy from somewhere online that I now can't find - sorry!
• A hand sanitiser holder from this blog (made one for myself while I was at it!)

It was a lovely day.

Delightful Decorations

OK, so Friday doesn't quite follow Monday. I apologise, I don't know where the week has gone!

Finding ideas for decorating a garden for a "Twinkle, twinkle little star" party is quite a challenge. Other people had had star themed parties but nearly everything I read involved fairy lights and the assumption that it could be dark when of course our party was taking part during broad daylight!

I decided we had to have bunting to cover our 22 metre of fence and was quite fixated for a while on finding parcel paper that was white as that was the kind of texture I wanted. In the end I came up with wallpaper lining which was nice and cheap. I was going to apply stars to it by cutting a star shape into a sponge but that wasn't very successful, just looked like a splodge instead of a star. So I experimented with potato printing and hey presto, we had bunting!

I wanted to make the gate to our garden a welcoming entrance. So one of the useful star ideas I did make was to make 3D stars here. The ones I made were only halves, so that I could stick them around the gate.

The other decorations didn't get photographed and I could kick myself about this because I spent a long time on them, the pinwheel windmills especially. I bought some hot pink and purple A4 card and cut each one into a square then glued it to foil and then cut the corners inwards to make pinwheels pinned onto bamboo canes. It was a very windy day and one or two did not survive! But they were very useful for providing directions, bringing people in from the front of the house and showing them where the drinks fridge was, just by masking labelled arrows to the bamboos.

We laid out all the food indoors in our dinning room which I was keen to have a little decoration. So I bought a piece of white organza with silver glittery stars on it for a table cloth (our house is now covered in glitter!)

I also collected about 20 glass jars and bottles in the weeks leading up to the party. I soaked them and applied white spirit to get the labels and glue off them. I tied different types of ribbon around some of them. Then on the damp afternoon before the party I pushed the pram along the river and collected different wild flowers and grasses. Together with lavender, roses and buddleia from our garden I arranged them in the jars and spread them across the window of the dining room. My mum said it looked like a fairy might pop out!

All partied out!

Ok, it's been a while since I blogged last. Bambino's party is over and done with and I think it was a success. Around 30 friends and family came along bringing food and drink, which eased the load on me considerably. Even so I spent two days in the kitchen making and icing cakes (much to bambino's disgust). This included re-icing the top tier of our wedding cake.

I spent many more hours making decorations which I wasn't sure, even on the morning of the party, that we would use, owing to a really mixed weather forecast.

We also had a very interesting approach to the photos... all will be explained...

For now let's stick with cakes. I made two types of cupcakes, Lemon & Poppyseed Cupcakes and Little Louise Cupcakes. The latter I did not make the meringue tops because I wanted fluffy icing so I just followed the directions on the icing sugar packet to make butter icing. I wouldn't make the lemon cakes again, there was no milk in the recipe, only yoghurt and I found them a little dry.

To decorate I bought 200 mini stars from an Ebay seller and I followed those fab Little Birdies' instructions for chocolate monograms. These were really fun to make although I've completely done for my diet eating the leftover chocolate! I also used this idea to put Bambino's initials on the re-iced wedding cake and to create a shooting star. I used a bit of florists wire for this, taped to the greaseproof paper and just piped over it. I wouldn't recommend this. Of the 10 stars I made only one survived!

To finish off I made another sweet, decorating treat. I shall call them marshmallow lollies, their American creator calls them Smores. (Sorry, I think that's a terribly unattractive word for something you expect someone to eat!) And these were the surprise hit of the day, we only had 4 left. I thought people would think them too sickly, but they loved them!

Tomorrow, decorations...

Daisy Tiara

I've made a few tiaras, for me, for my sister and for one or two friends but I've never made one just for the hell of it before last week. Obviously I am hoping that I will sell it but I wasn't intended for anyone in particular.

It's a combination of swarovski crystals and pearls, silver plated wire on a silver band.

It's for sale at £42.50 and I would lurve to make some matching jewellery.

Picture This

A very good friend of mine has recently moved house and so yesterday we took Bambino to her first party, their housewarming. It's also both their birthdays today and tomorrow! So a pretty fantastic present was required. I was their bridesmaid about 18 months ago and took loads of photos on the big day. I found that be bridesmaid was great for taking photos because everyone moved out of my way. (Perhaps I just look scary!)

So I had a good pick of photos to make them this present. My dad very generously gave me the piece of wood which he cut and routed for me.

I found the idea on my favourite craft blog, here... I think next time I would stain the wood, as per the little birdies and I obviously need to check out real Mod Podge since my waterer down PVA glue didn't really do the trick on the canvas effect. Still, my friend seemed pleased.