Happy birthday, Catriona!

Here's Catriona's birthday! At 19 now, we are lucky to have another adult in the house. The book is a printed version of a web comic she loves. That's where you find the funny stuff these days.

Happy birthday boys

It's birthday season here - this is ONE of Jonathan and Thomas' birthday cakes. They had two of course, on different days, to lessen the strain on the fridge! This cake has maltesers, and kit Kats. Yum.

This is Thomas on the left, and Jonathan on the right.

Happy Birthday Boys!

Hello Thomas, in your tshirt. Hello Jonathan, in that smart school uniform. Why are you looking so smug?

Oh, because there was CAKE! Now, why would you be getting cake?

I see, you had a birthday. Well that's lovely. How old were you?

Sixteen? Well I never.

Did you get out for dinner too?

Ohh, I see you did. That looks nice. Happy birthday guys.

I'm up early...

... so there's time for a cup of tea - from my BIRTHDAY CUP!

Thanks Anne-Marie for a gorgeous gift!

A Harold Lloyd Birthday Card

Chris is having a birthday, and luckily, our friends at the Astor Cinema knew exactly what to treat her to ... a night of silent movies, one of her favourite things in the world! This particular program was a Harold Lloyd double, "Safety Last" and "Speedy". "Safety Last" is the one with that fabulous scene of Lloyd climbing up a building and hanging off the clock (yes, the film sets up an excellent reason for him to be doing all that).

So, having established that we'd go to the movies as a birthday treat, all I had to do was make a birthday card. What do you think?

Happy Birthday Gail!

A little belated (it was last month) but I was just tidying photos, and I need to share this. Gail had a birthday, and I made a card, and I thought it was pretty cool. Gail is a new owner of a Thermomix, a kitchen machine that, among other things, is a very efficient blender. She tries to get her "Thermy" into the background of all her photos these days - that's how keen she is. So I thought I'd try to make a card on a Thermomix theme.

This is what I came up with!

I used stamps from my excellent collection of PSX vegetable stamps. So there's a carrot, some corn, peas, onion and radish. I stamped and coloured them ever so carefully. They looked really elegant.

Then I mashed them all to bits with a square punch, and stuck the pieces down randomly.














I explained on the inside of the card, that "I put your card into a Thermomix, 'cos you love that!".

I thoughtfully included an illustration of what the card may have looked like if I hadn't mashed it. Just to show that an elegantly coloured carrot is pretty nice to look at, but lacking that certain something.

Also, there was cake.

Happy Birthday Gail!

Happy birthday to me!

And how was your birthday, Mrs Laing?

Why it was lovely! How kind of you to ask.

Catriona found me a special gift. Back when we were in the US, we discovered that we quite like Reeses peanut butter cups (I know, Aussie chocolate is better and all that, but these were a nice indulgence). Well, it turned out a local shop had some, and she enclosed some in a handmade card!

Jeff tracked down a DVD set for me - we'd started watching this strange and funny Mitchell and Webb series recently, but it turns out we were seeing series seven!

The boys gave me a coupon for a breakfast - I haven't used it yet! I figure, if I buy delicious strawberries and other good fruits, then they make waffles, I will get fruit and waffles!










I made mandarin macarons, and took most of them to work. They were pretty nice...

On a driving practice session, Jeff had navigated Catriona to Wellington Rd, Rowville, where they bought a bar of this Cinnamon and Cashew chocolate. You may know Heritage more from colourful easter eggs, but let me tell you, their posh range is VERY nice.


Anne-Marie gave me a little parcel of treats, and I started my work day with a fancy tea from the parcel.

Gail made me some hazelnut and chocolate spread, which is amazingly good, very dark and not too sweet.

Chris gave me pretty chocolates, which are all gone, and made three of us very happy.

Jeff's Mum sent me gorgeous perfume.

My mum was stranded in Port Macquarie at the time (she was going to be here). She's unstranded now, but we won't see her until next year, probably. She still managed to send a PICTURE of a birthday card!

We went to see the new James Bond movie - fantastic, I loved it!

And John and Emma sent a coupon for a baking class at Brasserie Bread in South Melbourne. Jeff got one too - we'll probably go in the new year. Looks fabulous!

Jeff's promised to take me out to morning tea at Monseiur Truffe, the local-to-work posh chocolate place (I do like chocolate). We were going to do it on my birthday, but it was raining. Then the next day, we had end to end meetings. Then the next day it was unseasonably hot! So this week for sure.

I also had control of the remote control for most times the TV was on, and selected "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", followed, logically, by "Pulp Fiction" as my week's movie viewing.

Spot the Narwhal

Thomas and Jonathan had a birthday the other day. They made a list of treats they would like for dinner that night. I endeavoured to provide some of them. One item, though, was asterisked* and noted as essential! It was "Narwhal-based entertainment".

I had to think long and hard about that, but finally the idea came to me. A special game of "Spot the Narwhal!". This birthday card featured a number of perfectly ordinary whales, and only one narwhal. It came with a magnifying glass (magnification x1) to do the spotting with. It was a great success. In fact, the magnifying glass got detached later in the day and used as a monocle!








There it is!

















* like this

The royal cupcake fleet

We also made cupcakes. The goal was, they should be Pirate Cupcakes. I found an idea for cakes with sails, and let the kids loose on sail decorating. We ended up with The Royal Elephant, the Less Royal Rhinoceros, some Pokemon characters, some Portal scenes... It was quite inspiring.

Easter Island Birthday Cake!

This is the birthday cake I made today - those excellent Easter Island statues are, of course, chocolate (filled with ganache), and the ocean is made of two shades of blue jelly. The one spanner in the works was... Thomas took one look at blue jelly and didn't fancy the idea. So we kept the ocean on one side of the island only, and employed a Lego minifig to help set the scene. Pretty nice. Stay tuned for the next installment - we also made an armada of boats. Or is that flotilla?

My birthday!

We had a gorgeous birthday dinner with Mum and Peter - they'd driven down, stopping at both of Peter's sons places before getting to us.

They gave me a pretty cupcake shaped sugar bowl (or is it for jam??). And to go with it :




a jar of Roses Lime Marmalade, obviously the best marmalade in the world! I was brought up on it as the "treat" spread, the one you save for Sundays. Yum!









Birthdays are a good day to take photos of all the kids : here's the boys (that's Thomas on the left, Jonathan on the right, obviously). Hmm, prob'ly haircut time for you guys. Nice shirts. No, I do not make them dress alike.











Here's Catriona not looking little any more...





















And here's Jeff and Peter. See how nice Peter's skin is looking? It's the special soap! He had found a hotel soap that was very kind to his skin, and asked me to look up the web site for him. Thanks to the power of Google, soon I'd found a local retailer (these people) that would sell me a box full of that particular hotel soap! They asked where my guest house was ... So if you ever need lots of hotel toiletries, or stuff like that, I can recommend them!