The sweetest tea party

Last weekend my Beautiful niece turned nine. To celebrate she had a few of her closest friends around for  a sweet tea party.

My sister did such a great job with the table decorations, and almost everything was sourced from local op shops for next to nothing.

We (or should I say 'I') can never seem to leave the house without forgetting something, normally something crucial to the outing too like going to the shop without my wallet, urgh talk about frustrating!!!This time I forgot the camera but luckily I had my phone and used the instagram app to take a few shots.......

 

We had such a great day and of course the hardest part was leaving, lets just say there were a few tears shed.......Charlotte LOVES hanging with her big girl cousins!!!

Shop update...

Our Madeit shopfront has been a little neglected lately.

We have just added a few spring/summer dresses, maybe a little wishful thinking.........all this cold, wet and grey weather is really making me crave the warmth of summer,

and hopefully we'll be adding some more purses and bags in the next week or so, and maybe a few new things too.....

braids

All of our babies, as sweet as they are, are born bald and remain that way until well into their second year.

Case in point: Baby Abigail at 1.

Charlotte has similar hair but even whispier and possibly finer. I think she loves the feeling of her whispy strands of hair flapping freely in the wind for she loathes having it restrained in any form. No clips, hairbands, elastics or headbands for her.  

Which is why I was so amazed that I managed to not just put a hairband in but two braids. 

woohoo!!

(i was inspired by her sweet friend who has lots more hair and was recently seen rocking some cute braids.)

Ok, so these are maybe not technically braids, I 'm really bad at hair, but they are as close to real braids as we may ever get around here. 

Spicy Carrot Cake (egg, and nut free**)

This is such a delicious egg free cake recipe. I have made it sooooo many times already and everyone loves it. In fact because it is so delicious and I have no self  control this cake has been relegated to special occasion only (that is occasions when I will have to share it between lots of family snd friends) or else I would eat it all by my self and that is just not going to make my already tortured-stretched to within an inch of their lives-pants happy.

**The actual carrot cake recipe is dairy free however because we dont have any dairy allergies in the family I use a cream cheese icing (pictured) and this is NOT dairy free.

Spicy carrot cake

From – one bowl, allergy free baking

Linda Bosnic

Ingredients:

Dry

2 cups self raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ cup caster sugar

1 medium carrot, grated

Wet

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 cup soy milk

Preheat oven to 180˚ Celsius and grease and line a 20cm cake tin with non-stick baking paper.

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl

Make a well in the centre of dry ingredients and add wet ingredients

Mix together until they form a batter (not too much mixing)

Pour into prepared cake tin and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into cake comes out clean.

Cool in cake tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire rack.

Icing:

For some reason icing has never been my friend and I have struggled to make decent icing more so than egg free cakes. Possibly one of the reasons is that I never measure things out, I think all my measuring patience is used up in the cake baking process and by the time I get to the icing I’m really just throwing anything together.

This sortof not really a recipe works well for this cake though and so far it hasn’t failed me.

Ingredients:

1 block of philidelphia Cheese (cut into smaller chunks-hmmm nice technical term)

Icing sugar

Lemon juice

Place Philidelphia cheese in a mixing bowl and mix on medium to high until cheese is soft (be careful not to over mix as I have found this makes the cheese runny and no amount of icing sugar of refridgeration will fix this, at least that’s what I found)

Add icing and lemon juice to taste an continue mixing until soft peaks form. 

oops I really didn't mean to go so long between posts. It's been a little bit crazy busy around here. I've gone back to work part time and trying to squeeze what you normally fit into a week into four days has been a struggle, add to that two hours travel a day, lots of sniffly noses and lots and lots of sleepless nights, the last couple of months have been a blur. 

 I have to admit for the first month I failed, actually I thought I was doing really well but must have been high on some sort of nervous energy because about three weeks in I felt as though it all fell apart.

Things are looking up though, this past weekend was beautiful and sunny and inspired us to get outside and make a start on our enormous and very neglected to do list. 

 It didn't take long before I got distracted....

And all that sunshine was perfect weather for free toes and slurping on home made (by Oscar) Raspberry slushies.

Hoping you had a great weekend full of sunshine xx

Would you like some scone with that cream?

I've given up chocolate, AGAIN. 

I know, I can see the collective eye roll, "suuuure you have, mmm hmmm, how long will it last this time?"

To be perfectly honest it most likely wont last long what with Easter just around the corner and all, but I had to do something. I had stooped to new lows in my chocolate addiction and although I managed to give it up easily before, once the 30 days had past I didn't just fall off the wagon I jumped off, did a stunt roll, landed on my feet and ran straight to the nearest Cadbury's stockist I could find.

Anyway my concern in giving up only chocolate is that i may be substituting one addiction for another.

Did you know strawberry jam is over 50% sugar (well the one we buy is) and that could possibly be the reason why I have started slathering it on just about any edible surface.

On a positive note my need to find another way to eat more jam inspired me to try out a scone recipe I had previously been afraid of. 

We were all suprised at how delicous they were, and I qoute...."Wow, they're actually really nice" :)

Good morning sunshine.

I was meant to be making the beds and other domestic chores but got totally distracted by this cute little red head. 

Can you blame me, it's a wonder anything gets done around here!

Boo!

Looks like we'll have to move the cot mattress down tonight, a new skill discovered just this morning, standing up in her cot. 

They just grow up too fast.