The Requested Green Mario Cake

Well, here it is. The green Super Mario Bros as requested by my son for his birthday. His party is tomorrow and I finished the cake this afternoon. Very efficient of me, actually, as I'm normally up til 3 in the morning trying to finish the kids' cakes.

I actually got the idea for this cake by searching for ideas online. I liked the Mario cake made by Su-Yin which I found at Cooking Is My Passion. I am not nearly that good at cake decorating so here is my poor attempt at my own version.


It's a chocolate mud cake with vile green fondant icing. I made the mushrooms, stars and plants out of fondant too. The eyes are a bit silly and wrong but I couldn't change them once they were done without ruining the rest of the cake. The Mario is a plastic figure. I did actually consider making a Mario out of fondant too, but I didn't think that I was that clever. I'm quite happy with it and my son was speechless (in a good way, I think) It's the first time I've covered a cake with fondant so I was quite happy with how it turned out.

And last but not least, it's green and it's Super Mario, so all boxes, ticked.

Cross Stitching the Children

Ho hum. I have been feeling rather flat lately. I now have only 10 weeks left of this pregnancy and would rather like that time to fly. Feel as though I have been pregnant for a very long time. I have been doing quite a bit of cross stitching but must admit that I have given them away as presents before I thought to photograph them.

My one major excitement is finishing a cross stitch that I converted from a photo of my two children. I actually started about 2 years ago, but kept putting it away as it seemed very daunting. Anyway, I set myself a rule that I was not to buy or start anything new until I had finished this mammoth picture and finally, last week, I finished it. HOORAY! The only problem now is that I'll have to do another one once the baby is born with the three children.


My little man is turning five on Friday and at his request (repeated several times a day for the last 2 weeks) I have made cupcakes to take to kinder tomorrow. I decided to make "Cupcake Pops" which I found at this blog months ago, but never found an occasion to make them.



They took quite a while but I think they came out quite well, for my first attempt, and the birthday boy was quite impressed. I made enough for all the kinder class and for his party on the weekend. My next baking challenge is to make a green Super Mario Bros cake as requested by the birthday boy. Not so easy me thinks. We shall see and I shall share my attempt with you after Sunday, if it is not too shameful.

Return of the Slack Blogger

My my, it has been a while. I have been very uncreative lately. I do have a good reason for my lack of creativeness. It is due to feeling very ill and tired over the last couple of months. And the reason for this is because I am pregnant with my third child. So yes, from now until some time in June, I will be blogging for two. I am now 12 weeks and have started to feel somewhat more human.

No more morning (all day) sickness and I am not ridiculously tired all the time, so I have felt a little burst of creativity and as a result have made my Christmas cards, which I hand make every year. I don't really feel like making them every year, however, several years ago when I first made them I was told by a several mothers of young children that once I had children I would no longer have time to make cards (or do anything for myself) because I wouldn't possibly have time to do anything except look after my nagging children. Well as it happens I have two young children, who rarely nag and are quite happy for me to do things other than entertain them.

So rather than making my cards in the true spirit of Christmas (loving, sharing, something to do with Jesus?) I guess I make them in the spirit of spite and to show those mother's how efficiently I can manage my time even with 2 little children. Perhaps not very "Christmassy", but rather productive. Anyway, here are my spite filled cards (made with a little bit of love)


I designed the tree myself and punched the design onto card using a large needle and then used metallic purple DMC thread to sew the tree. A gold star on top and a little gold squiggle for the tree base. Very easy design and only took two nights to complete 20 of them. Sorry, it's not the greatest photo but it was taken at night with the flash on. What can you expect from a tired and grumpy (and spite filled) pregnant lady?

Bragging

I normally don't post pics of my kids, but we had the little ones birthday party on the weekend for which she dressed up as fairy for and I was so taken by how cute she looked, I thought that I must show you all how gorgeous she looked.

I also love this picture of my son. I was trying to take a picture of the birthday cake and he popped up in the background.


Anyway, that's enough bragging. I won't do it again, I promise!

Spacial relations and fairies.

I haven't been posting of late. It isn't that I haven't been creative, it's just that what I am making is very slow going and there's not much to photograph yet. I'm working on a cross stitched height chart for my newest newphew (he is now 2 weeks old) but it won't be finished for some time I imagine. It's quite cute, with circus teddies and such.

We had my little girl's second birthday party today. I made her the toadstool cake from the Australian Women's Weekly Cookbook. Nothing really spectacular and quite easy to make but all the kids seemed to like it.



It was just a butter cake with lovely pink and yellow icing. The door and windows are made from melted white chocolate and the grass is shredded coconut coloured green with food colouring. The fairies are little ceramic statues that I found at a bargain shop. The love hearts were made from the coloured part of licorice allsorts cut out with a heart shaped cutter. The only problem with it some minor issues with spacial relations. I don't think that the size of the door in relation to the size of the fairies is quite right. Hmmm...how would the fairies fit inside?

Sew Inspired!

I have gone from being very uninspired to being very inspired. I had a few hours by myself on the weekend (no kids!) so decided to go to my local Spotlight to see if that would inspire me. And inspire me it did! I pick up these fabrics, 8 metres in all, for a bargain $16:

The top 3 fabrics are all light cottons that were $1/metre and the next 3 are very heavy quilting fabrics that were $3/metre. I bought the fabric because I have decided that I should start making the presents that I plan on doing for Christmas presents.

I made this carry cot for my little girl to carry her dolls in yesterday:


I didn't have a pattern and I'm not really thrilled out how it turned out, but she loves it, so I guess that that is all that counts. I used batting to try and give it some shape, but it is still a little floppy, so a thicker batting probably would have been better.

I also have just bought a new cross stitch kit on eBay. It's called Moon Fairy and comes with fabric, threads and charts.



I won the auction for $0.99 and postage was $9.50 so in all $10.49 for a complete kit. What a bargain!

So, overall an absolutely bargain filled week that will hopefully get the creative juices flowing.

Uninspired...

I have been so uninspired at the moment. I haven't done anything remotely creative for about 2 weeks, until yesterday when I made a small Peanut for my niece (who turned 17 on Tuesday) I have been feeling lazy and keep wanting to start something new, but haven't found anything that has sparked my creativity.

I have found a baby doll pattern here that I would like to make. I think he's very cute but haven't decided if he is worth buying the pattern for.

I also have a cross stitch of the Taj Mahal that I have been working on for the last month that is 95% finished but I now only have the fiddly backstitch remaining and really can't be bothered doing it.

Anyway, enough moaning, here is the small Peanut I made. He is 75% of the size of the original Peanut: