Sometimes Turning 12 is easy......

Well - we are the other side of the birthday party and it was smiles all round. They all came, they all ate, they all had fun and they all pronounced the party as "so cool" and "really awesome".

I did my best Uber-mummy effort and am completely exhausted by it - but it was worth it to see the beaming face!
It's been raining cats and dogs in Sydney over the past week so I decided to set up inside - wise decision it was an absolute stinker of a day - must have been high 30s - so I was loving the new air-conditioning let me tell you. Turned out to be a wise decision as at about 4pm it actually hailed. My friend Erica (who was having a party at the same time )reported on it here - amazing!


This was how the room looked. We bought jumbo sized playing cards and stuck them all around the walls. Bought colourful posies of flowers from the $2 shop - they are pretty $2 shoppish in real life but massed altogether they looked very Wonderlandish - and they photograph like a million bucks!!!

The rose garlands were a score - picked them up at a shop called "dusk" which sells girly candles etc. They were only $5 a pop - the original price tag was $39 each.Love a bargain! Will save them for Valentine's Day - maybe wrap my naked self in them like the birth of Venus and see if the husband notices???


Anyway - back to the party.
Here's another shot down the table - do you love the pink and green plates? Found them in Target - $3.99 each - thought they were very funky!!! Did I mention that I was Uber-Mummy? I decided in a fit of mental instability to make Neenish Tarts. From scratch. They turned out beautifully but took about 4 hours to make. I will never begrudge paying for them in a cake shop ever again. They looked (and tasted) spectacular though - here's a shot of them mixed with the chocolate dipped strawberries we did (and for those of you who don't live in Australia - yes they are huge, lush and we get them all year round - we are a fruit lucky country!)

When the girls arrived I got them to decorate the cupcakes (I hadn't got them done due to the marathon Neenish Tart making) - it's a great thing to do at a party. Here's some cupcake love.

It was also a great excuse to buy a cupcake tree!

Turning 12 is hard sometimes

Em is turning 12 soon. She wants to have an Alice in Wonderland party. No problems here kiddo. We've come up with some great ideas for decorations and games. I've told her she can use real china cups, white linen, the silver tea service - and have a Mad Hatter's Tea Party. She wants to be Alice and after a small spat with Claire at 7.30am one morning we resolved that Claire will not be an alternative (read smaller/cuter) Alice but the White Rabbit (bribed with the promised use of an impressive pocket watch on a chain that I just happen to have).

So what's the problem? Well turning 12. Her great enthusiasm has been dampened somewhat by the response of a couple of friends. She made the mistake of seeking approval of the plan rather than just extending the invitation to come and join the fun. These little girls are turning into young women - this is her last chance to have this sort of party. Next year she'll be in high school and turning 13 and she and her friends will be old enough to think it's naff rather than fun. Some are already teetering on the brink - involved with boyfriends and flirting with eating disorders. She's worried that everyone will think she's a baby and/or that they won't come.

We had a long conversation about deciding whether to follow the crowd or lead it and whether pursuing friendships with people who think they are better than you or too cool to come and help celebrate your birthday are worth the effort.

In the end mummy logic prevailed over the quivering bottom lip and the boo boo face and she's now back into highly enthusiastic mode. Gulp! No pressure there - I'll just be eternally damned if the party's a flop.

So the invitations are printed and ready to hand out. We'll put up a marquee in the garden (a friends gazebo), lay trestle tables with white linen and put out the silver tea service (probably filled with peach flavoured ice tea) and the china tea cups. We'll serve ribbon sandwiches, jam tarts, chocolate dipped strawberries, cookies iced with the word "eat me" and little iced cupcakes. We'll decant the fizzy drinks into coloured glass bottles with labels that say "drink me". I've promised a red velvet heart shaped birthday cake with red fondant icing and iced flowers. And if anyone wants to get too snooty then I shall say "Off With Their Heads".

Not Such a Blog Addict

Apparently I am not the blog addict I thought I was - there are many others who far surpass my meager efforts! Erica - thanks for not pruning me from your list - I shall try to be worthy of such an honour. I have been following your growing home renovation with equally growing bemusement. For God's sake woman - quit while you're ahead!

Judi W (who subscribes to 105 blogs) was the lovely person who told me about bloglines - so if I do become a certified blog addict it will be all her fault (lol). Actually Judi has started
another blog for people to comment on cloth doll patterns - ones they've actually made etc. and what was good/bad/indifferent about them and I've just realised I haven't added it to bloglines yet - so there's another one!

I have been an excellent mother this afternoon and whipped up a skirt for Miss Claire with a matching headband.

She refuses to get off the Sims 2 long enough to model the skirt for my blog (ungrateful little snit) but is wearing the headband.

So I will take a picture of the skirt all by itself.

I found the pattern here at Grand Revival Designs. The headband was a quick whip up with a couple of yo-yos made with the Clover Yo-yo makers. They are a groovy little contraption which makes whipping up yo-yos a doddle. I got the idea from Heather Bailey - and they are her fabrics featured in the headband and skirt. Heather actually has a rather lovely looking headband on her site - but I am too lazy and made up my own.

I've been busy

One of the things I've been busy doing is helping my Mum and Dad clear their house out as they finally sold it. It's been the family home since 1968, despite various stints overseas (Petersfield in Hampshire, England from 1972 - 1975; Ossining, New York 1982 to 1984 and Holland after that).

They actually moved two years ago - but Mum wanted to be sure she liked her new digs before they gave up the house. Needless to say it was a big job - so Mum and I swapped several days - she went to play lady-in-the-shop and I went and got really ruthless with the stuff. Some got flogged on ebay - others went to the Salvation Army - books went to Lifeline for their annual book fair. Mum has an extensive collection of clothes from the 1950s - they went to Cavalcade of Fashion - where they will be properly curated and looked after which is nice to think. Anyway the last night the four of us (Mum, Dad, Kylie and I) had a "last supper" around the kitchen table. My older sister Ann was missing (gadding about in Bali for a month - smart girl!) But it was just like old times. It's kind of funny to think of it not being in our family anymore - lots of memories that's for sure. The best ones are always family dinners - where we'd sit around the dining table and laugh uproariously at something - you know the sort of laughing that brings tears to the eyes mixed with an inability to speak? Eventually Grandma would sob "oh stop, stop - before I wet my pants" and that, of course, would set all of us off again.

Here is one such scene - I am obscured by Dad's finger - and am wearing the floral circle skirt that I made as part of Home Science (mandatory in Year 7). That was the sum total of my learning to sew really.

Then it's Grandpa, my younger sister Kylie, Grandma, Mum, Nanna and my older sister Ann. This was taken Christmas 1978. Mum is about to cut Grandma's pudding (done the old fashioned way in a cloth (no basin) so it formed a floured sort of a skin). Ann and I had both made Christmas Cakes at school at the end of year activities week. The icing was as hard as hard but the cake turned out great! We only had one more Christmas altogether before Grandpa died in 1981. Each year someone would say, "this might be a Last Supper you know" - bummer when it turns out to be true. The most scary thing about this is that my mother's hair is a lot darker than mine is and I just worked out she is the same age in the photo as I now am (42 this year). Tempus Fugit.

Happy Birthday Chris

My baby is 14 years old. And taller than me. There I said it ok? Where is that round, fat little sausage I use to know? Turned into a muscle bound string bean.














Who'd have thought that he would have turned into this (washboard stomach and all). It only seems like yesterday (sigh). Oh well only 4 more years and then your 18 and on your own son. (Just kidding). Ooh - and he took this picture of himself (and about ten thousand others on the digital camera).