birthday dessert ideas: family life

Showing posts with label family life. Show all posts

Showing posts with label family life. Show all posts

17th Birthday Dessert Night

For her 17th birthday my daughter requested a dessert night for herself and around ten of her best friends.

I have rarely enjoyed organising a party so much, largely due to the active involvement and assistance of my beautiful daughter. Em had very clear ideas about the look of the party and the food to be served, and we worked together to bring her ideas to life.

Rather than a one or two-coloured palette Em wanted 'rainbow colours'. After visiting several homewares stores for ideas we discovered the cloth napkins below at Bed, Bath N' Table, which Em immediately felt were perfect. The bright pastel colour scheme was continued with colourful balloons and streamers and even multi-coloured cachous on the cupcakes. The table was set with a pale lemon tablecloth, white plates, dessert spoons, the pretty napkins and real glassware. Colourful solar lights lined the garden beds and a string of coloured light bulbs shone overhead.

The menu of dessert finger food we prepared included:

white and dark chocolate-dipped strawberries
vanilla cupcakes with piped pink buttercream icing (you can find the buttercream recipe here; we added a few drops of cochineal to the basic recipe) and a sprinkle of multi-coloured cachous
little chocolate eclairs filled with chantilly cream and iced with dark chocolate
little lemon meringue tarts filled with home-made lemon curd
tiny melting moments
chocolate brownies
hot chocolate with marshmallows

We had a busy day cooking and getting the house ready, but the enjoyment of the girls who attended (and especially the birthday girl) made all the effort worthwhile.

Saturday Morning

What a lovely way to spend Saturday morning, sitting in the sun watching Will swim and reading my new library book.

Maybe next week I'll bring my bathers and do a few laps - or maybe not.

Science Alive!

A highlight of the weekend was visiting the Science Alive! expo at the Adelaide showground.

While my 10 year old enjoyed visiting all the stalls and loved the presentation by the Curiosity Show's Rob Morrison and Deane Hutton, his absolute favourite was the Daleks at the Australian Dalek Builders' Union stand.

Ex-term-in-ate! Ex-term-in-ate!

Back from a Blogging Break

Walking from Middleton to Port Elliot, January 2013

I realised that I hadn't blogged for a long time when I logged into my Blogger account today and discovered 76 spam comments awaiting moderation.

I deleted the whole lot and now feel ready for a fresh start.

Anyhow, here's a brief update on life at our red house.

I'm still working four days a week and juggling family life, the house and garden, and a range of other commitments. Life is busy but fun.

In 2012 my eldest son finished school with a fantastic ATAR (Australian tertiary admission rank) and a merit (perfect score) in physics. He will begin university in March, doing a double degree in electrical/electronic engineering and mathematical/computer sciences. At this stage he plans to major in maths.

My daughter is 16 and in year 11. She combines a part-time job, schoolwork and a very active social life with apparent ease.

My second son is in year 9 and enjoys sailing and debating. Tomorrow he will compete in his first regatta as skipper.

Finally, my youngest is nine and the most cheerful, happy young fellow you could ever meet. He is a joy to us all.

Boxing Day

I had a delightfully quiet Christmas Day yesterday, shared only with my immediate family. However, Boxing Day has been full of activity, due to a very welcome visit from my brother and his family, who live in Sweden.

Today we re-celebrated Christmas, with cold ham and turkey, a vegetable flan, two kinds of salad, hot Christmas pudding with brandy custard, strawberry pavlova, home-made vanilla ice cream and fruit mince pies.

We ate outdoors in beautiful sunshine then collapsed in front of the Boxing Day test on the telly. The more energetic family members played table tennis (a Christmas present from Grandad) and Pictionary.

Living so far from my siblings (one in Sweden and one in Sydney), I value greatly any time spent with them.

The whole crowd

The girls: my daughter, sister-in law, three beautiful nieces and me

The Best Christmas Present Ever

Look what the best husband in the world gave me for Christmas.

I have longed for a Kitchen Aid mixer for years, and especially since my old Sunbeam Mixmaster died last January, but I didn't ever think I would own one.

The mixer is a delight to use; I have already mixed bread dough and made a pavlova for our Boxing Day visitors.

I know many people don't like to get household appliances for Christmas, but for me this gift is a dream come true.

Sweet Sixteen

Last night we hosted our daughter's sixteenth birthday party at our house. Although I don't usually publish many family photos, I thought I'd make an exception, just this once.

I am enormously proud of my beautiful daughter and the fine young woman she has become. I am looking forward to celebrating many more of life's milestones with her.

A Selection of Cupcakes

A selection of cupcakes for my daughter's 16th birthday party tonight.

I made four dozen cupcakes, although a few won't make it to the party because the birthday girl's Dad and brothers have eaten them.

We have (clockwise from the front):

chocolate butter cream on chocolate
orange butter cream on chocolate
pink butter cream on vanilla
a fairy cake filled with home-made jam and chantilly cream

As I write this, my daughter and one of her friends are busy decorating the back of the house with streamers and balloons. The fridge is groaning and the drinks are chilling.

I'll share some post-event photos tomorrow.

Beans with a History

Way back in the late 1950s an Italian man from Calabria brought bean seeds to Adelaide to start a vegetable garden in his new country. Since then, every year, he, his children, then grand children, and now great grandchildren, have faithfully planted the descendants of that first batch of seeds.

Today I was given some of those bean seeds by the Italian gentleman's great granddaughter Sandra, who works with me.

Sandra says the beans are snake beans, and must not be allowed to grow too big or they lose their tenderness.

She told me that her great grandfather also brought persimmons and figs to Australia, which have since become persimmon and fig trees that appear in many of the family's gardens.

I feel honoured to have been given these seeds, and look forward to planting them, watching them grow, and hopefully saving some seeds to pass down to future generations of my own family.

An Old-Fashioned Orange Cake Recipe

I can't make my usual flourless orange and almond cake at the moment because the blade for my food processor disappeared about a week ago.

Having conducted an exhaustive but unsuccessful search, we suspect that the blade went in the bin when a certain teenage son was cleaning out the food processor.

Faced with no food processor but lots of oranges on our tree, I have begun to make an old-fashioned orange cake from Everylady's Cook-Book (1925). This book was a favourite of my grandmother, who bought a copy not long after she married in 1936.

Like many vintage recipes, the instructions are endearingly brief and require the reader to know how to mix ingredients together correctly (cream butter and sugar, beat in eggs, stir in sifted dry ingredients alternately with orange juice). I make this cake in a greased loaf tin and it takes 35-40 minutes to cook in a moderate oven.

The "King" Orange Cake - Type 1
Expensive. Delicious. Needs careful baking. But is well worth it.

2 eggs, their weight in sugar, butter and flour (with an extra tablespoon of flour), 1/4 teaspoon carbonate of soda, 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/2 teaspoonful grated orange rind in the flour, orange juice, about 1 tablespoonful.

Icing: 1 tablespoonful of orange juice with sufficient icing sugar to make it like thick cream. Spread on the cake when nearly cold. Bake cake in a shallow tin; will keep moist indefinitely.

Flinders Ranges

Our family has spent the past few days enjoying a holiday in the breathtaking Flinders Ranges over 400km north of Adelaide.

The Ranges are both immensely beautiful and very, very dry, even in early spring. Empty, desolate farmhouses bear witness to the difficulties farming in this harsh, isolated environment.

A striking feature of the Flinders Ranges is the Aboriginal rock paintings on many of the cliffs. Also in evidence are many wild emus, kangaroos and parrots.

We only got a taste of the Flinders Ranges in our short holiday and I would love to go back to experience more.

Old Wilpena Station

Bushwalking

Aboriginal artwork at Arkoola

baby emus

And with their mother

On the way home we visited Port Germein, a small seaside town that was once the chief wheat port in South Australia. The town has the longest wooden pier in Australia, about a mile long. Walking along the pier was a great break from hours of driving.

This Weekend

This weekend we:

Played Monopoly in pairs and as a family
Cooked spicy peanut soup, a slow-roasted leg of lamb, and flourless orange and almond cake (again)
Dined on goulash at the Norwood Hungarian Club on Saturday night
Pruned some of the roses, mowed and weeded
Watched the chooks make a huge mess everywhere

What did you do this weekend?

A Sunny Saturday Morning

the modern child - playing games on the laptop whilst watching cartoons on the TV

my latest read

Today is a most delightful Saturday - a Saturday when there are no kids' sporting commitments to attend. While we enjoy watching the kids' games, it's also great to have a couple of weeks off in the school holidays.

It's been a quiet morning so far as my three teenagers have slept in - they appreciate slow Saturdays even more than their parents.

I'll have to get active soon though. Today is one of the few sunny Saturdays we have had lately and I promised myself that I'd do some weeding and get started on pruning the roses.

I hope you have a lovely weekend!

Brighton Beach

We spent Friday evening at Brighton Beach with my brother and his family, who live in Sweden.

While we Adelaideans are keen for a cool change after weeks of hot, dry weather, my brother's family relishes every moment of hot weather they get.

And coming from a freezing winter with less than four hours of daylight each day, who can blame them?

Green and Gold Cupcakes

Green and gold cupcakes for my sister-in-law Ymke who became an Australian citizen last week. Congratulations Ymke!

And congratulations to all the other new Aussies out there!

Birthday Breakfast for a Beautiful Girl (and an update)

Today is my beautiful daughter's 15th birthday and she asked for breakfast in bed. As she makes me breakfast in bed on Mother's Day and my birthdays, I could hardly refuse.

Emma asked for waffles with strawberries and strawberry sauce. She wanted ice cream but no cream. I added in a strawberry milkshake for good measure. It was a lot of fun preparing Gran's tea tray with dishes, cutlery and old embroidered linen, and Em was thrilled with the result. I think this might be the start of a new tradition in our family.

Update: I thought I should explain why I haven't been blogging lately, despite lots of blog-worthy material with Christmas approaching. Since my last post in mid November my youngest son, Will (8) has been very sick and ended up having an emergency appendectomy on 29 November. He is recovering well but is quite pale and thin still.

As you can imagine, I haven't had much time to visit other blogs but hope to come and 'see' you all again over the next few weeks.

Magical Mystery Birthday Tour

Yesterday was my birthday, a birthday filled with surprises.

For weeks my husband had told me that we were going out somewhere on the day, but he wouldn't say where. He said he wasn't going to buy me a present in advance, because there would be things to buy when we arrived at our destination.

As we drove up Main North Road I quickly worked out that we were heading for the Barossa Valley, although I didn't know which part. Eventually, the sign for "The Pheasant Farm" gave the game away - we were having lunch at Maggie Beer's famous Pheasant Farm!

This was a most wonderful surprise as I have been a fan of Maggie Beer for years. I thoroughly enjoyed my game terrine and the post-lunch walk around the lake.

After lunch, B told the kids that today was Mum's day and that our next activity was to go antiquing (their idea of torture). I had a lovely time wandering through a number of antique shops in the little Barossa towns we passed through. We also visited the Barossa Museum at Tanunda, full of fascinating artifacts from the early German settlers.

Throughout the day the sun shone gently on us as we passed vineyard after vineyard, the leaves newly emerging on the grapevines. In the orchards the stone-fruit and apple trees were in blossom or had delicate, new leaves. The entire landscape was green and lush after the winter rains.

Some birthdays pass by uneventfully, but this one was one I will never forget.

Changes

rose-scented geranium

There are some years when nothing much seems to happen and life moves with a steady and gentle pace and there are other years where change is constant and exhausting.

While 2011 has not required the radical changes of 2008, when we moved interstate and started a completely new life, it has certainly been a period of transition and uncertainty.

Both my husband and I have changed jobs this year, and the kids have experienced changes in their lives too.

However, I am so thankful that we are all together in a house that we love and are slowly building strong networks in Adelaide. Although I had never considered living here before it became a necessity, Adelaide is now home.

Doors

Some new doors are opening in our lives. I wonder where they will lead?