Happy 70th Birthday Mum

For a wee while we had been planning a "get together" for mum's 70th birthday. My cousins from Wanaka and Invercargil were coming and family from Christchurch.
My Aunty had decided to come over from Australia to suprise mum so after may e-mails and secret squirrel business Dad and I went to Christchurch on Wednesday to pick her up from the Airport.  When we got home to Mum and Dad's Aunty went to the door and rang the door bell - mums reaction was so good untill she cried lol.
Wednesday was mum's actual birthday so I took the afternoon off work and we went out for lunch and then went into town which was really nice!
Friday night Nigel and I had been invited to the Business Excellence Awards which was a black tie event - we haven't been that dressed up since we got married!
So just for a laugh here is a photo taken at midnight when we got home from a fantastic night, some didn't even recognise me with straight hair - lucky it didn't rain because that would have been the end of straight lol!

Then I was up at 7am to make mum's cakes and of course Joe's (last post).  I had already made mums topper and love heart but was not sure how much icing I would need and I wanted to do an ombre effect so I made 5 times the recipie and made three colours.MAN my hand was hurting by the time I had piped all those ruffles.
We had 33 people going out for tea so I needed to make sure there was going to be enough cake!
Anyway here is the picture of mum's cake which she was really happy with:

We ended up not cutting it on Saturday night so everyone came over to Mum's on Sunday and we cut the cake and had another excuse to catch up again.
Aunty Lyn headed back to Aussie today (we miss you already) and the cousins and all visiting family headed home to so I am sure Mum and Dad will have a well earned rest tomorrow.

Right that's about it from me!  Thanks so much for stopping bye and thank so much for letting me know that you have visited :-)

Rachel

Cards and more cake!

This past fortnight has just been crazy at our place.  I had been asked to make a thinking of you card so of course you have to give options just in case they don't like one :-)  So these are what I came up with.

This was a take off of one that I had seen somewhere - sorry I can't remember where it was!  And this was the second option:

The first card was the chosen one :-)

I also made two cakes this weekend here is the first one that I made for a friend of Jamie's who turned 17.
Joe's favourite cake is lolly cake so after some googling I found out that you just cover it with gnache and then white ice over the lolly cake so that is what i did.  The actual cake is 3 recipies so he should have enough to last for a week at least :-)
Joe has a nitendo game (cake was the controller) and he loves Mario so after seeing a tutorial on how to make Mario a wee while back I decided to give it a go and here is the resulting cake:

I was pretty happy with how it all turned out in the end!  Ok so Mario doesn't look as good as the tutorial one but I was happy!

The other cake was my mum's 70th which I have been working on for a few days but I will post that one tomorrow.
I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!

Cheers

Rachel

My Baby is 15!

I say it every birthday but seriously where did that 15 years go?

Abby turned 15 yesterday and was meant to be heading out to karate camp.  We had lots of chocolate cake in the freezer ready to make her topsy turvy cake (just because i wanted to have a go at one) and then next weekend for her birthday party we had a smaller cake planned.
Abby made her own invitations buy using distress ink and then burning them all to make them look old, she wanted a fantasy theme for her party here are the invites;

I took Friday afternoon off work to finish the cake but got waylaid helping dad fix the caravan roof - that aside i still would not have got it finished in time to take to camp - except Thursday night at 8.45pm and after the cake was actually put together Karate Camp was postponed.  So what to do with 7 chocolate cakes?
Abby phoned around her friends and lucky they could all make it this weekend for her party instead of next, so tonight we have 5 teenage girls for a sleep over!
Here are some photos of her cake:

 Here is the birthday girl cutting into her cake and a close up of the dragons head - I put the candle in his mouth so he could "breath fire" but it didn't really work lol.

This is a photo of her dress up with her friends:

I think they all look awesome although the costumes only lasted for a couple of hours then they went swimming and the "theme" of the night has been lost lol.

But the shreeching from up the front as they all do singstar is shocking lol.

My first attempt at a topsy turvy cake turned out OK for the theme but if it was meant to be a pretty cake the covering on it was shocking and I would be very nervous making one for someone else - scared in fact!

So tonight might not be one of much sleep for us with the girls ruling the house but they only turn 15 once!

I hope you are all having a fantastic weekend and made the most of the sunshine today as looking at the weather forecast it is not going to last!

Have a good one :-)

It's Missing something!

Hi there

This is the card I was talking about in my previous post:

I love this cupcake thief from Mo Manning, she is so cute and sneaky!  Nic came over a week or so ago and we put some bling in the corner top left and that defiantly helped.
Here is a picture of a cake that I did this weekend for friends that have just built a brand new home after having theirs destroyed in the February Earthquake, they have re built in Rangioria - hey Trace if you are reading, we went the back way to get there and I got all excited when I past the sign saying Swananoa!  I know where you live (well the area lol).
Anyway here is the cake it was a quick - ISH one lol:

The photos actually don't do this one justice, it looked sweet and was a copy of a cake that I found somewhere on the Internet!
This week I have Abby's 15th Birthday cake to do - this is a made up creation so it could be interesting, she is taking this cake to Karate camp as Abby heads to Raincliff on Friday (her birthday) for the weekend then next weekend we make another one for her slumber party and the following weekend I have to make mums 70th birthday cake so it is all in the kitchen for me over the next 3 weeks!

Right time to hit the shower and head to work!  Have a great week everyone :-)