Birthdays

June is always a busy time in our household. With two young girls there are always year end activities and parties to attend.  And at our house there are birthdays to celebrate. I'm happy to report that both parties were a success. Here are a few photos of the highlights.

First for my Rebekah, I made these little cuties for her to take to school for her classmates.  They were time consuming to make but easy and well worth it. They got rave reviews. I found the instructions on Pinterest if you are looking for the details.

Rebekah was turning 11 and wanted to celebrate by having a few friends over for a sleepover.  But every birthday requires cake and her dream cake this year was to look like a fish bowl.  So here is my attempt at the fish bowl cake. 

With that party over I then concentrated on Emilia's 9th birthday party.  She is an aspiring veterinarian so had her heart set on a pet themed party.  I contacted our local pet store to arrange for them to bring over some cute and cuddly animals. So all that was left to do was loot bags and a cake. 

For the loot bags I was happy to have Emilia help me make these cute and simple bags. 

Who wants a bag of sugar at the end of a birthday party? Not us.  So instead I found these cute Webkinz puppies at our local dollar store. What nine year old girl wouldn't want to adopt him?

The party was a busy one so I wasn't able to take many pictures of the craft.  Although a little tricky to assemble the fastener at the top, these birds in cages were a big success. Another pet to take home!

For this party the birthday girl had her heart set on a cake in the shape of a cat.  

 So this is what I came up with.  So what do you think? Not too bad eh?

Both parties are over and it's time to take a breather. 

Looking forward to a great summer with my girls. 

Update

Just a quick update to say that I haven't forgotten about this blogging thing. I think about things to write all the time but don't actually write them. . . hmmm . . . I'll have to try harder.

So know I haven't finished my projects but I have been working on them. I've been a little sidetracked by cooking meals for my family. Not that I haven't done this before but I'm trying to be more mindful of the things I make and try to make them from scratch. I'm happy to report that the number of boxes of processed food in the pantry is shrinking. Yay!

So I took a few cookbooks out of the local library to help with this. One that has caught my interest is Quinoa Cuisine by Jessica Harlan & Kelley Sparwasser.

This book has opened my eyes to things like quinoa flour and flakes. I had no idea! So I checked out my local grocery store and there it is quinoa flour, just sitting on the self! Of course I bought some to try it out.

I love baking . . . because I love deserts. How else does one develop a fondness for sugar? So of course the first thing I decide to make from the cookbook is the Maple Cake on page 163. It has a bit of a nutty flavour but as long as you don't talk about it, the kids love it!

When I make this again I'm going to try using my bunt pan as the centre of this cake sank a bit after I touched it to see if it was done. Not an issue though as it still tastes good. It's a very moist cake and we liked it when it was still warm even though the recipe says to wait until it is completely cooled. I see no harm in having it warm with some vanilla ice cream. Yummy!

Also, I've been distracted by a parcel that arrived yesterday. It's some lovely yarn from a local alpaca farm, Prairie Wind Alpacas. I've been searching patterns trying to decide what to make from these lovely yarns. I just got a few balls to try it out so I'm thinking hat, mittens, cowl, something small. I'll let you know how it turns out.