Mmm... nothin' better than a cooked breakfast!

I really should stop cooking breakfast, otherwise I'll be fatter than a crazed tourist in a Magnolia Cupcake shop (I could have eaten them all you know. No joke.) I made Will and I French Toast on Monday morning, complete with Banana and Maple syrup! OH SO GOOD!! I used that French Bread Stick that was torturing me with it's delicious smell on Saturday and it made for awesome French Toast. Will was suitably impressed and declared that he'd keep me as a wife, which is nice of him {snicker}. If you'd like to pop over for breakfast some time just let me know! I'm really good at making cereal, porridge, bacon & eggs, have become somewhat proficient at scrambled eggs in the microwave (thanks for the training Dad), waffles (mighty fine!), dutch pancakes and now can add French Toast to my repertoire! If only I could eat breakfast for every meal! {Fatty fat fat fat fat fat fat.. I hear you singing!!}
:) C

Christmas Baking has begun!!

Yep, it's officially 1 month to Christmas now!! Whoa {slapping back of hand on forehead}, it's time to get the tree out from underneath the piles of sheets and towels in my linen cupboard and it's time to start baking my fave Christmas cakes/cookies/sweet treats! It's also time for me to try out some new recipes this year, YAY!! Well, they are only new to me, Mum and Yvette have been making them forever, but I'm gonna try them now. Last night I baked a Buche Noel (Yule Log) but it's for tomorrow's supervisor meeting at work so I only baked the cake and will fill and decorate later tonight after the "Build a Gingerbread House" night at Church! That will be fun!! But I did totally make these gorgeous tiny Christmas Puddings last night! Yvette made them for Christmas 2 years ago and man, I must have eaten about 10 of them! They are so so so so so moorish and I want to keep eating them forever!! They are really easy and fun to make and I put them together sitting at the dinner table watching NCIS! Multi-tasking :) They are made from crumbled Dark fruit cake, a bit of cocoa mixed in, white chocolate drizzled on top and some glace cherries to finish them off! I ended up with about 26 in total so there's plenty to share around, and eat for myself!!
Happy Hump Day of the Week!!
:) C

Sunday Sweetness.

Hi Y'all,

I have been on a sugar-bender this weekend. You might think "Yeah, I do that occassionally" but I haven't done it in 2.5yrs, since I was diagnosed with Diabetes, cos you can imagine it is probably the worst possible thing for me! But something snapped inside me this weekend and I couldn't help myself {sigh}. Yesterday I went to Parramatta Westfield and I was suckered in by the smell of Kernels popcorn. Oh my heart! The beats picked up when I smelt that warm, sweet, corny, caramel smell and I automatically diverted there like a mouse on a cheese trail!! I got a tiny grab bag (I diverted from my old fave Creamy Creamy Caramel) of a Caramel and Butterscotch combo.... I can't even remember what it was called, just that my one track mind could think of nothing more than getting that corn into my mouth!! That wasn't all, I had already had a Lemon Merangue cupcake for morning tea from Cupcakes on Pitt and bought a Peanut Butter one for later too! Then this morning I went out for brunch with Willy to Zenja Cafe at the old Arnott's factory, North Strathfield, and I had Ricotta Pancakes with Caramelised Banana. And now I have a mound of dough rising near the heater cos I am trying out a recipe I found online for Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls (you know the American chain that I raved about in a previous post?) WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!!! I better have a sensible week this week with lots of exercise and healthy eating to compromise! Although my Pancreas may not think that is much of a compromise. Do you think 2.5yrs without a sugar binge was a good effort?! I'll try to make it another 2.5 years til the next one!!

Will and I did go see Ice Age 3 last night and his Bro got us into Gold Class with popcorn and a Pepsi Max for $6 each. Ha! Bargain!! It was a funny movie, so cute! I love a good laugh, and there were some people in the audience who were outright "gafawwing" at some of the jokes! Lol. There was only one other couple in Gold Class, it was 2 men who talked constantly at normal volume for the whole movie. What?! Whats the point of paying $30 each to talk through the movie? I suggested to Will that they were drug dealers doing a deal somewhere inconspicuous where they could talk freely for 90 mins and not worry about being spotted. You never know! They annoyed me though! Luckily we hadn't really paid for our seats or I would have complained about them!! Or yelled at them to shut up (I would never really do that, but I fantasised about doing it during the movie!)

:) C

Happy Birthday Cooper!!

Happy Birthday Little Man!! I can't believe he is one already, how time flies!! Yet, I can't imagine Fliss and Matt without him now. He's such a cutie!!

We had a party on Saturday, there were so many babies and little kids there it was like a Daycare Centre!! Honestly, there were 55 people, of which 20 were children, just amazing. I caught Willy sweating outside in the 40ºC heat cos he was overwhelmed by the amount of children inside in the air-con! Doesn't C look like such a little man in this outfit {heart melting!}, Will and I got him the tiny Vans shoes when we were in Hawaii last year, they are gorgeous! I love his button up shirt and little jeans... he has the most gorgeous clothes!!

I cooked up a storm on Friday night after work.. I finished at 10pm, went straight to Woolies to buy supplies, came home and made 46 Mini Cupcakes and a batch of face biscuits then made a CD of Cooper pics to play on the TV at his party. I was so tired when I finally got to bed at 2am but it was worth it cos the Cupcakes were a big hit and it was so cute to see all the pics of him growing up over the last year! I didn't come home with any cupcakes which was a bit of a bummer cos they were totally delicious. I find cupcakes in this size (and I mean they are MINI- you can hold them with 2 fingers) are so fluffy, just like tiny little clouds! Yum!!!

One last pic here of the little man and me... Happy Birthday Cooper, you have brought so much love and joy to our lives over the last year!

:)

Aunty Charlotte and Uncle Willy

My Halloween Birthday Party Wash Up :)

Wow!! My birthday was AWESOME!! I had so much fun at my Halloween Themed Birthday Party, there were so many great costumes and so many people there! I don't think I've had such a big birthday party before!! I got lots of comments like "Wow, you went all out" and "You put so much effort in" and "Do you own all this stuff?!" so that made it all worthwhile. I spent about 2.5hrs saturday afternoon putting up all the decorations in about 35ºC heat {hugs to Alicia for lending me all her cool Halloween stuff!} It was rewarding to put in so much effort and have people really enjoy it and appreciate it!!

I had heaps of fun dressing up as a Gypsy Fortune Teller complete with Crystal Ball and fortunes downloaded from the net {chuckle}. I gave out a fortune and a lucky Gypsy Coin (gold chocolate coin) to all my guests. One of the nerdiest things was to have people ask where I got my outfit and me having to tell them that I own all the stuff (including the Dirndl top which I bought when I was on exchange in Germany- this is it's 4th fancy dress appearance!)!! It was fun to go through all my jewellry and pick out a whole bunch of stuff to wear all at once. And I had about 10 people tell me I should dye my hair black cos the wig suited me {shaking head and making "eek!" face}. Will looked awesome in his rubber mask and "blood-stained" shirt complete with attached eyeballs! Will made me a cool CD to play at the party full of Halloween themed songs like Thriller, the Monster Mash, The Devil's Party by INXS, Silverchair's Cemetary etc. It was fun to hear all the "Scary
themed songs!

Here I am with my crazy-haired Witch Sisters! Does that make us Wicked Sista's? Lol. I love the little Pumpkin outfit Felicity made for Cooper too, so gorgeous! We missed you Yvette, wish you could have been here too!

There were so many other awesome outfits like Con who had a bloody shovel and was handcuffed to the remains of an arm!!, a Catholic priest was on hand to perform any exorcisms needed (he brought his own Little Devil in case there was no other mischief afoot!), the whole Addam's Family!!, 2 Scream Grim Reapers, a Black Cat, an angel (to even up all the Spookiness!) little witches, a few scary monsters, a skeleton (one of my friends is skinny enough to pull this one off really well!), a cockroach etc etc... this list is endless!!

(Sorry I can't seem to get it so you can click on the collage pic below... you'll have to squint and use your imagination!!)

It was an awesome party, I had so so so so much fun! I am so tired now though :) but it was all worth it!

Thanks everyone for coming, and for all my wonderful birthday presents! It was fantastic!

:) C

Cooking Up a Storm!!

I may have mentioned in passing once before, that it is my birthday tomorrow {wink!}. And y'all know I'm having a Halloween Party (check the date, yep Jan 31! Unconventionalism is my middle name, or is Danger my middle name? I forget. Anywho....) I decided to make my birthday cake after being inspired by a cake in Martha Stewart Living mag back in October. Thankfully I was able to sell one of my kidneys to pay for the $15.00 price of the magazine from Borders. Damn imported mags!! So tonight I went straight to Woolies after work to buy food for the party and made it home at 7:30. I took stock of myself and the kitchen and at 7:50 began cooking. In just over 2 hours I made 2 Mississippi Mud Cakes (Yvette's delicious recipe {hugs!}), brownies and Almond Roca (a request from my work friends). Needless to say now I am Pooped!! Totally! I think so much butter soaked into my skin that I will just slip and slide into bed tonight!! In total there were 4 pats of butter used in the recipes, whoa!!

I made 2 Mud cakes so that I could trim one about an inch in, layer it on top of the other mud cake and make a "mountain" on which to set up the Cemetary which adorns the top of the cake (buscuits dipped in chocolate for the tombstones and a chocolate stick fence!) Here is the adulterated cake cos I "had to check if it would trim well" (what I really mean is "I wanted to eat some while it was hot!" {delicious!})

Wow, so tired. But it's only 37mins til my birthday, I'm going to stay up damn it!!

The other fun news I have is that these little beauties arrived in the mail on Wednesday...

Hurrah Hurrah!! I have been wanting to get them ever since I saw them back in about September last year they are way way way way cool! Yvette alerted me to them being on a local scrap site (not to be exxposed) for $49 for the small sets and $59 for the big one. I couldn't believe it! I had paid $22 for my first sets!! I bought my first sets off the KISS stall at the Darling Harbour Quilt Fair and Lana the lovely owner had given me a flyer with her email and told me I could email if I ever wanted to buy more Nestabilites. Well, I emailed her and she quoted me the bargain price of $33 each for the small ones and $37 for the big one. WHAT!! Can you believe the difference!! WHOA!! {Happy Dancing Iriquois Indian style}. I had to get them all (and an embossing mat to use with them for $3. Hehe!) I am just so pleased with the price, I mean its a $54 saving!! I recommend everyone buy off her, what a bargain! Her email is here.

So I am a happy girl! Most of the cooking is done for my party and I got New Nestabilites and it's my birthday in under half an hour!

Quick my last wise words as a 26yo: Never play Leapfrog with a Unicorn.

:) C

Hot. Boy it's hot. Did I mention Hot?

Pour me into a tall glass over ice and sip me..... I've melted! Wow, what a stinker of a day! It was 40ºC here today and the minute I stepped into the sun I could feel the burn begin! Luckily for me I have sisters who love me and I spent today basking in Alicia's Air-con watching her Foxtel. Hurrah for Foxtel! We did venture out to spend vast amounts of my long earned peanuts from work (this always happens when you step near any cool shop with Alicia. She's so enthusiastic and knowledgeable.. this time it only cos me $60. Phew!) and I got 2 uber cool lamps. Keep your eyes out for them in a later post. Too cool. Now there is a forgivingly cool wind and I am no longer sticking to my chair with sweat. Double Hurrah!

So back to the Scrapping.. Here are 2 more pages in my Book about Me. You can see other pages posted here and here and here. Only 1 week to go til my birthday so I'd better get cracking! {Whooot-chir. That's a whip noise BTW.}

Have I mentioned I love baking (yeah, about a million times!) so I had to do a page highlighting some of the cute cupcakes I've made! Oh I love creating and choosing new ways to decorate them! I'm so happy to have this cupcake paper in my album too, it's so cute!

One of my other passions at the moment is Yellow Clothing. Who would have thought? It started with the yellow dress Alicia bought me at Wetseal on one of her trips and blossomed from there! Yellow Clothes HAD to make an apperance in my album cos they have been such an obvious part of my wardrobe this year! I got the cutest yellow bikini when we were on hols in Yamba too.. Love it!

Hope you've cooled off a little too!

:) C

Scraplifting..

Here are the 2 pages I did when I discovered my Mojo yesterday. The first is of the Bakerella Cupcake Pops I made at Yvette's place back in Sep. If you think this page looks familiar it is because I had already done this page on pink and white spotty paper about the same event! LoL! It wasn't planned but it's no biggie either, seeing as they go together in the album so they kinda match. I had all these pics of us making the Cupcake Pops so I thought they deserved a page just as much as eating the Cupcake Pops did! Man were these delicious.

Then I did this page, which is a Scraplift of a page by Jennifer Pebbles, one of my fave scrapbookers. If only she would post more often!! Her page is here. I bought the Mr Campy range by Cosmo Cricket specifically for the pics of our Road Trip/Beach Holiday, and I just love the way JP uses them. So cute! I don't generally Scraplift so closely, but I loved her page :) I hope mine still seems different enough! Will was so funny when he caught this fish.. he kept pointing at it's face and saying "I'm so gonna eat you!". He did! I tried a bit, but maintain my view that fish tastes like shoe.

So.. Happy Days.. I have done 2 pages already for the year! Did you know in 2006 I had a plan to do 52 LO's for the year and i did 36. Wow, so underwhelming. Last year I did 68! What an effort! I was quite pleased with myself. This year I hope to equal or better that number. Especially seeing as I have to use up my stash, as per my New Year's Resolution (to use 20% of my 269 PPs). Well.. so far so good... these 2 LO's used 3 sheets of paper! Woot {blowing a paper hooter} only 51 to go!

:) C

Baking Bonanza!

I added to my Baking Bonanza yesterday by making Gingerbread Cupcakes, Mini Banana Loaves and another lot of Almond Roca, all in 2 hours. Happy days {punching the air with fist}. Needless to say when I finally got home from work at 12:30am I was totally spent!! And went straight to bed!

The Gingerbread cupcake recipe is from the Martha Stewart website, which has heaps of great recipes. She is a pretty good mentor- apart from the whole "going to jail" thing. Maybe I'll skip that part for my life! I love her magazine too, so many pretty things. Especially the Wedding mag which I may purchase sometime in the future... ok, I'm off topic now.. back to baking.. The cupcakes are DELICIOUS!! Although how could they be anything else when they contain a whole cup of butter, a cup of golden syrup and cinnamon/cloves/nutmeg etc! I did have a tiny disaster though: just as I stood up from putting them in the oven I saw the eggs sitting on the bench. And if they're sitting on the bench, they're not in the cupcakes. D'OH!! I quickly whipped the cakes out of the oven, emptied all the cases back into a bowl and added the eggs, mixed, then got fresh cases and filled them and put them back in the oven. Phew!! {relief!} they worked out! And Fliss, I left one without eggs to see how it was, and it was just as nice! So I'll make them for you sometime with Macadamia oil and no eggs. See if you like them! I didn't have time to ice them fully (and I hate icing anyway, too much sugar, frosting is soo much nicer) so I used a white fudge pen to draw pics on top. I don't think gingerbread really needs icing anyway. I wrapped them up for my friends with a mini banana loaf and a handful of Almond Roca each and gave them out at work yesterday. I think they were all pretty pleased! I got a message from one guy this morning to say they'd eaten theirs for breakfast and they were delicious! Cool!

Will and I are off to Mum and Dad's after work, so a Merry Christmas to you all, have a great day tomorrow, celebrating with your family and friends!

:) C

Move over Martha Stewart....

Move over Martha Stewart... Mrs Claus the Cook is here!
I have been baking up a mini-storm in my kitchen the last couple of days in my awesome new Apron from Big W. I love it! {hehe, giggling at self}. It is the perfect kitchen wear and I even put it on this arvo just to wash up in. Lol. Pity no-one but me is here to enjoy it! (Yes Mum, before you say it, I realise this is my fake smile, but I was concentrating on getting myself in the frame! It's hard to take a pic of yourself full length in the mirror!)

I have been a bit behind the times this December. I don't know what has happened with all my time, but Christmas is almost here and I only just dug out my Christmas earrings! Today I pulled out my Christmas Mugs and tea towels.. {sigh} I will have to keep them out til my birthday just to make it worth while!!

So... as for Martha.. I was cooking Pumpkin Pies and Almond Roca for my extended family Christmas Dinner last night. I hadn't made Pumpkin Pies before, and they turned out pretty delicious! I absolutely love all the Christmas themed foods in America; I love Cinnamon and all those sweet spices and when I visited the US 2 years ago {sob sob.. I can't believe it's been that long!} I loved the Pumpkin bread, gingerbread cookies, Pumpkin Pie, Pecan tarts etc etc. So this year I decided to have a go. And also cos I found an English recipe for Pumpkin Pie which made it easier cos the American recipes called for Canned Pumpkin and "Pumpkin Spice" which they don't sell here in Australia. [Incidently.. FYI Pumpkin Spice is similar to our Mixed Spice, so I use that in recipes when they call for Pumpkin Spice.] Anywho.. they are yummy! And we only cut one at the dinner so I have another one for my immediate family Christmas dinner tomorrow night (this year I get 3 Christmas dinners, aren't I lucky!!)

The Almond Roca was also delicious, although I couldn't eat much cos it's total sugar overload! It's basically Almond Brittle (like Peanut brittle) with chunks of white and dark choc on the top. Delicious and very morish. Did I mention Delicious? And fairly easy to make, although you need a candy thermometer and I did panic cos the sugar started to burn to the bottom of the pot (despite my best stirring efforts) cos my stove is total crap, hence I thought I had ruined the whole thing. Turns out I didn't cos it managed to set hard and taste delicious! High Five {slap!}. I am going to make it for my work friends too, cos I know they'll love it. It's on my to-do list (with a million other things.. yet here I am blogging. Don't say I never spend time with you!)

And then, after all my efforts cooking and cleaning etc.. it's time for a cup of Hot Milo in my favourite Christmas Mugs (which live in a box labelled by Mum as "Gorgeous Christmas Mugs" so I know who to leave them to in my will!). Hope your Christmas is turning out not too busy and you still have time to cook and enjoy it! I am burning a scented candle called "Gingerbread Santa" and it is totally Delicious!! I wish I could eat it. And it (togther with sitting around in my Mrs Claus apron) has filled me with the Christmas Spirit!

:) C

Deliciousness :)

Hello! And goodbye to the end of the weekend.. how did another one pass by so quickly?! I did get some more Christmas shopping done today with my sister Alicia, but didn't manage to get the tree up which was on my list of to-do's!

Felicity's Stampin Up party on Saturday was great and the ladies had so much fun making the Ice Cream cards! Felicity and I even continued on and made another few Ice Cream cards after the party cos we were enjoying it so much! I made these delicious Apple, Almond & Maple Cupcakes for the Party from my favourite Woman's Weekley Cupcake cookbook. It's supposed to be Pecans but I substituted Slivered almonds and they were delicious :)

Then I was on a roll and made some funky desserts for Will and I tonight. They are Chocolate Mousse with raspberries, whipped cream and a kit kat stuck in. YUM!! I don't know why I was so lazy but I decided to buy already whipped cream (not in the can though!!) so I didn't have to whip it myself {feeling extra lazy in hindsight!}. I bought Gippsland Dairy ready to serve fresh whipped cream in a tub, and I have to say it was delicious!! I recommend this one if you don't have time to whip over Christmas :) It's much more real than the aerosol cream, Lol! But beware... there may be a scary face lurking around your dessert!

Back to the working week tomorrow...

Hope you all had a good weekend!!

:) C

Finally!! I got something done!

YYYAAAAYYY!!

Happy days to me today, I didn't have overtime at work so had some time to whip up this cute little page of pics from when I stayed with Yvette!
I used some new Cupcake/Sweets themed products from 2 peas- the stickers in the top left corner, the epoxy cupcake and the "laugh out loud" cut out are all from Colorbok's "The Sweet Life" series and I just LOVE them!! {hugging them tightly} They are so my kind of products :) I love the big die cut sheet of frames and journalling stuff, it's so cool!
I used one of Yvette's journalling spots from her etsy store, this time I oriented it on the side with my journalling going vertical. I never do that, but I thought it was time I 'switched my style up' (thank's 50 cent) and I think it's kinda cool.
I love this pink spotty paper, it's my last piece and I'm glad I got to use it on such a fun page!
The cupcakes were sooooo delicious too, and I have plans to do a page on us making them as well as another page of all the fancy cupcakes I've made over the last 18mths so I've got plenty of subject matter to use my fave new products on!
Got so many more plans for this day with no OT, but Dr Phil's already on so that means I'm behind! Betta run...
:) C