Garden Theme Bunting Cake

My poor husband was away on business for 2 weeks over his birthday. I'm not sure who had it worse, him alone on his birthday, or me alone with the waking-in-the-night 6 year old! Anyway, I made him a cake on return to make up for it. It was quite quick and easy. I made Annabel Langbein's Ultimate Chocolate Cake recipe for this and it's AWESOME. It makes 2 cakes if you use a 20cm or smaller cake tin. I halved the ganache ingredients and we still have some left over. Trick with using ganache as a filling, is that you pop it in the fridge and give it the odd stir every now and then for a couple of hours while it sets a bit. Otherwise it seeps in to the cake and runs everywhere.

I got this idea from CocoCakeLand but changed it up a bit.
I used a "grass" nozzle for doing the green grass - the trick here is that you have to make sure the buttercream is the right consistency or it all turns to sludge. I used Milo for dirt around the carrots. The carrots are made of fondant, along with the name plaque and flowers. The bunting is just attached to wooden skewers with bakers twine. The bunting was a free printable from YellowBlissRoad

The cake was much enjoyed by all!

The Last Page!

I've finally finished the 1st year scrapbook for my daughter! Amazing. Should we have another kid now? ;-)

I've since filled in the little tags under the buttons with "cute", "clever", "kind", "lovely". Inspiration online somewhere, I can't recall who.

A Flora Hat

This is such a sweet hat. And a free pattern from tentenknits, it does need some tweaking to make it work out, but the colour chart is very easy to use.

Here are my notes for this hat if you decide to knit it:

Whatever you do, DO NOT cast on 120sts unless your head is the size of a basket ball! If you CO 120sts you will have to do 4 repeats of the pattern. CO 90sts then you get the 3 repeats. I used the larger needle size for the whole hat to get the right gauge on my yarn (which was Malabrigo Silky Merino). The only problem though is that now it’s quite tight on my head and the green yarn woven in behind now shows through and looks a little ugly. But 120sts was WAY to large. I think with 90sts, this would perfectly fit a 10 yr old. My 6 year old daughter loves it, the yarn is so soft, it’s a little big for her (especially in length), so we’ll share it. I have a small head. If I knit this again, I’d attempt it in 4ply or sport weight yarn and cast on 120sts.
I did garter st starting with a PURL round otherwise it looked all weird and I only did 5 rounds of garter st otherwise it doesn’t look like the hat picture from the designer.
Be careful doing the chart, the colours can be confusing if you’re doing white leaves.
If you’ve cast on 90sts instead, you need to start the decreases at the top of the hat at Round 5 instead of Rnd 1, (you won’t have enough sts otherwise). To make up for this, you’ll need to add some more knitting 'even' where it says to work 5 rounds even. I knitted 8 rows 'even' and it was just right for length. If you don’t add in extra decreases between rounds 7 and 11, you’ll end up with your decreases looking like a dog’s breakfast, (this goes for 90sts CO or 120Sts CO). So it should go like this:
Rnd 5: K8, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 6: (and every other round): Knit
Rnd 7: K7, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 9: K6, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 11: K5, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 13: K4, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 15: K3, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 17: K2, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 19: K1, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 21: K2tog around (10 stitches left)

I hope that helps someone. 

Caught Being Cool - a positive chart for children

I wanted to share these basic 'charts', to give ideas to parents who would like to balance out the discipline in their relationships with their child. You can easily make your own, we have one on A5 paper so it's big enough for me to write on. The following PDF's are printable and you can print them to a size you would like. Our child likes to colour the chart in so we often just do the outline of her name ourselves and she decorates it. Some parents may not have time, so charts for printing yourself, follow below.

I need to point out these are NOT REWARD CHARTS!! We don't do reward charts in this house anymore and I'll explain why, in a bit. This chart was made because one night I realised I was feeling sad about all the times I felt I was on my daughter's case to do stuff or stop doing stuff. I could tell she was getting down about it too and all that negative responding was becoming a self fulfilling prophecy - she was starting to believe she was 'bad'.

I don't really like the terms "bad" or "good". I guess because the definition is in the eye of the beholder really, and I like to discipline the behaviour, not the child (if that makes sense). But alas, those labels are hard to avoid sometimes and they quickly pin these labels to behaviour when teachers and peers use the words in certain contexts. Anyway, one day Miss 6 announced she hated herself because she's bad all the time. I felt so sad, I had to do something! A friend suggested writing things down that we thought were good, to help balance it out, (more about that soon). We all know that pointing out things we like about others gives them a boost - in the same instance, when we point out negative stuff, it tends to make the person believe it after enough time. I think this idea would be great for adults in our lives too (although notes would be better or a chart might feel a little patronising)!!

In regards to reward charts, we don't do them because the flipside of them is that kids can begin to believe that your love is dependent on certain behaviour, it's why we don't use time out's either. We do use the bedroom (or elsewhere) for violent outbursts, but we don't label it "time out", we just remind the child we are removing them for our safety and they're welcome to join us when they're calm and ready to talk about it without yelling. Sometimes this involves having to lock the door to protect ourselves if they can't help coming back out before they're ready. So, things like sweets, rewards of special time spent with a parent, toys, stickers, etc, are all telling the child that they're not worth these things unless they are behaving a certain way. We believe that pocket money is given to teach good money skills and the child is worthy of it despite chore compliance. It also helps with those times you get asked 50 times a day for toys when out shopping. "Did you bring your own money dear?" We believe kids are worth treats and time spent with their parents despite non compliance. Of course, this doesn't mean you give pocket money or treats right after they've thrown cereal all over the floor - let's be sensible!

We now just ask Miss 6 to help out with a task. This is SO important in teaching kids that they are competent individuals who are an integral part of the family. They are valued and needed, and yes, they can achieve stuff. It helps them learn that when they help ease the load, parents often have some time to be able to spend with them (this needs to be pointed out) ie "could you please help unload the dishwasher so I can get dinner started, then when it's in the oven you could choose a quick game for us to play together". If they refuse, I find just pointing out your disappointment and clarifying that you won't have time to play or perhaps read that bedtime story later on, because of their choice, is enough to help them change their mind. Sometimes, when you ditch the rewards charts, it takes some time to help them recover from the desire to 'get' something every time. Sometimes we had to tell Miss 6 that she couldn't do xyz until the task was completed. She quickly learnt that doing said task meant time with Mummy later, or else life could get pretty boring for her.

Her confidence, maturity and empathy have all increased A LOT from using these techniques. I can't recommend highly enough, the book by Amy McCready entitled "If I Have To Tell You One More Time". She has great advice on how to stop the yelling, nagging etc, whilst getting what you need from your kids and keeping the bond intact.

The below charts don't have to be used forever. The charts are to help you show your kid that they can be awesome, when it's required. Over praising can result in kids who NEED validation for everything they do or say, you need to NOT use this chart for getting kids to do stuff. It's purely for balancing out the negative. So try and refrain from saying "if you don't do xyz, I won't be able to write it on the chart" or "what can you do to get on the chart". It turns it in to a reward system again. When they spontaneously do or say something awesome, you tell them how awesome it is and write it on the given day. Some days we have to write B.I.G so it looks like the day got filled up! Sometimes it's basic stuff like "remembered to wash hands", "washed hands when asked", "said sorry after doing xyz" or "ate politely". You really have to go looking for stuff as you want to BUILD ON IT. And build you will. It doesn't take long before kids like to sit in front of the chart and read all their awesomeness and just WANT to keep being awesome. It also takes the sting out of reprimanding when they don't make the best choices. I remind Miss 6 that she's awesome 90% of the time and that even adults get it wrong some times, I point her to the chart, which usually evokes an apology and some more awesome behaviour. Life is just getting better in this house now. Whatever you do, don't forget to fill in at least 5 things each day or your kid will be crushed! It's not hard to find 5 things, even if you're really pushing the boat out some days!

At the end of the week, we have a family night (we end the week on a night we can all be at home) and have a 10 minute hot chocolate and marshmallow session while we read out the COOL behaviour. Miss 6 LOVES it and it fuels her to keep it up. I think this is something that should be kept going, even as kids get older. The chart won't last forever, eventually we will use notes instead and bring them up at family meeting time (as well as continuing appropriate praise when said behaviour occurs).

We sincerely hope you enjoy the chart idea and it helps build self worth and esteem in your family too. If you want to read an excellent blog post about reward systems go to parentingfromscratch No More Stickers. Alfie Kohn gives some interesting insights also.

Click HERE to download this version

Add your child's name between the stars

Click HERE to download the flower version

Add your child's name between the flowers

Chainsaw Forester Birthday Cake

It was recently my brothers 40th birthday and I wanted to him a special cake, as he'd separated from his wife a few months ago. He's not the type for a boring old NORMAL cake, so I searched high and low for ideas surrounding his work. He owns a business that exports logs and his business clears farmer's land when needed. Although he's not so hands on these days, more of the office guy, he still has his precious Stihl chainsaw, and it's the brand he has all his crew use. I found THIS cake that this very creative lady made and switched some things around the personalise to it my brother. The expression on his face and his joy at seeing this made all the time and effort worthwhile.

 

My brother (in icing!) and his beloved chainsaw.

I won't go in to lengthy instructions on how I did this, as the link (above) to the original has a few steps included. However, I will add a few pics of this cake in the making, below. I made the chainsaw after the man was complete, so it had a stick to go through it and hold it on.

I used a toothpick to attach the blade of the chainsaw on to.

I used white fondant with a little tylose mixed in to harden it for the blade. I made a back and a front, left them to set a little (just for 30 mins or so) then stuck them together with sugar water oin either side of the toothpick. I used sugar water to stick it also to the chainsaw end. I carefully painted on silver colouring and black for the chain etc then left to dry overnight, whilst balancing on a little container the right height.



I wasn't that happy with the legs, but I used a toohpick in each one to stablise them to the torso (all the way down in to the boots) and left to dry overnight before adding clothing and arms/ head etc. I placed a toothpick through the torso, for the head and toothpicks for where the arms would go. And one out the front for the chainsaw to go through (which had to be placed BEFORE it set and wouldn't go on to the stick)! Ie, make the man first in full, before making the chainsaw. I used royal icing to stick the legs firmly to the boots (it sets hard over night).



The clothes were all made like this, in pieces for the front and back, then joined on to the man with sugar water glue. It took a bit of measuring to decipher the correct size/ shape. I used silver colouring to paint on the reflective stripes.

The "40" at the top was just rolled out thick fondant and cut with cookie cutters. I stuck toothpicks in each ones base (to sit them up on the cake) and allowed to dry overnight. Then I used royal icing for the orange detail, it sets within 10 mins. I used royal icing for the ribbons (to stick to the cake). The cakes were chocolate and a spicy nutmeg cake with chocolate cream cheese icing.

Measuring Up to 40!

I found a similar card floating about on Pinterest and thought it was a cool idea. Here's mine:

A card for my brother's 40th birthday

Mother's Day Card

I got this idea from Tarynne Wise's blog. What a great way to use up all those little scrappy bits you have left hanging about. A card for Mum. I used foam squares to elevate the hearts and message. Zig-zag stitch on the ribbon. I printed out the message from Word.