Christmas Photos

Down here in New Zealand we don't do the holiday Christmas photo, and send it out to everyone, but I still wanted to take some photos of the kids. It's hard coming up with a theme as it's summer here, and kids with hot chocolate, cute pj's, etc don't quite fit in. Maybe next year I should put tinsel on the BBQ, they can wear shorts, t-shirts, jandals, and hold onto some sausages.  

So on Christmas Eve I was stringing up stars, and taking photos. There is so much more that I wanted to do - take some video, more stars, better poses etc etc, but ran out of time. But saying that I'm really happy with what I got. I also put the photos into a short video, which the kids loved.

One of the bribes I used to get them in front of the camera, was they could open some Christmas Crackers.

I also got some different coloured glitter to blow.  Emme didn't quite get the hang of it, but Mason was really good.

Pink, White, and Gold Birthday Party

Last year I planned to do a cute ballerina themed birthday party for my daughter.  I had pins on my Pinterest board with pink themed dessert tables, pink ballerina cakes and other pink food goodies.

Planning was going well…until my daughter attended her friend’s birthday which was Frozen themed.  So of course, my daughter wanted a Frozen themed party as well……sadly I had to say goodbye to my pink décor and embrace the blue!!

This year she didn’t mention anything about a particular theme, so I decided to go with Pink, White and Gold which seems to be popular at the moment.  The good part was no figurines to make, as they are not my strong point.

I decided to go with a 7” chocolate cake, layered with vanilla buttercream, encased with milk chocolate ganache and covered in fondant.  The top layer was a 5” white chocolate mud cake, also layered with vanilla buttercream, encased with white chocolate ganache and covered in fondant.

I used Americolor Dusty Pink to colour my fondant, and cake board.  The gold was brushed on using Metallic Light Gold edible paint by Rainbow Dust.  For the name plaque I used the Vladimir Script font in Microsoft Word, flipped it horizontally, and printed it out.  I then traced it with parchment paper using a pencil.  After rolling out my fondant and using a circle cutter, I flipped my name to the correct side and traced this on the fondant.  You can then see the outline of the font, and then use edible paint or an edible pen to write on the fondant.   In this instance I used a black edible pen.  

The gold balls were made a couple of days before I assembled the cake, and didn’t work out well.  They were made with white fondant, left to harden and then painted with the same Metallic Light Gold edible paint that I used on the cake.  As they were hard they would not stick to the cake, and kept falling off. So I made new balls out of white fondant, and while they were still soft stuck them to the cake.  When they dried I then painted them gold, and the next morning gave them another touch of paint.

For the cupcake toppers a couple of days before the party I rolled out white fondant mixed with a bit of tylose, and cut out heart shapes.  The night before I painted them with the Metallic Light Gold edible paint, and left them to dry.  They were then nice and hard the next day, and wouldn’t go soft while sitting in the buttercream on the cupcakes.

The cake pops were made using leftover cake and ganache.  I dipped them in pink coloured white chocolate, and when the chocolate was set I painted Metallic Light Gold edible paint on them.

On Pinterest I found a tutorial on how to make the tassel garland.  They were very easy to make, the hardest part was trying not to burn my fingers with the hot glue gun!!