A night at the arcade dance

Wife of a stake Young Mens leader checking in. Tonight I got to hang out at a multi-stake arcade themed dance. Oh my goodness. I swear stake dances were never this good when I was a teenager. My mate Pippa turned up with her teens and we got to hang, so that added to the fun. Cameras may have improved but photos sure haven't. hahaha. 

Awesome tunes with lights and smoke, pizza delivered and fairy floss machine. What else could you need? My kids were particularly annoyed to have been left out of this as they saw the decorations, all 1980s arcade style, much like their current favourite movie - Pixels.  

The smoke was so thick at the end that we were a little worried it wasn't going to go down by church on the Sunday. Plus to be honest, accompanied with the fairy floss smell, it was like you were unintentionally vaping in the hallway where all the smoke was sticking.

Looks like the kids had a good time... that's all we were worried about! ❤

A long overdue catch-up

It's been four and a half years since we last hugged. Due to covid and the all drama that ensued and remained with international travel - my friend Lisa hasn't been home to Australia for that long. I have missed her so much and was absolutely thrilled to come across a post she had made online as she started the very long trek back to Australia with her kids.

I was even more thrilled when she managed to make some time for us in what was a pretty hectic schedule and we got to spend the morning together at Hillary's Boat Harbour with her kids and my older ones. It was so good to laugh together again and hear our kids do the same.

Madeline and Madison got along like they'd been best friends for years (the last time they saw each other Madeline was 5 haha) and settled straight into piggybacks and chasing each other about... then had a wander at the shops together while the boys splashed at the end of the beach. It's never too cold apparently! 

Hooray for catch ups!

Of course we had to finish the day with Cold Rock, cause why else do you go to Hillary's Boat Harbour? It was a good day to have a good day. Hopefully there'll be a lot less years between our next catchup. ❤

 

Joseph's twos-day party

This year there was a really cool day in the calendar. Twos-day. 22/2/2022 which fell on a Tuesday, so it was affectionally dubbed TWOS-day all over the internet. Joseph's birthday is on the 20th, so he decided that Twosday was 100% his and he was having his birthday party that day.

We had the party after school and knowing it was going to be hot, we organised with the parents to send some extra clothes and started the afternoon with a big waterfight. I spent the last half an hour before everyone arrived filling water balloons so they could go wild.

They had the best time! There was so much laughter and squealing in the street while they had their waterfight and funnily enough, Maddie ended up being the one who copped it as all Joseph's friends ganged up on her and soaked her, then grabbed the buckets and tipped the rest of the water on her too.

The best was yet to come though, as we headed inside once they dried off and came inside - we had hired Joseph a mini claw machine! When it got dropped off, he nearly died with excitement and I'm pretty sure it was the absolute highlight of his life. My friend's boyfriend owns three of them and hires them out for parties and events and oh my goodness was it a hit. The kids spent all afternoon playing it and refilling it over and over until it was time for pizza and cake.

Joseph has been on about wanting the duck cake from Bluey for months since he saw the episode where Bandit makes it for Bingo, so he insisted he needed it for his party. So, I made it happen and his face was so worth it. I have never seen him happier in his life than when he walked in the door and the duck cake was made and waiting on the kitchen table. Life, made.

Made every single second that went into it, worth it.

Joseph declared that this was by far the greatest day in his entire life and did not stop smiling once. I feel like we absolutely nailed this party. He and his mates had a ball. ❤

 

Heart attack!

One of my favourite ladies from our church is celebrating her birthday today - and when I was given the sneaky heads up by a friend, Madeline and I headed down to her house to give her a "heart attack" while she was out at dinner. We spent ages cutting letters and hearts from a bunch of coloured paper we had on hand, only to get all the way down to her house and discover that we had forgotten to bring the sticky tape along! 

Quick trip to the IGA in the next street and we were back on task. We made quick work of taping them all in place and then quickly got out of there before she had time to return. We were rewarded a little while later, by a gushing Facebook post about how loved she felt.

Totally worth it. ❤

ross's vanilla cake

i am a december baby, so i am super sympathetic to anyone else that is. so often your birthday gets forgotten or lost in the hustle and bustle of christmas and the month flying by. so i like to make a big fuss over our friends that have december birthdays and there is quite a few of them! for instance our mate ross, whose birthday was today. i sent him a message to wish him a happy birthday and he replied with "still waiting for my birthday cake - no chocolate." i knew he was obviously kidding (other than the no chocolate part - because he is actually allergic to chocolate, poor dude!) but decided to do him a solid and actually make him a cake. easy peasy, except my best cake recipe is chocolate. sigh. off to the internet we go.

enter "my very best vanilla cake" care of recipe tin eats which was indeed that. so flipping good! i will absolutely be making it again and again.

CAKE

2 cups plain flour

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ tsp salt

4 large eggs

1 ½ cups caster sugar

115g salted butter

1 cup milk

3 tsp vanilla essence

3 teaspoons vegetable oil

VANILLA BUTTERCREAM

225g softened butter

500g icing sugar

3 tsp vanilla essence

2-4 tsp milk (to adjust thickness)

 

PREPARATION:

Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan) for 20 minutes before starting the batter.

Grease and line 8” cake pans

COMBINE DRY INGREDIENTS

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

BEAT EGGS UNTIL AERATED:

Beat eggs for 30 seconds on medium/high speed

With the beater still going, pour the sugar in over 45 seconds.

Then beat for 7 minutes on high speed, or until tripled in volume and white.

FINISH CAKE BATTER:

Heat Milk-Butter: While egg is beating, place butter and milk in a heatproof jug and microwave 2 minutes on high to melt butter. Do not let milk bubble and boil (foam ok). Don’t do this ahead and let the milk cool (this affects rise).

Gently add flour: When the egg is whipped, scatter 1/3 flour across surface, then beat on low for 5 seconds. Add half remaining flour, then mix on low  for 5 sec. Add remaining flour, then mix on low  for 5 – 10 sec until the flour is just mixed in. Once you can’t see flour, stop straight away.

Lighten hot milk with some Egg Batter: Pour hot milk, vanilla and oil into the now empty flour bowl. Add about 1 1/2 cups (2 ladles or so) of the Egg Batter into the Milk-Butter. Use a whisk to mix until smooth – you can be vigorous here. Will look foamy.

Slowly add milk: Turn beater back on low speed, then pour the Milk mixture into the Egg Batter over 15 seconds, then turn beater off.

Scrape and final mix: Scrape down sides and base of bowl. Beat on low  for 10 seconds – batter should now be smooth and pourable.

BAKE:

Pour batter into pans.

Knock out bubbles: Bang each cake pan on the counter 3 times to knock out big bubbles

Bake 30 minutes or until golden and toothpick inserted into centre comes out clean.

COOL & FROST:

Remove from oven. Cool in cake pans for 15 minutes, then gently turn out onto cooling racks.

VANILLA BUTTERCREAM:

Beat butter with whisk attachment in stand mixer for 1 minute until creamy. Add icing sugar / powdered sugar in 3 lots, beating slowly (to avoid a powder storm) then once mostly incorporated, beat on high for a full 3 minutes until fluffy.

Add vanilla and milk, then beat for a further 30 seconds. Use milk to make it lovely and soft but still holds it's form (eg for piping). Use immediately.

he seemed pretty stoked with his non chocolate cake and stopped giving me crap for about 1/2 an hour so that made it well worth it haha.

came out beautifully and so so yum. really handy when said mate is actually a chef! i'm always nervous when he eats anything i cook, so i feel like this was a win!

nutmeg and booth archery

i decided to entertain the kids these holidays by doing something a little out of the ordinary, and brought along the booth girls for the ride. it was raining in perth, but wasn't supposed to rain in clackline, which i checked 4 times before leaving in the morning, so it was a perfect day to get off to the archery park!

we dropped alex off to nannas house, because there is no one in this world crazy enough to let a wild two year old loose near flying arrows, then hit up the hoddywell archery park. the kids looked like they had won the lottery, my kids have been once before, but it was the first time for the booth girls.

they loved it though, got right into it and were pretty good!

madison and chloe having a shot

joseph didn't do nearly as well on this trail as he had last time, when he kept hitting close to the bullseye every time and oh did we have to hear about it. he was well unimpressed.

besties who should not be messed with

as you can see from the photos, we discovered that the weather forecast was not correct... there was a sudden downpour and we all got soaked - but the sun came out again soon after and we dried out soon after.

it's not going to rain. honest. hahahaha

i don't think she was very impressed that i was wrong. but oh did we laugh. non stop.

things were progressing well, madeline even managed to shoot this fox in the head and was so proud of herself, insisting that i take a photo to show off to grandad.

it's so much fun watching these two together... they always have the best time (when they aren't arguing!) 

there was so many mosquitos though. that was the only downfall. we doused ourselves over and over with repellant, but they were still biting something cruel. i swear the pretty surroundings make it worth it though. please trust me! haha.

so here we were... right near the end and approaching the last target. it starts raining again, now that we are all finally dry - and this time it's way worse. like absolutely pouring - and then it started hailing. oh my word. we decided to make a run for it in the end, and then were so wet that we had to borrow a towel from the owners to dry off.  but at least we had fun. even when chloe managed to scrape her leg on the way back to the car with her arrow. i foresee a tetanus shot in her future!

one last stop - the christmas shop in toodyay for a quick look. these little drowned rats probably weren't impressed that i made them pose for yet another photo, but oh well. 

would you believe we then drove all the way to northam to get pizza for dinner, then back to mums to pick up an eagerly waiting toddler. we even waited that little bit longer until it was dark, just so madison could watch the stars. i completely appreciate this, as it's my favourite bit about visiting mums too!

it was a great day with the kids!

 

my favourite place

i grew up in a teeny tiny country town in the wheatbelt called clackline, 80kms from perth. i loved it then. i still love it. everything is far away, your neighbours are not at all next door and you can be as loud as you want. the most fun bit though, is the friends you make that are from seriously all over the place, because your high school caters to students that live ages away and we all turn up on buses that can take up to an hour to and from school. a lot of the "local" high schools (still 20 odd kilometres from ours only go to year 10 - so for their last two years they are bussing it in each day to hang with us. i also am from 20km out of town, but add in (as far as) dowerin, york, goomalling, toodyay, grass valley, spencers brook, bakers hill, wundowie... there's some massive ground you're covering there, so you really end up with mates all over the place.

anyway. one of my dearest friends from school is from a town called york and every now and then, we like to go to york and catch up with her. but it conveniently just so happens that the best opshop ever is in york too. boom.

so, today we drove out to york to see my beautiful friend keryn annnnd hit up the salvation army jumble sale there. i have said it before and i'll say it again, i am convinced that the guy who is in charge of pricing the items as you leave gets bored with his job cause he counts for a while and then just announces a total, (which is always way lower than it should be) which you hand over gleefully. today we paid (between mum and i) $30 for 65 items - which is just 46c each. sorry perth - but you'll just never be able to compete with that!

the way home from york to mums though, is my favourite place in the world. there is a certain point where all you can see is crops and sky. i love stopping there and just taking it in for a few moments, as well as grabbing a snap or two. you can take the girl out of the wheatbelt, but you can't take the wheatbelt out of the girl. ❤

valentine's day cookies with the madi's

doug and i never really celebrate valentine's day, but i think it's something fun for kids, you know "the day of love" and all that. so when we had to stop by madeline's friend madison's house to collect some ballet shoes, i decided to be nice to the girls and make some cookies for them to decorate. we took over pink icing and some things to top them with and the girls got to work. they were having so much fun, all i could hear was giggling and lots of talking as i chatted to madison's mum on the other side of the bench. really the cookies were just a distraction so i could have some adult conversation...shhh. haha

i used my favourite cookie recipe from here (i love it cause it's no chill and can be used straight away) and let madeline cut them all out

baked at home...

then threw them in a box to take over.

for the icing, we just used the free icing mix that comes with store bought cupcake mix with pink food colouring added - and whatever we could find in both my cupboard and theirs.

they got pretty inventive though, i was impressed.

and little brother was even allowed to taste test!

i had the best afternoon with these little valentines. ❤

christmas pixies

this was the most lovely surprise... some christmas elves attacked our house tonight leaving coloured lights around our raised lawn area

and twinkle lights wrapped around our frangipani trees. they must have quickly done it all and then done a knock and run, as we didn't hear a thing until then. there was a box of chocolates and a card on the doorstep with nothing other than "merry christmas" written in it. 

it certainly hasn't been the best year, losing doug's dad at the beginning and then doug's mum having spent a lot of time in hospital over recent months. it's little gestures like this that have helped us get through the hard times.

see how pretty?! i really felt so loved when we came outside to see them.

and i will definitely leave these up all year round, i love them!

*********************************

edited to add october 2021 - we finally found out who the pixies were, the lovely newman family. as we packed up their house to move them to nz after they accidentally got stuck there, we noticed their backyard fairy lights were the same as our pixie dropped lights. hmmmmmm. i hit julia up and found out it was indeed them and that made me even happier. we truly have the sweetest friends. it was definitely my favourite part of that christmas. ❤