zara's birthday cake

how lucky am i?! i got another chance to go wild and decorate a fun chocolate overload cake for one of our friend marks girls. i used my go to chocolate cake and icing recipe which you can find here, it is an absolute winner.

it's such an easy cake to make too and comes out just right, time after time.

cover with chocolate cream cheese icing and then go crazy with toppings

including these chocolate lollipops i made after buying a mould on ebay during lockdown earlier this year. i am certain it's going to come in handy a lot in the future.

thankfully my mother-in-law has a stack of chocolate always on hand at her place. i popped in, chose some nice goodies, including some clinkers (to add a pop of colour!) and had the best time decorating it and tipping coloured sprinkles about the place. so fun!

happy birthday miss zara. we love you! 

alexander james: twenty-three months

somehow this kid has made it through to being twenty-three months old and is still alive. wow. look at me (i mean him haha) go!

during the past month he has

- screamed a lot 

- loved the absolute heck out of the movie moana, the toys we have and the maui hook that i bought doug in america

- drawn all over josephs wall with a permanent marker (aughhhhh)

- loves any word with the k sound: cookie, chicken, yucky...

- says rahhhhhhhh! (like a monster)

- stands on a chair and helps (hinders) me in the kitchen

- is constantly trying to escape his pram and car seat

- loves toast with butter

- calls maddie up! because she always says it to him when she wants to lift him up and give him a cuddle

- says dasssssss when he sees a hungry jacks or mcdonalds store

- stretches out his arms while wiggling his fingers saying tikka tikka tikka to make out he is tickling someone

- finally got a haircut!

he is so full of energy and so, so, so full on, but we just love him so much! ❤

alex got a haircut

alex finally had his first haircut! and now with his hair all smooth and sleek, it's hard to be believe that last week it looked like...

this. an actual birds nest on top of his head.

sticking out all over the place and driving me crazy. even messier in the morning, impossible to tame and enough was enough. i happened to walk past the local barbershop with him in a trolley while it was at his worst and couldn't take it anymore.

so in we went, the girl did some magic and i left the shop with this grown up child who looks like he's at least 2 years older than he is hahaha. but now i am kicking myself for not doing it sooner, cause every single photo of him for the last few months with the mop is killing me. 

i am loving it. hooray for a haircut!

fathers day 2020

i am so, so thankful for the fathers in my life. i am grateful for the fathers that raised my mother and father. i am grateful for the amazing father i have. he was always 100% present, always there for me and the most amazing man i know. finding someone to love for the rest of my life was pretty damn hard when comparing him to my dad. there is still nothing he wouldn't do for me and although he rolls his eyes at all my requests, mum assures me they are done with love.

this is the first fathers day without my father in law and i would be completely amiss if i didn't mention him or the hole he has left in our lives. we still miss him every single day. he made my doug who he is. he is completely and utterly his dad... personality, laugh, sense of humour - and i love that he is still around us, living on through doug. 

he is such a good dad. he riots with the kids, makes them laugh non stop and infuriates me with the bad jokes he tells them and the mischief he helps them get up to. 

happy fathers day to all the fathers around me, but most of all the to the father of my children... the most important one in my little family. ❤

 

doug's 40th party

what an awesome night at the swans restaurant and function house in henley brook. covid-19 may have ruined a lot of things this year (including the family trip we had planned to celebrate with dougs best friend james who turns 40 the same week as doug...) but it didn't ruin our ability to have a party at a great local restaurant. the swans is pretty special to us, my best friend jennifer and her husband got married there 10 years ago and dougs sister and her husband a few years back - so we kind of love the place. it's had a few owners since then and the current ones seem to be nailing it! the food was excellent, as was the service and we really enjoyed our evening.

i got there a little early and set up a few things of my own, including the big 40 made out of photos that was in our hallway earlier this week...

and a stack of gold jars with electric candles around the place. they looked so gorgeous flickering away throughout the night.

star of the show was definitely this amazing cake made by my best friend jennifer, it tasted just as good as it looked. forever grateful to have such a talented bestie.

doug very kindly shared his birthday song with his bonus little sister darrio because he had his birthday party on her actual birthday. we felt bad, but she assured him there was nowhere she would rather be.

we had so many friends and family turn up and it was lovely to see him so loved. this year has been hard for everyone, but especially for him losing his dad, who was truly his best mate. he has really risen to the occasion, helping his mum out and doing what he can to step in when she has needed him. i am so proud of him and loved being able to celebrate him today.

happy birthday to the one i love the most. ❤

 

doug is 40!!

this guy is 40 today. forty. i actually can't believe it. 17 years ago we had only known each other for a few weeks and i gave him a metal toy story bucket full of lollipops as a birthday gift. i am really hoping this years gift makes up for that... what a day it was to get it all done though!

we started early at 6:15am, out to drop off my outlander with the broken rear end off to the panel beaters and collect a replacement to drive for the next week or so. dum dum dummmmmm, a freaking kia cerato. look beggars can't be choosers and that thing's got some get up and go, but it was a terrible day to have to lose my car. i had ordered 40 gold, black and white balloons to pick up so doug could arrive home to them, but now had no way to pick them up. 

lucky for me, my beautiful friend tara was on hand to collect them in her full size mum van, bless her and we shoved them all in there, which made me realise they wouldn't have fit in the outlander anyway, so even luckier! haha.

seriously, she has a mercedes benz valente and they took up the entire inside!

and just for good measure, here's me showing you how forty balloons looks like in real life. i honestly felt like i was at disneyland!

and they perfectly filled the hallway. huzzah!

anyway, here's the fun part. for doug's 40th present, i bought him a set of custom number plates for his ute. he always said when he got the car he wanted, he was going to get private plates with dsk 11. his initials and favourite number. so, on the downlow a few weeks ago, i got onto the department of transport website, found him the colour i knew he would like best (this has since been confirmed, he was very pleased with the colour choice) and nabbed the combo he was after. funnily enough, last weekend, he got on there himself and was trying to order the same ones and was very put out to see that someone already owned his combo. i don't know how any of us managed to keep a straight face as his mum was there too and knew i had ordered them. he finally managed to convince himself that he was happy with 011 because then "both sides had the same amount of characters". yeah okay g.

by some miracle, they were ready in time for his actual birthday, but i still had to go and collect them and get them onto his car... but you have to hand in the old ones to be able to collect them. here came the sneaky. i called in a favour from his boss, who removed them and left them by his car for me to pick up. all the way from ellenbrook to balcatta to collect them, then back to midland to get the new ones, back to balcatta - and guess who was right there sitting by his car. that was such a facepalm moment. his boss had sent him up past joondalup to do a job, but he finished early and arrived before i was back with the plates. i pull up, his mates like, "bro, isn't that your wife?" yes it was, holding his birthday present. there went that surprise, but he was still stoked... until he got a mouthful from the boss for being back too early hahah. he looooved them and was super stoked! plus he got a good laugh out of knowing that the jerk who stole his combo, was in fact himself. hahahahaha. 

i still had some tricks up my sleeve though, each of the balloons we collected earlier had a photo from his life attached to the base. i had spent hours trawling through old photos at his mums house and on facebook over the past few weeks, saved them all to a folder and printed them to attach them to the balloons...

 and make a big 40 on the wall in our hallway.

all set up and ready for dad to arrive home. 

it was so fun. he arrived home from work, all the kids popped out and yelled happy birthday and then they all spent ages looking at the photos, him showing them people they knew and telling them about people they didn't. it was the best!

my old mate 40 year old husband. ❤

i am so beyond grateful for you and especially grateful to have been able to show you just a little today how much i love you - and the time and people before me, that made you who you are. 

ward father's day gifts

father's day is almost upon us again, and seeing as we still can't really do anything exciting (even though covid restrictions in wa are fairly relaxed due to a extremely long period without any community transmission) we wanted to do something cool for the primary dads and drop it to each of them. i had seen this awesome little "man" keyring made from nuts and bolts, so we decided that would be the way to go.

after a stop to bunnings to grab supplies, i got to work and whipped up 20 of these bad boys. they were not easy... the wire chain especially was a bit hard on the hands - and there was multiple pairs of pliers involved to get the bolts tight enough, but it worked... and they look awesome!

packaged up in a little cello bag from the local reject shop (side note, i always have at least one pack of these on hand, they are 30 for $1.50 and have about a billion different uses)

with a card made on the canva app... perfect! ready for delivery. we are doing the best we can with what we can, to ensure our primary children and their families know that they are loved.