All things New and Blue (and Green)!

Albert Einstein once said: "Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, find opportunity."

He's clearly never lived in my house!

The past year for our family has involved many new things: A new house, a new suburb... A new church, new friends, and a new school for our children... Now, there's new fingerprints on the new windows, new 'artworks' on the new walls, and new (but little!) holes in the new walls because I like hanging things up...

And... Now we have a new puppy.

I really like creating, and I'm always finding (or searching for) new things to make and do (you do NOT want to see my current list!). But I also really like to bake. I've been baking more since moving into our new house in Ropes Crossing maybe because I now have a huge (new) oven, and a nice (new) dishwasher! We've never owned a dishwasher before, and I absolutely love it!

Recently, our 'new' church (a church plant in Ropes Crossing) celebrated its 1st birthday! I was asked to bake some cupcakes for the occasion, as I had previously made cupcakes with our church logo on them for a meeting (I do quite like making 'themed' foods), but here is Ropes Crossing Church's logo, and here are some Ropes Crossing Church cupcakes I had made :)

     

With the church birthday coming up, I was so excited I wanted to bake everything 2 weeks beforehand! It was so hard not to... I had everything prepared down to the marshmallow and cake mix but I couldn't touch it!

Because I was expecting to cater for about 100 people, I thought that a Number #1 cake would be a ideal, plus it gave me opportunity to transform some boring 75c ALDI vanilla cake mixes into a Blue and Green #1 cake!

It ended up being super easy to do and this is what the (2.5) cake mixes looked like before baking:

Another idea for some small treats I got from Pintrest... Smarshmallows! But since my husband declares that M 'n' Ms taste better than smarties, I changed the ingredients, sifted through a couple (or 6) packets and claimed the Blue and Green ones to use for Ropes Crossing Church's birthday Smarshmallows :)

I'm pretty sure I had made about 120 Smarshmallows, but as far as I know only 100 made it to the actual birthday!

I had lots of fun coming up with ideas for baking and making (and taste testing of course!) for this special occasion for our church. I had heaps of M 'n' Ms left (clearly I was a bit ambitious with 6 packets!) so I used them to decorate the bottom of the chocolate iced Blue and Green #1 cake:

For the cupcakes that I made for our church's birthday, I printed out, and stuck the Ropes Crossing Church logo onto toothpicks and poked them into the middle of the cupcakes, which I had piped Blue and Green icing onto... Saved heaps of time, but they were still effective! 

And still Blue and Green! :)

The layout of the dessert table at Ropes Crossing Church's 1st birthday

The inside of the Blue and Green #1 cake!

And of course, a picture of my daughter, Tamara, with her plate full of Blue and Green desserts, having a great time at Ropes Crossing Church's 1st birthday celebrations :)

Did I mention that the plates were also Blue and Green!?

Passionate? Obsessive? Who cares... It was worth it :)