It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

The busyness of life recently has unfortunately put a pause in my creativity. I baked cupcakes the other day, hoping to be even a little bit creative, but couldn't even be bothered icing them!

Today, I was incredibly determined to un-pause it, and because Christmas is 'right around the corner' (less than 6 weeks away to be exact-ish), I forced myself to get creative and make some Christmas cards...

Out of Christmas cards... (and wrapping paper).

I'd had this idea last year (to make for this year), but in a moment of ruthless de-cluttering a few months ago, I threw last year's unused Christmas stuff out. <mental palm to the forehead>

So I got some more :)

This is what I started with (I quite obviously went with a blue theme):

- Ribbon

- Christmas cards

- Cardboard (not pictured, because I couldn't find it quickly enough)

- Wrapping paper

- Baubles

- Scissors, glue, etc.

First, I cut my cardboards in half, and folded them..... Hmmm... Now what?

So, I got a knife...

... Aaaaand I made two roughly spaced out incisions at the bottom of the card to thread ribbon through to make a bow on the front... What else do you do when you don't know what to do or where to start?

Hopefully next time, though, I will remember that I need to thread the ribbon upside down if I want it to be the right way around... Makes total sense :)

I was getting the hang of it now... Cutting, pasting, not thinking too much about symmetry and just going with whatever I felt like doing at the time. It was so refreshing having that freedom! And so easy :)

These cards are as simple as bits and pieces cut out of cards and wrapping paper, stuck onto cardboard in whatever way I felt like at the time... They're fairly easy to recreate multiple times, or to do something completely different with each. Like slicing a Christmas card into strips and rearranging them onto a new card.

Whoever said that scrap bits of cardboard don't come in handy, hasn't had blank areas of DIY Christmas cards to fill. 

Of course, what were really scrap pieces of card and paper went into the recycling bin... I'm not that enthusiastic about keeping rubbish!

Now... You may have noticed, in my 'equipment' list, there were baubles... What might they be for, you ask??

Place settings of course!

I haven't quite finished them, but here's a rough idea of what they will look like (I've used blu-tac to stick this one together as I might thread some small silver ribbon through the top or something, which will be much easier to do before it's all glued together):

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!! Yay!!

My terrible, unstoppable cycle of anger...

The sun rose, and the new day was full of promise and a lack of storms from the night before... Birds sang optimistically. Children happily watched cartoons on the couch. My husband made French Toast with cinnamon, sugar and jam, and even brought some to me in bed.

All was right with the world.

I got up, and as I greeted my loving family, I casually glanced out the back door to survey the damage of the storm... A couple of puddles, and a few clothes that the wind had no doubt blown onto the ground.

Wait. A few clothes on the ground?
The dog treats clothes on the ground as a gift from the very heavens!
TAMARA'S NEW T-SHIRT!

It was like slow-motion horror. "Noooooooooooooooo!" came the guttural cry as I began my well-known and experienced roller coaster ride of intense emotions that look a little something like this:

1) Sudden anxiety seeing a piece of clothing lying on the ground outside, but, still having a little bit of hope that Deefa hadn't got to it yet and there's still time for a mad rescue mission.

2) Unbelievable anger because it was too late- the item had been ripped, torn, partially eaten, and pieces of it scattered over the yard...

          Which automatically rolls into:

3) Physical rage because of what the dog had done (and because I had again failed to rescue another beloved item of clothing). This phase includes stomping around the house, slamming doors, yelling, cursing, and occasionally using the 'F' word (Oh my, I am not perfect after all).

4) Tightening the day's schedule so that I feel in control again, starting with turning the TV off, and making completely irrational rules that honestly don't last beyond my little 'episode'. E.G. "He is never ever coming inside ever again" or "He's going to starve from now on because I'm not feeding him"!

5) Heartbreak after calming down and realising (again) what's been damaged/eaten. With this comes intense sadness, and through tears, grief, and gritted teeth, I tidy and clean (perhaps in an attempt to regain control over something)...

6) Guilt from the things I had screamed and cursed in my anger; and the way I had behaved for the few minutes prior to this new phase (including yelling at my husband, telling him that it's all his fault because he wanted the f*%*^#g dog)

7) Buy something on eBay to make me feel better about myself/the situation, which also allows me time to work out whether I can face the neighbours again after what they'd just heard/witnessed......

The problem with this last phase is that I usually have absolutely no idea what I want to buy!! Which totally sucked, because I really wanted to be excited about something after what had just happened and after the crazy emotional roller-coaster that I had just stepped off (in only a few minutes!)

And, lastly...

8) Eat chocolate.

Which (annoyingly, but not surprisingly) does absolutely nothing to benefit my internal wish of having a smaller waistline... Leading to this cycle being repeated from Phase #4 - making completely irrational new rules that I can never keep, and usually forget.

Oh well... Diet can start when we take the dog back and ask for a refund.

On the tip of his tongue!

Discovering some chalk this week while I was tidying up, I decided to surprise the kids with a spontaneous creative afternoon:

Chalk drawings on our front porch!

While I was looking at the photos I took of them, I couldn't help but notice the amount of times Jonathan had his tongue poking right out! I think I used to poke my tongue out a bit as I was growing up... You know, while I was deeply concentrating on something super important or something...

But this... This is just ridiculous!

I seriously don't think he can poke his tongue out any further than this:

It certainly does look like he was in deep, deep concentration

drawing whatever it was he was supposed to be drawing :)

... I think it's a squirrel.

Back to church!

Click here to see this photo and information better!

Yesterday, our church hosted 'Back To Church Sunday' - a day for people who had maybe gone to church before, but due to life's busy interruptions may not have gone for a little while... Or maybe a decade or so. When my husband mentioned it was our 10-year-anniversary early next year, I came to truly appreciate how quickly time can disappear!

So, to welcome people back to church...

... I made cupcakes!

My attempt to a) trace the cross used for the 'Back to Church Sunday' flyer, and b) combine and melt two different colours of chocolate; looked a bit like this...

Because nothing says "Welcome back" like chocolate!

After many, many minutes of meticulous piping, a wave of inspiration (though my husband says "insanity") washed over me and I decided to try and capture the idea of re-creation/new life by making fondant butterflies, that I folded and placed on cooling wire, then I drizzled some remaining melted chocolate over once I had traced enough crosses!

I'm finding it easier to make chocolate decorations to go on top of cupcakes... Using baking paper, a snap-lock bag with a small hole in a corner, and a sheet of paper with an image of what you want to trace is all you need. The stencil helps keep the chocolate images consistent... Hopefully no one comes up with the idea of a "chocolate printer", as then I'll be out of a job because of delicious technology.

My husband playing with our new digital camera,
obsessed with being 'artistic'.

I spent a fair amount of time making the icing for these cupcakes. Dropping tiny amounts of alternate colourings (pink & blue) into the mixture, aiming for the exact purple of the flyer cross... I think I came pretty close! But... Again, I had underestimated how much icing I would need, so my second (slightly rushed) batch of icing was more of a "yeah, that's close enough" kind of purple.

I probably spent far too much time organising the 'display' of the cupcakes onto their platters, with the fondant butterflies placed around the edges of each, in between the cupcakes... But I guess that's all part of the fun of creating! :)

I enjoy baking, and I enjoy church.

And I especially enjoy when I get to combine the two!

Halloweeeen!

Halloween... Not something that we 'celebrate' in our family (or Australia even - I'm not sure why it's become such a popular event in the past couple of years), but having children who go to school, they come home excited about Halloween, and even counting down until the night, when they bargain to go out with their friends 'trick-or-treating'.

To them, Halloween isn't associated with witchcraft, zombies, harvesting festivals, undead spirits, and paganism...

It's about free lollies, free chocolates, and dressing up!

It's a fun thing for them to do and be involved in with their friends, and a hard thing to exclude them from when it is splattered everywhere in the shops and at school... Well, since it's Halloween (so I've been told), I thought I would share some creative foods that I made for a Halloween themed evening at church last year (for fun, and as an opportunity to invite people who wouldn't normally come to church - we had a dress-up night; listened to a sermon about angels, demons, and spirits -good and bad- in the Bible; and walked through the graveyard).

Spider cupcakes:

My spider cupcakes were basic cupcakes with different coloured buttercream icing. The spiders were made out of Malteasers, crispy M 'n' Ms, and licorice straps. I don't particularly like licorice (in fact, I think it is disgusting - but some people love it), and couldn't think of anything else that I could use for spider legs!

"Scream" ghost face biscuits:

I used an egg shaped cookie cutter to make these fout of shortbread, then used white royal icing and chocolate fudge writing frosting for the 'face'. Using letter cutters, I spelled 'Halloween', purely for presentation purposes :)

Last year, I attached John 3:16 to Freddo Frogs (or was it Milky Ways) that I popped into kids' buckets and bags when they knocked on my door dressed up in their costumes... This year, Ropes Crossing Church has provided 'Trick or Treat' leaflets, explaining in simple language the best free treat of all - everlasting life through Jesus.

"A day of playing dress-up and getting free candy is every child's dream. But children need to know that while trick or treating on Halloween is fun, the best treat of all has been given to us by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ."

(Read more at Gospel-Centred Publishing)

Though we don't make a big deal of it, Halloween is a great opportunity
to be a Christian influence in a world that desperately needs saving...

Aaaaand, because I really like baking, and melting chocolate...
Aaaaand because I just couldn't help myself...

I made some mini spider cupcakes :)

bluRopes!

Allow me to start with some rough conversations I've had with my husband

regarding this event:

   -- Three weeks prior to bluRopes --

Me: Hey, so bluRopes is coming up soon... And I've just had a really crazy idea!

Husband: ... Go on.

Me: So you know how church is having a barbeque... Well, we could also have cupcakes to sell!!

Husband: Okay, but who's going to make them?

Me: Well, I could!

Husband: No. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances. No cupcakes.

Me: But-

Husband: No cupcakes.

   -- A few days later --

Me: So, you remember how you said you were fine with me making some cupcakes for bluRopes?

Husband: No, I remember saying absolutely no cupcakes.

Me: But I've already got ideas for how to do them! They could have blue icing, and I could make melted chocolate musical notes to put on top of them!

Husband: Uh huh.

Me: Because it's a music event... Called bluRopes.

Husband: I get it.

Me: With music! You play music, and therefore you'd like me to make cupcakes.

Husband: That's a kind of twisted logic.

Me: Maybe I'll just make just a few... I promise I won't go crazy.

Husband: Fine. But don't make more than a hundred. Like, seriously. Not even a hundred and one.

Me: Okay, no more than a hundred... (clapping my hands in delight because he had changed his mind!)

   -- Two weeks until bluRopes --

Husband: (checking Facebook at the time, looking at a photo I had posted of our re-arranged freezer with perhaps a few more than 100 cupcakes in it) Nat, why do we have 218 cupcakes in the freezer?!

Me: Um... I kind of maybe baked another 100 cupcakes... Today.

Husband: You did what?!

Me: But it's okay! They're all in the freezer; I washed up afterwards, and I won't bake any more... Because, well, there's no more room left anyway...

   -- One week until bluRopes --

Me: So with the cupcakes, right... I was thinking that maybe we could wrap them up?

Husband: No. Absolutely not. No wrapping. Bakeries don't wrap their cupcakes!

Me: But they will look so pretty - like little presents!

Husband: Nat. Seriously. There's no need to wrap them. They can just be put straight into people's hands on the night.

Me: But what if they want to keep it until later?

Husband: That's their problem!

Me: But I may have already bought little bags for them...

Husband: I thought you promised you wouldn't go mental.

Me: Soorrryyy...

   -- The night before bluRopes --

I made more cupcakes... And also decided that instead of just blue icing for all of them, I would make a blue/green icing combination, and a red/yellow combination, because Redwoods was also playing! I couldn't have felt more proud of my own brilliance!

I also melted chocolate and traced musical note upon musical note onto baking paper and set them aside - ready for the following day!

   -- The day of bluRopes --

Starting pretty much as soon as I woke up and made myself a coffee, I took the cupcakes out of the freezer and placed them in rows over the (entire) kitchen bench, all in their colour co-ordinated (blue/green and red/yellow) sections... Oh man! I forgot about pink! While they were defrosting, I made (in batches) 3.5 kilos of icing... I then counted how many of each colour I had, and without wanting it all to be colourfully imbalanced, I decided that the pink ones could have a white/chocolate combination on them.

With batches of icing, I piped the icing onto the cupcakes. Then I went around and placed the chocolate musical notes on them...

Cupcakes were taking over my kitchen!

Despite all that icing, though, I ran out of it at 200 cupcakes! I went slightly nuts at my poor husband because he refused to buy me more icing sugar to make more icing for the remaining 60 cupcakes! He said that there was already plenty of cupcakes, but I was freaking out because there was so many left still to ice!

I asked him (starting calmly, escalating to crazy) to "Please, please can you just go and buy me some more icing sugar? I really don't want to get all cranky and crazy, so please just do what I've asked you to do!"

To distract myself from my ingredient disaster, I melted some chocolate and made more musical notes, double notes this time, instead of single ones and just kept on going until either the chocolate ran out, or the baking paper...

I don't even remember which one it was!

My husband left to go and set up for the evening. I hoped he wouldn't be long and would be back with his shining armour, and with icing sugar!

Meanwhile, with tongs, I started placing the finished cupcakes into the bags and tied them up... This part was honestly the most time consuming of the whole story, and also the part where I wondered "Why, oh why, had I decided to do this part and not listen to my husband?!"

Then saw how good they looked and remembered ;)

I looked at the time, and it was quickly running out! Just as I had packed the last finished cupcake into it's bag and tied it up, my (wonderful, wonderful) husband came back with icing sugar for me, and I was able to ice another 30... Before I ran out of margarine! Rahh! What I had already iced would just have to do.

At least most of them sold...

Well... About half of them sold.

Probably should have stopped at 100.

Deefa at the farm...

We have just come back from giving ourselves a spontaneous extended long weekend... We went to visit family, who live on a sheep and cattle farm, and it was so nice changing scenery and enjoying life slow down for a few days.

I think the boys in my family were the ones who enjoyed this trip the most (they were totally in their 'zone')... Fresh air; thousands of acres to run around in; dogs; and quad bikes. A love they all share.

The day before we were to return home, we went on a very long quad bike ride around many paddocks to check their pasture. Deefa came with us, but he was not a big fan of riding in the quad bike, like the other farm dogs. So he ran beside the bikes instead, and looked fairly content with doing that.

That was when my husband clocked him running at 45km p/h!

As well as being a super quick puppy, we found out over the weekend that our half border collie puppy has absolutely no interest in sheep! So much for being (half) a 'sheep dog'!

He was much more interested in playing with the other dogs/puppies; eating the grass; and running like mad through the paddocks next to us on the quad bikes... He went for his first swim in the creek, and didn't seem to mind it that much... He often plays in the puddles whenever it floods in our backyard, so we were interested in finding out what he'd think of being neck deep in water.

Deefa has such a nice running stride, but gee he looked old when he stopped.

Poor thing must have run about 20km on that trip. And that was just one of the times we went out and about on the farm!

It was no surprise, then, that on the way back from our 2 hour bike ride to check the pastures for the sheep/cattle, Deefa was more comfortable/happy riding in the back of the quad bike :)

The next day, still recovering from all the running he had done for three days, he slept and snored for most of the 6 hours in the car ride back home, which was very cute indeed...

I suppose he can stay :)