Monday, June 22, 2009

Sling giveaway

Check out this site.  They are giving away a beautiful linen sling and muslin swaddling blankets.  

I make normal cakes too


Lemon with raspberry preserve and buttercream.  Sides are dusted with white chocolate shavings.  The raspberries and leaves are from my garden ;)


Sunday, June 21, 2009

Snapshot Sunday

This week I thought I'd put up pictures of all the flowers in my yard.  

Snap peas

Russian blue potatoes

Feverfew and mint

Such a beautiful time of year. 

See Sarah for the original.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Eddie's Third Birthday Cupcakes

For Eddie's funky buggy party.  Lemon cupcake with vanilla buttercream.  Hand painted fondant leaves and gumpaste bugs.  The butterflies were my favourites ;)

And I added the 'labels' gadget, so you can find all my cakes in one category.










Thank you Melissa and Eddie!

Just a Taste...

Another order today.  Here's a quick pic of some of the hand painted gumpaste decorations for Eddie's bug party:

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Snapshot Sunday

Today we:

built 'space efficient' Lego castles

had spinach and berry smoothies

witnessed multiple car collisions

read board books

and took the chuck wagon for a spin.  Big pot o' soup.

Here for the original.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Mushrooming!

I spied a mushroom when I was out walking with friends a few days ago. Yesterday I called up a friend of mine who knows how to identify mushrooms and invited her over for dinner and a forest mushroom hunt. So first we had a fabulous supper of mostly our own produce(!), some local chocolates for desert, and then we went on a little adventure to find the mushroom.



These aren't my photos...I forgot to bring my camera. We identified the mushroom as 'Agaricus augustus', commonly called the Prince mushroom. It is very rare, except on the west coast and islands. It is also one of the few summer sprouting mushrooms (which was why I noticed it in the first place - how odd for a mushroom to sprout in early June!). They are entirely edible. Our little mushroom book says," Very edible! One of the best!"

There were only three mushrooms, so, like responsible mushroomers, we only picked one (the second rule of mushrooming is never to pick more than 1/3 of any crop). And we took it home, sliced it up, sauteed it in butter and white wine. I wish I had taken photos. Oh well. Hopefully there will be many more later this summer! As for the edibility....I can honestly say I have never eaten such a delicious mushroom! My first thought was that it tasted like cheese toast (isn't that bizarre?). It was nutty, creamy, and sweet. One of the identifiers of this mushroom is that it smells like almond extract, and does it ever! There was a residual almondy-ness after it was cooked. It cooked up to be quite yellow. If I can find enough, I will make cream of mushroom soup....I think these mushrooms would make THE best. It puts grocery store mushrooms to shame.



We scoured the forest floor for nearly an hour last night but couldn't find any more. Sigh. I sure hope we can find more. In the meantime, I think I might be forming an unnatural addiction to my mushroom book.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Look who's sitting up by himself!

Kitchen Organization

It's a slow and painful process. Especially with two babes - one that doesn't like to be put down and one that loves to help 'sort'.

I snagged two boxes full of old canning jars off f freecycle....half of them are upstairs in the art room, ready to be used for painting and other crafts, and all the larger sized jars I've kept downstairs to organize my dry-goods.



In an effort to be frugal, and also eat more healthfully, we buy almost all our pantry items in bulk, cook from scratch, and produce all our own baked goods. I was getting tired of fighting the cascade of plastic bags that fell out of the cupboard every time I opened the doors. I was also tired of buying multiples because the first bag of kamut was hidden under the bag of brown rice. When I finally switched over to the jars, I found three bags of almonds! And three bags of sesame seeds. And FOUR bags of barley.



Here's everything all pretty. You wouldn't believe the mountain of plastic bags I had afterwards.



Now I need to do my spice cupboard. That will be a job and a half.

This post was brought to you by my favourite snack:



Avocado with lime juice and freshly ground pepper on rice crackers...yummy.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Why are babies so durn cute? (4 months old)

Well, I am having a hard time believing that my wee guy is four months old already. I feel like time is going by rapidly . I suppose that's because I am so much busier with a toddler; I'm not noticing/paying attention to every tiny thing like I did when Abhy was small. Here are some recent shots of the little guy.











Late Snapshot Sunday

But at least I did it this week!  Our camera was out of batteries for a while, and I feel like we've been so busy.  Anyways, here they are this week:







Go here for the original.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

June's 50th

72 cupcakes; chocolate with white chocolate cream cheese frosting, fondant cap, and gumpaste decorations.  24 have real freesia. 



Setting up at the event.  They arranged the cupcakes into beautiful centerpieces on each table.  I thought it was a really clever idea!  They looked great.







Thank you for the pleasure Tara!