Cupcakes!!

The latest faze to hit our house is cupcakes. Partly because I have been drooling over food blogs, partly because I look at far too many cooking magazines and partly because the kids love them. Now Nick and Sarah both wanted to make cupcakes last night, but of course they weren't content to both help with the same batch. No, Sarah wanted vanilla ones with pink icing and Nick wanted chocolate ones. So I did a quick search of some of my fav sites and found this divine Devil’s Food Cupcake with Chocolate Buttercream and Vanilla Scented Cupcakes. Made a few alterations to the recipes and voila, here is the kids finished result. They decorarated them with whatever they could find in the cupboards and the more colourful the better in their opinion!!

Then quite by conicidence at work today these people that come round selling cheap books at workplaces arrived with Susannah Blake's Cupcake book for only NZD$8. A steal as it retails here for $25. So I grabbed a copy of that and the kids are perusing that at the moment wondering what amazing creations they are going to whip up next!

Right, I have decided I am never going to be one of those bloggers who religiously writes every day in my blog. I have great intentions, but life just gets in the way!! For example I have had the last 3 days off work and this is the first chance I have had to go online and catch up on everyone's blogs. Spent Friday catching up an all the things that never get done when I am working...you know those mundane things like housework and laundry. Saturday was sports day so with 4 kids to cart round and watch at soccer and netball meant I never got home til late afternoon.

Tony had tickets for the All Blacks vs Canada game on Saturday night so dropped the girls at various friends' houses then hurtled off over there. It was a great atmosphere and Nick's first rugby game so he was over the moon. We were sitting about 5 metres from the try line so got to see Dan Carter in all his glory as he scored 3 tries. A couple of those Canadians weren't too bad either ;-)

Today we went to Rotorua to see my aunty who was in hospital with a broken leg and caught up with friends as well. Only got home a couple of hours ago and that is the weekend over.

Gonna curl up with a book in front of the fire now. Reading Celia Lashlie's book "He'll be ok". Kind of frightening to think in another few years my loving cuddly boy will become this mute adolescent who occasionally grunts and tests all the boundaries.

Thanks

Thanks for the feedback. Was a long weekend here so have been away for the last 3 days. Will have a look at both those 2 sites in the weekend. Have an assignment due Friday so need to put head down and focus on that rather than playing on the internet!! Was supposed to work on it while I was away but didn't get too much done unfortunately.

Updated blogs

Ok I have been perservering with blogrolling.com for a while now to notify me when my blogs are updated. It seems that it no longer works. None of the blogs I read ever get updated now so it means a manual check which I don't really have time for. I am going to change to another service. Has anyone got any good suggestions??

Cold mornings, hot brekkie

Actually, as much as I hate summer coming to an end and the days getting colder and shorter, the one good thing is I can start eating porridge again. It is not something I ever eat in summer, but there is something comforting about a bowl of steaming porridge on those cold foggy mornings. Plus rolled oats have a double benefit of being high in fibre as well as helping ward off coronary artery disease which I am genetically linked to. Dad had a heart atack at 48, as did 2 of my cousins on his side. Both his siblings died at early ages of heart disease and most of the cousins have high cholesterol. So I was very pleased to see the latest research showing how good rolled oats are in helping prevent this. At the moment as we have an abundance (and that is an understatement!!) of feijoas so I top my porridge with fresh feijoas, a dash of trim milk and an ever so slight sprinkle of brown sugar. Yum!!

Autumn is here...

...and with it the multitude of leaves that also occurs at this time of year. I love the beautiful autumn golds, russets and reds and the sunny clear days, but those leaves just create such a mess. Did try getting the kids to rake them up which went fine then they played hide and seek in the piles so they all got scattered again!!



However, autumn is pumpkin season and pumpkin soup has to be my all time favourite soup. The kids wanted a change from that tonight though so I am on the hunt for a pumpkin and ricotta lasagne. I got 102,000 results when I googled it!!! So I went to one of my fav websites instead and will use this recipe.



Last night was fun. I went to Puppetry of the Penis with a bunch of gals from work. It was hilarious. Nothing sexual at all, just lots of laughs. What those guys can do with their anatomy is just amazing. I must admit I was cringing at times thinking "That's gotta hurt!!" The guys work well together and their comedy routine was very good.

Need to put head down for the next couple of weeks. Another assignment due in on 12 June and I haven't even started writing it. I got an A- for my last one which I was pleased about. Got marked down as I went way over the word limit. I was hoping to get away with it, but 1500 words over was pushing it I guess :-)

Mother's Day in NZ

Well, it's Mother's day here today. The kids are with their dad this weekend but I am picking them up later and we are going out for lunch. They had made me cards which was really sweet so I opened them in bed this morning over coffee.

Went out for tea last night just to our local haunt then onto the movies. There wasn't a lot of choice so we chose Wild Hogs. Didn't feel like anything too heavy as it had been a pretty full on day at work with a couple of deaths so needed some light hearted relief. There wasn't a lot of choice as you can see. Tony was all for The Shooter or 300, but they so do not appeal.

Our local movie theatre has 4 theatres but 2 of these only seat about 60 people so it's almost like sitting in your lounge at home with a bunch of friends. Very cosy! With our town only having a population of 13,500, you are bound to know someone there. And wouldn't you know it, I ended up sitting next to friends of ours, but didn't realise until the intermission!