In February 2011 my daughter hosted a flower themed afternoon tea party.  We had cupcakes, biscuits in flower shapes (of course), sandwiches, scones and chocolate covered strawberries.  It was a lovely afternoon and almost all of the decorations were made by myself with my daughter’s ‘help’!  It is really quite amazing if you think outside the box and use what you already have around the house.  One thing I did learn was the type of food was a bit too fancy for the 9 year old girls -they did not like the white chocolate scones or the flourless orange cake, luckily the adults did so next time I will just host one of these for my friends rather than my daughter’s!

in June 2011, I was commissioned to make two cakes for two very different occasions: a boys’ 7th birthday party; and a baby shower for a friend.  I was asked whether I could make a dune buggy cake, ‘sure I said’ then quickly searched dune buggy cakes online to see what I was in for.  As you can see it turned out pretty good – I even put chocolate crackle mixture around the bottom of the cake so that the buggy was driving over rocks and sand!  The baby shower cake had to fit within a pink butterfly theme and this was what I came up with.

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each year my daughter picks a theme for her birthday party.  In 2011 it was a handbag party.  She chose it based on the handbag cake shown in a cake book.  As the cake was pink, the colour theme had to be pink, black and silver. 

​The cake
I baked a rich chocolate cake, iced it in chocolate ganache and rolled icing.  To save time and to make it more authentic, I bought black plastic handles and placed them on the cake.  I had a number of people having to take a second look as they thought it was a real handbag rather than a cake!

Wait a minute, this is a cake NOT a handbag!

Decorations
I made 21 tissue pom poms in various sizes in pink, black and silver and hung them around the dinner table and lounge room.  They look awesome and a cheap way to decorate a room.  The only costs involved are sheets of tissue paper and string.  I also had some handbag images printed and stuck them around the place with blu tac.  Along with a Happy Birthday sign.  With some small groups of balloons the room looked fantastic.
Please let me know if you would like any further details on the handbag party as a theme for your next little girls birthday.

our passion fruit vine has gone nuts this year and we have been patiently waiting for the hundreds of fruit to ripen.  They are now ripening at a rapid rate so I have had to find ways to use this fruit.

here is the vine, it has completely taken over the kids trampoline!

so what did I make with the passion fruit that are ripening about 10 a day.  I made passionfruit muffins, banana & passionfruit bread and passionfruit curd.  The curd was great, that used about 16 passionfruit!

I will keep you posted as to my other creative ways to use passion fruit, other than just putting it over ice-cream!

with February being the month of LOVE, I thought I would share my tips for a great date night at home!