Owl Themed Party (hoo hoo whoo is twoo?)

Our Little Man is Two!!!!! When and how did that happen?? Just can't believe how quickly this little man is growing up. And what an amazing man he is growing up to be, with a heart of gold, totally loveable, courageous and 100% fearless. He really knows how to keep us on our toes and drive us crazy but at the same time with just one little smile from him he has us wrapped around his little pinkie. This little man really does pull on our heart strings!!!!

So I know I am getting all mushy and stuff so I will stop for now and actually talk about what this post is about: An Owl Themed Party!!! Lets just say I went a little owl crazy when putting this party together. There were owls everywhere from beginning to end of the party. Lets take a look: 

I even had an owl infestation in my flowers:

For the kiddies food table I decided to go for a brown and blue theme, and all the food was linked to the owl theme:

 For the adults table I decided to go with a more elegant colour scheme of brown and creme, and of course there were owls present on the adult table too:

Did you spot all the "pieces of tree" I used to write what each food item was?? When I saw them I just had to use them for this party. I really thought it was a cute little touch.

I also had a couple of activities for the kids to do: colouring in and playing (okay really going wild) with balloons. The balloons was defiantly the favourite of the day:

After all the fun activities and the loading up on food and cookies and all the sweet goodness, we had even more sweet goodness...............................The Cake:

And of course there were party favours for everyone to take home:

I gave each child a bowl with a chocolate brownie biscuit. I turned each bowl into an owls "nest" and after adding the "owls" I also added "eggs" (smarties).

This party was very cute and was so much fun to put together. Just a quick side note with this party:
I think I might have made a bit of an oops when I put this party together. Remember the "nest" with the eggs and owl???

Well as cute as it was and as much as I loved it, I think doing it was a mistake because when I offered my older son an egg he took it and then gave it back to me and said "I don't want to eat baby owl"!!!! Oops!!!!! And he hasn't had eggs since.

Egg Free Friday: Vanilla Biscuits Recipe

Today's recipe is a very simple one that I often use when I want to bake with my children. We have a lot of fun cutting out different shapes from the dough. Last year Chanukah we used this recipe to make a biscuit candle Menorah. Was very yummy!!!!!

Ingredients:

150g butter (or margarine), cut into small pieces
225g flour
125g sugar
1tsp vanilla essence

Direction:

1. Sift flour into large bowl
2. Add the butter (or margarine) and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
3. Stir in the sugar and vanilla essence
4. Mix together to form a fine dough
5. Roll out dough and cut the dough into any desired shape.
6. Bake @ 180 C for 15-20 mins 

Make these on your own or with your children, either way make them and ENJOY!!!!!!!!

Lego Ninjago Cake

I was asked to make a Lego Ninjago Cake for a 7 year old boy and I have to be honest that until I was asked I had never even heard Ninjago. So I did quite a bit of research on Ninjago and I even watched a bit of an episode. Then I was given a couple of the Ninjago toys and that's what I used as my inspiration.

                                                                    My Inspiration

I made a very yummy but simple chocolate fudge brownie cake, which I covered with chocolate butter-cream icing (yum)

Then I really got down to business!!!!!
I made my own Ninjago figures. Take a look:

 And then I went a little bit further with the whole lego theme:

 And this is the final product:

I am really happy with how it turned out. I just hope the birthday boy was happy too!!!

Egg Free Friday: Brownies Recipe

This weeks recipe is one of my favourite recipes ever. It is easy, simple and absolutely fabulous. When I first started baking without eggs and I tried to do brownies I found it all very complicated and left me with a major mess to clean up.  At first I thought that if there is no egg to combine the ingredients I would have to use something else, so I would make a flour paste before putting the rest of the ingredients together and then once it had cooled I would combine it all together. but like I said this was very complicated and waaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy too messy. So one day I decided to just try combing all the ingredients without making the paste and oh my word it came out amazing!!!!!!!

Here is the best egg free recipe ever!!!!!!!

Ingredients:

21/2 cups plain flour

11/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup water

1 cup vegetable oil (although i normally use just under a cup)

1 tsp vanilla extract


Directions:

1. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.

2. Pour in water, vegetable oil and vanilla; mix until well blended.

3. Spread evenly in a 23x33cm (9x13) baking tin.

4. Bake @ 180 C for 25 to 30 minutes. (Once it it done the top should no longer be shiny)

Once they are done pour yourself a big glass of milk, cut a big piece of brownie and ENJOY!!!!!!

Egg Free Friday: Pancake Recipe

So you've heard of Meatless Monday, well now I'm bringing you egg free Friday!!! Why???
Well I have been a vegetarian since I was 12 years old and I don't eat meat, chicken, fish or eggs, Although I do eat things made with eggs but only because I was told I need to get more protein from somewhere, but to be honest I really, really prefer to cook and bake without eggs. I even started working on a collection of egg free recipes. Then a couple of months ago I brought out my recipes again because a friend of mine (who cannot eat eggs) came to stay with me.

So now I am back to using my egg free recipes and I am loving it!!!!!

The first recipe I am going to share in this series is my egg free pancake recipe.

EGG FREE PANCAKES: 

Ingredients: 

 

1 cup white flour
3 tablespoons white sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 tablespoons margarine
3/4 cup water
2 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

Directions:

1. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together into medium mixing bowl.

2. Melt 2 1/2 Tbsp margarine in frying pan until melted.

3. Be sure to tip the pan side to side to coat all over.

 

4. Pour melted margarine in a small bowl, add water. Mix well.

5. Stir liquid mixture into the dry ingredients until it is thoroughly moistened.

6. Add vanilla essence and cinnamon.

7. Cook the pancakes over medium-high heat on the stove-top.

 

8. Cook pancakes until the tops are bubbly and the bottoms browned.

9. Turn the pancakes over to cook other side (approximately four minutes per side). 

 

Serve with your favourite pancake toppings.

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!

Teddy Bears Picnic Themed Party

The latest party I did was a Teddy Bears Picnic Party for a friend of mine's daughter. It wasn't a very big party but I still had so much fun putting it together and I think it came out wonderfully. (just a side note: remember how I said when I was putting together the Noah's Ark Party I kept singing the Noah's Ark song???? Well the same thing happened with this party, I had the Teddy Bear's Picnic party song in my head for days!!!)

Anyway so back to the party, take a look at how the party came out:

My favourite part of the party was the cake. I really love how my little teddy bears came out.

Summer Holiday is Over!!!!!

Okay wow, we made it through the summer holiday and the boys have gone back to school. It actually wasn't as bad as we thought it would be and we found some really fun stuff to do with the boys.

So now that the holidays are over I am back to crafting, party planning, teaching and blogging.

So as of next week I will be sharing a lot with all you blogger fans out there.

Have a great weekend and see you next week!!!!

Noah's Ark Themed Party

I put together a Noah's Ark Themed party for a friend of mine, whose twins turned 2. In fact that is how I got to the theme: 2 x 2= Noahs Ark. (Don't laugh but the entire time I was working on the party I would sing "they all go in two by two, hoorah, hoorah" in my head.)

I had a lot of fun putting together this party and it was great fun working together with my friend on the party stuff.

Here take a look at how I put together the party:

At the entrance I had a sign showing where to go for the party (and of course some balloons):

I made a cute little box for the presents to go into:

Then I set up a table with different animal masks for each child to take:

And here is the party table:

Cute? I thought so :)
And of course I took pictures of all the food:

And here's the cake I made:

I think it looked quite cute but I defiantly want to better my cake making skills. They just not perfect yet!!! (oops is that my ocdness coming out again???)

For the party favours I made snake shaped brownie cookies and my friend got little animal finger puppets. We then found this cute boat shaped paper "bowls" and used those to put the party favours in.
(Just a funny side story: When my friend and I went to buy the paper bowls the lady who helped us asked us what we were planning on doing with them because they were a new product and we were the first people to buy them)

Here take a look at how they were used:

Hope you enjoyed taking a look at my latest party!!!!
Thank you 'N' for letting me be apart of the boys special day. Happy Birthday to my "nephews".