Two different BIRTHDAY CAKES

It's Caelan's 7th birthday on Saturday and he's excited especially as he could lose his top two front teeth. The other reason he's excited is because he'll get two birthday cakes (see other birthday cakes here), one for school on Friday and the other on his actual birthday.  Doing a cake for school is quite repetitive, every child having a birthday brings in beautifully iced cupcakes. This means everyone gets the same amount of cake, there's no cutting involved and the only concern is what colour icing you'll use. So keeping this in mind I spent time last week looking at a  few websites trying to get some inspiration.

Caelan reminded me H gave out homemade gingerbread cookies which he loved. I thought that this would be a brilliant idea and you could give each child more than one biscuit. Caelan then started to list his favourite biscuits, only problem was he didn't want any of the usual suspects. So I spent time looking for biscuits/cookies he might want to share with the class. Here are a few I thought we could try.

Spooky Spider Cookies

Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookies





I thought I could make 28 'cake pops'. Cake pops are the latest craze in the cake world. They're excellent for kid's birthdays as each child gets a small bit of cake, they are decorated and as they are on a stick there is minimal waste. Here is what I found.

Angry Bird Cake Pops

Lego Marshmallow Pops

  

Looking at all the beautiful cakes, biscuits and special treats led me to choose two cakes that don't require any cooking. I haven't mastered the gas oven yet so I didn't want to have undercooked cakes or burnt cakes so that's why I chose these two cakes. On Friday Caelan will take this cake to school and his teacher will give it out to 25 kids before the end of the day.

Kierste's Popcorn Cake

This will be Saturday's cake. I'll buy half a sponge slab and then I'll take the time on Friday night to decorate the sponge. This is what I'm hoping to create.

Lego Birthday Cake

So I'm hoping everything goes well with these two cakes. All I need to organise a round cookie cutter so that I can get the little round tops for each of the Lego blocks. All I need to decide now is whether or not I do big blocks like in the picture or I try to do two thinner blocks and make up a number 7 shape. I'll make up my mind after I pick up the cake from Woolworths.



I will share pictures next week, fingers crossed that it all turns out ok. I'm hoping that my Lego blocks look like Lego and I'm not going to do a red block because it'll end up going pink and that won't look to good. I think I'll do blue, white and yellow blocks. I just need to buy more food colouring so that I can add a bit of colour to cakes.

Megan

The week that was.

The weather this week hasn't been ideal for building a house. It's rained every second night and almost every day for the majority of the week so this hasn't allowed the tradies too many hours on site. Its funny that when building you take note of what the weather's doing, you can tell people how many days it rained this month and the number of light showers verses downpours. So I'm happy to say that although the weather hasn't been pleasant there has been some work done and we are one step closer to a completion date.

After the roof tile mix up I was surprised to receive a text message from Mark telling me that he was on site and he was watching the roof tiles go up. I was just down the road picking Caelan up from school so we called in to see what was happening. Nobody was there, it was only 3.10pm and the boys normally knock off at 4pm. So I got out, had a quick look round and took a few photos because the rain clouds were looming. I was happy with what I saw.



1. The inside of the garage roof.     2. Stacking sliding door in the family room.
3. The bath placed in the children's bathroom. 4. Welcome to our front door.

Wednesday was an overcast, cold and wet day so when I went to the block in the afternoon I was surprised to see one of the roofing guys up on our roof. He'd managed to move all the tiles up onto the roof from being on the driveway yesterday. The other good news was that tiles had been placed over the front section of the house just past the front rooms as you come through the front door. With the amount of rain I was really happy with what had been done.

Starting to look like a house.

On Friday morning we all turned up at the house for our meeting with the electrician. I'd given them an old plan that had 29 lights, a fan, 2 t.v points and 27 power points. Our new plan has 49 lights, 2 exhaust light/fans, a fan, 3 t.v points and 28 power points. I now have to go back and talk with the electrician because I've changed the position of one of the power points in the kitchen. So the guys did a few basic things before they had to go off to another job, they'd said they would be coming back in the afternoon.

Some electrical cord.

After Mr Opoes took the girls swimming he called into CTM Strathpine to pick up some of our wet area tiles and then he went off to the block. When he arrived at 10.30am the bricks had been delivered, the missing wardrobe had been finished and the sarking had been put around the walls.

The Ascot brick is on the left and the Hendra is on the right.

Looking at the bricks on site Mr Opoes and I are thinking that we should have chosen the Ascot brick instead of the blended bricks because the Hendra brick isn't pretty.

Sarking around the end of the house, the water tank it behind this silver paper.

I am hoping that when I go today that some of the brick work has been done and I'll get to see what its going to look like. Fingers crossed its better than what I'm thinking.

Megan

Pinterest here I come.

I'm new to blogging and not really up-to-date with technology and all its advancements. So late last year when I discovered many of the blogs I followed were talking about 'Pinterest' and its addictive powers I had no idea what everyone was talking about. I found Pinterest accidentally while looking for cake recipes. It was coming up to Mr Opoes birthday and I wanted to make him something different. I was drawn to all the great images and the more blogs I read the more interested I became.

One February 29th I was sitting on the lounge breast feeding Quinlan while watching 'The Circle' and the panel were talking to IT experts about the latest trends on the Internet. They were going over what Pinterest was and how addictive it can be. 'The female IT panelist was saying that she had put her request in to join Pinterest and after waiting 4 weeks without an invite she asked her friend to invite her to the site'. So at 11am I sent off my request to join Pinterest, as we were moving I was hoping that the invite would be accepted once we'd settled at Ascot but I wasn't going to hold my breathe because I knew it would take a while to get accepted. So 24 hours later I received an email letting me know that I'd been invited to join the site. I was blown away, they had invited me and I hadn't had to wait too long. I was so excited, they must have known it was my birthday in 3 days time.

I went to sign up but it seemed that I needed a facebook or tweeter account and as I didn't have either I needed to join. So I signed up to facebook which took a while because of my poor technical knowledge. So now I have a facebook account that I don't plan on ever using as I don't have enough hours in my day to parent, blog and pinterest let alone keep up with what everyone is doing on facebook. I requested that my family friend me and with just my 3 siblings I've now got 11 friends. Happy me.

So after a few days of looking I've mastered how to pin things I like to my boards, learnt how to delete all the additional boards I'd created accidentally. The next few things I need to learn is how to pin off the Internet when I'm looking at blogs and how to copy my board onto my blog. So far I can do this but it isn't what I want.

 

So I still have a lot to learn but I'm getting there. Maybe one day I'll get this whole technology thing and I'll be able to master tasks like this easier.

Megan

The secret of tiling a roof!

While packing up the rental during the latest move I visited the block a few times to photograph the progress of the house. The first change was the removal of the wrong water tank and the arrival of our Colourbond tank which occurred on 2nd March. The tank was positioned at the rear of the block, it was christened during the day with heavy of rain so this had delayed progress again.

'Paperbark' Colourbond Water Tank.

Last Tuesday I saw the guttering and fascia go up. Our building supervisor Mark rang to talk about the number of down pipes at the front of the house. We came up with a solution and again we have to sign another variation form. I was impressed with how quickly the guttering and fascia went up, 99% of the job was completed by one man and his dog. Mr Opoes was on site at the beginning of the day (he missed Mark by 5 minutes) and he rang to double check that the correct colours had been delivered. The only section missing is near the portico and this won't take too long to complete.

The guttering and fascia along the front of the house. 

We choose 'Loft' for the gutter and 'Classic Cream' for the fascia.

Wednesday saw the safety rail go up around the roof line so that the guys can get started tiling the roof on Friday (9th) morning. The roof tiles were delivered on either Wednesday or Thursday and because nothing else was happening I didn't visit the block on Thursday as I was busy dropping moving boxes off to Renee. I was excited  having the roof tiles go up and after speaking to Mark earlier in the week I was amazed that it would all be completed by March 13th. As we were early for Kindy on Friday I took Mackenna, Viveca and Quinlan to the block to get a look at the roof tiles. I was surprised by the number of tiles and tradies working on the roof. I took a few photographs as I'd noticed that sarking had also gone on some of the walls.

One of the roofer preparing the roof.

I was surprised with the amount of roof tiles that had been delivered but I was even more surprised with the colour of the tile. We'd chosen our roof colour back in November so I was a little hazy on the details BUT I was sure that the tiles were wrong. I contacted Mark to talk about it but I had to wait for him to come out of a meeting first. Not Happy Jan. The colour seemed wrong but I wasn't a hundred percent sure and with Mr Opoes also in meeting all morning I was a little worried. I heard back from Mark at 10am, the wrong coloured roof tiles had been delivered and the guys had just spent over 2 hours laying tiles. The delivery was Monier 'passionfruit' tiles and we'd ordered Monier 'fig' tiles. Have a look at these two pictures and you'll see the difference.

 

Monier 'Passionfruit' a pale pink/purple colour.



Monier 'Fig' a brown/purple colour.

  

So with this wrong delivery and the bad weather we'd been delayed another week, this is not good news especially when you've been given a 14 week build time. I returned on Friday after collecting Caelan from school and I was surprised to see that a few more deliveries had arrived. We now had a bath and all the windows sitting in the garage.

The children's bath.

All the windows are in the garage ready to be put into each room.

As of today March 13th we have all windows in place and 16 piles of 'fig' roof tiles sitting all over the driveway.

16 pallets of roof tiles and enough room for 2 utes to park on the driveway.

Window in our garage.

Two of the windows at the front of our house.

Now the only thing that will hold us up is the weeks worth of rain we have been promised. I'm hoping that the weather holds up and the guys get all the tiles up by Friday afternoon.

Megan

Missing in action

I've been missing in action for 9 days now and it's amazing how time gets away from you. So what exciting things have I gotten up to in the last 9 days? I celebrated my birthday by packing up our rental property and spending some one on one time with Quinlan. Mr Opoes and the kids bought dinner over and we all sat on the floor and ate our dinner. Then the fun started. Monday saw the removalists arrive, it took 3 hours to load everything into the truck and an hour to move most of our stuff in with my in-laws. Tuesday was the move-out clean, so we dropped Caelan at school and Mr Opoes and I loaded more stuff into the car and dropped it off at our new home. Wednesday was move out day. Mr Opoes returned to work, the girls and I meet the carpet cleaner and we hung out while he cleaned our carpets. I left all the windows open so that carpet dried out completely and we returned just after school pick up so that we could make sure everything was perfect. Leaving the windows open had allowed dust to blow in so now I had to sweep the floors again. We rushed off to the real estate agent getting there with 5 minutes to spare.

An idea of the amount of stuff we have

After packing up you still have to unpack your stuff and this seems to take more time. I'm proud to say I'm halfway though the unpacking and re-packing process, I've successfully bought more things with me than we really need. CLOTHING. We seem to have clothes everywhere so I'll be going through everything and pack away all things that we won't need. I hope that when we move into our new house I'll have a few months to go through everything otherwise I'll be filling that house up with clutter and I'll never get rid of it.

I'm hoping to achieve a look like this

So now we have to hope and pray that the weather holds up so that the house gets built. Cross our fingers hoping that we get our bond back and not collect too many additional things so that moving won't be a long process. So far Quinlan hasn't settled into a routine and he wakes numerous times every night, Caelan is finding it difficult having to leave early in the morning for school and the girls are having to learn to be quieter especially as the neighbours are closer at grandma and grandpa's house. Tomorrow I'll give you an update on what's been happening with the house and I'll share some photos.

Megan

A gap he's happy to have.

This month is a busy one for our family, we have some birthdays to celebrate, we are moving out of our rental, Caelan has a talk to give at school and there are a heap of supplies I need to pay off and deliver to the site. So I'm hoping that my memory kicks in so that I don't forget anything on my long to-do-list. Today is my brother in-laws birthday so we'd all like to wish Craig a happy 35th birthday. We hope that you enjoyed your day and that you get to celebrate with friends and loved ones during the weekend.

The other significant event that happened today involved Caelan. He's been at home the last two days due to having an upset stomach so I was really happy that I was with him when this milestone happened at lunchtime. Here is the before picture...



He picked the place he wanted to pose for this photo.



He was eating his lunch which Mr Opoes had prepared for him. After finishing his sandwich Viveca and Caelan asked their father for an apple each, while eating the apple this is what happened.

He lost his first tooth.

If you look closely you can see the new tooth has already broken the skin. Caelan had been having a bit of pain from this tooth as it may have been pushing against the loose tooth but as soon as it was out the pain disappeared. I was surprised with the amount of blood but I soon stopped it by having him gargle salty water - the facial expressions were priceless.

When we picked Mackenna up from Kindy Caelan asked her if there was anything different about him? She looked closely, thought about it and then asked him:

'Where has your wibbly tooth gone?'

'Did it leave Caelan?'

He was so proud you couldn't wipe the smile off his face. We then spent the next 5 hours talking about the tooth fairy and what it was he thought she should give him.

Mr Opoes and I have decided that we aren't going to do the whole tooth fairy thing as it can become a bit of a competition amongst other parents and with four kids it could become expensive. So now Caelan is like everyone else in his class he's minus a tooth.

Megan

Onward and Upward.

The weather's been ideal for building since Monday. No rain, a nice breeze and temperatures around 30 degrees so I was happy to see that we wouldn't be too far behind schedule. The frame work for the walls was meant to be completed by Tuesday (28th February) and the trusses would all be done by Monday (5th March). So you can imagine how surprised I was to get onsite yesterday and to discover that they are right on schedule. We haven't spoken to Mark (building supervisor) but I'm expecting him to call on Friday with a progress report. We shouldn't have any delays but Coral Homes has required their first progress payment and if the bank don't pay it on time then our chippies won't be working until the funds have cleared. Praying every night that there is no problems..

So I thought I'd share some photos with you of what the house looks like. Not long until we have ourselves a roof and work can happen even if it is raining as everyone will be covered.



The view from the living room, see those pallets I have plans for them.



View from the media room through to the garage.

I had to think long and hard about the photo above, I knew I was at the front of the house but its so easy to become confused with which direction your standing because everything looks the same.



This is the view from Caelan's bedroom down towards the Media Room.

Caelan's bedroom is in the far corner of the block so it should be quite and peaceful for him. As he gets older he won't tend to disturb his siblings especially if he's doing any late night assignments.

Our roof trusses, these are lying flat on top of the walls at the moment



We have four piles of trusses just balancing on the roof, three of them are at the front of the house and the fourth is towards the middle of the house.

These are a few little trusses which will probably form part of the portico (veranda) that leads to the front door.

Mr Opoes is going to be surprised when he arrives home on Friday to see the progress that has happened while he's been away. I'm sure that he'll be happy especially as every time it rains he informs me that we won't be moving in just after the 14 week build schedule.

Megan