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Make It Perfect

Make It Perfect

.Spook-tacular!

Halloween came a little early this year…tonight we were privileged to attend another Spook-tacular Halloween party held at the Webster’s house. Jackie and Mark (and Mel and Dean) have pulled off awesome Halloween “Trunk or Treat” parties for the last three years. We love them, it is fun to dress up and catch up with friends and of course the kids love going from car boot, to car boot collecting lollies!
I took the easy option this year of dressing up as a hippie! At the last minute Jaron decided to dress up as “Two Face” from Batman (I think…or is it Superman? I’m not into Super Heroes!) Mum surprised Oscar and Lil costumes earlier in the week – they looked very cute! Tommy doesn’t need a costume because he is the cutest baby around!!For once we were blessed with a beautiful night…not too chilly and clear skies.

There were some VERY clever costumes this year. Check out the “Three Blind Mice”
“Where’s Wally?”Tinman and ScarecrowMiss Paparazzi herself!Our kids came home with SOOO many lollies…I like that they are still young enough not to realise that most of their lollies mysteriously disappear overnight 😉 We loved what Louise did to Levi’s boat…and then dressed up the family as pirates! Very cool!After trunk or treating, a sausage sizzle and some games, the night was topped off with a fun hayride through the paddocks on the back of Uncle Kim’s truck. Lil loved it so much that she threw a tantrum when it was time for it to finish so she ended up taking another ride!
It was such a fun night…a bad thing happened on the way home though.

We were driving along the highway and drove over a crest in the road, right in front of the car appeared a wombat bigger than any wombat I have ever seen – it was HUGE. It appeared so quickly and there was a car coming in the opposite direction so we couldn’t swerve and drove straight over it. It was the hardest, loudest hit and Jaron and I both knew that it wasn’t good so we pulled into a rest stop to check out the damage. The bottom part of the front of our car (pretty technical term!) is all broken and was dragging on the road and one of the fog lights had fallen out. Lucky we had some fake spiderweb in the boot that Jaron used to tie everything back together to get us home!! The car still drives and everyone is safe, we’ll just have to take it to the smash repairs this week and cross our fingers that it isn’t going to cost too much to fix! Life goes on 🙂

October 17, 2009
Make It Perfect

.dishcloths.

Jayne gave me this funky dishcloth. It is crocheted and she bought it from here.

Is it not one of the the coolest things you have seen? I’m loving the colours. It sat on the windowsill above my kitchen sink for a couple of days because I couldn’t bring myself to use something so nice on dishes! After I had a couple of days of enjoyment I thought I should probably put it to use. It is UNREAL! Seriously, I’m loving it. It is super absorbent and perfect for wiping the benches and the kids dirty hands and faces. I like to do my dishes with a scrubbing brush but this dishcloth is great for all of the wiping that goes on in the kitchen.

I love it so much that I was tempted to go and buy some more, but being the crazy crafter that I am I have decided to try and crochet some myself! I’m not much of a crocheter, have made flowers before but that is it. I reckon if I can master flowers I can whip up a square!

P.S. You may remember when I knitted these dishcloths awhlie back? They were lovely but way too thin and flimsy. I think they are better suited for washing faces rather than dishes. I have ordered some chunkier 100% cotton wool this time and think crocheting will be much, much faster.

October 11, 2009
Make It Perfect

.Recipe Monday.

Another recipe for the slow-cooker. I have never had much success cooking chicken in the slow-cooker, but I think the secret may be to only cook chicken with the bone in so that it doesn’t dry out during cooking…

Slow-Cooker Ginger Honey Chicken Thighs
10 chicken thighs (bone in, skin removed)
1/2 cup honey
3/4 cup light soy sauce
3 Tbs tomato sauce
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbs grated fresh ginger
1 tin crushed pineapple
2 Tbs cornflour
4 Tbs water

Pour honey, soy sauce, tomato sauce, garlic, ginger and pineapple (with juice) into slow-cooker and mix well.
Place thighs in slow cooker and turn to coat with mixture.
Cover and cook for 4 hours on High.
Mix the cornflour and water together in a small bowl. Remove thighs from slow-cooker. Stir the cornflour mixture into remaining sauce in the slow-cooker until it thickens. Serve sauce over the chicken.

October 11, 2009
Make It Perfect

.Pirate Party.

Today was Pirate Party day. I can’t remember whose idea it was to go with the pirate themed party – mine or Oscars? Never mind…we both thought it was pretty cool!
Oscar had such a fun day with lots of his little friends coming around to play. Lil was a bit feral (who would think to hold a party during her nap time?) but we all still had a fun time.
The kids started off decorating pirate hats with stickers, they all looked very cute wearing them – I wish I took more/better photos of the day but kept forgetting!We played pass-the-parcel and inside each layer was a pirate eye patch and little treat.
After a game of Pin the Eye Patch on the Pirate and “What’s The Time Mr Pirate?” we ate lunch. Jaron made little pirate ships out of some wood scraps and dowel and as the kids finished eating we gave them a piece of fabric and some textas to decorate a sail to stick onto their ships.
Earlier in the week I went around the backyard and took photos of different things and made a treasure map on the computer. The kids had to follow the map to all of the different landmarks and collect gold coins at each spot.
And…voilla…the treasure at the end of the map…
This cake was *almost* a total disaster. I should probably have used a recipe I had tried before but decided to use a marble cake recipe I found online. The cake was fine, just didn’t rise as much as I would have liked and ended up only being about 5cm high. Not tall enough to make a decent treasure chest. Lucky for me, I have a husband with good ideas! He always seems to “save the birthday cake day” – he propped the cake up with Tupperware containers to make it look higher then I iced around the cake AND containers and you couldn’t even tell it wasn’t all cake! I like to call it “cake plastic surgery”!! The lid was made out of a cardboard box (thanks to Jaron) and I just iced the outside of it! We were pretty impressed with the end result and it was actually better than a huge cake because it meant that most of it was eaten at the party and we didn’t have any wastage. A few of the kids said that it was the best cake they had ever seen…bless their hearts…but from a child’s point of view I reckon any cake piled with lollies would be looking pretty enticing!
Our happy pirates…I have a heap of left-over Make it Perfect bags from Quilt Market last year so used them as the take-home goody bags. Along with a few treats and little toys, I made each child a fishing set to take home and play with. They turned out really cute…but I wasn’t feeling so enthused when I was cutting out, laminating and re-cutting 100 little fish! It was worth it in the end though!!

October 10, 2009