Amplified

Friday, 3 September 2010

Cake Basics

Friday, 3 September 2010

It's been a busy busy fortnight but the end is almost in sight. Last Saturday I ran the first CakeWoman Cake Basics course - (as opposed to cupcakes) and it went really really well.  Could have done with a few more students in order to actually make a profit, but I enjoyed it and I'm pretty sure the students did too.    The next course up is Children's Cakes which will be similar but with more a a kiddie theme (brightly coloured icing etc etc).

Cooking Adventures

Thursday, 26 August 2010

Jett loves to bake on his days off school. And someone was asking me about a cake for a rainbow themed party the other day - so I'd been checking out rainbow cakes on the web. Which led to our latest cooking adventure...

Bad Fairy.

Tuesday, 17 August 2010

This morning Zali was devastated to discover that the tooth fairy hadn't been last night.  This wasn't good.  I tried to tell her that the tooth fairy probably had Mondays off (when in actual fact I think it's more likely that the tooth fairy stayed up too late last night watching disc 3 of Dexter (the lovable serial killer).  This isn't the first time the tooth fairy has been inconsistant.  In fact once the tooth fairy managed to drop the gold coin practically on Zali's sleeping head and then was unable to locate it again in the dark. This forced a replacement coin to be positioned and of course Zali woke up in the morning and found both coins - and rejoiced at the unexpected doubling in the value of  teeth.  Sadly for Zali, the market value had sunk to its usual level by the time the next tooth dropped out. 

A rambly story with no real point told in 3 parts.

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

I used to walk to primary school. The journey was about 1.4kms and went past three corner shops, all of which sold mixed lollies.  Occasionally, I had 20c or so with me, so I would stop at one of these shops.  I remember one time I bought a chocolate santa and when I bit into it, it was filled with maggots.  Because I didn't know any better, I didn't contact my lawyer and demand a huge compensation payout,  instead I resolved to never again buy a chocolate santa in March, regardless of the price.  You'd think I would have at least demanded a refund but it really just didn't occur to me.

So. Roll forward about 10 years years to when your shoes were a crucially important factor in your social scene (well they were in mine anyway - but I also waited for the school bus in 2 degrees without a school jumper on because I was too cool to wear the royal blue dorky version and my cool navy blue one had fallen apart).  Anyway,  I had an after school job at one of the corner shops which I really didn't like but I got paid $4 an hour  - so with my hard earned money I bought a pair of Adidas Tennis shoes which I loved. Unfortunately after about 4 weeks they started to fall apart. I was devastated, but luckily mum suggested I take them back to the shop (Myers) and ask for a refund - she even wrote me a letter confirming the purchase and how dissappointed I was.  To my surprise Myers were completely happy to refund my shoes and I don't think they even asked to see mum's letter so the shoe story ended happily. But I think that marked the beginning of my resolve to return things which I don't think I've had a fair deal on.

We live close to a Big W department store, but a long long way away from a K-mart (25 minutes). I almost never buy anything from K-Mart because it's too much of a pain to take it back and that is an important part of any purchase. Today for example, I took a pair of Jett's shoes back to Big W. He's been wearing them for 8 weeks but they were beginning to fall apart - the soles were starting to crack on the inside, there was a tear in the outside of the shoe, and the velcro was no longer sticking.  They also looked pretty grotty but to be fair, that wasn't Big W's fault.  As I paid $30 bucks for these Dunlop shoes, I believed that they should at least last one school term, and they have fallen about 3 weeks short.  If I'd only bought the crappy looking $15 pair I would have accepted that 8 weeks was a pretty good deal, but I paid $30 and that is not a good deal in my view. Of course I didn't have a receipt - all I had was a grotty pair of old shoes which the staff behind the customer service desk were reluctant to touch. Did I get a refund? Yep. Well sort of, they let me swap them for a brand new pair of the same shoes.  They will certainly fall apart in the same way but as they will have lasted a term all up, I won't take them back again, as a fair deal is a fair deal and I will have got my $30 worth by then.  And that is the end of my story.

Morning Views

Monday, 9 August 2010

Distractions

Monday, 9 August 2010

I've got tonnes of administration stuff to do including invoices to create, advertising to source, income tax to submit, blah blah blah...

Sooo.. clearly there's no better time to sit down and do the invitations for Jett's pirate party - it was always going to be way more fun!