are we there yet

Wednesday, 19 December 2007

The cake on the left has taken about 20 hours of work including cooking time and has a street value of a bit over $400.   The house on the right has a wider market (every single child in the world who is under 14)  took about 3 hours yet  would probably have a street value of about $5 (unless all those kids pooled their pocket money).  Now I think about it, you don't see many gingerbread wedding cakes do you - when they wouldn't be entirely inappropriate really when you think about it. anyway. it's clearly getting late (as usual) .  Tomorrow  I've just got 50 cupcakes and a 10 inch mud cake to make and I 'm then I'm nearly at the packing the house, tidying my bags,  and vacuuming the children stage in preparation for our trip to adelaide on saturday.

sparkly shiney things

Sunday, 16 December 2007

In a stroke of genius (if I do say so myself )  I managed to come up with a great thank you present for our excellent creche staff which didn't involve cupcakes, chocolates, copious amounts of money or an enormously guilty conscience for not actually getting around to doing anything... These gift christmas tree baubles have all been tagged with the message 'Thankyou from zali, jett, cathy and jnnoo' - My writer was insistant that the order of the letters didn't reeeally matter and  I really needed to get it done before Jett began to cut everything into little pieces (he's scissor happy at the moment) .

Speaking of Jnnoo, him and I have been up past midnight every night this week and I guess the chances of going to bed earlier than that at any stage before we head off to adelaide next weekend are fairly slim. oh well.   Still it is our own doing so we don't deserve any sympathy.

Yay

Thursday, 22 November 2007

Tomorrow I will have two reasons to celebrate - firstly I'll be able to have my first night off cake decoration for a few weeks, and secondly the settlement of the sale of newtown road should (fingers crossed) have gone ahead smoothly. to celebrate I intend to partake in the dual delights of  sorting some washing while watching a dvd - something I haven't done for months and months and months. This puppy dog is to accompany a set of figurines  for Saturday. I think he looks a bit anxious cos the groom is wearing white.

Finding Nemo - Losing Sanity

Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Once again, while the rest of you were busy at your proper jobs, I was sweating over something silly. Not the cake itself mind you, just the fact I've charged the customer roughly half of what I should have charged. In fact charging three times as much would have been an even better idea as I would have hopefully avoided the whole order.  Happily it's mostly finished now though, which just leaves a harley davidson cake, some wedding cupcakes (for a Bridezilla), a set of figurines and some birthday cupcakes to do in the next week.  

And in another lesson in life, Zali's sports day was postponed until next week due to..um..  overcast weather. I'm not sure what sort of day they are waiting for but this is hobart, so it could be a long time coming!

Endless weekend

Sunday, 28 October 2007

Due to the Hobart Show Day public holiday on thursday (yes read it and weep NSW people),  and a self declared creche holiday on Friday, this weekend seems to have gone on FOREVER. We didn't manage to go anywhere or do anything particularly spectacular but luckily it included enough fun stuff to stop us all from going a bit crazy.   The highlight was dad's 70th birthday celebration on Saturday - and the incredibly well controlled cake decoration session which all the cousins participated in beforehand. Unlike recent cooking activities everyone demonstrated extreme control whilst decorating their cakes to take to mum and dad's place. Denny did Dad's which the rest of us all shared when we got there after some delicious pizza. 

Jon did a lot of pottering around in the garden including participating in his most recently acquired hobby - planting kangaroo paws. He's planted about five now despite my gloomy predictions of their demise (we had a few in Sydney which died faster than you could say  'gosh it's hot out there'). 

I threw three runs together on consecutive days which is a record for recent times and today I took grandfather and granny out for a drive which although enjoyable and peaceful (compared to my usual back seat passengers at least!) is quite tiring for all of us.

Ahead of the game

Tuesday, 9 October 2007

In Tasmania we are now enjoying daylight savings time. Well most of the time anyway - I have to admit I'm not enjoying the morning part of it, but the light evenings are great.   The other advantage of daylight savings is that I don't have to listen to the half an hour news & current affairs program "Hack" on  the youf radio network "JJJ" as we drive to the creche after work - I find Hack really annoying and I know there are other radio stations I could listen to but I find them even MORE annoying than Hack what with their advertisements and the like.

In general news, Jon was in Adelaide last weekend living it up at his school years  20th-reunion thingy - he came back pretty tired and husky voiced so I'm pretty sure he had a great time.  Somehow Jon always manages to go away when I either have a zillion cake deliveries, or the children are sick and last weekend he hit the jackpot as both these events occured -  we all survived it though mainly due to our Hobart luxuries of having excellent support people available and the fact that deliveries nowadays never really take that long as there's next to no traffic and not very far to drive.
The cake pictured is what I delivered to a restaurant on blackmans bay beach. As you can see the beach was packed out.

In sporting news I've been inspired by both the recent world cup and being awarded my soccer teams best and fairest trophy   to play in a 7 a side soccer for a short season over summer.  I'm thinking that 20 minutes halves will both suit my current fitness level and also have me skipping dinner/bath/bed time routines at home for a few weeks. yay. Luckily I didn't actually throw my soccer boots in the bin at the end of the winter season as I had planned to although I probably would have if the house was tidier and I had found them sooner. Along the same lines I'm hoping my orienteering compass turns up before this weekends sprint championships but given our childrens ability to relocate useful objects I'm not holding out much hope. Last night Zali and Jett relocated all of the towels in the towel cupboard  to the full bath. 

Sun and Rain

Sunday, 30 September 2007

This morning we left the kids and Robin and Denny's and went for our forth run together since arriving in Hobart (And about our tenth run together since 2003) .  We ran on the mountain along the pipeline track and despite the occasional bout of horizontal rain it was really nice.

In other news,  I had a very smooth cake delivery yesterday despite experiencing a few gale force gusts of wind while bringing the precariously balanced figurine endowed top tier in from  the carpark (ahhh - hobart weather!!).   These spanking bride figurines have been a bit of a mini-hit here - they are a bit fiddly but I don't mind them too much as I charge more for my suffering.

Procrastinative Baking

Sunday, 23 September 2007