Birthday Prezzie: Cup Cake Kit

When I was a kid, I think my parents used to give me and my siblings ten dollars to buy a birthday present for a friend whose party we would attend. At the time I always wondered, what in the world can I buy them for only 10$? Now that I'm a parent, I think 10$ per kid per party is a huge amount! (With four kids at five or six parties each per year? That's 200$ a year!)

D and I have attended birthday parties and baby showers here and there, and often I've knit something for the guest of honour. These days, with my knitting time quite restricted, I'm trying to be creative in other ways.  Sewing takes less time, but still a few hours, and there's no guarantee that it'll work out. We're attending the 4th birthday party of a sweet neighbour friend today, and here's what we've done for her gift:

It's a cup-cake kit. A friend posted a link to a one-minute chocolate cake recipe on Facebook awhile ago, which I obviously made immediately. It was really good, and the process reminded me of my Easy-Bake oven from years past. I remember loving the tiny cakes I could make almost by myself (until I got older and realized I could make a whole cake in roughly the same amount of time!). I don't know what happened to my Easy-Bake oven, and I don't know if my neighbour has one, but I do know they have a microwave. Here's how I assembled the kit; everything but the ingredients came from Dollarama:

-1 small plastic tub
-1 packet of 40 smallish ziploc bags
-1 mug with spoon
-assorted sprinkles (Bulk Barn)
-a card

First, measure the dry ingredients of the recipe into three different bowls; I measured flour into each bowl first, then sugar, then salt, then cocoa. Then I whisked each one, then sifted it to get rid of some cocoa clumps. I transferred each lot to a ziploc bag, and did the same for the sprinkles before writing out the recipe on a card.

The only remotely time-consuming parts of this are mixing the ingredients and writing out the instructions. Between that and picking up the necessary kit components, I think the whole thing came together in about an hour and a half, and cost about 6$.

I hope she likes it! Now I feel like a cup cake for breakfast.

Once in a blue moon

In an unprecedented turn of events, I finished a dress (that I do not need to fix) in two days. I think this quick turnaround may be one of the reasons people get into sewing. Last evening, I ironed and cut the fabric, and today I did the bulk of the sewing during the girls' quiet time, and the balance once M was in bed. I should have taken a picture of D wearing her dress, giggling and hopping up and down. Instead, you get this:

Take a good look, because the next time I get my sewing act together may well be in 2015!

Snappy dress(er)

Last night, I had Hubby haul my sewing machine up from downstairs so that I could do my annual summer sewing. This would be what happens once a year around Labour Day, when I decide I can face fixing whatever disaster I sewed last summer, and maybe start a new disaster to fix next year.

First up, remember this little number? With the gaping armholes? I had tried to fix it before by folding the top of the dress down and sewing it in place, and even though it looked horrible and bunchy, I still put it on D to wear. She was happy with it. I was happy not to be working on it anymore. I unpicked the seam and now need to cut it and sew it back up.

The material I used for that dress was originally purchased for this one, called the Snappy Toddler Top. One problem when you sew for children, and only choose to do so once a year: they outgrow stuff. I finally got over my nervousness about attaching snaps, sewing with tiny seam allowances, working gathers... and didn't it end up being too small for D now! Good thing I have a younger daughter.

Sunday roast

Hubby and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary last week, and only a few days after that, I did something I've never done in my married life: served a Sunday roast dinner. Now, we don't eat a lot of red meat around here, and when we do, Hubby's usually the one to cook it. But every now and then I like to try something new in the kitchen.

We wanted to invite some friends and family over to tell them, with food, how much we love and appreciate them. Coincidentally, there was a special at Food Basics on eye of round roast, which was 1.99$ per pound. I picked up a 7 and a half pounder and promptly researched how to cook it, figuring it would likely go into the crock pot for several hours. As it turns out, it works well to rinse, dry, and season the meat, put it in a roasting pan, and cook it at 500 degrees for 7 minutes per pound (53 minutes total for ours), then turn off the oven and leave it shut for 2 and a half hours. No peeking or anything. I actually put the oven lock on after Hubby went to check it out of habit. It cooked up beautifully, and I discovered that I quite prefer rare roast beef to well done.

One of the benefits of cooking such a large roast is the copious pan juices that you can turn into delicious gravy. I cheated and used gravy from a packet for once, but then stretched it with flour and water to double the yield. There was even a bit left over. Which leads to another benefit: despite having eight adults at our table, we only finished about two-thirds of the meat we cooked. So, my job tomorrow will be turning those leftovers into something, which will probably be some sort of beef and barley soup.

This is not a picture of roast beef, but we may bring the beef soup with us to the cottage this weekend. You can bet this kid will be spending a lot of time in this spot by the water!

Casting off

I've been emotionally done with the wedding afghan for a little while, but now I'm actually finished! I came close on the weekend, but ran out of yarn four rows from the end. We were on a road trip at the time, and on a bit of a deadline, so we couldn't be bothered to hunt down a Michael's. Here's what we were racing to see:

Those two lovely ladies in the middle are my dear friends Morgan and Sarah, and they completed a triathlon this past Sunday. Also present to cheer them on: Maggie, Morgan's roommate from first year, and her sister Shelagh. Oh, and their puppy, Gus, whose name D could recall with no trouble whatsoever, even though she just met him that day! The evening before, we were joined by Coco, Mandy, and Morgan's best friend Steph for a potluck Greek dinner at Sarah's. It's crazy to think that as of this fall, we've known each other for ten years! We met in residence and still enjoy each other's company immensely, which is pretty remarkable, given how much a person changes from late teens to late twenties.

Fortunately, I did manage to get out last night and acquire the necessary yarn, enabling me to cast the blanket off today. Now that it's been washed, dried and photographed, it's time to pass it on to the happy couple!

Goodbye to a beloved author and namesake

The first time I read a Maeve Binchy book, I think I was about ten or eleven. It was Circle of Friends, one of her best-known books and an enduring favourite of mine. Over the years, I've read just about every book of hers, or at least all the ones I could get my hands on. I have several of her novels on my bookshelves, although I buy them second-hand. And, of course, I named my darling Maeve Catherine after her (and my mom). So it was with tremendous sadness that I learned of Ms. Binchy's passing yesterday at the age of seventy-two. I actually took the step of writing to this treasured author, who had no children of her own, shortly after my Maeve was born. I never got a reply, but I'm so glad that I sent it anyway, given that her life briefly overlapped with that of my precious baby girl, who is now nine months old. Here is what the letter said:

Dear Ms. Binchy,

I am a great admirer of your work, and have read all of your books, many of them several times over. When you gave a talk at the Museum of Nature in Ottawa (my hometown) many years ago, I had you sign a copy of my favourite novel, Circle of Friends; I must have been about 12 years old at the time. Anyway, I wanted to write and tell you that on October 27^th 2011, I gave birth to a baby girl, and my husband and I named her Maeve, after you. (We also have an older daughter, Daphne, named for Daphne Du Maurier, but I didn’t write to her descendants.) It is my hope that as she grows up, my beautiful daughter will find a career she loves and that enriches her life as well as those of the people around her, and that she will enjoy a long, happy marriage, just like you. In turn, our little Maeve also has parents who think she’s just wonderful.

Warmest regards,

Becky

The funny book

At my sister's wedding, her father-in-law shared that, for each of his four kids, he and his wife kept a little notebook where they would write down the funny things each kid would say. A funny book. I thought this was a great idea, especially because we are prone to commenting that D says the funniest things, and then we can't remember what exactly she said. Initially, I did have a little notebook, but then I lost it, so now I keep track of her comic remarks in a Word document on my laptop, which is usually nearby. I include the date, and any relevant background info in square brackets. Today's bon mots:

[At the dinner table, just as Hubby's about to say grace] I will ask the blessing! Dear Lord Jesus, -Maeve, close your eyes- we thank you for the hash browns, amen. And we thank you for the rain that we don't drink, amen.