First Day of School

Today was the day we'd all been waiting for - the first day back at school! Well it was Master C's first day back, but it was the girls' first day ever!Though they were excited, I thought that we might have an issue when it came to saying goodbye. But I needn't have worried - they were absolutely fine. After a big kiss and hug goodbye, they didn't even watch us leave. I was worried for nothing. They can't wait to go back tomorrow and play with their new friends and do more paintings. My kids are growing up so fast! :(

A broken down car and a kid in the back seat.......

I had quite an interesting day yesterday. I broke down in the car. Now this wouldn't be so bad if it was close to home on a side road or something. But this was driving through the front gate at work. Probably the most awkward spot to break down!

I drove to the airport to pick my friend up as she'd just returned from Sydney, and on the return leg the car just wasn't acting quite right. I would take off from the traffic lights and the car would only do about 5kph before eventually deciding to drive properly. Then my elecrtics stopped working i.e, no dash lights, headlights, indicators, not even the speedometer!

I had to pull over and let some cars pass at one stage as I'm sure they probably thought I was some crazy woman driver.

My friend had left her car at work while she was away, hence the reason we were headed there, and just as we'd pulled into base and were just about at the boom gate the car died completely. It was DEAD. I'd managed to start turning it into the visitor sig- in office just as this was happening but I only managed to make it halfway, so the car was still sticking out and no one could get through.

Luckily at the exact moment that I got out of the car ready to start pushing, a couple of the guys I work with were leaving base. They pulled over and helped push the car into the car park and out of the way. They were then nice enough to drive my friend to her work so she could pick up her car and come back for me and my little miss (who in the backseat was completely oblivious to the issues at hand!)

And did I mention it was pouring rain? Now this isn't just any rain, this is a Darwin downpour. It never rains lightly in Darwin! By the time my friend came back with her car and I'd rung my other half to warn him out, changed Miss C's car seat over, strapped her into the new car, and locked up my car we were soaked to the skin.

And to top it off my thong got caught in a puddle due to suction so I fell over!

Luckily I have a great partner who knows cars well, so as soon as i was home he left to go buy the part it needed (it was the alternator by the way) and went and fixed it for me, right there in the car park in front of the boom gate at work.

And don't worry, we can see the funny side of it! Ahhh such is life.....

Learning to ride

I seem to be baking so much lately that my blog is almost turning into just a baking blog! This isn't the case, and so instead of bombarding my page with just recipes I've made I have made a side page to add recipes on.
I made rum and raisin icecream last night, which i can't seem to stop eating (as you'll probably notice in the picture which has some missing in the corner!), so check it out when you have the chance. It's such a great recipe you'll be glad you did :)

I taught Master C how to ride a bike today! Without the training wheels, that is. The first time I let go of him and the bike he took off pedalling and balancing perfectly. I couldn't believe it. Made me think that I should have done it sooner. He still needs a bit of practice but no doubt he'll be making me take him riding to the park in no time. I'm so proud :)

The Cupcake Recipe

I thought I had better update this blog to add the cupcake recipe as promised, so here it is...

VANILLA CUPCAKES

2 1/2 cups SR flour

250g butter

2 tspn vanilla essence

1 1/4 cups caster sugar

5 eggs

1/2 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 180 c and line muffin pans with paper cases.

Place sifted flour, butter, vanilla, sugar, eggs and milk in a bowl and beat on low speed with an electric mixer until ingredients are just combined. Increase the speed to medium and beat for about 2 minutes, or until the mixture turns a paler colour.

Drop mix into paper cases and bake for 20 mins.

Once cool, ice and decorate as desired and enjoy!

This recipe will make about two dozen cupcakes.

Cupcakes and lego

Master C and Hubby's lego plane

Cupcakes!

The kids tried their hand at decorating
The finished products

I got bored today and decided to make some cupcakes with the kids. Now I'm not very artistic but with the kids help we did our best to decorate them with fondant icing, which we coloured with food dye. The kids made their own special ones and had them for dessert tonight. The cupcakes were vanilla and it was a really nice recipe which made almost 24 decent sized ones. I'll post the recipe tomorrow!

Hopefully this video works, because this is Master C's little video showing off a leg plane that him and his dad made. I thought it was pretty clever!

Banana Cheesecake

I made a baked banana cheesecake a couple of days ago and it was super easy and tasted divine! Master C asked me to make a banana cake but I'd been meaning to make a cheesecake for a while, so banana cheesecake is what we ended up with.

Miss E and Miss C helped me by eating - I mean adding! - in the ingredients along the way and doing the girly baking thing with them was quite enjoyable.

The cake turned out perfect for a first attempt and it was a big winner with all of the kids so it will definitely be made again!

Ok so the recipe.....

Baked Banana Cheesecake

Ingredients

1 x packet of biscuits of choice for the base, eg, nice, marie etc...

100 - 150g butter, melted

3 x 250g blocks cream cheese

4 bananas

150ml cream

120g caster sugar

3 eggs

30g cornflour

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method

Crush the biscuits in a food processer, add the butter and mix together. Place in a greased and lined 22cm round springform tin, spread evenly and press down to form the base. Place in fridge for 10 minutes.

Add the remaining ingredients to food processor and process until smooth.

Bake in oven at 170 c for 30 - 40 minutes.

And it's that simple! This makes a good amount of mixture so I made a miniature cheesecake with some of the mixture in a mini springform tin.

I LOVE this cheesecake, it was so creamy. I had to use guesswork with some of the ingredients as I don't have any kitchen scales so I'm glad it turned out.

Right now I have a pavlova baking in the oven so am looking forward to eating that too! Until next time............

UPDATE: The pav was great! Kiddies helped decorate it with whipped cream, bananas, blueberries and passionfruit pulp. Was so good even Dwayne cleaned his bowl and that's saying something! I used pavlova magic but next time I'll be trying it from scratch! Mmmmm

Holiday Shennanigans

Well last time I blogged I was looking forward to Christmas, travel, and time off from work. I've been away from work for a couple of weeks now and I must say I am thoroughly enjoying the holiday break!
The plan a few weeks ago was to spend our Christmas as a family by ourselves here in Darwin before heading off on our roadtrip adventure on Boxing Day. As the time neared closer however, we were put on cyclone watch and were preparing for a cyclone to hit on Christmas Eve.
Fearing we'd be cut off by floodwater and stuck in Darwin we didn't want to take any chances of our plans being ruined. So with half a day's notice to leave, I took the rest of the day off work and came home to start packing. We left home at 0500h the next morning, 23 dec.
The plan was then to make it to mum and dad's house in Brisbane by Christmas night and spend the last hours of Christmas with the family.
It was a long, but (mostly) enjoyable three days in the car, and Santa managed to make it to the motel room we were staying on Christmas Eve (Good ole' Santa!) so the kids were still excited and had presents to take in the car with them.
We finally finished the drive and got to Brisbane at about 1800h Christmas night and had a great Christmas dinner.
We spent the night there and the next 9 nights at an apartment in Spring Hill right near the Brisbane CBD. Hubby, the kids and me had a great time in Brissy, shopping, Going to Dreamworld (3 times!) and White Water World, Surfers Paradise, the Old Petrie Town Markets (whiched I loved!), and playing laser tag against with the family (which was awesome). The kids loved spending time with their Nanny and Poppy, and Hubby and I even had a few nights to ourselves.
It was sad when our time was up and we had to leave again. Again though, the long drive back was enjoyable. There's some great places along the way to stay at and explore. We really enjoyed staying at Barkley homestead, and Mt Isa was a good place to shop.
It was such a great holiday, I'm already looking forward to next years trip. And what's even better is I still have almost 2 weeks off work. It's so nice to spend quality time with the kiddies!