Bikes for Miss Mackenzi

Dear Miss Mackenzi,

I thought you might like these bikes.  If I was in Australia I would cycle over to your house and pick you up for a spin on:

The Rainy Day Bike-this one would be good cause it wouldn't mess up our princess hair, or get our ballerina tutus wet.

The Craft Bike-you could sit on the back of this one making all kinds of things.  Maybe we could get Mama to come too and teach us how to knit.  Although I'd probably need my hands to steer and my feet to pedal so I'd have to knit with my mouth.

The Garden Bike-this one is good for snacks.  We could grow some food in the baskets and we could munch as we cycled along.  I'd like some tomatoes and strawberries please.

The Garbage Bike-instead of sitting on the back of this bike you could ride in the garbage bin and we could go around the streets when it's throw-out time and pick up all kinds of groovy stuff.  We'd just have to make sure there was still room for you in the garbage bin on the way home.

The Crazy Girl Bike-we all know that you're a little bit crazy, so here's another crazy girl to go cycling with you.  I think you'd have to dress up to be as crazy as her though.

I hope your leg gets better soon, but if it doesn't we'll have to find you a bike as cool as these to tear around the streets on (or you can just go in the garbage bin!).

Big, sloppy kisses,

Aunty Calli xxxx

Cacao

I love the cocoa I buy in Holland.  Isn't the packaging so pretty?

Bling. Serious Bling.

Brooke (Hindle) Kay's sister-in-law and a friend were in Amsterdam at the beginning of the week and Brooke had asked me to show them around.  They had booked a tour of one of the diamond factories here, so I went along for the ride.  It's better than the one I usually do cause you get to ooh and aaah over diamonds and then try jewelry on to your heart's content.  I felt quite ashamed of my ragged, dirty fingernails when I was trying on 15, 000 euro rings.  My fingers didn't quite do them justice.  It was fun though!  You could buy diamonds as well, the ones in this photo were on special.  The little ones on the right anyway(0.15 carats).  They were a steal at 251 euros each.  But the big one (1.53 carats), it was a little more on the pricey side, just over 22 000 euros.  I considered slipping it into my pocket, but the security cameras and the long-legged Dutch guide made me reconsider.

My Turn

Trinny has bobble heads and castles in clouds.  Linny has diamond lakes and toboggans.  Kt Mac has...ummm...she's kinda disappeared.  And I have star shaped islands and pigs heads.

On Saturday we picked some friends up (that sounds so much easier than it was, give me a bike in Amsterdam any day over a car) and headed out into the countryside.  Our destination was Lindenhoff in Baambrugge, a little village with a farm that sells it's produce along with produce from the area.  We'd found out about it when we went to a foodie event and the lure of more cheese sampling lead us out there.

We wandered about the shop, munching on the cheese and fig bread (there was an incredible cheese that was covered in grass, grass I tell you!) and looking at all the freshly grown goodies.  

Andrew was drawn into the butchery to gaze upon the flesh.  He ended up in a conversation with Remco (sounds strangely like a car parts company I know) and at one stage turned around to see our friendly butcher cradling a quarter of a pig like a teddy bear.  Those butchers, they're strange they are, although very friendly (or are they just eyeing off my rump?).  Remco then cut us some pig, we bought some bits and pieces, had a meander about the farm and then headed to Naarden.

Naarden is a Spanish star fort.  If you look at the picture I'm pretty sure you can tell why it's called a star fort.  Although I am still trying to figure out the Spanish bit. 

 We munched on farm bread and brie, sitting in the sunshine by the moat and then headed home.  With a stop at the kringloop of course.  No day is complete without a little second hand shopping if at all possible.

Zausted.

I walked, cycled and ran all this today.  That's why I'm zausted.  So zausted I can't even come up with the energy for the exh.  Almost 21 kilometres.  And next time I won't be doing this on a bowl of muesli, sesame snaps, banana milkshake and an ice cream.  I want a smorgasboard before I do this again, and I'll  probably eat the board along with the smorgas.

Bobble Heads and Beauty

Kenzi has been so sick lately, but she still has a way of looking beautiful with bed head and missing teeth. Of course I am totally rose colour glassering it up. But this girl is beautiful inside and out...and when she is 14 and looking at these pictures and wondering what I was thinking, I hope she reads these words and knows them, because bobble heads or no bobble heads it's who you are that counts and this little precious is certainly making it count.

Barb The Toe...matoe

I was asked to create some costumes for Little Miss Dani's amazing production she is putting on. She needed a tomato and a cucumber, but not just any tomato and cucumber. They needed to be Bob the Tomato and Larry the cucumber, or as Kenzi calls them Barb the Toe...matoe and Larry the cucumber (Ok, so the Larry one is the same, but she swears that Bob is Barb and is a girl!)
Now, because I want to insure that the production that Miss Dani is putting on will go fabulously, the costumes had to be fabulous also. So today I sewed and ironed and created and cut. They started out like this, but turned into this. Every one had to get a little bit of the action...yep everyone. (He doesn't look like he is enjoying it at all, does he????) Oh and I have added optional arm holes just incase they need to play a Tuba or something!
So, on with the show I say!

Castles in the Cloud

You know how you always dream that you can walk on clouds and that song always comes to mind 'I know a castle in the clouds...I like to go there in my sleep...aren't any floors for me to sweep...not in my castle in the clouds'. Well, today was a sick day and we built cloud castles. Actually I was completing some other crafty venture using some polyfill.....turned my back for 5 seconds and Miss Kenzi created her castle in the cloud. Connor joined the fray and added his Knights as guards. There were also a number of penguins and sleeping babies. So, today we had castles in the clouds...however there were still floors for me to sweep!

Where Would I love To Be

Water, sunsets and piers....perfect

Of coarse this is what I would look like as I was setting off.

Hmm, My kind of camping.

A city to visit and explore and enjoy

Flowers in France with French labels......oh so French

Oh the loveliness

All weekend I have been nursing sick kids, sitting in after hours doctors surgeries to be told that Kenzi has 2 middle ear infections 1 being very close to exploding and trying to keep up with feeding a little man who is going through a growth spurt and eating me out of house and home, I decided that there must be some place I would rather be doing all of this....because I couldn't not be here...but perhaps we could be somewhere else with the same thing happening and it would make it seem better some how. I found these images.....I love these images....I want to be where these images are.......just for a while.......a moment to drink in the loveliness and hold hot packs on ears!

Cookies, pinatas and pins, oh my!

Even though I'm doing one subject less for uni this semester, I still seem to be on the backfoot with getting things done.  Hence the delay in putting this up.  This is the reason I was so busy last week.  I was asked fairly late in the game to come up with a treasure hunt/game kind of thing for our friend Minette's surprise 3oth birthday party.  Apparently I'm thought of as a fun kind of person!

Sonja picked Minette up from home and brought her to the Amsterdamse Bos (kind of a foresty area) where she gave her the first clue in which she had to follow Sonja.  Once there I 'accidentally' bumped into them, and gave Minette a rather large cookie that had 'Eat Me' written on top.  We started munching and found another clue baked inside the cookie.  (The games and clues were all centred around things Minette likes to do.)

This clue sent us meandering again until Andrew popped out from behind a tree like a circus side-show entertainer.  This game involved being blind folded and everyone taking turns to draw a certain part of an elephant.  Minette is South African, hence the elephant.

Next stop was a bag toss.  Different people joined us along the way and the aim of this game was to get all the bags through the hanging tyre.  Once accomplished, the next clue was hidden in a bag.
As we were wandering along the path Minette said she just didn't know when another person was going to pop out from behind a tree.  Just as she said this the next person popped out from behind a tree, it was such perfect timing!  This game was pin the needle in the pin cushion.  I have never played this as an adult (never played it as a kid either, just the normal donkey version) and I hadn't realised how much adults think strategically about feeling the sides in order to figure out where the target should be.  Darn adults.
Obtaining the last clue led us to the last station, pinata baby!

Minette enjoys tennis so I attempted to make the pinata tennis-ballish.  Just incase people were still wondering about the shape I wrote 'This is a really bad replica of a tennis ball' on the bottom.
Kung-fu Master Hugo swiped the pinata into oblivion.  He's part kung-fu, part fairy (note his left hand).
And the pinata?  It was the perfect holder of the last clue leading to the party and even better, the perfect party hats for the birthday girl and her husband.
And lastly, birthday cake.  Amazingly enough (oven issues and all) it turned out pretty good.  Two layers of this delicious cake, slapped together with some chocolate ganache, drizzled all over with more ganache, then a fancy chocolate wrap and topped with chocolate dipped strawberries.
We didn't get a photo of the full cake (too busy lighting sparklers and singing and making sure I didn't trip in the semi-dark) but I'm hoping to find someone who did.
A fun, fun party and the birthday girl said it's the best party she's ever had.  Score.

PS Dad, I'll see what I can do about a painting (although if you ask me they're kinda weird), and I totally got your comment without Linli's interpretation!

PPS The most hugest, biggest, sparkliest thankyou to my husband who encouraged, glued, fun-ed, carried, placed, advised and generally had my back.  You rock A.

Brunch

We had brunch with our down stairs neighbours on Saturday.  We've always chatted in passing and finally figured a date to hang out together.  We've known that he's a musician and artist, we've been in his place and seen his artwork and listened to his music.  Weirdly, we found out that he's quite a successful artist.  He did a painting in an afternoon that sold for 15 000 euros the other day.  Woh.

Help Wanted

I've been asked to bake 40 cupcakes for a friend's wedding.  No problem (except that our oven sucks, I don't have cupcake tins and no idea where to buy cupcake liners).  I'm sure I'll figure that out, somehow.  But here is where I need your help.  This is the pic she sent me of the cakes she wants:

I've got red food colouring and I'll buy pink when I'm in the UK.  I think I can find the decorations.  It's just the cakes that are the problem.  Does anyone have a recipe for cupcakes that rise this high?  Most cupcakes I've seen on the net are normal size and then a whole stack of icing is piped in a swirl in the top to give it height.  Help me out here sisters!

And this is my other idea.  I've just been out scavenging on the streets, picking up a whole pile of small terracotta pots.  I'm going to paint them like this (but funkier):

But probably use them like this:

Sure hope it all works out.  My baking reputation is on the line here!