Jikana Damaru

lovely little parties.....

Have you seen this gorgeous online store yet??

One of my favourite bloggy mums Virginia from Mum/Toddler/Babe has a new venture and I have just spent ages window shopping through it's delights.

"Lovely Little Parties is all about helping you create your own special events with a range of unique and affordable party accessories while still giving you lots of room to get creative yourself and put on a celebration that is memorable for you and your loved ones."

I love party planning and setting the scene of an event, Virginia's style is exactly what I like and there are heaps of things to inspire you to make the coolest of party themes. The range is growing very fast and she has just uploaded some gorgeous Easter treats.

Here are a few of my party favourites...

Rainbow Fun party invitation-set

Retro Wagon Popcorn bags

Snowflake Papel Picado Garland

Cupcake Boxes

You can find lovely little parties here...

and

oh and if your in NSW looks like they will be at the next Matilda's too!!

Market info

Fern's Drawstring Kindy Bag

When Fern came home from kindy with a note saying that cot linen needed to be packed into a drawstring bag from there on in, I panicked. Where to find a bag big enough to fit a cot pillow, fitted sheet, normal sheet, blanket, and about 14 of Fern's 'essential' sleeping companions? Until then, I'd been stuffing it all into her backpack along with her lunch, spare clothes and nappies, so it was no wonder staff were putting their foot down about a special bag for linen they could easily pull out at naptime.

I scoured the linen cupboard for a solution.

One white pillowcase, a bit of leftover ribbon, and some scraps of fabric later... I came up with this:

Fern's very own personalised drawstring bag! AND it fits all her stuff! It's almost criminally easy if you want to make one yourself, folks!

You just need:
- A pillowcase
- Some ribbon or cord
- Scraps of material, buttons or ribbons for decorative effect!

1. To make the drawstring at the top, I simply folded the top edge of the open end of the pillow case in about an inch and ironed it flat. Then, fold it in about another inch and a half and sew, leaving an opening to thread the cord or ribbon. Using a safety pin, thread the cord through, then tie a knot in the end, securing the ribbon inside the pillow slip.

2. And in one simple step.... you already have your drawstring bag! Now, the fun part. You can decorate any way you fancy; in my example I simply drew Fern's name on scraps of fabric freehand and cut them out with zig zag scissors. You could also print the letters out from Photoshop or similar, and pin to material and cut out that way, if the prospect of drawing freaks you out.

3. Iron some adhesive onto the back of the letters and iron on to the slip, then sew around the edges using a straight or zig zag stitch. Contrasting thread colours could be fun... you could also applique little animal cutouts or shapes, or stitch some buttons onto the fabric to make it even more groovy. I had no time for such frivolity!

4. Ta-da! Super simple, and one kindy bag that will stand out from the rest!

Telling Husband!

I never planned how I would tell my husband if I were to get pregnant. I didn't want to get too far ahead of myself. Almost as if I would jinx myself. So as I sat at work that day (very long day) I schemed up how I would give him the news. I decided I would wrap up the positive test in a huge box wrapped with Christmas paper and say “Your last Christmas present finally came in” since it was only a week and a half past Christmas. He wouldn't be expecting it; he did not know I would be testing and so early. So that's what I did!

Sorry if you're tired of seeing my pee stick. :)

I left it on the living room floor. He came home from work extra late that night and it was killing me not to shout it out when he walked in. But I played it smooth. He walked by the wrapped gift and said “what's this?” and I gave him the line “your last Christmas present finally came in”. He didn't open it right away- he proceeded to unpack from work and get his dinner out. Seriously? Couldn't he just rip it open already?! Even though I was so excited, I was also so ready for bed (one of my earliest and worst symptoms- exhaustion) so I asked if he wanted to open his present. He said yes, pondered around another minute, and finally started unwrapping. My heart started racing. He opened the big box and picked through the tons of green and red tissue paper inside and then... “WOW! … you're pregnant?!” I looked into his eyes, wide open with excited, and exclaimed “YES! …You're going to be a Daddy!” We hugged and kissed then talked for hours about anything and everything pregnancy and baby related before I fell asleep. It was such a great day, and such a perfect moment. I'll never forget any of it.

Up Next: First Appointment!

I would like to say a big THANK YOU to all of you who left congratulatory comments and kind words! You're all awesome!!

Country Living Spring Fair 2011

Hallway shot with hare painting

Hare print by Kate Wyatt
Pink and white floral mixing bowl, blue gingham paper cup cake cases: all Candle & Blue
Vintage glass cake stands: Velvet Ribbon
Wooden boat ornament: Artisans UK
Stripy dinner candles; box cushions on floor: both Susie Watson Designs
Wooden bird house with slate roof: Indigo 11
Glass storage jar: Cape Henley
False Easter eggs, gingham ribbon: Jane Means
Vintage yellow jug: Acorn & Will
Woven basket: Pinks and Green
Wooden hare egg basket: Birchcraft

As I am sure you can tell from Sunday's Flickr Fave post, Sweet Spring, my thoughts have turned to Spring decorating and planning my new Easter Table. So I can't wait to visit The Country Living Magazine Spring Fair later this month to stock up on new ideas for my home and garden for Easter.

The Country Living Magazine Spring Fair at the Business Design Centre, Islington, London from 23 – 27 March 2011 anticipates the joys of Spring and Summer, promising a lovely day to savour fine food, home styling, skilled craftsmanship and expert demonstrations from some of the UK’s leading artisans. The Country Living Magazine Spring Fair heralds all that’s loved about a summer lifestyle.

With refreshing ideas for your home, exhibitors from all over the country will be showcasing a range of beautiful accessories for every room. Whether you’re charmed by the silk animal-embroidered cushions from Sophie Pattinson or drawn to the delightful trinkets and homewares on display at the Velvet Ribbon stand, the Fair boasts such a vast array of wonderful home items that you are bound to find the perfect home accessory.

I will, of course, be taking lots of photographs of my inspiring day at the show to give you ideas for your home and garden and Easter; introducing you to new boutiques and brands that make my heart flutter and catching up with old favourites to see what they have in store for us this Spring!

I just adore the first pic "Hallway shot with hare painting" and am so looking forward to especially visiting the stands whose pretty goods appear in this shot.

To find out more and purchase tickets to this event visit The Country Living Magazine Spring Fair.

Have a sweet day!

Wearing Clever Clogs #1: Piper and Lily

Meet Natasha. (And one of her cute little poppets, above!). Natasha runs two boutiques: Little Love: home of the small via etsy and Piper + Lily via Made It. As well as being talented, inventive and generally just all-round lovely, as our maiden wearer of the Clogs she's clearly a very brave person indeed.

I'd like to say that Natasha and I sat down over a lavish meal at North Bondi Italian (like all the interviewers seem to do), but we didn't. Nope, it was a lot more like heeellllloo Gmail.

So, like, hi... and, um, what do you, like, do? (Bear with me, my never-before-seen-the-light-of-day interview technique clearly needs some polishing!!)
I'm a Mum, Wife, tiny business owner, blogger, lover of handmade, vintage & photography. My business, Piper+Lily, is where I get to run my sewing machine into the ground making vintage inspired children's clothing & accessories made from eclectic fabrics ensuring that there's no matchy-matchy stuff in the collection! little love : home of the small is my new venture selling hand picked vintage pieces for kids. I love taking way too many photos, sewing from scratch and repurposing what we've got lying around or what we've picked up from the op shop. One day I hope to have time to learn how to screen print, quilt, crochet & knit properly!

Reversible Cotton Baby Slippers (I would like some in 'Extra Enormous' please, Natasha!)

What sparks your creativity the most?

I have no idea! Probably my girls - I like to make them cute things and see how excited they get when I make them something.

Piper in her Reversible Hooded Capelet

How did you learn to do what you do?
I think that I learnt to sew by osmosis.! My Mum has been sewing for all of my life. Being the youngest in my family by 13 years I spent a lot of time hanging out with my Mum while she was sewing my dancing costumes so I kind of just picked up how to do it while I was most likely annoying the crap out of her!

How on earth do you make the time?
I would LOVE to say that I have fantastic time management skills and I am super organised but the truth is I suck at these two things! Between working 3 nights a week, ferrying the girls to kinder & their activities, general mothering & wifely duties(trust me, not those kind of duties!) and running two tiny businesses something has to suffer and it's usually the housework!

Where do you do your sewing?
I work out of my study/sewing room which unfortunately has no doors to hide away the chaos!

Here comes the tough one: what drives you to create?
Some internal craziness that won't just let me relax and do nothing! While I can easily avoid boring things like cooking and cleaning, if I'm not making something I can be a bit like a kid with ants in their pants!

Ruby models the 'Ruby Tuesday' Fabric Necklace

Can you recommend some sites that might have tutorials for us to learn your craft too?
Made is quite good, it has a heap of tutorials. The Burda Style website is quite good as well and Grosgrain have a heap of tutorials and a sew-a-long called A Frock by Friday where you can follow along, sewing a bit each day and hopefully have an outfit made by the end of the week. A great one to get you going.

Thank you for sharing, Natasha. Before we go, can you share your Top 5 crafting sites with us - we do love a new blog!
Craft:
elsie marley
Crafterhours
The Crafty Crow (great for kids crafts)
Homemade by Jill

That's it for my first Clever Clogs! Be sure to visit Natasha at her blog - I particularly love her Piper's 4th Birthday Party post and her thoughts on choice in breastfeeding.

And, pretty please with vodka on top, let me know if you like the Wearing Clever Clogs idea. Works for you? Bores you to tears? Okay but things could be better? Let me know what you think!

Tommy's Wild Animal Dessert Table

Last week I had the pleasure of putting together a dessert table for my gorgeous friend Natasha whose son Tommy was celebrating his 4th Birthday. Natasha is the incredibly talented lady behind my soon to be launched website and she creates lots of the fabulous graphics you see in the printables on my tables - we make a great team so we have spent the past few weeks planning Tommy's wild animal dessert table - We used a fantastic colour pallet of yellow and chocolate which was great to work with (and did require a little taste testing along the way!).

It started with the invitation.

Which set the theme for the dessert table ...

Once again Jacki from Blissfully Sweet Cakes created the most incredible cupcakes with Tigers and Snakes on them - to say they looked amazing is an understatement - she is so talented (check out the feature I did on her here.)

I whipped up a batch of dark chocolate Tim Tam Cookie Pops and Tommy's dad made delicious Honey Joys that all tied into our theme perfectly.

Thanks also to Sarah from Style Me Gorgeous for the backdrop idea which she used on her son Jack's party - (you can pick these up at your local bunnings store).

Our lollies for the day were jelly beans, bon bons, cola straps, lemon sherberts and milk bottles (which we lovingly called possum tails)

The fantastic Snake illustration was included on all the party paper goods

Wild snake juice kept the kids cool

Honey joys, chocolate bees and chocolate frogs - yum!

The party was a blast with some great animals making an appearance to keep everyone entertained as well as wonderful face painting by Aunty Hannah

Birthday Boy Tommy

Happy Birthday Tommy - we hope you had a wonderful celebration.

Exciting news to finish off - we are thrilled that Tommy's party has today been featured over at Amy Atlas - thank you Amy for such a lovely feature.

Blissfully Sweet Cakes

Over the past few weeks I have had the absolute pleasure of working with the amazing Jacki from Blissfully Sweet Cakes. She has created some amazing cakes for me which I have showcased here, so today I have a asked her to let us in on her world - she is so passionate about food - not just cakes but all food. So sit back and get to know a little more about Jacki.

How long have you been creating beautiful cakes for and when did you start Blissfully Sweet Cakes as a business?

Alot of my most fond and cherished memories are those I shared with my mum. Mum made me believe that anything was possible and that you should see the beauty in EVERYTHING. So I suppose my passion for "creating" cakes initially came from my mum.

Every birthday eve, my sister and I would fall asleep to the sounds of the mix master as mum worked at making our birthday cake for the following day. Mum was no pastry chef and no great artist, but those cakes were made with soooo much love. The best part of every birthday was waking up in the morning and wondering what cake she had made this year.

So when my first son was born, one of the first joyous thoughts I had was WOW now I can do the same for him ..... and at that point it all started!! My first official "cake" was Liam's 1st birthday cake! I then continued making cakes every year for my kid's birthday parties and would find an excuse at other occasions and also made cakes for those closest to me.

Blissfully Sweet finally came to fruitition the year that Liam started Kindergarten. Some of the mums up at his school knew that I made cakes and asked for me to make their cakes and that is when I decided to make it official! It was very daunting and still unsure of myself and unsure of putting something very personal out there! It has now been 18 months and I have been flat chat since that moment. I have never had one weekend without something to bake and other weekends are completely manic!

I have never "trained" and am fully self taught in this edible art. When I made the business official, I decided to hone a few skills and I took the basic course at Planet Cake. Everything else I have taught myself ..... always looking and always getting inspiration around me. It is a wonderful way to fully utilise my complete OCD personality!

Have you always had a love for cooking?

YES YES YES. Have always had a love of food and organisation and everything surrounding it. My first memories of this passion are of me about 11 years of age, planning dinner parties for my parents and making lists to go shopping and preparing everything. I have literally hundreds of cook books and scour the net for new recipes and Foxtel is constantly on the Food Network. But I credit the full spectrum of my now cooking skills to my beautiful mother-in-law. I married the man of my dreams and in turn got a second family that was second to none! My husband's family are Italian and are "old school". I watched my mother-in-law cook all these wonderful Italian dishes over the years and tried and tried again to perfect them ...... and with success! Every year I host our family Easter, Christmas, New Year and every other get together. I do LOVE to bake, but I ADORE to cook!

Which of all your cakes is your favourite?

That is like trying to choose your favourite child! I cannot! Over the last 18 months, I have baked over 350 cakes as well as easily 1,500 cupcakes .... so there is alot to choose from! As time goes on, I look back and I can see how my style in cakes has adapted. I love new challenges for each cake and try to push myself to the limits on what can be done. Still there is sooooo much to learn and I am simply an apprentice! So to answer this question, I would say that my favourite cakes are those that EXCEED my client's expectations as well as cakes that are completely personalised! The biggest praise you can receive is the smiles, sometimes the tears and above all else the gratitude! I feel very honoured to be able to contribute to people's special day in such a small way. I love to make cakes that look soooo realistic that people say "is that a cake?" Or when people say "OMG that is over and above what we expected". People want to make their special day personal and when you can incorporate a client's brief that simply says "..... he loves to cook, travel and drink green tea...." and when they see the cake that was made, it really makes the HOURS and HOURS worth it!

How many cakes to you average per week and how many did you make on your busiest week?

On average I would have 3-4 cakes a week to make. These range from cupcakes, to birthday cakes, to novelty cakes, to sculpted cakes, to religious cakes, to cakes for donation and to wedding and anniversary cakes.

My week usually consists of:

Beginning of the week - baking during the day and creating toppers and figurines for the weekend's cakes.

Middle of the week is carving, assembly and ganaching.

The end of the week is the best bit - the decoration part.

I can honestly say that Sunday night is usually my only night off.

On my busiest week I had 10 orders! I was crazy but I hate to let people down and especially my return valued clients and I knew I could do it. In that week I had a couple of orders of cupcakes, but the rest were all decorated cakes! I look back at that time with very tired eyes .... but it was exhilirating and it is not unnormal to have at least 6 orders for a week.

Tell us about your family

I am very blessed to be surrounded by beautiful men! I have 3 sons .... Liam aged 7, Ben aged 3 and Noah aged 5 months. But my biggest fan as well as biggest critic is my husband Larry. We have been married for 17 years and he knows me better than anyone else. I do not tell him, but his critiques are usually spot on ... when it comes to cakes that is! Having such wonderful people in my life and being able to do the things I love the most is truly the best gift of all. Liam says to everyone that his mum makes the best cakes (slightly biased!) and Ben loves to stand at the counter and yell "Mummy ... cake .... it is delicious!" And Noah, well my best assistant. He sits with me at the counter and smiles the whole way .... yep ... life is good, no it is great!

I hope you have enjoyed getting to know more about Jacki - I look forward to sharing some more of her lovely creations with you over the coming days in a dessert table I put together last week.