Shirley's party advice thread part 2

[stealthsquiggle]

...can I take the liberty of starting another thread, since the other one filled up?

Cool that you managed to meet up. I have done a fairy castle - for my goddaughter. Can't do links on silly phone but the wow factor was hollow towers with battery powered tealights so the windows lit up. I will do proper links later but she loved it

It was a flying visit as I had tired and hungry kids in the car by the time we got to DW's but I'm sure I'll be back again soon so we can attempt a better meet up.

Looking forward to seeing the pics

cake set
Attempted link from phone - fairy/princess castle (fairly interchangeable, IMHO) should be in there somewhere.

Thanks for the link stealth. Love the light up idea but it wont work for me as party will be all outside and no opoortunity to dim the lights. Incidentally do you think it'd be easier to make turrets from cardboard tubes or swiss roll? Dont think it matters if they're not edible.

Im exhausted as im going all out for easter. Ive invited my mum over to hopefully smooth things over as we're all going on holiday together in may.
Ive made sticky toffee cheesecake and eton mess cheesecake. Ham terrine starter left over from xmas in the freezer with home made onion marmalade.
Both dd's have a new outfit waiting. Dd1 a rapunzel t shirt and dd2 a frilly dress with an easter chick on. Dd2 has a chick hooded towel and dd1 an easter egg. Then egg hunt with eggs filled with sweets, hairclips, hello kitty knickers and little figurine toys. Ive gone sooo overboard.

We've also made paper easter baskets and filled them with chocolate cornflake cake nests. Dd1 made a garland if easter egg shapes too. I know my mum is going to be so disapproving that its not one egg per child but having had such a scary time, the one thing i was scared of was dying and never having known dd2. But that they would be too young to remember me. So i'm going all out to make occasions matter. To fix these memories in their heads in case im not here. So that they'll always know they were loved and i tried to give them a magical childhood.

I've been doing the same thing DW - almost.

I've not been poorly but I did have an awful childhood and the majority of my memories are painful and upsetting so I want it to be different for my children.

A few days ago, DS started asking if I would do another Easter Egg hunt for him "just like last year". To be honest, he had me then as the thought that I was creating these lovely memories for him was enough to have me planning another hunt but then, on the way back from seeing you guys, when we stopped off for Dinner (in Leicester by the time we found somewhere open that wasn't packed!) he asked again and said "you do lovely things for us Mummy". After that how could I not do an egg hunt?

So I laid it all out last night and we searched for card eggs (Dh OTT about them having too much chocolate imo so he'd have gone mad if I'd have left out chocolates) which led us to 2 chocolate bunnies hiding in a drawer :)

Would have been perfect had Dh not insisted that they were only allowed a tiny bit before having "a proper breakfast". This obviously lead to tears and grumpy children. I did manage to get me and DD eating Hot cross buns at least.

He's also eaten all of the shredded wheat I bought to make easter nests so we'll be having cornflake ones now. I'm going to do those once we're dressed then hopefully they'll be set by the time we sit down to our roast lamb and we can have them for pudding. I'd attempt another jelly rabbit but the last one was very definitely jelly road kill! It needed less water I think to make it a bit firmer.

We've been doing various easter themed activities all week as DS doesn't really do being at home and gets a bit stir crazy so I had us out and doing anything I could find to do. Getting it past my Atheist conscience by reminding myself that there's been a festival of some description at "Easter" long before Christianity so as long as I stick to the bunnies and eggs we're ok

Right you've had me in stitches. Easter road kill bunny! My childhood wasnt great. There was a thread a couple if months back about the best bits from your childhood. I honestly couldnt think of anything. It wasnt abusive but in modern day terms probably neglectful. My brother and i had a big chat about it. He agrees so it cant be just me.

I think when i had kids it crystallised things for me. Would i demand my 7 year old make me breakfast and drinks whilst i slept til 3pm? No. Would i smoke 20 a day knowing they were going without.no. Would i go out every weekend drinking despite not seeing my kids due to working 2 jobs. No i wouldnt. And the worst bit, she has never ever ever said im doing a good job as a mum. She frowns on me for not smacking dd etc.

But if i challenged her on it, she'd deny all!

Icant wait til she arrives to get snooty that i've spolit the kids. And i dont actually buy for them except easter birthday and xmas! I cant win.

OMG

Stupid phone. I was trying to say I was the opposite - I spend my time trying to combine all the stuff my DM did with us with a full time job (she did work, but not often full time, and term time only). I did egg trails inside last night and got up at dawn to hide eggs outside. Excess of chocolate all the way here - I do make them eat something else as well (hot x buns) but DH would leave them to it . My parents are coming over to do outdoor egg hunting, then we can let the currently very pissed off chickens out.

My Mum will tell me I'm doing a great job but then says it's because we had such a good example! - I just look at her gobsmacked. TBF it wasn't her but she knew what Dad was doing and let him

So I'm making all of our family traditions from scratch - including the egg hunt which seems to be working [bgrin] I also have a birthday book which has a picture of all of us taken every birthday plus a picture of whatever cake (or cakes!) I've made that year. It's really nice to see them getting bigger in each photo. I'm very lucky that I don't need to work - we'd be better off if I did but... - so I have time to do all of this stuff. I'd love to just have 1 "stuff it, just eat chocolate" day but DH is having none of it.

Must admit its a eat chocolate all day day here. Easter and xmas its eat it all day if you like. We only let her really have sweets on a sat normally. She gets 1p for a good morning and afternoon and then go to the market on a sat where she can pick penny sweets.

Today shes eaten choc all day bar a bit of bread at dinner. My mum is being quite gracious but keeps commenting why am i doing so much if im ill. Still aint helped though. Dh is looking bored as she saying 'i need things to keep me occupied' i know he'll explode later saying she could help us out if she's bored. She's telling him how she's oiled her garden furniture!!! I cant wait to hear him rant later.

I hope you made it through the rest of the day OK, DrsW. We just got our fresh air for the day watching vintage motorbikes racing up a muddy hill (more fun than it sounds). I really must get on with friend's cake - all I have done so far is to make some cotton reels and re-organise all my cake making kit into toolboxes.

Ooooo whats the cake?

Is it the craft basket one that we were no help at all with?

That's the one - not that it is anything other than a quilted cake board and a collection of cotton reels at the moment (and 2 needles, a stitch ripper, a thimble and the blade for a rotary cutter) .... my excuse of the day is that I used up the Trex for something else so didn't have anything to soften the icing enough to put cotton on the remaining reels (I did one before). I have decided to "fill" the basket (i.e. cover the top) with bits of "fabric" (gum paste) rather than a quilt, since I have covered the board with a quilt, IYSWIM and not really because I can't work out how to make the quilt so that it can be "draped" without it drying and cracking.

Can you just paint it patchwork rather than quilt it? Like the tablecloth on pizza party cake? And what trickery is this with trex? And with my castle attempt am i better to cover cardboard tubes for towers or swiss rolls?

oh sorry - forgot that question! I made the towers hollow on mine, from gumpaste, and left them to dry for several days (partly because I wanted to light them up), but swiss rolls would work, too. Cardboard tubes would go soggy with the icing, I think - you could get a length of plastic pipe and use that?

Trex kneaded in to sugar paste makes it soft enough to go through a sugar shaper. It was searching for the right disk for the sugar shaper (I have, for reasons I will not get into, 3 sets of disks and I couldn't find 1 of the one I wanted ) was what tipped me into buying toolboxes and re-sorting all my cake decorating kit.

Yes, I could paint it, I guess, but I am really pleased with the "quilt" on the board as it is all white but different textures on each square IYSWIM and I would rather do scraps of fabric to match, I think. I am also struggling with scale - the cotton reels are almost life size, so it would only be a teeny bit of a quilt and I can't work out how to do unfinished edges [perfectionist].

Ahhhh i see. Your suggestion of pipe is good. Now swiss rolls i assume i could skewer through into the cake or dowel into the cake board? How did you get your hollow towers to stand?

Ive been asked to make this cake because im better than this other girl who is charging/own business. Shall i pm you and blathers the website its bloody hysterical. You gotta take a look. If you think you're too busy or not up for some cake bitching just say!

go on then...I am working but up for some nosing!

I just cut out appropriate shapes from the edges of tiers of the cake and "glued" the towers on with icing, TBH, although if you went the plastic tube route you could just leave an appropriate amount of un-iced tube to push down into the cake - in fact having one tower like that on the top of the cake would stablise the whole thing (unless you have boards in between tiers, of course.....)

You're bloody genius!!! Thats a perfect idea. is it wrong to practice do you think? Right im gonna pm you this girls site. Check out her spelling, backgrounds and her cake board coverings. I've checked both your profiles and im confident its not either of you ha ha.

WTF is an 'ingrediant'? Some of those cakes are good but some are bloody awful!

the typos are hilarious - the cakes are - well - getting better - and she doesn't take the most flattering photos of them, either (plus I never "got" the over-iced fancy biscuit thing, personally)

Actually, scratch that - they're all fairly awful. How on earth does this woman make any money?

I would guess that she doesn't, Blathers - it looks to me like more of a self-funding hobby than a business.

She was charging £80 for some of those!

If she can get away with it, maybe I could do it for a living after all!?

Blathers - you probably could. Unfortunately in order to replace my current FT income I would have to do it on an industrial scale and it would no longer be fun even though my DM never bloody stops asking why I don't do it for a living