Mothers Day Quilt

I used a Moda fabric range – It’s a Hoot by Momo. I used a charm square packet and some white fabric I had in my stash.

This quilt was sent off to the quilters at the same time as the wedding quilt. However this quilt is not as ornate, just a basic all over pattern which looks great.

The finished quilt was just under 1 metre square, designed for the lap for when my mum watches TV and knits.

Thanks to my Dad for the photo as when I went to blog this quilt, I realised that I had made the mistake of not taking some photos, so a quick call to my dad and he emailed me this photo.

• Deserted by Lady Luck by one of our church pastors, on the Brumbies injuries.
• Through the In All Honesty Facebook Feed, I enjoyed finding the following blog Food that Serves.
• Through Challies.com I have read a stack of interesting blog posts including:
  10 Disney Secrets;
  Mormonism 101;
  Introverted Church.
• Finding your Value at Home - Part 1 & part 2;
• Finding out how Retro Mummy is fitting into her new routine.
• Finding out the Sew It together is on in Canberra this year – now to try and convince hubby to let me go.

We bought the bike for him late last year but when he tried it then, he found the peddling hard, so he went back to his balance bike. We tried again earlier this year without success, and with such a nice weekend last weekend we decide to try it again, and it was a success. We went out both days and by the end of the weekend he could ride for quite a while with out stopping. He also figure out how to stop, using his back brake.

Getting some help starting from Daddy

He still needs some help starting, but that is getting better at that too.

To get him used to pedalling we did a few laps of the local car park, we were very impressed with the number of laps he managed to do and how fast he managed to go.

Some of the finished bickies

The base dough is very simple:
500g Margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1 tin sweetened condensed milk
5 cups self raising flour (usually the dough is a bit sticky and I need to add extra flour – up to 1/2 cup)

Cream Sugar and margarine.
Add sweetened condensed milk and flour.
Mix all together until dough is formed.

I then separate the dough into smaller batches and add the flavourings. For the batch I made on the weekend they were mostly M & M bickies as I had a bucket to use up, but when I ran out of those I used choc chips.

Some of the dough with choc chips

The biscuits are rolled into teaspoon size balls then flattened. They are then placed on trays lined with baking paper and then cooked in a moderate oven for 10-15 minutes.

Ready to Bake

Some other flavours I have used are:

• Choc Chips and chopped Glace Cherries
• Choc Chips and Macadamia nuts
• Sultanas and Corn flakes
• Sprinkles (Hundred and Thousands)
• Milo and Coconut
• Sultanas
• Jam drops

They can also be frozen and defrosted for later use.

The finished quilt

The quilt was inspired by Retro Mummy’s Christmas Quilt however on a smaller scale. I only used one pack of Charm Squares – Oliver + S Modern Workshop plus a series of 5″ white squares I cut myself.

The quilt was just under 1 metre square so will be good for snuggling under on cold days.

The Quilting was a custom job by Sunflower Quilting. With heavier quilting on the white squares:

Quilting on The White Squares

Compared to the coloured squares:

For the back of the quilt, I used some Farmers Market fabric from my stash. In fact the only fabric I bought for the quilt was the fabric for the binding.

So this is my April entry in 12 WIPs for 2012.

My gorgeous little nephew

He came over for about an hour while his mum went out and did a few things. We had lots of fun, even if he was grumpy by the end of it.

At the end after he had a feed, the cousins had a little photo shoot, with their matching t-shirts. These t-shirts were in addition to the ones I made for his naming day. When the little man saw those ones he wanted one for himself that matched his cousin’s. So here they are:

1) A wedding present for my Brother and my new sister in law (this will be blogged about shortly to give them a chance to open it)
2) A naming day present for my nephew, some appliqued long sleeve T-Shirts. They are a bit big now but in 6 months they should fit.

Elephant T-Shirt

Giraffe T-Shirt

3) Then yesterday evening, the Little Man and I ironed onto some plain long sleeve t-shirts some Iron on Patches.
The first one, he picked the teddy himself and as I watched he ironed it on. He was so keen to do it himself, I was worried he was going to hurt himself.

The Little Man and the Teddy Bear he ironed on himself

The Skateboard T-Shirt

Yes, I know the little man doesn’t look his best, we had recently returned from our ANZAC day trip and he was over tired.

Pa's Unit

He served with the 53rd Anti Aircraft Regiment and served in Japan as part of the post war contingent.
It was a long day, we were up early to catch the train into town and then Pa went past about 1hour 15min into the Parade and when we left after 2 and 1/2 hrs they were still marching. It was quite windy and cold until the sun came out and that made it warmer. Here are some of the photos from the day.

The Parade Start

The Little Man found the pipes and drum bands quite loud. And kept covering his ears when they came past.

The Mounted Police

RAN Current Members

Fire Brigade Band

RAAF World War II Veterans

St John's Volunteers

The Little Man enjoying a Hot Chocolate to warm himself up

The Little Man enjoying seeing the RAAF dogs march past

At the end of the march we asked the little man what the best bit of the day was and it was seeing Pa march.

The first few steps were easy, I used this and this recipe as a basis for what to do.
The cake got baked successfully (Due to time contraints I cheated and used a packet mix, I prefer to make from scratch), crumbled fine as well. I then managed to add the frosting fine, roll them into balls and the put them in the freezer.

The not so good Cake Pops

When I took them out of the freezer and started decorating them, that is where the problems started. When I put the sticks in the balls some of them started to crack and fall apart, then those that went on sticks okay fell apart when I covered them in chocolate. So once I used up the chocolate I had melted, I posted the above quote on Facebook and then googled “Cake Pop Problems”, and found a couple of useful sites including this one and this one, there were a few others but of course can’t find them again. So the issue was that I had added too much frosting, rather then restart them (which I did not have time to do), I re rolled the remaining balls put them back into the freezer to harden them up. Then when I pulled them out, before I put the sticks into the balls, I used the suggestion of dipping the sticks into the chocolate before putting them into the cake which worked heaps better. I then worked quickly to cover them all in chocolate before the chocolate set and the did work better.
The ones that didn’t completely fall off but weren’t quite right, where turned straight onto a backing tray, which resulted in flat tops but at least they were still a pop.

A couple that fell apart when dipped in chocolate

With the chocolate, for the first batch I used a block of Cadbury Dairy Milk which worked quite well, for the second batch I used Nestle Melts and melted they were just too thick. I really needed to thin them out, other Aussies recommend Copha which is what I will use next time. I also found it easier to spoon the chocolate over the pops rather than dip them. With the white chocolate as the chocolate cooled, I used a spatula to spread the chocolate round.

The other thing was that the sprinkles went everywhere as I put them on the pops, I will probably be cleaning them up for weeks.

Hopefully this long post does not put you off making cake pops, so if you are making pops:

1. Allow plenty of time;
2. Do not add too much frosting;
3. Thin the chocolate (if required); AND
4. Most importantly: HAVE FUN!!!