What Do You Get When You Combine

chocolate & child labour on a Friday night......



Oh yes! A whole delicious bunch of melt in the mouth goodness made from scratch with fresh ingredients.

Ms Gabriela made cupcakes & of course I helped eat them. They were delicious!!
Of course I should have saved one to take to work with me today for my morning tea!

Just a Quickie

if there is ever such a thing from my keyboard!

First up a photo to prove I can get quite messy - especially when in the middle of projects....of course you just know I'm going to go & spoil it all by saying that I took this right before tidying up ;)

Both the teenager's, & therefore my, moods are slightly better today. I've kitted up her cross stitch (& resurrected an older one of mine) so we can get her started with something to concentrate on. It's all ready to go for after school tomorrow.


Her Nana & I had a plan as another diversion....something she has wanted to learn for ages. A couple of years ago her Dad bought her a guitar for Christmas, with the promise of lessons to come. They never did.
We later discovered that the natural way, for her, was to play the guitar left handed. So back at the beginning of the year I got it strung upside down for her in time to take a couple of guitar lessons at school. The group situation wasn't ideal & I suspect she was left feeling more than just a little frustrated.

She has, however, perfected the intro to "Smoke on the Water" & the chorus of "The Lion Sleeps tonight" struggling along by herself - but after the first 300 times of hearing them, I think we are all a little over it.

So the 'other' distraction was some guitar lessons & we were fortunate enough to find a guy that would come to the house & teach her. It went really well & I think she is looking forward to her lesson next week. I say 'think' because as we all know it is uncool to show too much enthusiasm for something when you are 14. So I happily settled for a 'yes I want to have more lessons'.

Michaela has never been great at meeting new people - it is right out of her very clearly defined comfort zone (something she has not inherited from her Mum!!). She does however warm up to people quite quickly once over her initial shyness. A quick chat with Ross, the guy who is teaching her - revealed that he had read her quite well & wasn't in the least put off by her apparent 'coolness' - lol!



Younger sisters are not to be left out & of course a certain 11 year old decided that baking was what she'd like to do this evening.... she thought a chocolate cake was a good idea & who was I to disagree?
Having been sneakily looking at The Pioneer Woman website for some time now, I needed very little excuse to try my hand at this number:
Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever



It was an outstanding success, except that Miss Gabriela fell asleep tonight before it was cooled enough to cut - but hey she'd licked the bowl & mixing spoon clean, & that's the main thing when an 11 year old is baking....right????

And then there was chocolate

or rather more chocolate in the form of Miss Gabriela's (or "Gabby", as she is known to her friends) Birthday Cake.

Can I quietly tell all of you who are Mothers out there exactly how thrilled I am that, after 30 years of making Birthday cakes for one child or another, I now have permission to go all out & BUY them. No more up until 4.00am trying to decorate the cake of their dreams in secret.

Just as well we have an awesome bakery called "Divine Desserts" specialising in cakes & deserts using only fresh ingredients to call on these days. Although my first choice would have been the Tiramisu Cheesecake - I did bow to slightly less refined tastes & went for the Chocolate Mud Cake for this occasion.
Anyhooo - I managed to quickly capture the cake before it was devoured feverishly.... never to be seen again ;o)
As if they needed more chocolate....