A cupcake a day….

Will give you a heart attack in a very short space of time if the ones I helped make today are anything to go by!

Tomorrow is the SPCA’s annual cupcake day. The idea is that you register with the SPCA, telling them how many cupcakes you’re going to bake and sell, then you bake, sell, and return the proceeds to the SPCA. While this is definitely a worthwhile cause, I hadn’t managed to get myself involved…until today. An innocent visit to the house of the Friendly Farmer, and I’m up to my eyeballs in cupcake madness.

Miss Friendly Farmer, age 8, is a complete sucker for animals. She probably gets this from her parents, one who is a very ethical and caring farmer and the other who is a sucker for anything cute and cuddly. Mrs FF has recently started collecting cats from the SPCA and the vet, unable to walk away from a needy animal. There are other animal stories associated with this lovely woman, but this blog just isn’t long enough!

So Miss FF wanted to bake cupcakes. Her mum is not a baker (by her own admission, not a horrible judgement I’ve just laid down – in fact everything that she’s baked except for her healthy chocolate brownie (pah, choc brownie shouldn’t be healthy!!!!)  has been truly yum). So the help of another friend was acquired. I arrived as the carnage baking started. Mrs FF on one side of the kitchen, following her recipe to the letter, and Mrs Friend on the other side throwing together the ingredients in a seemingly haphazard manner. Both produced most excellent cupcakes, and I ended up being the “getter out of the oven” and “getter of cupcakes out of the pans”. So by a late lunch, there was an admirable number of naked cupcakes on the table.

As for adornment, there were a number of different ideas in the room. Miss FF, who had been absent (there’s a surprise) for most of the baking, along with my lovely Emily decided that making the tops look like animals would be great. Ooooo, yes, that sounds like a great idea darlings….but I haven’t got another 6 hours to achieve that, so let’s think of something else! In the end, piped butter icing, in shades of pink, yellow, red, pale green, proper green, pale blue, dark blue and purple, was topped with an almost endless array of sprinkles and mini M&Ms. I did the piping, and the kids (mostly) did the sprinkling.

The kids had a ball with the decorating, and to tell the truth, I really enjoyed the day. It wasn’t quite how I’d intended to spend my day, and the lambs were rather put out that they missed half a day of feeds, but I usually do all my cooking on my own. It was really nice to share a project with a couple of lovely ladies, and a bunch of raucous children.

So if you’re in the vicinity of Norsewood and Districts School tomorrow, I expect that you’ll be there at 12.30 to grab a sweet treat for lunch. They’re only 50c (what a bargain) and they’re for such a good cause. Well done, Miss FF, great idea….just don’t eat all the profits!!!!

Oh, and just in case you’re interested….112 was the final tally after a few quality control checks and a sneaky 2 year old!

Dear Diary

It’s been a busy day and I really can’t think of a lot to talk about tonight, so I thought a rundown of my day might be easiest!

Adrian and I spent most of the day at the Friendly Farmer’s farm again, planting trees. The area we were planting was approximately 250 metres long and probably 7 or 8 metres wide…that’s what, around 2 square kilometres of planting? Wow, that puts into perspective why I’m feeling particularly knackered tonight! The Friendly Farmer’s wife, also Super Friend no. 1, 2, or 3, looked after Briar so that saved quite a bit of stress. And while we were there, my new calf was born…we didn’t see it, but the Friendly Farmer texted me tonight with the good news.

And while we’re on the subject of calves, Emily is doing so well with wee Bambi. She is independently getting up at 6.30am, warming the milk and taking it down to the shed to feed her, then back at 7am to get ready for school. We pay for it a little in the evening with a more tired than usual Miss 10! After school, she comes home and has something to eat, gets changed and is back down with Bambi until she feeds her again at 4.30pm. She’s had a halter on the calf, and is getting her to follow her around really well. Emily appears to be loving the responsibility and also the relationship she is developing so quickly with Bambi.

On another Emily success front, we think that her rabbit, Arro, is expecting kits. After Emily had a complete panic last night that Arro could not be found, and hadn’t eaten any of her food, I opened up her living quarters to find that she had piled as much hay as she could find into the end of her hutch, made a nest in the middle and was filling the indentation with fur she was pulling from her chest. We figure another 9-10 days, given when she went to the buck.

Tara had her successes too today, getting a certificate from school for Super Work Habits. Not bad after two weeks!

Finally, after dinner and putting the children to bed, Adrian is now bottling beer, I’ve made Chewy Bread, sourdough crackers and yoghurt (from scratch with our own milk), and am proving some plain white bread rolls for the girl’s lunches. Tomorrow I’m on duty at Playgroup and have to take morning tea for the adults, so I’ll whip up a batch of bready swirls filled with brown sugar, butter, mixed spice and walnuts, with a lemony drizzle over the top. I should also make something sweet for the girls lunches. Just didn’t quite get round to that tonight…..

A day closer

A day of “lasts” for Tara today. Last playgroup and last day care session. With cakes to fit the occasion. It is, of course, always nice to see the reaction to these cakes…I always think they “could be better” because I watch too many cake shows on TV and see too many gorgeous things on the internet and in books.

Tara’s last day as a 4 year old too, and so excited for her that she starts school as a 5 year old tomorrow. She was supposed to go on the bus, but we’ve taken pity on her so she’ll get a lift with Dad. School photos tomorrow as well, so what a great record of her first day at school.

But also a first today…it really did feel like the first day of winter today! I know it’s July and we should already have had a month of winter, but we just haven’t. A farmer we were talking to today said that it had been a self-congratulatory winter so far for farmers like him – they’ve been chuckling about how clever they are making their grass grow so well! But today they were out in their beanies, balaclavas, 14 layers of wool and waterproofs and they were still cold. Our neighbour was shearing his sheep though, so imagine how they felt! They use what’s called a “cover comb” for winter shearing which leaves about 10 days growth of wool on the animal, but let’s face it, it’s not going to help that much, is it? And the cold took it’s toll at Ra Puke today, with one of our goats not managing to survive the night. It was not unexpected, but disappointing and saddening obviously. Tallulah was the first doe to have a kid last year (apart from the ones who were pregnant when we bought them), but when the kid died she started to go “downhill” and has rallied numerous times. Eventually, however, last night’s real cold was the last straw. Poor wee Tallulah.

The cows didn’t like the cold either, standing with their back to the driving rain and sleet, so we took pity on them by giving them a double dose of warming hay, and some trees to hide under. Maybe winter won’t last long…..though the snow on the Tararua Ranges is very pretty.

School days

As promised, this is Tara week, and today was her first day at school.

I know I’m biased, but isn’t she cute?!

She’s been so looking forward to going to school, though hit a bit of a bump in the road when she realised last night that she was going to be there for a WHOLE day, including lunchtime, and who was she going to play with at lunchtime? Apparently, she had a welcoming committee at the school gates this morning of her little friends, and a lot of the hockey kids who have got to know her during the season, and there were plenty of people to play with at lunchtime. Day one went well. Now two days off (appointments and farewells) then back on Thursday and Friday, then two weeks of holidays. What a nice way to ease into school.

On the home front, I was pinned to the couch in front of kids TV all day with a very sick bubba. High temperature, sore tummy and generally just miserable. Refusing to take paracetamol through coercion, pure brute force or stealth, she just had to ride out the fever, clinging to me and watching telly, falling asleep regularly. According to the nurse at the medical centre, these symptoms are the illness de jour for the local kids at the moment. One cute photo from yesterday though (just forget she did this because she was sick.

The cat was not amused!

Off to get cakes out of the oven now and then will reveal the finished decorated cakes tomorrow. Good night!

School, school and more school

Today was a school day. Yes, in the usual sense, it’s Friday and Emily went to school on the bus, but our whole day revolved around the school today.

First, it was Merit Assembly day…this is run every fortnight by a different class and they put together a whole lot of little things to present to the other kids and the half dozen parents who show up. Today was Emily’s class and we don’t often go but Emily promised it was going to be funny. It was, too, with the class having put together a power point story about being “firewise”… I think the motto in the end was “get down and get out fast or you’ll just be a memory of the past”…catchy for 10 year olds!

This was the other reason for going in to school this morning….

The big school girl

Oh, yes, be afraid, Tara is about to start school! Her birthday isn’t for another month, but she had her first school visit with schooliform today. They have a lovely system here where the local day care centre takes all the 4 year olds to school for one afternoon a month, so Tara has been going to school for the last 11 months..but not in her schooliform! She was soooooooo excited to put on her uniform. She was a bit quieter when it came to being handed over to her teacher, but she sat through the assembly riveted to proceedings and then toodled off with her class to their room. We left two children at school today, which was quite odd to be truthful.

On arrival home, it was a whirlwind of the usual jobs before having to go back to school to pick up Tara at lunchtime. I had to do the rounds of the kids who know me as the “baker” from hockey, and those who wanted to tell me about the progress of the chickens they’ve got off of us this year. How come everyone else’s chickens are laying eggs and ours aren’t?!?!

Eventually home for lunch and by this time Adrian has left for hockey practice at school, so he’s back there doing the practice and then a coaching workshop that the school has deemed all their coaches must participate in. At 3pm he excuses himself and heads into Dannevirke for the hockey games.

As for me, after lunch we get into the preparation for hockey afternoon. Put dinner in the crockpot, bake bikkies for after the games, dress the children in 14 layers of clothing as both of tonight’s games are outside. At 3pm, leave to get into Dannevirke to do library, supermarket, vet and the warehouse, then hockey.

4.40pm Norsewood Blue vs Weber Blue. The Weber team is super good with lovely skills and they’ve been playing since they were 4 or 5, and they beat our other team 9-0 in the first game of the season. Our Blue team is ever so slightly better than the other team though, so we had high hopes. Until the last 5 minutes, all was pretty even, and then all of a sudden our guys ran out of puff and Weber ran in 3 more goals. Still, it wasn’t 9! Final score, 6-3 to Weber. Biggest pasting that the Blue team have had this season so probably quite useful for them, but they still get warm chocolate chip bikkies afterwards….no wonder so many kids play hockey at our school!

5.10pm Norsewood Red vs St Josephs Green. Our blue team beat them by 2 goals last week so we had confidence that the red team could do pretty well. Briar and Tara had abandoned 10 of their 14 layers, were stuffing themselves on chocolate chip bikkies and ready salted chips, and had disappeared into another part of the complex to play tag with all the big kids. Emily played defense and this was her usual pose…

Patrizia in goal with her loyal defender, Emily

These guys saw a fair bit of action, but we did get down the other end….

The melee at the goal, but we got one in!!!!

Again, the second half kind of fell apart and they got too many goals and we didn’t get enough….6-2 we think….ooops! Still, everyone got chocolate chip bikkies afterwards, though they weren’t warm by that stage!

And finally, at 6pm I bundle 3 children into the car and wend the half hour home before lighting the fire, plonking them in front of “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” and cooking some veg to go with the chicken I’ve had in the crockpot. Late bed again.

Adrian however, still had more to do…a hockey meeting….more school stuff…and he got home at 8.45pm. That’s pretty much 12 hours he spent at school or related things today…

Phew, thank goodness it’s the weekend tomorrow!