Birthday Boy!

So recently my gorgeous wee boy turned one!

Where the heck did that year go??? I swear my daughters first year felt twice as long, those two definitely keep me on my toes!
We decided to have a fairly low key birthday party this time, we went all out with Alia's first birthday and for the most part she cried and whinged and had an awful time. So we thought this time we'd do a casual afternoon tea with friends and my parents popped down to stay as well.
It was just lovely, really relaxed and stress free! I think we can get too caught up in the whole, First Birthday thing and go over board too easily. After all, the child is never going to remember it, and so long as there are photos to show you did SOMETHING to celebrate the milestone for your child to look back on, it doesn't need to be enormously over the top.

The cake is a different story entirely for me though, I have made it my mission in life to do the whole big birthday cake thing every year, I started off with my daughters first birthday cake being a fairy toadstool cake and they've gotten better each year with practice.

My cake making abilities isn't the only thing that has improved over the last 4 years, my camera has upgraded quite some what since then too haha, excuse the terrible photos!

So onto Master Alexander's first cake,

After much pinterest cake idea searching I decided on the very popular Dump Truck cake.
Pretty impressed with how it turned out and how simple it actually was to construct! I've gotten much better at icing cakes now I've learnt a few new tricks and watched countless tutorials on Youtube. But don't get me wrong, It's still anything but perfect and I certainly won't be opening up a professional cake making business any time soon!

Delicious afternoon tea, our friends brought an oh so nommy antipasto platter and french bread and we made the best scones in the world.( Lemonade scones are by far the best scones in the world, i'll so a post on those another day, otherwise google Lemonade Scone recipe) and cake and punch. Pretty tasty little afternoon really!

Got some family photos finally! Sadly, there is only 2 photos of all four of us together since Alex was born, and both were blurry! So we made sure we got heaps together at his party, though managing to snap a shot where we are all looking at the camera nicely was easier said than done. The best ones are usually candid and not posed anyway so thats ok!

Alex had never tasted chocolate or cake up until his birthday party, and his reaction was pretty unimpressed haha!

That's a malteaser he's holding and about to taste.

Haaa! Yeah he wasn't too sure about that...and the cake was even worse lol he mostly just scrunched it up in his hands and threw it on the floor. But hey, we all enjoyed it!

For now I must love and leave you, as Master 1 has just started singing out his *I'm awake and I've probably done poos* cry!

Go make some cake and stay beautiful! x

Soup!

So here comes another recipes post.

Still on my pumpkin buzz from last time, I whipped up a couple of divine pumpkin soup recipes I think you might enjoy!

First one is super quick and easy, and second one takes a little longer with deeper flavours.
Both delicious though.

First one.

Garlicky Cumin Spiced Pumpkin Soup with Coconut Cream Swirl.

This is so easy you're gonna flip out haha.

1. Crank your oven up to 200°C Bake.
2. Slice your butternut pumpkin in half length ways, scoops out the seeds and fill the cavity's of both halves with 3 garlic cloves that you have slightly squashed with the flat of a heavy chefs knife. Leave the skins on.
3. score the flesh a little and rub with olive oil and salt n pepper.

4. Put in the oven for 1.5 hours, give or take depending on how big your pumpkin is. When you can eaaasily stick a knife into the pumpkin flesh and it slides all the way through with no effort, it's done.

5. Take your pumpkin out, let it cool until you can peel the skin off with bare hands and not burn yourself. The skin basically falls off so don't worry about faffing around for ages trying to get it off. Easy peasy.

6. right, throw all your cooked pumpkin flesh in the blender (or half and save half for some of my other fave pumpkin recipes on my previous post). Pop your garlic cloves out of their skins and throw them in the blender too.
7. Add to your blender 2-3 tsp of ground cumin, depending on how strong you like it, and 1-2 cups of milk depending on how thick you like your soup. I like mine so thick its basically a puree haha. But some aren't so keen on that, so just adapt this bit to how you like it.
8. Right go for it, whizz all that goodness up (I'm pretty sure a stick blender would work with this too, but i haven't tried), then pour into a pot and warm through. Lastly crack open a tin of coconut cream, and scoop out a good tablespoon of the thickened bit at the top, dollop it into your soup and swirl it round. Be ponce and garnish with parsley like me if you like, and serve with a nice grainy piece of toast slathered in butter.

Enjoy!


Second one is

Pumpkin and Parsley Soup.

OK granted, the colour of this soup isn't all that appealing. But that's just because the green from the parsley in it gets blended up with the pumpkin and gives a slightly green tinge to it.
Once you taste it, you wont care though. Trust me, it's good!

1. If you have any left over roast pumpkin from the first recipe, use that. Otherwise begin with the first 4 steps of the previous recipe.

2. Once you have your roast pumpkin scooped out of the skins, set aside in a bowl.

3. In a heavy based pot, start to saute one diced onion and one crushed diced garlic clove in a lug of olive oil until soft and transparent, not browned.
4. Pour in 2 cups of hot vegetable stock (or one cup vegetable one cup beef is really nice for extra depth in flavour).
5. Add in one big handful of roughly chopped Italian parsley and your cooked pumpkin (about 2 cups worth, though by all means add more and make a big batch, the soup freezes really well) and mash it into the broth. Let this simmer for a good hour, adding extra liquid if you need to.
6. When it has reduced down to your desired thickness, pop it all in the blender and whizz until smooth.

7. Sprinkle with feta cheese and garnish with parsley and enjoy! Soooooo tasty! 

Tomorrow some tasty salad recipes to get you out of your boring same old salad funk!

Got to fly, time to get tonight's dinner organised , roast chicken quesadillas, oh yeah, you know it, deeeelish. Hubby is gonna love me tonight, Mexican anything is his fave.

So for now, get your souper groove on in the kitchen, and stay beautiful! x

Recipes Recipes Recipes

I've been on a bit of an experimental food buzz the last few days.
Discovered how much I love pumpkin, how much I love Bulghur wheat (and how super easy and quick it is to cook) and how much I love zucchini after despising them for my whole life!
I've developed a few tasty recipes which I feel are worthy of sharing, so here goes.


This, my friends, is Mr Butternut.
Just out of the oven after about an hour an a half of roasting away to perfection.

Until recently, I despised Mr Butternut, and all his relatives, Mr Crown, Mrs Buttercup and all other odd bods in between.
When I was growing up, the only ways I can recall having pumpkin was boiled (spew), roasted (which actually is delicious now that I'm an adult) in soup (which none of us 4 kids liked so it hardly ever graced the table to be honest) or in pumpkin pie.
"Pumpkin pie!" you say...
"Pumpkin pie is amazing!" you say....
Sorry, I am just not a fan (though actually thinking about it, its probably actually Mr Nutmeg I don't like.)

So as you can see, I didn't have the best relationship with the pumpkin family.
BUT all of that changed recently. I am a little bit obsessed with Jamie Oliver. He is basically my food God.
I love his philosophy on food, I love the way he supports homegrown, or locally sustainably sourced food, which is free range and/or organic. His rustic approach to food is right up my alley and omg, that accent. Come at me!
Anyway, so my wonderful Mama bear gave me his most recent book (Save with Jamie) and I began instantly testing out the recipes and drinking in all the saving tips and tricks he writes about. One chapter is all vegetable recipes and there was this recipe in there for Roasted Butternut Squash Rotolo.
I thought, you know what, that sounds and looks to die for. Lets give ol Mr pumpkin another chance.
And the rest is history. I am in love with pumpkins!...although just a side note...the nutmeg in that recipe....no...just no....it was all wrong. That being said, it's probably just that I don't like nutmeg as I mentioned earlier. I'm sure if you're into nutmeg, you'll love it in that recipe. Go check it out on Jamie Olivers website here: Butternut Squash Rotolo Recipe it's amaze!

So since then, I have been roasting it up left right and centre!!
My little man Alex is just about a year old and he seriously loves all this pumpkin I've been cooking.
(Leave me a message if you want some great, healthy vegetable packed baby food recipes)

OK so I've been back into my salads again trying to shed a bit more of my pregnancy weight before the wedding ( 5 months to go, omg, it's creeping up way too quickly, I still have so many things to do!). I took a bit of a tangent for a while and the winter comfort foods crept in but I have jolted out of that comfy little rut and have whipped up a few exceptionally tasty salads which are a wee bit different.

1. Zucchini, rocket, bulghur wheat salad with toasted pine nuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds sprinkled on top.

Now I could have easily left it as is and enjoyed every last morsel. But I thought, feta and sun-dried tomatoes would go fab in this...and so would roasted pumpkin!
Seeing as I had another zucchini in my fridge I thought I'd use it up before it went off (happens far too often in my house) and I quickly whipped up a batch of my "Anything goes vege fritters".
Which today consisted of 1 grated zucchini and 1 grated carrot, hanful of roughly chopped up baby spinach, bit of grated cheese, self raising flour, salt n pepper, garlic powder and one egg. I don't really know quantities of flour and cheese....just a small handful of cheese and enough tablespoons of flour until it combines together into a doughy consistency...I cook by sight a lot of the time, but I'll endeavor to measure it out next time im making it so I can report back for anyone wanting to know. (These are a great way to get the kids to eat some more veges, anything in a fritter with some kinda dipping sauce looks tastier than a bunch of boiled veges dumped on a plate right?? My man hates zucchini by the way...I told him "I added chopped spinach this time to get more veges into the kids....well I wasn't lying....I did put chopped spinach in...I just failed to mention that most of the green he could see was zucchini....lol! What he doesn't know wont hurt him, he loved them so much he practically inhaled them.)

Right so, fritters made, salad made, ohh yes, that must mean lunch time! 

Come onnnn! Bitta non-fat plain Greek yoghurt and sweet chili sauce over the top, and in the words of my Food God Jamie Oliver... HAPPY DAYS!

Whoops! Just about forgot to add that delishy roast pumpkin! 

Ok so keeping with the "anything goes vege fritter" theme, here are some tasty left over roast pumpkin fritters! Really quick and easy, just some mashed roast pumpkin (skin removed) crumbled feta cheese, salt n pepper and self raising flour. This is what the mixture should look like...thick enough for the fork to stand up on its own in the middle without falling down.

Then spoon onto the fry pan  with a bit of olive oil a bit like pikelets, and cook on medium heat for about 2-3 mins on each side. The self raising flour makes them puff up and go lovely and fluffy when you flip them over the first time.

Yum Yum and Yum!
These are crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside and have little pockets of oozy gooey feta. Even better if you stick a small handful of grated cheddar cheese into the mix. Not so great for the waistline though.

My only tip here is, don't cook ahead of time thinking they will reheat and be as nice as fresh. They seem to loose their air and go flat and stodgy.

I found this out the hard way when I tried to make these with some roast chicken. Thought, yum, shredded roast chicken on top of pumpkin fritters and side salad for dinner!
Welllll I had a bit of an oven malfunction and my chicken took twice as long to cook as it should have. So when I finished making my fritters, and thought yep, get the chook out of the oven to shred now and dinner will be on the table in 5 mins.

Hah! No....I have no idea why, but even tho my chook had been in the oven for 2 hours, it was still oozing out bloody juices, not nice clear ones, so onto plan B. Crack the back bone and butterfly out the chook to try get it to cook faster. 45 mins later it was JUST cooked enough to serve. 

By which time, the kids were grizzling, it was nearly their bed time (Whoops!) and my lovely fluffly melt in the mouth fritters has collapsed, gone stodgy and cold and lost all of their loveliness. Even when I popped them back into the pan to warm them up, it was no good. They were ruined.
 (Soo these aren't the best fritters to make in bulk to freeze and pull out on a lazy night when you can't be bothered cooking. The zucchini ones work fine for that though.)
*Sigh*
Talk about fail...I've never had a roast chook fail before!! I was in such a fowl (haha get it? sorry... :P ) mood after that incident....I don't cope well with cooking fails!

Right that's about as much as I can type today, it's raining and cold the kids are bored out of their minds.
So for now, embrace that lovely pumpkiny goodness, get creative with him and stay beautiful! x 

Wedding bells are coming!

With my wedding fast approaching, I'm beginning to get the "everything goes wrong" nightmares at night!
Apparently this is a thing and i'm not the only one who spends months before the wedding tossing and turning at night dreaming of every last detail falling to pieces.

Last night was particularly bad.
For some reason I dreamed that I had 2 page boys (who knows where the other one came from?? I only have one son, and I'm sure as heck not having any more babies??!!)
And for some reason, when their suits arrived, they weren't proper waistcoats and trouser suits, they were onesies with a suit PRINTED on them!!!!
They looked awful, and one was too big, so I tried to take it back to the store to swap it for a smaller size, (baring in mind this was all happening on the morning of the wedding while I was supposed to be getting hair/makeup etc done) but the store didn't have any left in the right size, so I tried to find some grey ties to go with them, but the only grey ties they had were charcoal with silver glitter all over them! uhhh....I dunno about you, but that doesn't sound very manly!
The groomsman suits hire booking was double booked so they had no suits, and I forgot to order my flowers!!!

Oh my lordy lord, I woke up hot and soaked in stressed out sweat! gross!
Pfft as if I'd ever forget to order the flowers lol.

Speaking of which, after spending the last 6 months changing my mind on an almost daily basis about which flowers I want to have.
I just discovered that we can in fact get (commercial standard) David Austin garden roses here in NZ, though it is a fairly recent thing. SO FREAKING EXCITED!!!!!!! I've spent the last 2 days researching pictures of the 3 varieties of David Austin roses we can get, and trying to decide which ones I want to order.

And the contenders are

Juliette

Oh my life, isn't she delicious???? Just you wait until you see her in a bouquet!...

Like seriously, that is florist porn right there!! I'm in floral heaven looking at these!

Next up is the lovely Keira

Sooo pretty! She's the perfect colour to match my bridesmaids dresses, but I'm so in love with the Juliette, I want both. *sigh*

And then you see her in an arrangement and its just, ohhhhh sooooooooo lovely!

How am I ever going to decide???? Honestly!

Lastly we have Patience

Below you can see how nicely they fit in with any colours to break it up a bit. So beautiful!

Patience I will be ordering regardless of whether I go with Juliette or Keria, as she's a creamy colour she will work well with either Juliette OR Keria as a nice contrast. She also smells heavenly, major bonus in a bridal bouquet. How often do you get scented roses at commercial quality??

Oh you have no idea how excited I am to make these bouquets! They're gonna be so lovely no matter which flowers we end up choosing. Can't wait to to share the photos with you after the wedding.

I got up super early this morning after a full nights sleep (finally our little boy has started treating us to the occasional full night's sleep, he's nearly 1 so its a bout blimmon time!!) and both my kidlettes are up and about now, so I must be off!

For now get into your floral mojo and stay beautiful! x

Photos credit to these webites:
http://www.associatedcutflower.com/Articles.asp?ID=350#.U91al_mSx0Y
 http://www.rosiesfloral.com/my-best-friends-wedding/
http://bluegeranium.blogspot.co.nz/
http://www.bloombrokers.co.nz/products/detail/david-austin-roses
http://flowerdesignstannes.blogspot.co.nz/2011/08/full-posting-of-richard-catherine.html

My little Dinosaur and her Fish dinner...

Ok, so you may have noticed, I've become a little obsessed with creating food pictures for my daughter!
And each week they're getting more elaborate...

Yesterdays design was an ocean scene, complete bubble blowing fish, seaweed, coral and sand...

Her facials tell it all, I don't even need to make my own comments about how it went down!


Today unfortunately my little dinosaur has awoken rather unwell and docile. One trip to the doctors and a script of antibiotics later, little Miss Muffit has crashed out on the couch, Master 10 months is in bed having a snooze (also sick, along with Daddy and I), and I am here at my dining table enjoying a cuppa coffee and admiring the stunning double daff's I bought from work on Saturday! They are about the only cheery thing about this household at the moment, too bad there isn't some sunshine to brighten things up in here further!

Poor little chookin pie :(

And as Murpheys law would have it, now that I've written about both kids being asleep and me enjoying a cuppa...Master 10 months has awoken!
That's my cue to get off the computer and carry on with the chaos. :-P

So for now, keep well, keep warm and stay beautiful! x

Flowerrrrs

So I've recently scored myself a part time florist job, and it's been SO nice to get back into it!

Being a stay at home Mum has its perks of course, for example; I am currently sitting here on my laptop, in trackies and a hoodie, its 10:56am, the heater is on, nice cuppa coffee in hand. The baby is asleep, and 4 year old is quietly munching on some morning tea. It's a cold gloomy winter's day outside and I know I don't have to go anywhere, I even managed to get washing on, dishes done, 4 year old's room tidied, the house vacuumed, and tonight's roast prepped ready to go in the oven a bit later!
Talk about a productive morning!

The downside, is I had to get up 4x last night (a regular night is 3x) to a teething, sick, croupy baby boy, there is a pile of (clean) washing a mile high sitting on my couch which I just cannot face folding right now, and I feel like drowning in a pool of coffee, or energy drink or just sleep for a week solid! *Dreams are free hey? :P *
As soon as Miss 4 has finished her morning tea, she'll be back to her hyperactive, cannot sit still, needs your 24/7 undivided attention, so this is a mere quiet moment in all the madness!
Don't get me wrong, I love my kiddos, but sometimes I get super jealous of hubby, getting to disappear for 8 hours a day and hangout with adults all day!

Sooo this new part time job has been blissful, one day a week I get to leave the madness behind, get 40 minutes of quiet time relaxing on the train ride into the city, get this view on the way in and the way home.

No matter the weather, I always find the seaside beautiful, the ever changing colours of the water, and the sky. Gloomy weather is equally as beautiful as a clear sunny day....only not quite as nice to be out in haha!

 

 

 

Best of all I get to spend the day playing with flowers and get paid for it!
I'm sure if it was full time, the novelty would ware off pretty quick, but for now, it's a bit like a paid holiday.

Some days when it's a glorious sunny morning...and if I've managed to get out of bed by the second snooze..haha...I catch an earlier train and head down to the waterfront with a coffee and just breathe in the peace and quiet. How many times can one person say bliss before it looses all meaning??? Well I'll say it one more time, BLISS!
It really does become the little things in life which are the most enjoyable...and now that I sound like a complete sunshine and rainbows, stop and smell the roses hippy, I'll move on...

So here is some yummy flowery stuff I've been up to, seeing as my blog is aptly named the Florist Mama, and I rarely post any floristry pics, thought I'd better catch up on that little aspect...

This next one, is accompanies a cute little anecdote. Guy comes in looking for a "cottagey, girly bouquet". He was planning on surprising a girl at the airport with a big romantic gesture, only it was at the airport as she was about to LEAVE the country...Possibly would have been a better idea to do the big romantic gesture as she arrived home...or better yet, before she decided to go overseas. But oh well, good luck to the guy, hoping it all went to plan! So nice to know there are still some romantic men out there!

and just a couple more :)

Righteo my lovelies, that's my floristry input for now, I have a roast for tonight's dinner I need to crack on with!
So for now, go buy some flowers, decorate your house, and stay beautiful!