Tuesday, May 18, 2010

A self fulfilling prophecy

Mr Bee is very, very busy at work. Poor thing!

This is why he gets all the best YouTube videos.

Here is one he shared with me this evening.

I haven't laughed so much for quite a while.

He is apparently, according to Mr Bee, the most watch man on YouTube; I mean come on, 143,701,965 views at the time of this post for goodness sakes!

Mr Bee is worried that if I blog about this I am perpetuating the prophecy.

Oh well, maybe Judson Laipply deserves it.

Go Judson! Go you good thing!

I hope it gives a grin :)

Monday, May 17, 2010

Emma missed out on.......

....the Rainbow cake so I made her one of her own :)


Mr Bee works with several different departments in his job and in one of those departments is my friend, Emma. She read my blog, saw the cake and asked Mr Bee where her piece was? It was a very large cake after all. Surely there would have been enough to go around.

This is a chocolate layer cake. There are three layers with chocolate buttercream in between each layer.

This is a special diet chocolate cake. If you only eat half a slice you will only put on half the weight - until you go back for the other half :)

I hoped you and every at the Registry liked it Em.

Monday, May 10, 2010

This Cake has got a secret....

It is quite unassuming isn't it?

Please note the well smoothed icing - I bought a new toy :)


Please excuse the wonky cutting but it is hard to cut through six different layers of cake when the cake is taller than the knife.

SURPRISE!

Four and a half hours of baking and icing later and I managed to capture a little bit of sunshine.

Therapeutic baking is just what I needed and it was time for Mr Bee to take another cake to work.

The Bumble B'eers are most put out that this is not for them :-0
I have promised the possibility of more baking tomorrow and I seem to be forgiven.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Liberation Day 2010

Happy Liberation Day Guernsey

65 years of Freedom

The Guernsey Concert Band lead the Liberation Church Parade from the White Rock Cafe, along the seafront to the Quay.

The parade was under the command of Major Bob Place.


This is the first year the Ghurkhas participated I believe.


B2 was very impressed with the pony mascot.

The Guernsey Cadets

The Standard Bearers were followed by the multi-service Veterans and the Chelsea Pensioners.


We missed the parade last year so we made sure that we were there on time this year. This is the Town Church (view down the High Street) all decked out in Guernsey colours; yellow, red and white.

Mr Bee and I were interviewed live for BBC Guernsey Radio. The kids were very impressed. I could help but see the funny side of possibly the only two Australians in the crowd being interviewed and asked to comment on why the Liberation Church Parade is important.


The French Markets were in town again.


We opted for 1kg of the most delicious strawberries for £6.00.

The quality of the fruit and vegetable for sale is of a very high standard. The problem with the fruit and vege for sale in Guernsey in the supermarkets is that everything need to be distributed via the UK so all the produce has an extra few days transportation to get here. Hedge Vege is definitely the way to go when the Market is not in Town.

Six cheeses of your choice for £10



The carousel was free to all, big kids and small :)

It fined up to a truly beautiful day.

We ate most of them this afternoon and any leftovers were blended up into fresh fruit ice-blocks/ice-lollies now that the warmer weather is upon us.

The mustard cheese (on the right) was a new experience - the jury is still out on that one!

Fresh bread - one plain and one with black olives.

Until the Guernsey tomato season is in full swing these French ones will have to do.

We wandered around for about two and a half hours until the whinge-o-metre hit about 7 then we made our way back to the car. The Cavalcade didn't reach Town until 2.00pm so we did not stay until then. Next Year we will rotate and come in for the Cavalcade instead.

Thankyou to all the men and women who protect the freedom we enjoy!


X

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Space Party

Last weekend was B1's Space Party. I themed it blue, green and silver; blue and silver for 'spacey' type colours and green for the aliens. B1 invited six guests, plus our three, made for nine little space explorers.



I used Word for Windows 'wingdings' script to write the invitation in 'Alien' language and then wrote the translation in 'Earth English' down the bottom. This was received well by all the guests when B1 handed the invitations out at school. I still haven't told him how I did it - well a Mum's got to have a few tricks up her sleeve hasn't she?


B1 chose the Space Rocket cake from the Women's Weekly Children's cake cookbook. I can highly recommend this cake as it was VERY quick to do, with very little stress. I did alter the design a little to suit the sweets and decorations I had to hand.


I also made 'alien' cupcakes using little frog icing cake toppers I bought in Waitrose when we went to Manchester. OOHHH I love English supermarkets, compared to Guernsey the choices are seemingly endless.


We played five space games; they scored points for each game and the person at the end of the party with the most point got to choose first from the prize box, then the person who came second, and so on, so everyone received a prize. I made sure that there were a few more prizes than players so that the person who came last did not feel like they received the leftovers and were able to still choose a prize for themselves.


'Find the Moonrocks' is a version of the Australian party game, the 'Minty Hunt', where sweets are hidden around the garden and the children have to find them. To make the sweets into moonrocks we simply wrapped them in aluminum foil, B1 enjoyed helping with this. The children received one point per sweet they found.


'Space Quiz' was a quiz of twenty questions relating to our Solar System (which B1's class are learning about at the moment), Dr Who and Star Wars. They received a point for each correct answer.


'The Great Space Race' was a game where they had to run to our garden wall, touch the wall, run back, eat three dry biscuits, run and touch the wall (once all the biscuits were in their mouth, though not actually swallowed), run back, blow up a balloon (the boys loved this as all the biscuits not yet swallowed were blown into the balloon which resulted in lots of screaming about how fabulously gross it was ;p), run with their balloon, touch the wall, run back and drink a glass of orange juice but the problem was I had filled the bottom half of the glass with orange jelly! It was great to see the total confusion in their faces when they couldn't pour out the last of the orange juice :) Lots more screaming about the grossness of eating jelly with your fingers! The winner received nine point and each player received point in descending order until the person who came last received one point (I hope that explanation makes sense but I want to tell you about the games so you can use them at your own space parties if you need a few ideas).


'Space Food' the kids had to kneel with their hands behind their backs and eat a gravity defying donut (which was tied to our clothes line). I took a lot of very funny photos here I can tell you!


Last but not least, 'The Alien Body Parts Game'. I had placed four cardboard boxes over four bowls of Alien body parts. The box had a small hole cut in the top so the players could put their hands in to feel which body part was inside the box. I had placed a tea towel over the top of each box so no-one could sneak a peak and also so they could wipe their hands to get the alien goo off after they had felt the body part. There were quite a few nervous nellies waiting for their turn. More absolutely priceless photos, lots of screaming, laughing and being totally grossed out. The body parts were 1. a tin of lychees in juice for the bowl of eyeballs, 2. cooked spaghetti coated liberally in oil to make slippery intestines, 3. a lump of tofu carved into the rough shape of an alien brain, 4. a tin of creamy tapioca for the foulest possible alien poo! I highly recommend this game - after they were all feeling a little queasy I fed them lunch :)

We lit up the rocket's boosters and blasted off. Unfortunately the table cloth and the table will never be the same again; you can just see the burn holes under the sparklers.


B1's rating of his party - 'This was the best day of my life Mum!'


I can't really ask for better than that!