Cupcake dramas

I made my first cupcake order today.... was a bit busier than I expected.

Last night I had a test run (new oven, kitchen, life etc) and they were pretty good so I went to bed happy with my practise session. 

Off to the supermarket first thing to get some extra butter etc and started work at 10am (90 cupcakes to be collected at 4.30pm - so tonnes of time, seriously!!!) 

The first batch overflowed the cupcake cases, never mind, lots of time and let's have another go..... second batch (and I'm doing 24 in a batch!), came out sunken in the middle!!  Like doughnuts!!!  OMG - getting abit stressed now. 

Think of the science class, ah yes, oven too hot, cakes rise too quickly and then sink.... turned the oven down and they got better, but they weren't my best cakes at all!  So I'm hoping that because it is a children's birthday party for 1 year olds, then the adults will be rather distracted with kids running about and all they'll have time to notice is that the icing looks pretty not that the cake is a bit weird!!!

I must mention that mum was an enormous help in this drama.  I booked her up to look after Fraser while I pottered about doing cupcakes, la la la.  However, it turned into a frantic mum and daughter cooking and icing fest and I couldn't have done it without her.  Love your mum!  She'll help you in your cupcake crisis!!!  xx :-D

This was iced batch number one.....

The Possum in the Birdhouse

An exciting morning - we went outside to find that there was another possum in the birdhouse!  This time we'd woken it up and it peered at us through very sleepy eyes as Fraser and the puppies danced, shouted and squeaked about below it.

It stayed there all day much to my surprise, despite all the noise.  It will be interesting to see if it returns tomorrow.....  (See below - top left "window")

Puppies doing well and surviving Fraser's pursuit of them.  At one point he hoisted Tessa up by the back leg in order to get a better look at her toes!!  She yelped and looked at me with pleading eyes, but she does come back for more.  Max already dances out of Fraser's way, his pedicure must be in need of a touch up, obviously.

Meet Tessa (she's a Kelpie):

And this is Max (he's a Schiperke - pronounced Skip-er-key):

Puppies and drenching cows

Last night we brought home our 2 puppies.  They were both bred by my mum and step-father and have gorgeous natures and are loads of fun.....once I worked out a bit of a system!!!

This morning after Fraser and I had got up, read stories, got dressed etc, I let them out of the laundry where they'd slept the night, in case they tried to escape.  Fraser couldn't believe his eyes and choas then ensued!!  Fraser spent the next hour following them around saying "puppy, puppy", with me following all 3 of them around with a bucket of dettol.... I won't enlarge, but needless to say I happy that a) we'd just pulled the carpet up and b) the new carpet in the hallway hasn't gone down yet.....  The following hour was spent in the garden with puppies and toddler each following the other around depending upon which toy was in play at the current time.  A stick and ball for Fraser and a ball in a sock for the puppies.  At noon they all went to sleep and I collapsed on the chair outside to gather strength. 

Mike came home about 12.30pm having done the early shift (4.30am start!!!), the puppies woke up enough to have their tummies scratched and then went back to sleep!  He'd been drenching young cows this morning and proudly announced that his rugby skills had come in useful!  He had cow hair all over his trousers and I also was given sight of some teeth marks he'd been given whilst man handling the cows to poke a tube down their neck to give them the drench.  I used to help Geoff do this when I was a teenager and was never strong enough or big enough to be at all successful - the majority of the drench ending up all over me or the cow, so I think Mike's well and truly passed Drenching 101.

Fraser and puppies woke at 2pm but unfortunately it started raining so it was all inside for a few hours where all parties learnt about putting Brio train sets together.....tomorrow is another day.

Renovations

Our "internet house" has mostly lived up to expectations - as in, it's on a large block, has lots of trees and a house, which is very well built.  The only thing which wasn't quite expected was that it is in desperate need of a re-paint and to have new floor coverings!!

Mike finished painting Fraser's room the first week we were here and is almost finished the second one.  The floor coverings are going and attached is a photo of Mike in action, tearing up the carpet in the dining area attached to the kitchen.  It was quite a job as the runner boards along the edges of the rooms were nailed so well a hurricane couldn't even have torn up the carpet.  I made a trip to the hardware store and bought a "wrecking bar" - which Mike rather liked.....

As the cricket didn't start until 1pm (it's in Perth which of course you knew.....), the stereo was playing Neil Young's latest album and thus needed to remain in the room. :-)

An enormous garden

The garden is considerably larger than the one I had on the back doorstep at St Leonards Court.  Fraser and I spent some time in the garden today planting seeds in the patches on the lawn.  He loves using the rake and scratches away in the dirt, sometimes in the patches, sometimes in the flowerbeds.  But the real hit is the wheelbarrow which to Fraser is a "tractor" and he requires a ride in it at least once every 15 minutes. 

 

We had a shed and an aviary at the bottom of the garden which are now gone thanks to an ad listing the items as "FREE" in the local paper - I could have got rid of about 20 of each....  But there is now a very large pile of junk which wasn't taken by those lucky people and so I've a bit of work to do.  Orange skip to hire anyone??

 

Mike's working hard, but I think it's all good.  He does however now smell awful in the evenings though, but thankfully we seem to be going through a correspondingly large amount of soap....

Tractors and Fire Engines

Yesterday was a very exciting day for Fraser.  He had a sit in a Tractor on the farm AND a Fire Engine at the fire station when I went to enquire about volunteering (well, volunteering for Mike!) 

Here are the boys on the Tractor.  We couldn't get Fraser off it!!  So much for the cute little calves nearby.  (Mike put on clean clothes especially for the photo....)

Mike is also learning to drive the Tractor - all fences so far intact.

No longer the dry country

Mike believes it is a myth that Australia has droughts and that the centre is dry.  However, he's not yet come across Dorothy McKellar's poem "I love a Sunburnt Country", which was written in 1906 and continues... "I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains....."  So it was flooding way back then too.

We're having record rainfall here and many parts of Australia are indeed flooded.  Pearcedale received more rain today (I think it's rained virtually everyday we've been here so far!), but there are long bursts of sun and I'm still wearing a t-shirt at 10.45pm at night!  So not all bad.

Started digging up the veggie patch today, but the rain arrived before I could get the plants in and I decided not to get my hair wet by continuing to work out in it.  Fraser spent the whole day telling me it was raining which was very kind of him. 

Mike's onto room 2 of the house painting journey.... we decided tonight over dinner that we'd leave the big room at the back for David to do when he arrives :-)

Wildlife Victoria are taking the aviary at the bottom of the garden away for us, so I feel as though I've done a good deed for the day.

Old friends

On Sunday we drove along Melbourne's lovely sunny beach front to have lunch with Rupert and Juliette - very old friends of Mike's from the UK who moved to Melbourne nearly 4 years ago.

It was fabulous to see them and have a wonderful lunch - complete with home grown potatoes!!  Very impressive.  Juliette was also about to plant more tomatoes, so I was inspired and have bought a bag of horse manure today to start my veggie garden!

We also collectively moaned about the inadequacies of Australian media (a Roberts digital internet radio is apparently the answer to the one decent radio station problem here in Oz) and they provided us with suggestions on how to get around Australia's exorbitant food costs - buy in season!!!

We're connected!!

Hello there!  Well after almost 5 weeks notice to Telstra (Australia's BT), we are now finally, connected to the internet.  Seems as though there service hasn't improved whilst I've been away.  Or perhaps my attempt to be super organised and request the service whilst in the UK (thus showing an international IP address), caused the chaos....

Mike is on week 2 of cow duties and he's even brought home a few milk churns filled with the fruits of his labour.  He's not so sure about drinking it as he's seen where it comes from...

Fraser is thrilled he can run about with next to no clothes on all day and play in water without wellies and a mac on!

I have my first cupcake order (although is it a problem if she's not returning my calls??)  Hmm, anyway, today I supped a flat white in the local (and very smart) cafe, where I will go back to next week to hawk my wares, but this time minus extremely excited child, all revved up and bouncing off the walls having shared mummy's chocolate cake!

lSam (sitting here at 10.30pm in a t-shirt with the back door open!)

Putting our life into 3 suitcases

As the freezing Edinburgh rain drummed against the windows, I spent the day trying to fit the remnants of our life in the UK into one last suitcase.  I failed miserably.  First I tried a small suitcase (it was overflowing before 3 pullovers, 2 pairs of jeans and a large teddy bear were even near the suitcase), then a larger one, which I promptly filled to 35 kgs....

So out came Mike's records (no! and he'd even completed his collection of Genesis and Eagles albums....hmmm), the jeans will become cutoffs and the pullovers will have to be sent with Royal Mail via boat in a brown paper package, lucky they won't be needed as the BBC tells me it will be 30 degrees when we arrive.

Did I say something about hot weather????  ;-)