Kiddie Drinks

Here's an easy idea for fun drinks for a children's birthday party or celebration, courtesy of Laurier Gordon Ramsay.

1. Wet the rim of a glass (or mason jar) and sprinkle with pop rocks candy.
2. Fill glass to the 3/4 mark with ice cubes and seven-up.
3. Add grenadine syrup and a drinking straw.
4. Garnish with a slice of lemon or lime, or better yet, a candy lemon slice.


There you have it, a colourful, sparkling, bubbly, exploding fancy drink that's as entertaining as it is tasty.

Birthday Roses

These amazingly beautiful roses were from my aunt and uncle's garden in Devon. I had picked them for an arrangement for my aunty's birthday. And today I am posting them to help me celebrate mine!

Teapot Cookies

Thought I'd give you a look at the cookies I made for a birthday tea. I had such a good time trying to make them look like blue and white chinaware. And I was pleased with the result and quite excited to bring them to the birthday. There’s rather a lot of icing involved, so they certainly aren’t a cookie you would want to consume every day. Nor would you want to eat many at one time. Much too sweet. But hopefully they are very sweet in the other sense of the word and everyone enjoyed them. I think they are pretty and were well suited to the tea theme. Happy Birthday D. and J.

Birthday Wisdom

“Woman must come of age herself. She must find her true center alone. She must become whole.” (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)

Around the Bend

With the arrival of my birthday tomorrow it’s only natural to look ahead and wonder what might be around the bend for the coming year. After a challenging summer with family health issues, hopefully life will settle down a little to make space for challenges of the happier variety. It’s always good to allow oneself the room to try new things, as well as to re-acquaint oneself with old passions that have for one reason or another fallen by the wayside. And of course it is human nature to also look back at what has been and reflect on the paths taken and not taken. But if one does take the time to look back, then it better be with the intention of learning what one can from what has been and then look forward once again, to plant oneself firmly in the present and do things differently or at least strive for growth and development. Here’s to a year of new discoveries, treasured memories and lots of joyful creativity.

Birthday Bliss

Today was my husband’s birthday and although I left work at 3:45, I still only had a short time to make a lasagna from scratch, assemble a salad and toast garlic bread, ice the cake, wrap the gifts and set the table before the guest of honour was due to arrive home. Sometimes fortune smiles on you and everything goes off without a hitch. But when you’re short on time, it can go either way. I knew I wanted to use some paper lanterns I had purchased a month or so ago, and was very pleased with the way they looked with a vintage tablecloth that I have. They looked like birthday balloons, and if it had been dark they would have looked great lit. As luck would have it, I had some gift bags in my stash in colours that also worked well. The whole thing just came together without a lot of fuss. It's so nice when that happens.

A Gift of Serenity #2

Yesterday I posted about this gift I put together for my sis. Well, it all started with the book pictured here. And inside there was a photo of a sachet filled with dried scented flowers. I decided to make a replica to enclose with the gift, filling mine with dried lavender fom my garden and some rose petals. I was surprised how much it looked like the original. I enclosed all sorts of wee things and marked the corresponding pages where they were featured with post-it notes. I think it's a great way to incorporate other little gifts when you give a book.

A Gift of Serenity

I love giving themed gifts. This one, for my sister, started with a book called Your Home as a Sanctuary. The book is filled with ideas to bring nature into the house to create a serene environment. I was inspired by some of the photos in the book to create a gift for my sister. The natural elements and the beige and aqua colour scheme all played a part, but it all came together when I remembered the spring-like wallpaper I'd found in a thrift shop (which I used as gift wrap).

Perky Polka Dots

Half the fun of giving a gift, for me anyway, is in the presentation. I usually start with a theme, perhaps a colour, and go from there. In this particular case, it all started with some red and white gift wrap that I bought knowing that my dear friend R. is partial to red. Next I remembered some black and white polka dot ribbon I already had squirreled away. A trip to my local crafts shop turned up the perfect polka dot boxes as well as some wee red paper bags. A quick trip down another aisle yielded some red and white gingham ribbon. Once home I punched a few star-shaped breathing holes in the red bags destined to hold flower bulbs.

Put it all together, tie a ribbon onto the Spanish garden tub, and what have you got? A very cheery gift! R. tells me she had as much fun undoing this gift as I had assembling it!