My little girl is 5 years old

It is hard to believe that my little girl is five years old and that she starts school next year.

 

She is certainly going through the princess stage, but friends tell me that it doesn't last forever. She loves the camera at the moment and has been practicing her poses ...

 

As usual I tried to make the cake. Every year I try to do a sponge, and every year I fail. I am starting to look upon the ritual as a sacrifice to the baking gods.  After the sponge failure, I return to an old faithful recipe that always turns out well. Some jam and cream and pink icing courtesy of blood orange juice.

Tori has had one hell of a month with her eczema, so I baked a bunch of cakes and cookies for her birthday so that at least she would have something that she could eat.  We are booked into an allergist to get some testing done, but until then, she has to be so careful about what she eats and also what we use to wash her clothes in.

Over the Rainbow

She wanted a Wizard of Oz party for her birthday. But we were not too crash hot on a big gathering. Birthday #5 can be big, but the rest can be smallish. So she was given the opportunity to identify a handful of friends and we held a small afternoon tea in the local park.

Even though not many came dressed up, she had her Dorothy dress and that is all that mattered.

The difficulty was actually getting a picture of her, she kept on running away to play on the huge playground.

But we did get a few snaps of her!

I had the most amount of enjoyment with the baking. Making a cake for her on the theme Wizard of Oz. I'm no good at the fondant stuff, so I opted for a smartie rainbow and a meadow of flowers on a vanilla cake with cream and raspberry jam

Outfit Notes:
The blouse and petticoat was from the German Dirndl outfit that I made last year. I popped some light blue Ric Rac on the blouse and I unpicked and sewed up the petticoat so that it was more flouncy. The dress was a simple pinafore style dress with an invisible zip up the back and interfacing in the waste band. the pinafore used about a metre and a half of fabric. The skirt was just a length gathered, no fancy half circles or anything. The top is similar to an apron with straps that crossed over at the back.

Happy Birthday Victoria

I still can't believe that my baby girl turned 4 today.

The last 6 months have been jam packed with learning curves for her and now we are having full intellectual conversations with her. Now she is a little girl and this time next year we will be preparing her for school in 2013.

We picked her up early from Kinder, washed her, dressed her and decided to take a few photo's early knowing that she probably wouldn't be up for it later on in the evening. She has been battling a low grade fever for the last few days and was understandably tired. This is not unusual, we always seem to be sick around her Birthday. Two years ago she ended up at the Royal Children's with dehydration due to a bad case of gastro that we all ended up getting.

She has been wonderful with Nicholas, rarely showing jealousy. She sings to him, gets down on the floor with him and is quick to put a dummy in when he cries. She takes her big sister responsibilities seriously and likes to help at nappy change times.

Victoria is quite crafty and loves to create things and then play with them. Her craft desk is always a work in progress and once when I was doing hand sewing she came up to me and asked me to teach her. So I hope when she gets a bit more dexterous I can teach her to hand stitch and crochet.

And of course she loves to sing and dance. She has wonderful memory recall for songs and wants us to sing to her each night. She is always excited to learn a new song. Her favourite CD's are the Justine Clarke ones at the moment.

For my reference, here are the blog posts for her Third Birthday and Second Birthday.

Busy weekend

A busy weekend was had preparing for the very small party we had for Tori on Sunday. Last year we had to cancel her party because she had severe gastro and ended up in the Royal Children's Hospital with dehydration.

We only had a handful of kids around all three or turning three. It was a nice small intimate group. Cake was simple, I used the sponge cake recipe and used dairy substitutes (Nutelex and soy milk) as one of the girls that turned up can't eat dairy. So what you are looking at is butter free butter icing!

I love this picture, she looks so grown up. Rather than wear the new clothes we got her, she wanted to wear her party dress. By the end of the day it was really grubby, but she had fun.

This week will be a busy week with final book edits due in to my publisher and corrections for school. I am hoping to get all my work done this week so that I can relax and do some indulgent sewing next week.

Happy Birthday Victoria

My little girl celebrated her third birthday yesterday (16th September) and all the excitement that went with it. In the evening our family, grandparents and gothmother, came around for Tori's favourite meal at the moment ... Pizza!

Her Uncle David in Japan gave her a wonder woman outfit. It was a battle to get it off her when she went to bed!

Tori's Oma made her a strawberry birthday cake and Tori and I made a sponge cake together when we got home from childcare. She loves the magic of putting something "soft" into the oven and it comes out as cake!

Rather proud of my first sponge cake attempt!

Of course throughout the evening, she couldn't get over how "super" she was ...

Showing Nanna how it's done ...

Opa got Tori a musical cardthat plays the chicken dance .. *groan*

Tori and Mummy being silly!