Some time ago, I was on the hunt for a beautiful, and unique mobile for my baby’s nursery.  They are very hard to find.  In the end, I decided to make one.  I love birds, and thought they would make a really cute mobile.  I am not an advanced sewer, by any means, but armed with my Grandma’s old sewing machine, and a fabric bird pattern I found on line I set to work.   I found a great little bird pattern at LollyChops, and headed out to the fabric store.  I originally thought I would do five birds, but in the end decided three looked better. I ended up creating one pink bird, one yellow with a little lime green, and one purple and blue bird.  I really like the way you can use a different fabric for the birds tummy, it was a great opportunity to mix in more pattern and colour.

After I sewed the birds, I went for a walk in the woods and found a good branch.  The birds are attached at various lengths with some ribbon.  I couldn’t resist adding a small nest, I found at Michaels and a few faux eggs. 

It turned out so well, I absolutely love it.

This is the view from lying in the crib.  I love the different colours on the tummies.

I did originally hang this over my daughters crib, but now it is in the window of her “big girl room” which has a bird theme, and fits perfectly.  When she graduated to her big girl bed, we ordered this beautiful birdie bedding from Target, and have been really pleased with it, even though they don’t deliver to Canada and it had to be sent to a relative with an American address, and be delivered the next time he flew home (thanks Uncle Steve!).

My daughters nursery had a polka dot theme, but she wanted a change when she got her new bed.  Her nursery walls had the very cute Dottilicious Wall Stickers, which are removable/repositional vinyl wall decals, on them in the shape of polka dots.  There were fairly expensive so I was excited to be able to reuse them.  I used the ones that matched the colours in the bedding to create matching little birds for the walls.

We added a few more bird wall stickers, and some little bird accents around the room to complete the look.  Maddie loves her “birdie bedroom” and so do I!

This post is linked up to:

 Made By You Mondays,  Tatertots and Jello, I’m loving it Fridays at Tidymom, Tickled Pink at 504 Main, and Trendy Treehouse

Today we went to Centreville with friends for some fun and a picnic.  We had great weather, delicious food, and amazing company.  We took the ferry over to Centre Island in the morning.  From the Island we had a great view back to Toronto, and the CN Tower.

We were greeted by these great signs!

We enjoyed lots of rides together.  Maddie loved the pony ride, and another favourite for us all was the merry-go-round.

We were all looking forward to our picnic so much that we headed to a picnic table at 11:30  The menu, classic picnic fare, Kentucky Fried Chicken.  It was bought the night before and served cold –nothing like it!  With it we had veggies, chips, home made dip and humus, and fresh bread and butter.  Yum!

For dessert, I tried a new recipe from Cityline.  I made it the night before.

Peach and Frangipane Tart

Recipe courtesy Michael Bonacini

Serves 6 – 8

Ingredients

4 just-ripe peaches, peeled, pitted, and sliced
1 pack frozen puff pastry
Frangipane:
2/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 whole eggs
1 tbsp, plus 1 tsp, all-purpose flour
2/3 cup ground almonds
Zest of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method
Roll out the puff pastry to about 1/8 inch thick, and 10 1/2 inches in diameter.

Place an 8-inch flan ring on a cookie sheet that has been lined with parchment paper.  Line the flan ring loosely with the puff pastry and dock using a fork.  Place in the refrigerator to relax.  In a clean bowl, cream the butter and sugar.  Crack and beat the eggs, reserving some for the egg wash.  Add the beaten eggs to the creamed butter and sugar, followed by the flour, ground almonds, lemon zest and vanilla.

Beat thoroughly to remove any and all lumps.  Take the pastry from the refrigerator and place the frangipane in 6 – 8 dollops over the base of the pastry crust.  Slice the peaches thinly, and arrange on top of the frangipane.

Loosely fold the edges of the pastry crust inward.

Egg wash the pastry crust, sprinkle with a little sugar, and bake in an oven at 350° for 20 – 25 minutes, covering with aluminum foil if needed, until pastry crust is golden brown and crisp.

Serve with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, or plain yoghurt.

At our picnic, my sweet husband walked back to the concession stand and bought vanilla ice cream so our pie would be picture perfect.

I’m all for truth in blogging, and I have to say that I was a little disappointed in the pie.  It was good, but if I made it again, I would make sure to chill all the ingredients.  My frangipane was warm when I put it in the pastry and the pie didn’t hold together in the oven very well.  It kind of melted onto the cooking sheet.  Overall, it was okay, and a good way to use up our fresh Ontario peaches.

We had a great time at Centreville; the weather was great, the food was yummy and the friendship a blessing!  We love you Hagen’s, and our first annual picnic

Our amazing friends, Dan and Heather, recently celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary with a backyard bbq for friends and family.  Heather did an amazing job on all the little details, as usual, and I wanted to share some of the highlights here.  The colour scheme was turquoise and white.   Guests were greeted by beautiful black and white prints of the couples wedding day.  Heather strung them up on a custom “clothes line” of turquoise string, and added a circle of coordinating scrapbook paper to the clothes pins.  This idea would also be great for a birthday party.  Photos of the birthday boy or girl over the years could be unified by all being printed in black and white, like they did here.

The front deck was decorated with beautiful butterfly garland, found at the dollar store.  Dollarama we love you!

The big beautiful maple tree in the back garden was all dressed up for the occasion with more ribbon and butterflies, and a bouquet of tissue paper pom-poms and paper lanterns.  So beautiful, and summery.

All the tables looked coordinated and beautiful with Heather’s handmade table clothes.  She used inexpensive dress lining found at the fabric store, which matched perfectly.  Another great idea that the guests loved, especially those with kids, was the full salad bar.  Guests were able to customize their salad to what ever they liked.  The lemonade  looked fantastic in the big glass jar dispensers, complete with fresh lemon slice garnish.

The dessert table looked amazing.  Heather added turquoise touches by adding ribbon to her cake stands, and adding in turquoise candy, and fun turquoise jello for the kids!  She also made beautiful sugar cookies monogrammed with the couples last name initial.  Don’t those cupcakes also look amazing, and she made them all herself.  Yum!

Before guests left, they were asked to write some advice for the couples next ten years together.  Instead of having it in a guest book, Heather used coordinating turquoise scrap book paper, and had guests attach the papers to the metal garden shed with beautiful hand-made pebble magnets.  What a great idea for an outdoor party.  I also love the use of adhesive chalkboard stickers here.

What an amazing party.  Congratulations Heather and Dan, and our advice for the next ten years?  Life is what you make it, so make it a party!

Today I finished off a little project inspired by my daughters up coming ice cream themed birthday party.  I saw a cute ice cream finger towel on Etsy, but decided to make mine bath towel size so it could be used by my daughter after her party.

I found a plain white towel at Home Outfitters for $5, and used up some felt I had.  The pretty pink rick-rack is from Fabricland, along with the button.  I already had some Heat-n-Bond, so it was an inexpensive project.

I started out by creating an ice cream cone and ice cream out of cardboard, and using this pattern to draw and cut it out of the felt.  I then created the criss-cross pattern on the cone, by sewing diagonals on my sewing machine.  I made sure to tie the ends on the backside.

After I finished sewing the criss-cross pattern on the ice cream cone, I adhered the cone and the ice cream to the towel with an iron-on adhesive called Heat-n-Bond.  You could skip this step and just sew it, but the iron-on adhesive should help insure that even after washing, the ice cream cone will stay on the towel.

After this, I sewed around the ice cream and cone with the sewing machine, and added the rick-rack.  The final touch was to sew on a bright pink “cherry” button.

I love how it turned out and so does my daughter.  I think it will be a cute touch to the bathroom on the big “Ice Cream Birthday Party” day, and a great addition to bath time later.

Now I think I want a real ice cream cone!

Last night we had some old friends over for dinner, and I wanted to make something really nice, and summery for dessert.  I decided on Strawberry pie, and we all really enjoyed it.

It is a recipe with several steps, but is really quite easy.  The pie crust is a no-roll, which is baked and covered in a cream cheese filling, then fresh strawberries, with a glaze on top, and the finished pie is served with sweetened whip cream.  Yum!

Mrs. Megarry’s Strawberry Pie

Crust:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 cup corn oil
• 3 tbsp cold milk

Mix flour together with sugar.  Mix oil and milk in a separate bowl, then add to flour and sugar mixture.  Combine and pat with your fingers into a pie plate.  Bake at 400 for 10 min.

Cream Cheese Filling:

• 1 pkg. cream cheese
• 1 tsp almond flavouring
• 1/2 cup sugar

Combine all three ingredients in a mixer and whip until smooth.  Spread the mixture over cooled pie crust.

Strawberries and Glaze:

• 4 cups of fresh strawberries, sliced
• 3/4 cup water
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Add 3 cups of strawberries to the pie on top of the cream cheese layer.  Reserve 1 cup of strawberries for the glaze.  Combine 1 cup strawberries, and water in a sauce pan and simmer for 3-4 min.  Combine the cornstarch and sugar and add to the fruit and water.  Simmer until the mixture is thick and clear, stirring constantly.  Add lemon juice.  Cool slightly before pouring over the fruit in the pie shell.  Chill, and serve with sweetened whip cream.

It’s always a good sign when the guests ask for the recipe

My husband and I recently went on a romantic getaway.  After two days of shopping, dinning, antiquing, and wine tours we finished our visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake with my husband taking me to high tea at the Prince of Wales Hotel.

The dinning room where they serve high tea was beautiful, and made us feel like we were going back in time with its Victorian furnishings, linen table cloths, fresh flowers, and china teacups.

We ordered the traditional high tea.  You can see the menu here.  Everything sounded so good.

The tea was served on a beautiful traditional three tiered tray.

The bottom tray was the savoury sandwiches.  They included cucumber and goat’s cheese rolls, salmon with horseradish mayo, egg salad with dill, and my favourite, ham and cheddar cheese with mango chutney.  I host an annual tea party, and will definitely be adding this one to the menu.

The second tier included the traditional scones, served with clotted cream, jam, and butter.  The top tier was filled with delicious sweets.

We had a great time, and it was the perfect ending to our romantic getaway.

Last week my husband and I went to visit a winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake with some friends.  We had a great time learning about how wine is made and how to taste it.  We started out learning the history of the winery and their wine production, then we moved out into the vineyard.  It was beautiful to see the grapes on the vines.  The leaves had just been trimmed back to allow the grapes to get more sunshine;  100 days of sunshine required for idea conditions.

From the vineyard we were brought into the wine cellar.  All the barrels stacked up in rows looked so beautiful, and the winery uses the cellar for many special events.  Imagine a wedding reception down here.

While we were in the cellar we had an instructed wine tasting.  It was very informative.

After the tour we stopped by the wine boutique, and purchased a few bottles to bring home with us.

It was certainly a lovely afternoon, and I would love to do it again.  If you’ve never gone on a wine tour, I recommend it.  It was a great addition to our romantic getaway.

Today was brought to you by the letter “P” and the letter “M”!  We registered for the summer reading program at our local library, and this week is “Know Your Letters” week.  One of the suggested at home activities was to have a letter day and do things, eat things and say things that start with that letter.  We chose “P” for Paige, and “M” for Maddie.

When we got home we made letter decorations for our special letter dinner.  We also used some alphabet pasta to create “M” and “P” words by gluing them on construction paper.  At least that was the idea.  Maddie, who is 3, was more interested in random glue and paste

The highlight of letter day was our special letter dinner.  We had a great time planning our menu and looking around the grocery store for foods that began with our letters.  Paige is 5 and just learning to read, so this activity was right up her alley.  For “P” we had pizza, papaya and peaches.

For “M” we had macaroni with mushrooms and meatballs, chocolate mousse, muffins, and mangoes.

It was MARVELOUS, we kept saying “MMMmmmm”.  A good time was had by all!

The girls both drew a picture about our letter day in their reading club journals, and took them to the library to show the librarian and get their weekly stamp, and of course some new books!

I think a letter day is a great no special occasion party, try it!

I wanted to make something special for my best friend’s baby girl’s first birthday.  The theme of the party was ladybugs, see all the details in my post from yesterday, here. I had attempted to make the cupcake cake pops once before, and found them very challenging!  They didn’t come out quite as beautifully as I hoped, and I vowed never to make them again, but…I had this idea that I could do ladybugs and just had to try it.  Cake pops, in case you’re not familiar with them, are little balls of cake and frosting mixed together, and coated in chocolate, on a lollipop stick.  And, they’re just as yummy as they sound.  I went straight to the master, Bakerella and followed her basic instructions for cake pops.  I also did a little Googling this time, and came upon some helpful hints.  In case you’d like to try them too, here’s what I learned.

I made them out of chocolate cake, and cream cheese icing.  The first time I attempted these, I used the whole container of icing and they were way too wet.  I ended up having to bake another whole cake and add it to try and get the right consistency, which ended up making around 100 cake pops!  This time I added the icing slowly, and ended up using about half the container.  I also learned that I should dip the sticks into a little candy coating and then into the cake balls.  It really helps them stay on the stick when it comes time to dip them into the chocolate candy coating.

Also, don’t attempt to use regular chocolate.  The candy melts are like chocolate, but melt more easily and harden more quickly making them much easier to use then just regular chocolate or chocolate chips.

The big difference this time though, was adding a little vegetable shorting to the melted chocolate candy coating.  It is too thick to get a nice smooth application when it’s melted on it’s own.  Adding a little shortening really helps make it runnier and easier to dip.  But, it can be too runny so don’t add too much at a time.  I added too much in the beginning and it was too thin, and kept dripping off.  Through trial and error I found a good consistency.

I dipped them first completely in the red chocolate candy melts, and stuck them into some Styrofoam to dry.  The next step was adding the ladybug details.  I used semi-sweet chocolate candy melts, and put them in a small Ziploc bag, with a very small hole snipped in the corner.  I used the bag like a piping bag and added the detail of a small round face, and line to create wings, and the polka dots.  I think they turned out so cute.  And they tasted great too.

After they were set, I wrapped them up in lollipop bags and added a little red satin ribbon to finish them off.

I think they made a great addition to the Ladybug Dessert Table.

Happy Birthday Allie!

Today was the first birthday party of one of my very favourite babies, Allie.  She has the sweetest nature, and deserved a super sweet birthday.  The theme was ladybugs, and they were everywhere!  We were greeted by a beautiful display of ribbon on the front railing and a welcoming bouquet of paper lanterns on the front gate.

The path to the backyard was lined with cute ladybug pinwheels.

The backyard was full of treats!  There was a craft set up on the deck, to decorate your own ladybug fairy wand, with sparkly pom-poms, googly eyes, and glitter glue!  There’s one of my little ladybugs hard at work.

There was also a little ladybug swimming pool and sprinkler set up for some water fun.

There was also a beautiful handmade game of pin the lady bug on the leaf, and each child’s name had been made into a cute little ladybug.

There were lots of other little ladybug touches everywhere.  The backyard swing had inflatable ladybugs on it, the tree had a ladybug windsock blowing in the breeze, and there was a cozy quiet spot set up for little loungers.  The attention to detail was amazing and made the party so special!

After games it was time for a lovely lunch and an amazing dessert table!  The kids had their own picnic table and sweet ladybug picnic containers complete with fork and spoon, for everyone to take home after.

There were ladybugs all over the food table, stuffed ones as weights on the paper plates and napkins, ladybug magnets on metal containers, and handmade matching ladybug table cloths.

Of course my favourite was the incredible dessert table!

There were beautiful homemade cupcakes made by the birthday girls mom –Heather.  They were so delicious!  All three designs were so beautiful.  One design was different flowers in butter cream icing –pansies, carnations, and daisy-like  blossoms with gumdrop centres.

She also made amazing sunflowers, with Oreo and mini-Oreo centres, and beautiful little ladybugs.

Heather also made amazing pink ladybugs.  Their cute little bodies were made from marshmallow cookies, covered in pink icing.  I love the heart sprinkle eyes.

There was also ladybug sugar cookies, in pink and red, with chocolate chip or jube-jube polka dots.

I made ladybug cakepops for the party, more on that tomorrow.

There was also flowerpot desserts.  Heather made “dirt” pudding with chocolate pudding and cookie crumbs, put them in a clean plastic flower pots, added candy rocks, and sugar cookie flower lollipops.  They were adorable!

There were also lots of ladybug chocolates, and sweet details like pictures of the birthday girl during her first year.

Everyone had a great time, including the birthday girl herself!

And the fun didn’t end when the party did, because Heather had made beautiful loot bags for all the kids.  My girls couldn’t wait to open them, they were full of lady bug treasures!

What an amazing party, Happy Birthday Allie, we love you, and well done Heather!