Silly

This little lady loves her Daddy because he is "silly".  If you ask her why she loves him...that is what she will tell you.  She may add "but he's not the silliest, Granda Robert is the silliest."

How does he express this silliness?  

Well, amongst other silly things he tickles her, throws her high into the air and remembers to catch her, he stands her on the gatepost while I reverse Florence into the drive EVERY time we go out, he talks for her princesses in funny voices, her plays hide and seek, he acts out stories on a loop, he tells her the story of how he met mummy, he pretends to be a prince while she is in the bath parading around in a towel cape, he lets her creep up and surprise him when she has the stealth of a small hippopotamus and every night he plays "flat Bea"

She loves him very much.  So do I.  For many of the same reasons* and more.

* except the tickling.  I dislike the tickling.

Pink & Blue

Poor husband, returned from a nine days of summer camp with the cadets to discover one or two little projects.

I had of course visited the hardware store and bought lots of tester pots to choose a new paint colour for our bedroom.  The very act of daubing them on the wall forces a choice as you can't life with a patchwork of poorly painted blocks for longer than a few weeks.  

The final choice was "mineral mist" aka blue.  I had planned to paint my pine furniture too, but when we moved it back into the bedroom, the orange of the pine looked good with the blue and the lazy girl within me cheered.

The very girlie ornament is one which I bought
Granny for Christmas when I was about 8.

The walls also compliment one of my beautiful mugs and....

....inspired me to bring up a lamp who had been hiding on top of the bookcase in the dining room.  This lamp gives off a blue glow which is much too sad for downstairs, but just perfect in my nbr (new blue room).

As Beatrice headed off to Rascals (on our day of painting) she informed me that she thought my new room would be lovely, but not as nice as hers as it wasn't pink.....

You see....the previous week we had repainted her bedroom.  I was deeply saddened to watch the lovely sunny yellow of her nursery go...but she wanted pink and the huge smile when she saw it was worth my sacrifice.

Bea does have a picture which she printed out of a scorpion on her wardrobe door.  She loves it.  She kisses it frequently before bed.  No, I do not understand why.

When you have a new pink room, it is obligatory to hide in the wardrobe and then jump out....

So, our bedrooms have been transformed thanks to the wonder that is Dulux and we are both supremely happy with them.  However, I did notice that despite resembling her Daddy in all ways physical, Bea is starting to pick up one or two of my traits.  To demonstrate...

I love perfume

Bea loves perfume

Like mother....

...like daughter

A rascal no longer

I have a very strange relationship with the word "rascal".  I have done for as long as I can remember.  Whenever it catches me unawares, the back of my throat dries and I find myself swallowing quickly.  Thus it is a word I have in the main, avoided.  Even finding myself in a que of traffic behind a rascal van caused unpleasant swallowing.  I'm sure that there is some medical diagnosis for this odd response (and yes I'm sure "barking mad" covers it)

Imagine my surprise then when looking for nurseries to send Beatrice to my favourite, by a long shot was Rascals.

Beatrice has been going to Rascals once a week since she was 18 months old.  She has always loved it.  She has been loved and well looked after there.  Every afternoon when I collected her I was told "Bea has had a great day...."  I was also informed that she ate everything offered to her.  I also discovered that at Rascals she would drink regular milk which she would refuse at home demanding formula until she was three!

Today was quite a significant day in our family, because it was Bea's last day at Rascals.  For the next few weeks we will be off at Castlewellan and then she will be starting Nursery School and so she set off this morning for her last day at Rascals.  She came home with a scrapbook of some of her artwork over the years and many hugs. 

She also came home to a new scooter.  I had bought it for her for Christmas, but decided that she had more than enough Christmas gifts and so it remained in the attic until today.  I suppose it is her graduation gift.

And so she scoots into a waiting future.  

Thank you Rascals.

18!

Once upon a time, there was a little girl, who had been named Chloe Lowie by her brother and the name stuck.  She managed to walk along the Brandy Pad one day in her school shoes and anorak and tell us all about her dreams for the future.  (These dreams did include a household staff with a butler...and I'm not sure they have altered in the intervening years)

As she grew, she developed a great love for the most dreadful American tv shows and the most fabulous sunglasses....

She belonged to a gang of three called the Dalchoolies and I have been delighted to watch them grow, from this....

....to this...

Amazingly, time has passed and Miss Chloe Lowie has turned 18.  We celebrated this momentous event which makes her an adult and the rest of us feel considerably older, with a party last night in the Old Inn at Crawfordsburn.

The party people...

And of course the birthday girl and her bff

(We'll not embarrass Paige by mentioning anything about steak or her newfound closeness to Karl.)

Bea sharing the secrets of her Fairy Field Journal with Karl.

Bea was slightly bewildered by Thomas' non fairy action figures.

Table flowers

Opening presents

Bea was of course enchanted by the cake...especially when she got her own mouse to eat.

Happy Birthday Miss Chloe Lowie.  No longer a little girl, but a warm, witty bookwormy woman.  We love you.

<3

The Barbie Birthday Cake

Miss Josie decided that for her fourth birthday she wanted to have a Barbie Party.  Her Mummy believes that Josie's choice of theme is inspired by Alana's.  The proof: for her fourth birthday, Alana had a princess party, the following year, Josie wanted a princess party.  Last year when she turned five, Alana had a Barbie party....so perhaps this is the root of Josie's inspiration.

To be fair, Alana's Mermaid Barbie birthday cake was inspirational in itself.

Thus Heather and I made plans on Friday to create a beautiful, but less spectacular Barbie birthday cake for Josie.  Heather had bought a new Barbie doll to sit beside, or on the cake (our plans were quite non specific) and she was convinced that Josie would be beside herself with excitement at the thought of having a new Barbie.  

So at 11 Heather and Josie arrived.  The girls quickly disappeared upstairs to destroy every room they discovered  play while Heather and I set about making buns and the cake.  We baked three different coloured square layers of cake, stuck them together with jam and buttercream and then rolled out the fondant icing.  As we draped it over the cake Heather remarked that it looked a bit like a tablecloth.  Inspiration struck.  A tiny doll's tea set was quickly unearthed, the plates were given napkins, flowers were added and a cake stand with pastries from my doll's house provided the final touch.  We stood back in amazement, high fiving our obvious skill as cake decorators.

Heather brought Josie in to see her cake.  I'll be honest, we anticipated gasps of delight.  Josie looked at it and shook her head.  "No." she said.

Heather and I looked at each other.  "But don't you like your new Barbie?"  "She's having a party like you'll be having tomorrow".  Our efforts to convince were unconvincing. 

While Heather and I had thought of the cake in the loosest parameters of "Barbie", Josie on the other hand had a very clear plan of how she wanted her cake to be, and this poor attempt on the part of her mum and her aunt was just not meeting her standards.

"No, she has to be in the cake with a dress"

We ascertained that Josie did not in fact want a cake with a Barbie, she wanted Barbie in a cake whose dress she could eat.  Her inspiration was not Alana's cake, rather Beth's from the princess party  (May 2011!)

One look at Josie's face told us that this cake would not do indeed.  But by now it was three o'clock and Heather had to leave at five to get to work on time, plus we would need to bake more cake and buy more icing.  The pressure was on, or as we were in the kitchen I should probably say the heat was on!

Anyhow.  We added two more layers of cake to the top of the square cakes.  In a moment of great intelligence, I wrapped cling film around Barbie's nether regions and we removed her shoes.  We then bored a hole through five layers of cake and stood Barbie in it.  That damned Amazon was still too tall. We cut the square cakes into a circle (using the term very loosely and with great apologies to the circle shape) and then packed Barbie with all the cake off cuts.   We rolled out the icing.  Then couldn't figure out how to get it over Barbie's head (yes I know we should have removed Barbie, put it over the base and then stuck her back in - but I challenge YOU to try thinking logically under such pressure!)  We made a skirt panel.  We decided that might just work.  We made another panel.  We fixed Barbie's fondant bodice which had somehow stretched and was exposing her rather too much.  We kept making and sticking panels until the skirt was covered.  I rushed upstairs and, while you may find this hard to believe, found ribbon which exactly matched Barbie's bag and shoes.  We wound the ribbon around the slightly unsightly seams.  We added some rosebuds.  We stuck pin after pin into that ribbon as if Barbie were some voodoo representation of our greatest enemy. 

Now if you were to look closely (which I know you will be much too gracious to do) you may observe that Barbie lists a little too much to the right and looks like she has had one too many champagne cocktails.  ( I was so tempted to accessorise her with a few wine bottles from the doll's house)

But I'm sure that you won't notice because when we summoned our harshest critic, she looked at our creation and a huge smile spread across her face.

"That's her"

Job done!

Post Script

I know also that you will look at this photo and be convinced that the fact that Barbie has rather more going on in the front of her ball gown and much less at the back was a design choice.  You may also believe that her rather lopsided characteristics are caused by the force with which Josie is blowing out her candles.  And for that, I thank you.

UPDATE

To see the cutting of the cake, click here