I'm a big boy now!

It is with mixed emotion for me, that my youngest turned 5 recently. When my first child was born, I couldn't wait for her to reach each new milestone, with my youngest I now think "oh that's the last time we'll ever go to kindy". As I was driving to work the day before my son's last day of kindy, I was thinking to myself about the play-doh birthday cake I received when I turned 5 at Kamo Kindy, and lo &; behold when I got to work Grandma Kiwicakes had propped this photo up against my computer.

`

The photo above lead me to thinking about my 5th birthday cake, I can still remember the anticipation of waiting for Mum to go and collect the cake. I had chosen it from the Kamo Home Cookery. They always had a few dummy dolly varden cakes in the window, which I used to gaze at longingly as we walked past the window on the way to kindy, they also had stacks of photos of them in their cake albums, mine was pink & white and very girlie. Some where is a much better photo of it, but this is the only one I could find. In 30 years, not much has changed, this style of cake hasn't changed, except perhaps the 1980s hair do on the doll and the style of piping on the dress.

However I cannot dwell on it for too long as mister 5 is so full of life and rip roaring ready to go to school, I cannot be sad for more than 2 minutes. We've already been shopping for school uniforms, books and a new bag. So we're eagerly awaiting Monday morning.

Both my husband Vaughan and I went for the "happy happy last day" at Kindy, the children get to choose their mat time activity/song and receive a card & play-doh cake. Mister 5 chose dinosaur cupcakes to give to his friends, as he lives, breathes and dreams about dinosaurs, all day every day!

So it was not surprising the party theme was DINOSAURS! I used the Diggin for dino partyware

-->

Mister 5 had very specific ideas about the candy he wanted in the jars on his party table I used green & orange jelly beans from Kiwi candy buffets the kids really enjoyed using the tongs and scoops to get the candy from the old fashioned candy jars

If it could be made in the shape of a dinosaur it was, such as the sandwhiches, which I cut out using these cookie cutters These dinosaur picks were perfect for spearing cheese & dinosaur eggs, oh I mean grapes!

I made the mistake of telling Mister almost 5 to look through all of my cake books and see what he liked for a cake, he found an old wilton yearbook from the 1980s and chose the Wilton Megasaurus cake tin, long discontinued, so it was an expensive shopping trip on ebay to get the tin secondhand.

For some reason I've never been a great fan of poking candles right in a cake (unless it's round and plain), so I was really pleased to find this Wish-a-saurus candle holder, which makes a great keepsake of the party when all the excitement is over.
That's it for kiddy birthday parties in our house until next. Goodness knows what next years obsession will be?

My time in Wellington

Many of you have enquired how my time in Wellington went, at the Her magazine Businesswoman of the year awards, I've had this blog post part written for a short time and hadn't quite finished until now. Many of you know I returned from Wellington to an email crash of epic proprotions, the ripple effect of this meant chaos for some time. But on to the story............

I reached Wellington late in the afternoon of Wednesday 29th and took a taxi to the James Cook Chancellor hotel (very nice). I checked in with the lovely folks from Her magazine . Then it was quickly up to my room to change in to a frock, in time to meet my lovely date for the night. Many thanks for Fiona Hume for agreeing to accompany me. You might remember Fiona's last cake see here or her winning entry in 2010 see here and here Fiona and I had a blast and we talked cakes much of the time.

The awards were part of a lovely dinner hosted by Her magazine. Kay Gregory was our MC for the evening. When it came time to announce the category I was nominated for Kay read out the spiel about me, that had been pre-prepared for her, she then when on to say she could vouch for how great my website was, as she was a customer and received my newsletters, this was totally unexpected and made me quite proud.

I did not win my category, the honour went to Cilla Hegarty from NZ Tax Refunds. Cilla also won the supreme award across all categories. But I'm certainly thrilled to have been nominated.

I met the lovely girls from Biteme Cupcakes Caroline & Rachael this is a photo of them from their website they were nominated for the best new business category. It was lovely to have another nomination from the cake industry. We also talked a lot about cakes. They promised to send me some cupcakes, to test how they travel on the courier (I wonder if they will remember?)

After a fun filled evening, I climbed in to bed at 1.30am and left a large group of ladies still enjoying the wee small hours of the morning.

Thursday morning, I had arranged to have breakfast with the lovely Tanya of Decorada We also talked a lot about cakes & cookies. I was so lucky, to receive a gorgeous box of Trixie kiwi cookies (that's the Kiwicakes logo for those of you that don't recognise it). I would also not be exaggerating when I said, they were one of the very best sugar cookies I have ever tasted. Don't you just love Tanya's wonderful pale blue satin ribbon printed with her logo.

My time in Wellington was short lived less than 24 hours later I was back in Whangarei - one tired caker!

Starship's Diamond & Stars Tea Party

I received an email recently from one of Kiwicakes earliest customers. Lenna has been with me right from the beginning. She asked me to sponsor some Satin Ice fondant, glitter and some foil cupcake cases for Starship's Diamond & Stars Tea Party. The event raised over $88 000 for Starship's national air ambulance. Lenna sent me some wonderful photo's of all her hard work (she had an accomplice in the lovely Donna) She also promised to send some photo's I could share with you all and I just loved what they did with their 350 cupcakes. I think they did an awesome job.

I asked Lenna what she thought of Satin Ice fondant and she said "Donna and I had a lot of fun making these cupcakes for such a great cause.We loved the Satin Ice Fondant, it was easy to use and tastes AMAZING! Love love love it!"

Enjoy the photos

Satin ice fondant colour mixing chart

Click to enlarge & print this awesome colour mixing chart for Satin ice fondant. Make a huge range of awesome colours from the standard Satin ice range.