More blue skies............

More blue skies, more Miss Sydney but what can I do this it what life is centered around at the moment, that and 9th birthday celebration. Oh yeah and also my mum. She is here visiting for the birthdays...........twins and mine. No time for sitting and looking at lovely blogs or writing my very infrequent posts. Not siree it's all about the baking, cooking, feeding, entertaining( not that my mum needs too much of that she is very good that way) organising party bags and games. Miss Sydney will head off to her next destination soon and with her a couple of new outfits so there also has been a bit of sewing squished inbetween everything else. It is amazing what you can do when the pressure is on.
 
Now I am going to bed most likely to dream about some failed game at the birthday party and all the kids going home disappointed........oh the pressure of kids parties when will it end!!!!

Goody bags.......

I tell you sometimes it is so hard to find the simplest of things on this island. I have been in search of a good goody bags for the kids upcoming party. Do you think I can find anything remotely interesting. I don't want to use the usual branded stuff or crappy plastic for that matter so I went in search of paper lunch bags to do a bit of goccoing on. I had in mind to use the same design as I had put on their invitations. I knew it would be hard before I even set out. All the kids/parents here go to canteen/restaurants or home for lunch. Nobody carries a lunch bag. So not chic and so I failed on this. But on the way home I had an idea. Print on calico! Why didn't I think of this before. So I went straight home made a big mess on the kitchen table, learnt some new things about my print gocco and voila! The starts of some fabulous goody bags.

To be continued...........

Party antics.....

Party fun........
What a great day was had by the birthday kids and hopefully their guests. The weather turned out to be good, everybody ate all the food, kids went home with lolly bags. What more could you ask for. The pictures above are of some of the activities on the day. The pinata was completed and got plenty of bashing about. Pin the tale on the mermaid, she was eventually given one in the right place, and our friend Brett bought his sea canoe along and gave the kids rides out into the deep sea(so Juliette told me it was anyway) and when all organised games were finished there was just good old playing in the sand to be done.

Thanks to everybody for the lovely gifts and for coming to enjoy the festivities.

Passionfruit and unfinished pinatas.......

What to do....What to do.....Well I know what to do with the pinata, that's a work in progress for the upcoming party, but all those passionfruit and that is only a small amount of them that I collected from under the vine yesterday afternoon. We have the most fantastic passionfruit vine on our back wall and it is the most prolific fruit bearer. I really do love passionfruit but all year round! I'm used to having them only in the summertime in Melbourne. I am slowly working through my tried and true desserts that incorporate this fruit but I must say you never get sick of a good pavlova with lashings of whipped cream and passionfruit. Even the new french friends we have made agree that pavlovas done this way are pretty damn good.

Update on party business is that it has been on a go slow. Juliette has had a double ear infection and has been home from school this week. It also doesn't help that the french school system seems to have nearly every wednesday off so both children were home plus an extra one. I feel like I am going round in circles on those days but today Juliette and I are on a mission to go and find floral leis for this party. It is either going to be easy or a disaster!!!!


The vine that produces all those lovely passionfruit and look another beautiful winters day......

Another friday.....

Another friday.....seems to me the weeks are flying by and who knows where they are going. Django and Juliette turn 6 next week and it only felt like it was 3 weeks ago that I was telling them it was 6 months till the day of their birthday.

Oh it seems like only yesterday that they were babies......not!!!!

We are in full swing of party plans, or should I say I am, and they just keep throwing in new ideas around the theme which by the way they only told me in the middle of this week. The theme is a "polynesian party" which is not so bad when you live on a pacific Island. A floral lei to everybody as they arrive I think should set the scene and we are having a beach picnic at "Kuendu Beach" which has an abundance of palm trees. No decorations required. Yipee!!!! Any ideas about what you might do at a polynesian party would be greatly appreciated. I still have a full week of planning left.

On a more interesting note when I finish writing this post I am going off to be a mystery shopper. Can't say much( nudge nudge, wink wink) but it should be fun. I get to spent somebody elses money and get paid for the privilege. You get asked to do some very interesting things when you don't have much else on your plate. Must go now and get into my disguise!!!! Not that I need one the shop assistant won't know me from a bar of soap. I hope !!!

A good weekend to all.

P.S this is the kids wearing jug covers on their heads that my mum made and sent over for me. See they can be very useful when not on a jug of water.