St Patrick's Week

At school this term, Ellie's class are studying shapes and colours. Each week has been designated a particular shape and a corresponding colour, and parents have been asked to provide the Friday snack in that shape and colour... what was I thinking - I signed up for Green Shamrocks, and we're not even Irish!!! It was an interesting week as when Ellie first learned about Shamrocks on the Monday she came home and said: Shamrocks are green. They ring people brack. What...?

By Tuesday, she knew that tomorrow was Shamrock Day! In fact, she was talking to Grandma and said "Do you know what tomorrow is?" And Grandma, expecting her to say Daddy's birthday was most surprised when she informed her it was Shamrock Day and everyone needed to wear green or they would get pinched. What...?

On St Patrick's Day proper, she dressed in a cute green dress. And was very excited to help Daddy celebrate his birthday, but was more excited that she wasn't going to get pinched. Although she was quite keen to help him open his presents. I have to tell you, Mike got three things for his birthday from us - a new camera, a camera case and a laptop backpack and Ellie determined who would give him what - the camera itself was from her, the backpack from Jamie, and I got to give him the camera case! She’s not stupid - she knew that the camera was the best present to be giving! After school that day, Ellie could now tell us that Shamrocks were made of 3 blobs and a stick. And that they make people cluck. What...?

We went out for dinner to celebrate Mike’s birthday, and we were lucky enough to have a private fireworks display directly outside the restaurant. Because here in China anyone can set off fireworks - they are often quite small intimate displays. There is a function on our new camera... So here is a photo of the fireworks.


As Mike’s birthday is St Patrick’s Day - he traditionally likes to have a Guinness for his birthday. We were out and about the Sunday before and happened to be in a pub which had Guinness on tap... so fortunately for Mike we got his birthday Guinness in nice and early!

Having not had too much time to work out the settings etc, the next photo is of the rich chocolate birthday cake I made... but the candles are a bit flarey. I needed to go to 3 supermarkets to get an ingredient for this - each one increasing in stock of imported items! Anyway, I can now make this cake about 10 more times!!

For Friday at school I had to make our contribution to the snack... I had been working out what to make. I bought dried sliced kiwi fruit - trying to be creative. But then Mike made me a biscuit cutter out of an old formula tin... I didn’t have to be creative after all... He did!! Happy with the way they turned out, and loads for everyone. The green icing even worked a treat!!


By the way - Ellie finally worked out what Shamrocks are for... They bring people GOOD LUCK!!! And the pinching thing?? Well that’s an American tradition (according to Wikipedia) that if you didn’t wear green the leprechauns would get you...

Happy St Patrick’s Day!!!

Ellie's 2nd Birthday

For some weeks now, Ellie and I have been reading the trusty Australian Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book working out which cake to have for her birthday celebrations!! Interestingly, for a reasonably girly girl, Ellie selected a cake with a big purple spider on it. Ellie's favourite exhibit at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum is the spider section, and one morning quite unprovoked, as she was having her nappy changed, she calmly and seriously said "I like spiders", so the cake choice really was quite fitting! It also suited me, because although the recipe made a giant cake that would have fed about 40 people, I could easily downsize it to cook it in our shoebox of an oven.

On Sunday morning, I made all of the cakes required to be the web, the spider's body and the head. I showed Ellie the cake in progress next to the picture in the book, and she could identify which bit each little cake was going to be. That night Mike and I decorated it. It had a butter cream icing, and I didn't believe that whipping the butter would eventually make it soft and smooth enough for icing - it was almost the same temperature in our kitchen as in the fridge, so although the butter had been 'out' nearly all day it was still rock hard!! But thanks to our trusty food processor and a lot of patience on my part it actually did end up getting to the right consistency!! The best bit was mixing the colours in. We got a very satisfactory purple for the spider and a really rich green for under the web. Last year, Ellie also was supposed to have had a purple cake, but it really turned out mauve, so I was thrilled with the colour for the spider!!

Mike and I had a good reminisce of the 2 years since we had Ellie while we were decorating the cake. It's amazing it has gone so quickly, and that she has grown from being a tiny helpless baby, to a walking, talking person!!! We also remembered the big difference when we celebrated her 1st birthday in a beautiful park in Coogee overlooking the ocean!! Due to Mike's steady hand, he is actually the better cake decorator in our family, but receives artistic guidance from me, and so of course he had the big part in last years cake too!

The web was made of liquorice strips, not amazingly easy to find in Shanghai, but thanks to an imported food store I had managed to find some liquorice wheels from Germany, which were easily separated into strands. The same company had some Allsorts that have served to be the detail on the spider, plus we got some orange pipecleaners for legs. I did the web on the main part of the cake, and was really quite happy with the outcome!! But it was nothing compared to the intricacies of the spider!! Well done Mike!!

On Monday morning, the actual big day for our little baby girl, we told her it was her birthday and that she was now 2 years old. We were talking about the cake, and said that it was all done. Mike went to the kitchen and brought it in for her to have a look, and she was gobsmacked!! It was amazing, we really had managed to bring a picture from a book to life!! She even wanted to compare the cake to the picture in the book. Then when Mike took it back to the kitchen she leapt out of bed shouting "no, more spider"!!

At very short notice, some of our good friends in Shanghai were able to come around for a play in the afternoon. We had a lovely little celebration, and Mike managed to get home from work at 4pm, to join in too!! We had 3 mums and 6 kids, ranging in age from 14 months to 5 years. It was delicious chaos!! Ellie loved it when everyone sang Happy Birthday to her, but I think was even more excited about blowing out the candles, and then joy of all joys she was allowed use a 'real knife' to make the first cut in the cake!! We have saved the spider to share today, but ate almost the whole of the web cake.

With cake and chips provided so close to dinner time, who needed a birthday dinner?? We had already planned on having a takeaway pizza for our dinner, but when Mike brought the pizza home, Ellie was far too engrossed in playing with her new toys and drawing with her new textas to join us at the table for dinner!! Needless to say, we figured she'd probably eaten her fill earlier!!

During the day, we also managed to have successful conversations on Skype with both sets of grandparents who were excited about their only grandchild turning 2, on 02/02, a date milestone, that is way over Ellie's head!! Ellie was also excited to show off the whole cake to her Aussie grandparents, and the remaining spider to the Welsh ones. She also received birthday phone greetings from Aunty Marnie and our lovely neighbours from Sydney - I enjoyed talking to you both, even if Ellie wouldn't come to the phone, as well as the myriad of email greetings and facebook updates!! Thanks everyone!!

Happy 2nd Birthday Ellie!!!
Love,
Mummy and Daddy
xx