kindness and beauty

Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.
Anne Herbert

Yes.

emma is five

Emma's birthday always marks the beginning of birthday season in our family. We have three birthdays in three consecutive months. She wanted a princess cake. Actually she'd been asking for one since last year, and I was initially quite hopeful that she'd forgotten. But no such luck. It gave me some impetus to overcome my fear of working with fondant though. So the princess' skirt didn't fall straight down, but that's what skirts are like, right?

Birthday celebration at school

Emma's birthday fell on Chinese New Year eve this year, so it seems particularly appropriate to include this picture of her at the Chinese Gardens. She loves this skirt for the twirl factor. I used the circle skirt tutorial from MADE.

Does she look like she's having a Marilyn Monroe moment?

Christmas table

I have decided that even though we are already in 2011, and have been for a month, we can still admire the sight of a Christmas feast laid out. This is our Christmas table from 2010. Every year, we have a big dinner together with all the grandparents, and we pull out all the stops. Nice ham, roast sausages, and a hunk of roast beef. Along with whatever sides I can think up to make. The meats are the stars clearly.

I got it into my head to sew up some simple table toppers to add to the festive atmosphere. This was the first time I did this - usually we just plonk the food down on the table. But I managed to find some lovely Christmas fabric from Spotlight so I went with it. I was very happy with how everything looked - but I also confess that those pretty table toppers added some stress for me. How to get the stains out if someone dropped food/gravy/wine on the table??? (I did think of putting a clear vinyl sheet over the cloths but decided that it would be too tacky!)