n´s birthday

¨n¨ er to år gammel nå! Nica is two now! Wow!:) We had her birthday, including A who´s at uni. T helped corral the kids whilst I got all the food I´d made onto the table without mishap. I´d not been able to find the long sparkler candles, and had been way pressed for time to make the cake more elaborate, but overall I was quite pleased with the as-close-to-eggshell-blue-as-I-could-get-to turquoise blue cake that I did have time to make! (upload photos, then add reminder).

If you squeeze your eyes nearly shut and looking very closely in the background, you can just nearly almost see the three unusual unique handmade camel stuffed animals I found for n at the local bazaar right before her birthday. It was cutting it short waiting for the last minute, the day before her birthday, but I just was exhausted, and fed up with trying to find more toys or books or clothing when she doesn´t need anything, and they already have so much stuff! Atleast this is a recycled item, one-of that no one else will have, and they all 3 really enjoyed (fought nearly over!) playing with! I will try to take and add an actual photo of when time.

¨The Magics¨I made. Tiny paper origami balloons, surprisingly easy and quick to make from a square of thin paper (I used normal, coloured A4 xerox paper, the kind you might have in your printer). Then just slip them onto the tiny Christmas lights. Very pretty when the lights are down or off---though now our daylight in Norway here is getting longer (more hours further into the day rather than being dark for most of the day and night) it was not until nearly bedtime that we could actually enjoy the dark room with the tiny lit lights, as it was still very bright out until nearly bedtime! To show how quickly the light changes from the winter dark, it´s only a few weeks later, and now it is light until about 8pm, and light out around 8am or so, whereas a month or so ago, it was darkness still much of the day and night. I like both times, the dark winter days are very romantic, relaxing in winter; while the long bright daylight of the summer is refreshing, exciting, letting one have a day lasting nearly 24 hours if one is so inclined to stay out enjoying it from waking until midnight, which I often do!

Some of the undone paper stars, made with simple scrapbooking papers. Elmo hats, they all love Elmo from America. Not sure anyone here in Norway actually knows who Elmo or Sesame Street is, but thank goodness for the internet, dvd movies, and YouTube etc video clips, and my past long visits back to the states:). I got those Elmo hats with matching papercups at a The Dollar Stores in the US, for...two packs for a dollar, hoping to use them on their birthdays and teddy bear picnic English teas I make for us:).

Teddy bear picnic English ¨tea¨ the kind of meal with tiny bitty delights such as Clotted cream scones, but since we do not have clotted cream available here, I made tiny brownies. Will post the recipe in a minute. It´s a quick, easy, one pan, and delicious cracked-top chewy inside, fudge type brownies, mmm.

And the cake. Couldn´t find the long sparkler candlelights I wanted to add, but these turned out sweet and pretty!:) Was pressed for time, but wanted something not pink, hopefully eggshell blue cake, but was happy with this colour too. The food dyes here are difficult to mix to get an actual colour not greyish in the end result, so I stalked out some imported American cake gel dyes instead. Costly, but very concentrated with a great colour result which does not water down the frosting. I´ll post the recipe in a minute.