So, back to the M&Ms. I volunteered to make Clare's birthday cake as I had a bit of pinspiration bookmarked which I was itching to try. It was a number cake covered in M&Ms, created by Martha Stewart.

I cheated on the cake bit by going with a gluten-free chocolate cake and vanilla cake box mix. I had thought about trying out a couple of gluten-free cake recipes which I had pinned. I decided against this as I wasn't sure how much these cakes would rise. Gluten-free cakes are often quite dense and flat. I thought it would look funny if the two numbers were different heights.

October was breast cancer awareness month and Mars were selling pink and white M&Ms to raise money. I also stumbled across State of Origin M&Ms which are light blue and dark blue in colour. I was so happy to find some unusually coloured M&Ms I ended up buying 2kg of them, which in hindsight was overkill. But as I was going to be covering a cake with a pattern I didn't want to run out of a colour halfway through. I only ended up using about a third of the M&Ms... oops!

On Saturday evening I iced the cakes with butter cream (half a kilo of butter and a kilo of icing sugar!) and then covered them with M&Ms. Andrew helped with the decoration as it was getting late. We finished the Zero on Saturday evening and then decorated the Three the next morning during Evie's nap.

I found out the hard way that M&Ms do not refrigerate well. When I took the Zero out of the fridge in the morning the dark blue M&Ms had all discoloured. I replaced most of these dodgy looking M&Ms. I know they tasted fine because I ate a few of them as I took them off the cake (Mmm M&Ms and butter cream icing for breakfast). So if you want a pretty cake you shouldn't put it in the fridge.

Happy Birthday Clare! Hope you enjoyed your cake as much as I enjoyed making it.

More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

Clare turned thirty at the beginning of November. We celebrated her birthday on the weekend with a BBQ in Timbrell Park in Five Dock.

I just seem to take photos of the kiddies now so I don't have a great photo of Clare at her party. So here is a lovely photo I took of her and Elliot on her actual birthday.

And here are some cute photos of the kiddies.

More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.

This is what our Saturday night involved this weekend. Sorting 2kg of M&Ms into separate colours.

Not for eating though. More on what we used them for later.

TD turned 64 last week. Happy Birthday TD! We had our usual shindig at Mum and Dad's house to celebrate.

I made the world's biggest trifle instead of a birthday cake. I double the recipe I have so that it fills the trifle bowl that I own. There is usually heaps left over though. Enough for everyone to take a Tupperware full of trifle home. Next time I should probably just stick to the quantities in the recipe and just half fill the bowl. TD and Leo will be disappointed though. They love my trifle (what's not to love about custard, jelly, cream and cake?)


There is a famous Beatles' song about turning 64. The song has the lyric "grandchildren on your knee; Vera, Chuck and Dave". So here is TD with his grandchildren: Vera, Chuck, Dave and Vera.

We seem to be spending a lot of our spare time in parks these days. Evie isn't quite ready for playground equipment yet but she still enjoys being outside. And with weather like we had on the weekend, Andrew and I enjoy being outside too. We get to catch up with friends, spend time in the sunshine and entertain Evie all at the same time.

On Saturday, we attended Alex and Geoffrey's 2nd birthday which featured two Thomas the Tank Engine cakes (or as Oscar used to say "Two trains, Jessie!").

Happy birthday Alex and Geoffrey!

On Sunday, we caught up with the Stuarts and the Goldys in Sydney Park. The park was absolutely chock full of kids. I don't think I've ever seen that many kids in one place. Elliot is enjoying himself on the swing set, Evie is looking forward to giving this a go when next we go to the park.


More photos (slideshow) of Alex and Geoffrey's Birthday on Flickr.