Fire truck! Fire truck! I want to ride in a fire truck!

My sons current favorite song is Ivan Ulz' 'Fire Truck' _ which he can incidentally sing word perfect (not to blow his trumpet or anything)! As such it seemed only fitting that for his 3rd birthday we throw him a Fire Truck themed party.

So I began scouring Pinterest for ideas and inspiration for a cake, for decorations and for food. I love Pinterest! There were ideas a-plenty. I found a cake I could attempt, and dessert table decoration ideas and inspiration in general. So I got to work (who doesn't love a good art-&-craft project after all?

I created fire truck invitations by scanning the lid of Noah's giant floor sized fire truck puzzle (it's about 3 foot long), cutting out the images and printing the party information on the back.

I also used the giant floor puzzle as a stencil to draw and paint a large fire truck on which to play "pin-the-fireman-on-the-fire-truck". This was quite time consuming and my husband came home many nights to find me painting the 3 foot fire truck. But my son loved it and this fire truck painting is now hanging on the wall in my sons' playroom















The cake I decided to make was inspired by a Betty Crocker Fire Engine cake and after an initial cake failure (trying to make a gluten-free flourless hazelnut cake) I think the cake turned out pretty great! But it took a whole day to decorate with 2 kids to wrangle in between making icing, mixing colors and applying finishing touches! And there was definitely more red food coloring used than I care to admit (especially to the mothers of the other children who attended the party).

The initial cake failure....




The success cake taking its 'Fire Truck' form...















I decorated the cake table with some of the many many fire trucks and FDNY vehicles my son has accumulated in his 3 short years. And I made a "Happy Birthday Noah" bunting from wrapping paper and hand traced the letters onto it (we don't currently have a printer) using fridge magnet letters. I made toothpick stickers with FDNY emblems or fire hats and the words "Noah is Turning 3!" printed on them for the food trays and each of the children received a sticker badge as they arrived.






For the food we served mini burgers and sausage-sizzle, fairy bread and bowls of red berries.






All up I think it was a great party and my little Fireman loved it! He didn't notice that I forgot all about the 'Martha-Stewart-inspired-tissue-paper-fireballs' which I made or the fire truck piñata his Dad had bought for the party. He just loved wearing his fireman outfit all day!

Martha Stewart Easter

It seems that moving to New York has awakened my crafty-homemaker instincts. Ok maybe it is because I can actually call myself a "homemaker" now that these instincts have kicked in. Just this year I have completed a knitting course, and so far knitted one scarf and have both a jumper and another scarf on the go, embroidered several baby singlets for friends, and even converted an old desk into a play table for my son (post to follow).

So I guess it should not be all that surprising that in the lead up to Easter my brain was running overtime on egg decorating.This is not something I had done in years. I have memories of blowing eggs and dying them with onion skins with my Mum when I was little, but other than the occasional school art class, I have never thought about decorating eggs again. But here in New York, and maybe the USA generally, egg decorating is on every corner - ok not every corner, but the drugstores and supermarkets are stocked high with Easter Egg Decorating kits.

So a few weeks back I bought one of these packs and thought I would have some fun with Noah dying some eggs and letting him put stickers on them - and I thought this was a much better option than letting him gorge himself on chocolate eggs over the weekend. But alas my "craft-homemaker-cum-Martha-Stewart-instincts" kicked in. I read a blog post which described an art of tie-dying eggs (and by "tie" I mean the mens silk fashion accessory, not the colourful concentric ring style of clothing art popularised by hippies).

And so I set out to find some garishly bright 100% silk mens ties (hopefully on special) to use for my craft project. This took some work, but I finally found a discount mens suit store in TriBeCa which had a collection to meet my needs (pictured to the right) and I was all set. Eggs were blown (a harder process than I remembered from childhood), and ties cut up and tied around the eggs, before being boiled for 25 minutes.

This was all made more exciting by the fact that I was doing this at 12am (much to my husbands bewilderment) after returning from a nice evening out. It was a long 25 minutes for the first batch of 3 eggs, and I was nervous that my eggs would not be as vibrant as those I had seen.

So at 12:30am I unwrapped my first egg and it was disappointing - from the vibrant blue and gold tie almost no colour was imparted onto the egg (not pictured because lets face it, who likes to show off their failures?) I felt crushed - maybe more due to fatigue than anything else. The 2nd and 3rd eggs (pictured above) though were fantastic and I excitedly woke my husband to share in my crafty-homemaker-cum-Martha-Stewart prowess. He seemed less than thrilled but feigned some level of congratulatory pleasure for me and then asked if this meant I was going to sleep now?

The next day I did another batch of 3 eggs during the day and a final 4 late on Good Friday evening - after all I had set the table for our lunch-party the next day, and 6 eggs really didn't make a centre-piece (especially with one disappointing blue/gold creation). My husband bided me goodnight as I commenced blowing 4 eggs at 11pm.

The results were all great and I was very excited to place the eggs in the glass bowl for the centre-piece of our Easter table. I was even more thrilled when our guests commented on them and seemed impressed that I had dyed them myself using mens ties. I put it all down to my crafty-homemaker-cum-Martha-Stewart prowess.

(To see photos of all my eggs, please go to the "Crafty-Homemaker" page of this blog).