Now we are Three.

Small Roar turned three this week. We celebrated with a lovely little party and then spent Monday at Thomas Land, based at Drayton Manor. More to follow on that one.

This is the first year I have made SR's cake myself. I had seen at least three of my friends attempt (successfully!) the Rainbow Cake, in both dollop and line form. This really appealed to me- if nothing else it takes the pressure off making a highly decorated cake. The beautiful personalised cake topper from Sarah Designs covered that for me, too.

I used Delia's all-in-one sponge recipe (from her Complete Cookery Course), a set of gel icing colours and my Grandmother's sandwich tins. Struggling against a monster of a migraine and aided with liberal doses of codeine and caffeine I set to work. I used the tutorial and icing recipe from Whisk Kid and lots of moral support from friends who had already made the cake...

Come the day of the party I cut into the cake and...

It was worth the hours of baking, £19 on icing colours and kitchen covered in blue icing for the moment when I held aloft the first piece like a newborn Simba and heard the appreciative 'oooohs' and 'aaaaahs' and one 'she has too much time on her hands'. 

This cake will leave you seeing through time with a numb tongue, but looks amazing.

So, the title of this post. Now we are Three. Three years of being a family, of growing together and teaching each other to grow. Three years of being three.





No sew button bunting

I found myself, at 7:30 am, sitting infront of a pack of felt wondering how on earth I was going to follow up on my impulse-buy notion that it would make excellent and cheap birthday bunting.



By 10:30 I had made the garland above, plus two more long strings of bunting without lettering. Here's how:

BTW- I worked this out all by myself with the help of tea and codeine. If it is the same as someone elses method then hey, great minds think alike. And so do we.

 
I started off with:

• scissors
• 2 12 sheet felt packs, £1 each from Poundland
• yarn
• yarn needle
• jar of random buttons
• tin of pins
• pva glue
• small brush
• letter stencils, traced from a pattern book and cut out.

Take your sheet of felt.

Fold in half.

Fold in half again and score about half an inch with your fingernail at the crease to leave an indentation.

The indentation will mark the point of your triangle.

With the sheet still folded in half, take another sheet of felt and lay from the outer corner to the indentation:

Cut along side the edge to make one side of your triangle.

Take the felt  sheet and do the same on the other side.

When you cut from indentation to corner again, you will be left with three felt triangle bunting flags and extra felt triangles from the edges. Keep the edging offcuts for later.

Have a cup of tea.

You can now use the offcuts as guides for your other bunting flags. Fold each piece of felt in half first so that you cut three flags at a time.

I was making this bunting for Small Roars birthday party, so wanted to add his name to a section. He has a name that you rarely find printed on anything outside of leftwing political biographies. As a template for the lettering I used the alphabet available in Cath Kidston's 'Make' book.

Traced onto paper:

And then cut out to use as templates.

I matched the flags with a contrasting off cut for the name section.

Pinned the template to the off cut. Cut out, and stuck to the flag with pva glue. You could applique, use wondaweb or hand/machine sew if you're cleverer than me.

Repeat.

This is the point to mention this is not meant to be bunting of any longevity. It is quick, cheap, cheerful and made in a hurry. If I were to make pretty bunting, I would use nicer fabric, pinking shears and my sewing machine but this is the anyone-can-do-it bunting with most of the materials available in your local pound shop. ;)

Then I was stumped. How to link it together without ribbon, cotton tape, ricrac or extra fabric? I looked at the never ending ball of red acrylic yarn. I looked at my button jar.

A plan formed.

It's not sewing so much as threading. I reckon a three year old could do it, so it can't be difficult.

I took yarn, yarn needle and button.

I made the length of yarn three times the width of the flags laid side to side.  I simply threaded it through the first flag, right side up.

Threaded a button, and passed the needle and yarn back through the felt to the back of the flag.

Then I loosely threaded the yarn back through at the other top corner of the flag:

Threaded another button, threaded needle and yarn to the back of the work and joined the next flag by starting the process again.

I had millions of buttons:

And here it is!

The rest of the flags ( I got about 40 from the two packs, and didn't use the black sheets of felt) I strung with buttons and yarn, but no letters.

Not bad for a couple of hours of making it up as I went along!