Renovation / Life Balance

Sometimes it takes a moment of reflection to see the path you've been heading down recently.  And while breastfeeding, I'm forced to sit and reflect on things a lot!

This week I realised that while we succeed at maintaining a healthy work / life balance (most of the time!), it's trying to establish a more sustainable renovation / life balance that we need to work on.

And last weekend is the perfect example.  For a while we had wanted to replace the guttering at the front of the house to match the new roofing on the porch.  During the week I had a spare moment to ring around for quotes, and when we discovered how affordable it was, we decided to do it.  Mark measured up, I ordered it and Mark picked it up before work on Friday morning.  We had our neighbour booked in to help and we were all ready to go.

Then our TV antenna stopped working.  Another trip to Bunnings, and Mark's time spent researching.  I spent most child-free moments on Saturday painting the front door jam, and filling any gaps between the jam and the architrave.

Mark then spent Sunday morning up the ladder taking down the old antenna and replacing it with a shiny new one. I love shiny new things!

Then we all went to Ava's swimming lesson together as a family, before Mark spent the rest of the afternoon replacing the front guttering.


That was the weekend gone. And while the kids spent patches of time with their Daddy on Saturday and Sunday, had a nice time with me, saw their grandparents and had an afternoon in the park with friends, they didn't get big chunks of quality time with their Daddy and we didn't get much family time.





We all felt the effects of not spending time relaxing together, and have promised ourselves to try not to let the house take over again.

It's so easy to focus on the end result we want to achieve with the house, and loose focus of the time we need to spend together as a family along the way!

Welcome to Life in Tempe

I've been working on the new layout of this blog in secret for a while now, and gave myself the end of March deadline to make sure I didn't keep it secret indefinitely!

I had our web developer put a message on the Innocent Catering website saying that the new blog would be up at the end of March with a slightly different concept.  So here it is.

Originally, we had the Innocent Catering blog and I had my personal blog as two separate entities.  But I found it much easier to update and write posts for my personal blog, while the Innocent Catering blog ended up being a little boring to be honest.

So far, we've re-designed the Innocent Catering page and kept all the previous posts, and I'll gradually re-write the posts from my personal blog over here.

So why "Life in Tempe"?
I've spent the last 2 years being immersed in the building our Tempe based business, adding to our family, renovating our new house and becoming part of the Tempe community.  All activities seemed to be centred around this little close-knit suburb of the Inner West, so "Life in Tempe" seemed a natural fit.

Have a look around, I hope you like what you see so far, and please come back again to read more about what we've been up to.

This is the first bib I made

And it also became my daughter's favourite one.  She must like the pattern, because when she was old enough to grab things herself, she would hold onto it and examine it while she was being feed.

I also had more comments on this bib than any other.

I have a passion for sewing.

It all started when I was pregnant...

I became obsessed with sewing!

Hand sewing mainly, although when the need arises, I do use a sewing machine.  I started by making bibs for newborns, then bibs for older babies, bloomers for little girls, cot blankets, baby picnic rugs and patchwork quilts.

There are so many great fabrics available, and most baby stuff is quite dull, so I enjoy creating things that get loads of comments and compliments!  I'm going to attempt to document all the bits and pieces I've made on this blog, eventually...

Gift Hampers

With the "home made" and "baking" trends on the rise, Gift Hampers are becoming more and more popular as presents.

We made so many in December last year for our Clients, that we've decided to share with you just some of the options available.

There are many small options, such as a parcel of home made Marshmallows, a pot of freshly baked Shortbread, a bag of Rocky Road, some bite-size Chocolate Cherry Puddings, or a packet of Creamy Coconut Ice.  Here are some photos of the smaller options:

Red Velvet Cupcakes in boxes make great Christmas presents too. 

Then there are some larger options, such as a large jar of Marshmallows, or an assortment of tasty treats put together to suit any budget.

Christmas 2011

With the "Silly Season" well and truly over for another year, I thought I'd share with you some of the ideas we had for our own Christmas lunch this year.

As with most of our personal events, the emphasis was on the desserts and sweet items.  We had a massive 6kg ham, glazed with Chilli Jam, and roast potatoes, salad and rice as sides.  But the main event was the amazing Gingerbread House that looked like it was straight out of a storybook.

Here is a photo of the beautiful Gingerbread House.

To sit on the side of the Gingerbread House, and for everyone to nibble while they were admiring the house, we had red, green and white marshmallows and coconut ice.  And once we'd eaten the savoury course our Bûche de Noël, or "Yule Log" was placed on the table for everyone to eat.  We served it straight from the fridge, which made it lovely and cold on such a warm day.

We also put together lots of different Christmas gift hampers and baskets, which I'll show you in another post.

Baby Showers

Over the past 2 years, we've catered for plenty of baby showers, in fact our first ever event was our official business launch at my baby shower back in September 2009.

Having just provided lots of cupcakes for yet another baby shower this past Sunday, I thought I'd share some photos from baby showers we've baked for.

These first photos are from Sunday's baby shower.  The gender of the baby isn't known yet, so the theme was pastel blue and pink.

The 3 photo is from a baby shower where they didn't know the gender, but wanted a really girlie pretty pink theme.

Obviously these all pink cupcakes were for a baby girl's baby shower!  There's something lovely about keeping it simple and all one colour.

This theme was pink, white and black.  The cupcake wrappers were black with white polka dots, and all the cupcakes were decorated with white icing and pink flowers.  I personally like this theme, because its a bit of a more sophisticated twist on traditional white and pink themes.

And of course, our homemade marshmallows are always a favourite at baby showers!  If the theme is pink and white we usually make the following flavours: Vanillla Bean, Roasted Coconut, Raspberry, Raspberry & Coconut, Strawberry.  If the theme is neutral, or a lovely yellow theme, we usually provide Passionfruit, Pineapple & Coconut, Lemon, Banana, Banana & Coconut.

I personally think marshmallows is one of the best sweets you can have at a baby shower, because they're a special treat that you don't see often.  They look fantastic on the table, and also make a great little gift to give your guests when they leave.  At my baby shower we had lovely little pink boxes with Strawberry and Vanilla Bean marshmallows inside.  We had these stacked up on the dessert table, then handed them to all our guests as they left.  Of all the food we provided, the marshmallows were definitely the most talked about item!