Day before the party

THANK YOU EVERYONE, for your sweet comments about my hair. Will do some shots tomorrow when Ruey is here .... and I will leave them curly. ;-)

We are having a joined birthday party for both kids tomorrow, at 2pm. I take advantage that their birthdays are only 2 weeks apart, so I have always had combined parties. That way, I only need to do it once, and people only need to come once (which I'm sure many will appreciate due to their busy schedules). I figure .... when they get older and start having their own friends at school, and having a party together with your younger brother / older sister is something very uncool, they will then ask for their own parties. But while they are still 'under control', I call the shots.

OK... menu for the party:
1. 1x birthday cake - Phaedon
2. 1x birthday cake - Ellen
3. Vol-au-vents
4. Sausage rolls
5. Sushi - California rolls, Tobiko, Mix hand rolls
6. Jelly (compliments from Ruey)

So today has been non-stop for me. I had to go to a cake deco shop in the city to get these Wilton Nut and Party Cups. I would like to use them to make the cupcakes for my cupcake tree, which will be Ellen's birthday cake. I could've used normal cupcake liners but I don't have enough muffin trays to make 23 at one go, and I didn't think leaving the cake mixture out while the first tray was baking, wasn't a good idea.

I got home, to bake Phaedon's birthday cake. I am making a Pirate Ship cake for him. Thanks to Jess for this brilliant suggestion. Remember a few posts ago, I was asking for Playmobil toys? I found a set of Playmobil pirates on eBay and I bought them. Those will be for the cake deco. So while the cake was cooling, I made the filling for my vol-au-vents - chicken and mushroom.

Then I started making the 2nd batch of cake mixture for Ellen's cupcakes. Seeing that it was the same cake mixture as Phaedon, this one went smoothly in the oven..... until I checked it at 1/2 time, I found that all the cups have over-flowed. I have filled them up too much. STUFF-UP #1.

Then I started making the butter cream icing for the pirate ship cake. You would have thought I would still remember how to do it considering I did the same icing 2 weeks ago for Ellen's cake for kinder. Bugger-all chance... but I still went ahead without the destruction manual - icing sugar and butter all in - AT THE SAME TIME. DESTRUCTION it was. Into the bin the crumbly icing went. STUFF-UP #2. Started all over again. This time, I read the instructions... in detail. Somehow I don't think I'll ever forget that method again.

We also needed some wafer biscuits to act as the cannons on the ship. And you think I remembered to tell my husband to stop eating those wafers like they were going out of fashion?? So no cannons. I had to get Ruey to buy me the wafers and bring them to me tomorrow before the party. STUFF-UP#3.

Now the cupcakes have cooled... I stood over the sink and scraped the overflowed cupcakes one by one. Thank goodness I only bought a medium size cupcake tree with 23 cupcakes. And I sent DH to the supermarket to get more unsalted butter and icing sugar to make icing for the cupcakes since I completely destroyed the first batch.

By 6.30pm... I'm exhausted. My feet are aching cos I've been standing all day - baking, stir-frying, baking, icing, more icing, scraping ...

Fortunately, I only have 1 more item on the menu - sausage rolls. I think I'll leave them for tomorrow, as well as the icing on the cupcakes. I've ordered 2 platters of sushi to be picked up tomorrow as well and Peter can take care of that.

I hope I have the brains to take some pics tomorrow.

Chilling out tonight.