Posts by Jolisa
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Oh, Giovanni, touché! Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
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How do big game hunter, italian renaissance, and especially the country distressed kitchen go together???
What made me giggle was the name of this, er, palace. Madison. They go all out for "originality" on the decor, and then settle on a name unique to, oh, every other girl under five?
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Kim, your penguins were astonishingly gorgeous, really Wallace and Gromit-grade spectacular. I'm not sure I'd have been able to watch them just walk out the door either!
(So will you have a chance to re-use them on a future cake or did they become a stealthy grown-up snack once the kids went home??)
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Sarah, if you can put lollies on a cake and tinfoil gumboots on a fairy, you can do anything! And while I'm keen to emulate Amy in the fondant-fondling stakes, I usually just work with icing the way my nana made it: butter, icing sugar, water. Lashings of the stuff. Food colouring. And anything edible that's the right shape for your decorating needs. (The wheels on the bus don't just go round and round, they are in fact round wines, or Oreos, or gingernuts, or whatever you have on hand).
The fanciest I've gotten so far was melting hard candies in the oven (red, yellow, orange) to make crackling flames for the fire engine cake. That got a round of applause.
It's a nice ritual, staying up the night before and getting all artistic, and it's so gratifying to deliver the goods at the party. I got it from my Mum who always made a spectacular cake. I have vivid memories of the mountain-bike cake for my brother, which consisted of One Tree Hill with a bike going up it. The "grass" just didn't look green enough so we kept adding more food colouring. And then the icing dried and darkened and we realised it was plenty green.
I think the sewers of Papatoetoe ran chartreuse for a week after that one.
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Hilary: you've asked the big question. I don't know the answer but I'd love to talk around the topic in search of one.
Charter schools are obviously a pretty labour-intensive answer (I'm intrigued by the Discovery School in Chch and would love to hear from anyone with direct experience of it; I'm thinking too of the programmes that let pregnant teens and young mothers continue at high school, like He Huarahi Tamariki in Cannons Creek). And at least as far as Wikipedia is concerned, NZ is one of the easiest places in the western world to start one.
But there must also be smaller, versatile models too, that individual schools and parents could call on and plug in as needed?
[Disclaimer: speaking, as always, as a total utopian, and one with no current direct experience of the NZ school system.]
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Dammit. When what we really want is to attract the antennae of the elaborate, sweeping, omniscient surveillance apparatus of the Min of Ed, always in search of disgruntled consumers to bring back into the fold by any means necessary.
All right, let's try that again... I'll send google maps directions, you bring fingerpaints, pine-cones, highly advanced Italian educational philosophies of a quasi-communistical bent, and some of those nice wooden pencils, 'k?
(Hello Langley: not "fingerpaints" "pine-cones" and "nice wooden pencils").
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the uber-mum who couldn't part with her penguins.
Y'know, I'm not one to judge, but... yeah. What was up with that? She's just going to keep them in a special penguin box in the cupboard?
For me the best thing about cake "art" is watching it be demolished. Although the year we did the aeroplane was a bit disturbing, since we just ended up with the tail and a streak of chocolate crumbs... too Erebus for my liking.
It gives me ideas for the future. If there any cakes for the future.
Cakes for the future! That's a slogan I can get behind. You'd be surprised how little excuse you need - go on, I dare you, make a cake at random. Valentine's Day?
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Then I show up with a tank and annex their neighbourhood.
I can send you google maps directions to New Haven!
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It might not work for the kids who really come alive when wired, but I'm loving this description of the Waldkindergarten movement. It gets interesting at the end, too, when the parents realise they can't possibly send their kids on to regular school, and start up a Waldschulen...
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Oh, so smart. I don't know why I didn't think of that. All those tiny wee dextrous fingers, so good at all the little fiddly penguin bits. And yes, the edible party favour, always a winner.
Next time.