Rainbow Cake

A few weeks ago we had a family get together for Miss 8's birthday. She requested a Rainbow cake. Now I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with birthday cakes. I have made quite a few over the years and I've had some that turned out ok and some more interesting one's. Unfortunately (fortunately!), I don't have photo's to show you. I found this cake on Pinterest and Miss 8 loved it!

                                 

We both fell in Love instantly. 

After falling in love with it, the 1st thing that I noticed was that it was made with fondant icing. I've never used fondant icing, but here's the thing, although I think it looks great, It just doesn't have the same amazing taste that butter cream icing has. Mmmm mmm butter cream!! I knew that I wouldn't be able to roll butter cream icing, so just decided to wing it and see how it turned out. 

For the general instructions on how to make the cake, I followed the recipe and the photos from this site  -http://www.tablespoon.com/recipes/rainbow-pinata-cake/5795d355-a6a5-4030-

b414-235fe9b750bb?nicam4=SocialMedia&nichn4=Pinterest&niseg4=Tablespoon&nicreatID4=Post

However, here is what I did differently:

*I used 2 butter packet cake mixes for the cakes, just making them up as per their instructions on the packet. I just used the cheapest ones from the supermarket, which cost 80cents each. 

*I filled the inside of the cake with M&M's only.

*I used butter cream icing both for sticking the layers together and for the decorating. 

I made up 4 batches at once with this recipe:

125g Butter

1 1/2 cups of icing sugar

1 Tbls milk

Leave the butter to soften at room temperature, then beat together with the icing sugar and 1 tablespoon of milk, until smooth and light in colour.

Once made up, take half of the icing mixture and colour it sky blue. Then cover the entire cake in this colour. Once covered, smooth over with a knife. If the icing sticks to the knife, dip it in a glass of boiling water and continue the process until the cake is all smooth. 

This picture is before the smoothing out process.

Next, divide the remaining icing into 5 separate bowls, colouring each bowl of icing with the desired colour. I used red, yellow, pink, green & purple.

Next, take a piping bag with your desired piping nozzle attached. Fill with red icing and starting from the bottom left hand corner, slowly sqeeze dots of icing onto the cake. Repeat the process until you have followed the top of the rainbow down to the bottom right corner. Follow up with a 2nd line. 

Repeat the process with the leftover colours, as seen in this picture, until you have finished.

You can use 1 piping bag and clean it out in between each colour. Or do what I did, which was use disposable piping bags (that I purchased in bulk for dirt cheap off ebay) and just clean & use the same piping nozzle for each colour.s

I just used a cake board that I already had and stuck some marshmellows around the edge to form cloud. 

I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, but I was really happy with it. And most importantly Miss 8 loved it! 

Kylie xx

Re-Grouting!

There are so many cheap things that you can do to give your house a little face lift. We moved into our house a year ago, when it was 16 years old and it was definitely showing it's age. The grout in the kitchen and bathrooms are one of these. No matter how clean you keep your grout, after years of wear, it starts to look a little dark & dirty. There are a few ways that you can give your grout a makeover. A lot of people paint it to give it a fresh new look. I decided to go with another way and grout over the top of the existing grout. I had previously grouted some tiles around the fire in our old house and it is super easy. You can either go with the same colour that you have or choose a different colour. I’m not exactly sure what colour the original grout was, but I’m guessing it was possibly white in the kitchen and dark grey in the Ensuite. We decided to go with a light grey.

You can now purchase pre mixed grout in a variety of colours. I bought this bottle at Bunnings for $10.

here is how to use it...First, I would suggest wearing gloves. I didn’t and wore some skin off my fingers...not a nice feeling! Before starting, give the grout a good scrub and sweep/vacuum the area, so that it is as clean as possible. Then squeeze the grout along the already existing grout lines and smooth out with your finger. When the grout is starting to dry, wipe away any excess grout from the tiles. Once it has dried you have a great new clean line.

Here is how it looks on our ensuite floor 

Before

 After

 These are the tiles of our kitchen splashback. I don't have a great before photo, but if you look at the background of the grout bottle photo, you can see a little of how gross it was. 

And this is the after. 

I love how fresh and clean it looks. A big difference for $10!

More Frugal projects coming soon.

Kylie xx

Weetbix Slice

I love browsing recipes on pinterest! If your anything like me, you have a thousand pins and not enough man hours in your lifetime to do all the things that you pin! Anyway, I have seen this recipe floating around pinterest for a while now and finally decided to make it. Let me tell you, It did not disappoint! The ingredients are mostly things that you would have in your pantry and I got a whopping 28 slices out of 1 batch, so it's a really low cost slice to make. But most importantly....It is delicious! I can't believe I waited this long to try it! below is the recipe I used, but there are many other variations floating around pinterest, if your interested. 

WEETBIX SLICE

 (recipe adapted slightly from http://laughingkidslearn.com/2014/08/weetbix-slice-kids-can-make.html/)

Ingredients:

1. 3 WeetBix crushed
2. 1 1/2 cups plain flour
3. 1 cup desiccated coconut
4. 125g butter or margarine
5. 3/4 cups brown sugar
6. 1 1/4 cup milk chocolate melts (for icing)

Instructions:

1. Grease and line a tray with baking paper
2. Combine all dry ingredients with butter or margarine
3. Press mixture into a tray with a spoon and bake at 180C (356F) for 25 minutes
4. When slice is cool smooth over melted chocolate and refrigerate until set 
5. 
   

 When I spread mine out in the tray, I felt like it needed some more butter to hold it together, but resisted the temptation to put more in and it turned out perfect!

This recipe is super easy to make and the perfect one to get the little kids in on helping you make it

Enjoy,

Kylie xx

DIY Father's day gifts

With Father's Day just around the corner, I thought I would share some fun and inexpensive DIY gifts that we can give our Dad's, Grandfather's or other loved ones, to celebrate them! 

At my daughter's school we are running a Father's Day stall and I am making some of these

I made this tag, as we wanted one that could be inclusive of Dad's, Grandfather's, Carer's or other loved one. On pinterest, there are a ton of different free printables for Father's Day goodies, like the ones below. (Website with free printables are attached under each picture)

http://www.classyclutter.net/2014/06/father/

http://eighteen25.com/2013/06/dads-secret-stash/

http://www.idigpinterest.com/2013/06/super-dad-simple-fathers-day-gift.html

Some other great gifts.....

This photo frame is super cute 

(https://www.pinterest.com/pin/66920744439366281/)

This site (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/255579347581926335/) has a lot of great Fathers Day ideas, including this jar....Fill it with all your Dad's Favourite things.

If your Dad is a beer drinker and your handy with the tools, then you might want to head over to  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/445082375648941266/  for instructions on how to make this bottle top opener.

For the littlies, there are lots of great little crafts that you can help them make for Dad to treasure, like this hand tree from  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/539939442798621217/

 or this personalised artwork  

 (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/539376492849617314) 

Or for wife's wanting to give their hubby's a Father's day gift, this is a really cute idea 

printable's available at http://www.thedatingdivas.com/holidays/valentines-day/a-wallet-surprise/

And last but not least, this site (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/366128644679544290/)  has a large range of awesome DIY Father's Day gifts

Enjoy spoiling your Dad's this Father's day

Kylie xx

Chicken slow cooker meals

This week at the meat market they had chicken breast for $4.99 a kilo (2.2 pounds)! Boy was this frugal mumma excited!! I bought 5 kilo’s, but at that price I’m thinking I should have bought more.  Normally I just break it up into 500g bags and freeze it, but I thought I would try some pre-bagged slow cooker meals. I’m sharing 2 recipes with you today, found at  https://kleinsis.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/its-nearly-time-lets-pepare/ , but have adapted them a little to suit us a little more. Please visit the site for the original recipes and double the batch for larger quantities.

Teriyaki Chicken:

( https://kleinsis.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/its-nearly-time-lets-pepare/)

3 Carrots

½ red onion

½  Can chopped pineapple

1 Tbls minced Garlic

1 Potato, diced

500g Chicken breast

½  Cup Teriyaki Sauce

Put all ingredients into a ziplock bag and freeze.

Completely thaw and cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours.

BBQ Chicken:

(https://kleinsis.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/its-nearly-time-lets-pepare/)

1/3 large Green capsicums

1/3  large Red capsicum

1/2 Onion

2 Potatoes

2 tsp minced garlic

500g  Chicken breasts

¼ cup Tomato sauce

1 Tbsp. Worcester sauce

½  Tbsp. Sugar

1 Tbsp. Mustard

¼ tsp. salt

1 Tbsp BBQ sauce

Put all ingredients into a ziplock bag and freeze.

Thaw completely, and Cook in your slow cooker on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours

Learn from me and buy some large ziplock bags. I only had sandwhich ziplock bags & they are almost bursting at the seems. So excited that I have finally made some of these!!

That’s it for now friends.

Enjoy your day,

Kylie xx

Cinnamon Sugar Apple Slices

Wow, It has been a month since I posted anything on the Blog! And what a crazy busy month it has been. With the crazy business over for the minute, I have time to get back into everything:) 

Today I'm sharing one of my favourite, super easy snacks.

 A few months back my friend told me that she makes cinnamon apple crisps for snacks. You slice up your apple, lay it on a tray, sprinkle with cinnamon or cinnamon sugar and bake for 2 hours. After cooking it for 2 hours, I discovered that I didn't actually like the taste. However, after sneaking some cinnamon sugar apple slices before they were cooked, I discovered one of my new favourite snacks.  So all you need to do is slice up your favourite apple, lay it on a plate, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and enjoy!

Baked Beans with Toasted Herb Lebanese Bread.

Hello!

 I have been meaning to share some of the recipes that I am using on my journey of getting rid of this baby weight. But in all honesty, I haven’t been very good at it lately. In fact I’ve put on 2.5 kilo’s (5.5 pounds) in the last few weeks...eek!! I am still breastfeeding (ALOT) and I am just hungry all the time. With the school holidays almost over, I have a refreshed desire to finally get this weight off. I would love to be one of those people that desires to eat healthy, but I am not! In fact, I could happily swap eating lunch for a block of chocolate. It’s not that I don’t like healthy food, but I don’t Love it. Now I have no desire to have abs or be super slim. What I do want is to fit into my clothes. At the moment, I have 1 pair of jeans (with major muffin top) & about 3 tops that fit me....and I am absolutely refusing to buy new clothes.

With my renewed desire to be “good”, I avoided the chocolate and made something that I do love and that I knew would keep me full for a while. I had baked beans with toasted Lebanese bread. This is super yummy and you avoid having toast that goes soggy.

All you need is tin of baked beans, heated; a piece of Lebanese bread, sprinkled with Italian herbs & a dash of chicken salt; and an oven. 

                       

Toast the bread in the oven & break into pieces. Serve with a bowl of baked beans and enjoy!

And hey, If I keep it up then there will be lots more easy, yummy, frugal recipes up on the blog!

Kylie xx