A creative weekend afternoon

This afternoon it rained, but not as hard as I wanted it to. Although spring is gorgeous and uplifting, I wanted it to be freezing, raining and windy so we could fall even further in love with our fire! When the weather was really cold at the beginning of winter, we only had a heatpump, which didn't give us nearly the heat or ambience of this baby.

For a while after lunch, I curled up on the couch and gazed at the fire before falling asleep.But that can't last for long with two children in the house. So it was time for a bit of creativity.

Anna and I did a bit of flower arranging, and I was thrilled to be able to use for the first time a recent Salvation Army find, a heavy fluted glass vase. Made in France, it says on the bottom. But who's checking, right?

We bought the tulips, but the lilies are weeds from a nearby gully.

Jack and I built a lego castle. Check out those turrets! He added the flags for me, because he knows I like them as decoration. All he cared about was the turrets. This was a two hour operation.

We scored most of this lego at a garage sale a few years ago.
It has given him hundreds of hours of pleasure.

Anna, by herself, wrapped and decorated a gift for her friend's birthday party tomorrow.

Sadly, she might not be able to attend the party because there is a touch of redness about one of her eyes. Ian has had an eye like this all week, and is in quarantine because it's so contagious. It feels like there's a log in it, he says, and it oozed stuff that hurts his skin like acid. Ouch.

Viral conjunctivitis. Different from bacterial:
the ooze is clear rather than opaque, and it itches like mad.
And the only 'treatment' that works is time.

But back to the creativity: this morning the girls of the house had visited a daffodil show, where hundreds of single daffodils stood, arranged by category, to be judged. Everyone has their 'thing', I guess! We whizzed past those to the cake decorating competition at the back of the hall. Some were incredible, and if my camera batteries had not died, I'd show you more.

Cupcakes to die for. The creator had a Sri Lankan name
(or so the US Indian friend who I ran into there told me),
and I can see the ethnic influence in her design.

Wedding cake - all the frills are icing.

Gorgeous.