Rainbow Cake, Bitches!

As a 26 year old adult you'd think I'd be mature, responsible, and sensible. You know, all those things we associate with actual adults.

Well, I'm not really. I mean, I can be, and I'm sure if you ask my family and friends, they'll tell you I'm one of the most mature people my age. But really, I like fat rhinos (you may call them unicorns), sleeping in half the morning, and glitter.

So this past Friday night, we had a few people over to celebrate my boyfriend Justins birthday, and I was tasked with making the cake. Now, I love baking, but when it comes to deciding what to bake, I'm a mess! I always opt for cookies, because they're pretty much my signature baked good. Either that or cupcakes.

Even though I was stuck at work until nearly half 5, and was running behind, I thought that for once, I would go out of my comfort zone and try something different.

Rainbow cake.

Yup, a cake, made from rainbows. Might I add, rainbows are elusive creatures, and can be very hard to catch. Here is my final result! 

Getting this beautiful, arty cake of perfection was no easy feat, so I felt it necessary to share my pain triumph with all of you. 

Enjoy.

There was so much cake mix, it nearly overflowed my mixing bowl! I hadn't realised that cooking two cakes at the same time, would make so much batter! I mean I probably should have, but I didn't. So shoot me.

Once I had batter ready, I portioned it out into 5 bowls, to colour the 5 colours of my rainbow. Note to self, wear gloves when handling food dye. Even double glove it, you can never be too careful.

Now came the sorting of the rainbow candy. I bought family sized share bags of M&M's and Smarties, and got to work. Being a little, shall we call it, pedantic, I thought it best to separate all of the colours, not just the ones I needed. 

This is my 'Why the hell did I do this?' face.

But never mind, I'm not one to give up. Even though I wanted to. My arms were cramping, my legs ached from standing in the same spot, I was seeing coloured dots everywhere I looked. But I made it through, I separated all of those damn coloured chocolate pieces of hell.

Now that is a vision of beauty. Say otherwise, I dare you.

Anyway, while I had been dying sorting, I had the cakes in the oven baking away nicely. The recipe stated I needed to have two tins the same size. Do you think I have 2 of any of my baking things the same size? No. Oh well, odd sized tins it was! 

Pretty impressive huh!

So while they were cooling, I thought it best to start on the butter cream icing. I've decided to rename butter cream icing, to sugary death icing. Seriously, to cover my cakes, I needed 500gm of butter, and 6 cups of icing sugar. 6 CUPS. Are you kidding me?  

I could not believe how much 6 cups was. I mean, of course I knew but I didn't really know. If you know what I mean. I spent the next half an hour adding the sugar to the butter and making sure it had all mixed through, while I cleaned the kitchen and prepped for the guests. 

Come 8:30pm, everyone but Justin had arrived and we were all mingling and enjoying ourselves. Until I realised I still hadn't wrapped Justins present or iced the cake. 

A quick dash to the spare room to grab some wrapping paper, and I had his presents wrapped in record time. Not as neat as usual, but I was on a time limit, Justin was going to be home any minute!

Just as I had hidden his gift, in he walked, happy as Larry, and none the wiser. Except now he would see his super-awesome-ultra-fantastic-I'm-the-best-girlfriend-ever cake before it was iced. I couldn't have that happen, so I hid around the corner of the kitchen and fixed it up as quick as I could. 

Then, ta da!

But I couldn't sigh a sigh of relief just let, had to make sure the inside cake rainbow-ness had worked! After lighting some candles and signing the usual happy birthday, it was cake cutting time!

Well would you look at that, it worked.

*looks dreamily at delicious and perfect rainbow cake*

And yes, I know there are more than 5 colours in the rainbow, but you try making this and tell me how easy it is with 12 colours. 

I was pretty impressed with my cake, hence sharing it here with all of you.

Much love & rainbow cake crumbs,

J xx

Car Boot Sale Saturday

Have you ever realised just how much crap you actually own? I mean really, who needs things like DVDs when we download everything (legally of course), or clothes that don't fit and will never fit, shoes you've never worn but bought because they were on sale?

Not us, that's who! Over the past month, we've been cleaning and sorting out all of our 'things' to see what we don't use, and what would be better off with someone else. Our lounge room became a bit of a stock room, but Saturday we finally packed everything in our cars, and went off to the local car boot sale.

Now, if you know me, you'll know I can be freakishly organised. Well, this was one of those situations. I had printed out price signs and had them laminated, made everyone name tags, and had everything ready to go, to make set up easier on Saturday morning.

I had written lists on what things I wanted to sell, and what categories I thought they would go in. 
I had even written a timeline for the month beforehand, so I knew when things needed to be done by.

We were up bright and early that morning. Actually, everyone but Justin was up early, his royal sleepyhead went back to sleep after my morning wake up call. But anyway, I picked up Annie before the sun was even up, and we were back at my house having breakfast at before 6:30am. After breakfast, we finished packing the cars, and were on our way to the local Salvation Army church to set up for our first ever car boot sale.

Annie and I went in my car, and we arrived at about 7:15am, to start setting up. Our only issue? Justin and Georgia had the tables. But never dispair, we unpacked anyway, and started organising how and where everything would go.

A short time later Justin arrived with a table, and we were able to start setting up our media section. DVDs, CDs, videos, boardgames and a few random electronic gadgets.

The actual sale started at 8am, but that didn't stop pesky people hassling us to buy things we hadn't even set up set. People were rummaging through bags and looking in boxes that weren't open, and expected us to have all the answers to their annoying questions. 

If you are ever one of these people. Don't do it. It just makes the seller hate you even more. 

Well, it did for me. 

Georgia arrived a little while later in her big black van, and after unloading and setting up, we were ready to go! We had hired two spots, which totalled 3 car parks, so we had plenty of room to spread out, and make everything easy to access. Mind you, it took us a little while to get into the swing of things,working out where this goes, should this be on the table, comparing different positions of the tables and goods. But, after we worked it out, everything went like clockwork.

Organised chaos!

We probably looked like lost lambs to the regular sellers there!

 Georgia had mountains of kids things to sell, and did really well with her tables, organising them and making them look appealing and easy to work out how much each item was. In fact, she made a killing selling her kids toys, she has one whole table dedicated to toys, and deemed the entire table was $1 per item. Soon after setting it up, her table was half empty!

Having the larger toys set up on the blanket was also a great idea, because they were at the kids level, and easy for them to touch and play with. 

Also, have you ever noticed how bright and colourful kids toys are? I guess not having kids myself, I've never really noticed. But damn, it was like a rainbow exploded!

We didn't have a spot in mind for the kids clothes, so we mixed them together with the books. Not really the best move, but we didn't really know how else to do it at the time.

We did pretty well selling a lot of our DVD's and CD's, and even some of our board games went too, which I was sort of surprised about. We had a few electronic things with this table as well, like a record player, fondue machine, and popcorn machine. Justin sold the record player, admittedly for a lot less than I would have liked, but I guess at least that is money that we wouldn't have had other wise.

The start of our media table.

We hall had a bit of a wander around the sale and even bought a few things for ourselves as well. I found some ace books to add to my collection, Georgia found some books and toys for her daughter, and Annie bought a cute little toy pram and cot for her daughter. Here is the rest of the sale:

By the end of the morning (the sale was 8-12) we were all pooped, but really enjoyed the day. It was so much fun meeting all of the locals, and learning more about selling, as well as the actual selling. In total, Justin and I made just over $150, which is pretty good, and we're booked in to do another stall over Easter. 

So if you're in the area, pop down and say hi, you might even find a bargain or two!

Much love,

J xx