Making friends and influencing babies...

I suffer from buyers guilt. Since having my daughter the guilt has intensified and every item I look at now comes under scrutiny and starts ethical debates between my husband and I (he's a law student and therefor a card carrying smart arse).

When I'm in the supermarket I think about how far the food has traveled, what is it packaged in? how was it farmed? should I support the regime in the country it's from...? I blame my mother (you can too) she has a strict list of requirements and an order of priorities, organic, fair trade and then local, in that order. She has several things she wont ever buy, battery farmed chickens and eggs make her cry and there were a few countries in the past she completely boycotted, I'm sure they felt her wrath in South Africa when she wouldn't buy their wine. Unfortunately as with most things about my mother that I've previously mocked I now find myself emulating her. Almost any item I buy for my daughter puts me on edge.
I have just received in the post this beautiful little lady for my beautiful little lady's first birthday:

Isn't she sweet? I love that she's a brunette and her outfit is blue. There are so many blonds in pink out there in the dolly world, I wanted someone little V could relate to. She was hand made by a clever lady on etsy called Secelie. http://www.etsy.com/shop/Secelie There are so many clever ladies (and gents) on etsy making and selling things it makes me want to learn how to sow... well almost. Anyway there's a feeling I get from something that's hand made and individual, it's just better don't you think? Unfortunately it's tainted by the ongoing ethical debate. I'm not sure of the economics of it. By buying something from one person on etsy I'm encouraging enterprise and craftsmanship which is good for the countries economy... but I can't shake the feeling that I'm also likely just handing my money over to other affluent westerners who have the free time to make this stuff.

That said we have also bought this :
 
It is a rocket ship and it does have it's own space dog. What little girl doesn't want that? It also makes me feel a bit more balanced, doll vs rocket ship, hand made v's plastic, single seller vs factory in China....

One thing is for certain though, fashion designer or astrophysicist, I hope when she inevitably finds herself emulating me it doesn't make her cringe.

You never forget your first time

My little girl is now going to be four. I wrote this and never posted it because I, like most women I know, have super awesome self esteem and decided it probably wasn't good enough... but now I'm older and wiser and less picky. So here it is. 

It's my daughters first birthday soon (yay me for keeping her alive this long), so I'm working on birthday cake ideas. She's never had cake or any kind of sweets before. I was considering some kind of "natural", organic, carrot cake. Cream cheese frosting? Wheat flour? But then I saw a how to for a rainbow cake, and I fell in love. It will be the first time she experiences cake, and I want it to blow her tiny mind. So today I made this...

I'm VERY proud of it. It reminds me of the scene in the peter pan film "hook" when Robin Williams sees the food the lost boys are pretending to eat. Multi-coloured gloriousness. Probably because I ate about half of the cake batter myself... If I barf, I'll barf rainbows.  


Anyway here's my own rainbow cake how to. 
You will need:

• white cake batter
• gel food colours
• a steady hand
• bowls, spoons etcetera etcetera

1.) Make a bunch of cake batter, the paler the better, so replacing butter with oil and eggs with just egg whites is a good choice. I'm sure you'll find a good recipe lying around. 
2.) Split the cake batter into as many bowls as you have coloured food gels, I had four but I combined the blue and pink to make the purple, so five bowls in total. 
3.) Add said gel to said batter
4.) Pour your first colour into your pre-greased cake tin (clever you for greasing your tin ;) Let it settle. 
5.) Pour the next colour into the middle of the first colour, easy does it, you want it to make nice circles. 
Like so:

6.) Do step 5 with your next colour and so on and so forth until all your colours are in the tin and out of the bowls

7.) Eat left over cake batter, salmonella be dammed.