Piñata Cones

There are always those events that pop up through the year where you are asked to bring a plate of food. Sometimes you get given a specific item to bring but more often than not, the only "suggestion" we're given is 'sweet or savoury'. If lucky you might get a weeks notice, but chances are if its something for a school event; your child will tell you as they're on their way to bed that they need something amazing to take to school the following morning. This is pretty much what happened for the end of term class party at Lexi's school.

I was given the heads up on thursday night that, not only did i need to supply a plate of sweet food for Lexi's class, but there was a list at the classroom where parents had to write what they were going to make, so there was no double ups. I had the choice to buy a package of lamingtons or similar just as a bit of a cop out, or to go all out and make something really special. i decided i wanted to show off a bit.

After browsing Pinterest i finally found something that caught my eye;

credit: www.pomyslodawcy.pl

i loved it and decided to do my own take on it. I decided to bake the meringue in the cone instead of doing them separate and gluing them together with icing as the picture suggests, i also did them in flat bottom cones to make it a little easier to take them to school and for display purposes.

To start you need 3 egg whites (i used 125ml of carton egg whites), a dash of vinegar, 3/4 cup of caster sugar and a splash of vanilla extract. Start out by whisking the egg whites til they're nice and frothy. Next add the sugar a little at a time to ensure optimum break down of the granules and add the vinegar too. You need to turn up the speed of the beater and beat til stiff peaks begin to form and then whisk in the vanilla.

Once the mixture has formed firm peaks, set it aside and begin on the cones. Line a tray with baking paper (for any drips) and set out the cones, this recipe calls for 12 cones. Fill each cone with lollies to the brim of ice cream cone but don't allow them to sit higher that the top of the cone. Next fill a piping bag, or cut the corner off a ziplock bag and make an "ice-cream cone swirl" on top of each cone and sprinkle 100's and 1000's on half of each swirl.

I put "girl" colours on one half of the batch and "boy" colours on the other half. I also did another 12 meringues without cones as there is 23 kids in my daughters class. Then you need to put them in the oven at 100*C til the meringue starts to colour, which from memory, was about 10-20 minutes.

Once cooked the cones will need to rest in order to cool enough to put in containers. When we took the treats in to school, Lexi took the lunch boxes from under the pram and showed them around to her teachers and school mates, and, as i had hoped, they were a huge hit. So glad i decided to go al out instead of being lazy and sending a box of cookies or similar.

Family Command Centre and School Nook

Our house had begun to become one of chaos and confusion. With the Reindl man at work 13 hours a day, 6 days a week, Little miss at full time school and a newborn bubba keeping me busy, i didn't have time to tidy the house, let alone keep up with everyone else's schedule! So I finally decided to put to action the ideas I'd pinned to my command centre board on Pinterest!

I started out with little miss' school nook. I brought a storage cube and some medium command hooks from Masters home improvement which cost me about $30 for both. I mounted the storage cube to the outside wall of her built in robe and placed three of the wall hooks on the adjacent wall. As I explained to her, she puts her library bag, take home folder and backpack on top of the cube, her lunchbox goes in the cube and her shoes get tucked underneath it all. Her uniform gets hung up on the other wall, her skort, t-shirt and dress each have their own hook. This is the end result:

The following week i started to gather all the things i was going to need for command central. That included scouring Etsy for appropriate house hold documents (I got mine custom made from Rachael at All About The House), heading to Typo to get a blackboard, decorative mason jar, coloured milk bottle and a decorative letter "R" for Reindl and and also a quick call in to officeworks for some cool pens, document wallets and a pretty folder for my household docs. I also had the shelf, whiteboard/corkboard and the requirements for the receipt box on hand.

Rachael made me up a tailored cleaning schedule, peek at the week, online order tracker, password log, a universal month at a glance calendar, shopping list and an entry sheet for my paid bills, all in the design of my choice. i've displayed the cleaning schedule and peek at the week in some clear document wallets stuck to the wall.

What i have written on my whiteboard is null and void now that i have my peek at the week sheet so that will probably be used for messages between my man and I. The cork board is for school newsletters and party invites and my receipt box it to keep all my tax invoices til I get around to entering them in the book when i do the BAS at the end of the quarter. I'm using the milk bottle for keeping pens and the mason jar for loose change. Eventually i'll be putting in some hooks up for our keys but for now they can just stay in the lock of the front door.

I'm hoping that all this helps me to keep up with everyone else's goings on and more importantly help me better my time management but i suppose i will just have to update this post later with how i go.