Cuddly Animal Farm

Today I had an awesome time at the Swan Valley with my friends from uni. As a (late) birthday present, they decided to take me out for breakfast at the Margaret River Chocolate Company, followed by a visit to the Cuddly Animal Farm and finishing off with lunch and drinks at Oakover winery.

OK so the whole day was great, but Oh My God the Cuddly Animal Farm is the best place ever! Despite the fact that we were obviously not the target audience (and apparently I'm too big to ride the pony... yes I asked) we all had a really great time! I patted so many things!

My animal highlights are cuddling the baby bunny with the white nose (I want it), seeing a turkey (I had no idea they actually said 'gobble gobble' and their face looks like chewing gum), feeding a piglet (but he went a bit crazy and I got milk everywhere), and hanging out with my duck buddies (I was the duck whisperer today, all the ducks and me go way back).

Cupcake Month

Well it seems like August has been a month of cupcakes! It was my birthday earlier this month and I decided to have a crack (well two cracks) at Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' cupcakeified. Then Amy and I decided to do 'Cupcake day for the RSPCA' to help raise funds for all animals great and small :)

Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' in Cupcakes

As a tradition, I always make cupcakes (instead of having an actual cake) for Matt and I on our birthdays. I try to keep it cute and geeky (e.g. last year I made Mario Mushroom cupcakes for Matt's birthday), and this year I came across an amazing idea that immediately stole my heart.

It turns out that Van Gogh has been translated in to all types of sweets (I found a great summary of a bunch of different attempts) but since we have a print of Starry Night hanging in our lounge room I thought I'd give that one a shot.

I did a practice run before my birthday and took them into work as an early birthday cake. Everyone loved them! Only one person guessed what the painting was without any hints, but that certainly made my day :)

For my actual birthday I asked for Amy's help and managed to do a much better job with help from her infinite cupcake knowledge! It took us about 3 hours to ice the whole lot (I baked the cupcakes the previous day just to rush things along) but it was great fun! So much better with two people.

Cupcake day for the RSPCA

After how much fun we had making the Van Gogh cupcakes, Amy suggested that we put our baking to a good purpose and take part in Cupcake day for the RSPCA. The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is a really great cause, so we were happy to do whatever we could to help, and thought it would be great fun having a go at some animal themed cupcakes!

Amy signed us up and the RSPCA set up a fundraising page for our team, and set our fundraising goal as $500AU. I personally thought that was very ambitious, and didn't think we'd get anywhere near that amount. Turns out we're currently the 6th top fundraising team in WA (we actually got up to #3) and we've raised $729.35AU! Go team!

We each baked a huge amount of cupcakes and got together for a marathon icing session. We had some really big ideas to start, but because we had so many cupcakes to ice we thought we'd keep it simple so that it wouldn't take us all night.

We had paw prints (big and small), gummy bears, sharks, and (everyone's favourite) kitties. People at both of our work places were really generous, and my books actually overbalanced! I guess who can resist cupcakes or helping animals in need.