For my little sea lover Ash who turned 7 today… I had a crazy busy day of gathering last minute party supplies, then into his classroom for his Star of the Week project that involved decorating cookies with kids in small groups of 6. It went pretty smoothly I would say! There were rules with no sugar and no nuts so I found a super oat cookie recipe from my favourite cookbook – King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking and made an icing from this recipe here which was quite tasty as it had a slight coconut flavour to it.

I would say that around 90% of the class enjoyed it, which was good to see as I am not a fan of frosting on American cakes at all! So the decorations were orange flavoured cranberries (thanks to TJs), raisins, dried papaya and coated dates (which looked like licorice bullets). The most popular of course was the dried papaya as it is super sweet – I asked the kids if they knew what it was and most of them did not know. Maybe I was lucky growing up in the tropics in Australia and living in a family who came from tropical Sri Lanka. After all that, the kids did enjoy the cookies and scoffed them down – a few keeping the cookies for later with their lunch.

So after the fun with cookies and the classroom I dashed home to get my lunch of buckwheat noodles and tofu and hung out while my son enjoyed soccer in a class of older kids thanks to his birthday today. But the day did not end there… a parent/teacher conference was next which went well and a huge thank you to his amazing and caring teacher. After that was over it was homeward bound yay!

Dinner was a lovely gnocchi primavera with a very tasty banana cake recipe from A Homemade Life what a glorious way to end a crazy day. So here’s to my big boy my latest inspiration a tidepool inspired cushion – it will add colour to where ever you throw it!

Starfish cushion – under the sea, under the sea, anyone seen Finding Nemo?