As a teenager I use to love baking, I would spend the whole weekend baking various goodies for my family. Overtime I stopped baking, I was still impressed with amazing things that people could make and felt intimidated to try anything that looked slightly complicated. Recently I have been reading lots of baking blogs, I was inspired to try out some new things and these bakers make it all look so easy. If you follow me on twitter you would have seen recently that I was attempting Sugar Cookies with royal icing for the first time, I decided to document my attempt and share it with you.

I decided to start with a simple heart shape to make things a little easier. I also do not own a piping bag, so I got these disposable piping bags which were great, would have been even better if the nozzle was just a little smaller.

Outlining the cookies was trickier than I thought it would be, I think my icing may have been too thick

Some turned out better than others……

Flooding the cookies was a lot of fun and super easy

The icing takes 3 – 12 hours to completely dry, my four year old niece want keen on waiting and just wanted to eat them straight away

I got the recipes and some great tips from these blogs, here, here, here and here.

I am keen to make these again, I might even get some different cookies cutters and try out a few of the different icing techniques. Oh and get a smaller size piping bag tip and maybe some squeeze bottles to make the ‘flooding’ process easier.

What do you love to bake, do you have any great recipes or baking blogs to share?

Much Love

Melanie

Announcing the winner of the Mother Day Session. The comments were entered into a spreadsheet and I used a random number generator to pick a winner - Donnelle Phipps.

Congratulations Donnelle!!

Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter and everyone who became a fan on facebook. I will be running more competitions from time to time, so be sure to keep checking back and I would love to hear any suggestions you have for competitions.

Because a post without a photo is boring, here is a photo from an old session. Love the connection between Mum and her baby girl.

Much Love

Mel

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Wishing you and your family a Happy Easter, have a great day!

Much Love

Mel

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Uh-oh, looks like someone thought they would give make-up a go. Someone needs to let her know that with make-up less is definitely more

Much Love

Mel

Mothers day will be here before we know it and I don’t know about you, but I always get stuck for gift ideas for Mothers Day. Not to worry, I have the solution for you! Why not give Mum the gift of memories this year, what mum doesn’t love photos of her children? And Dad’s this would mean no having to go around and around the shops working out what to get your wife, win win!

Want the chance to win a free Mothers Day Session? You just need to become a fan of Melanie Joanne Photography on facebook and then come back here and leave me a comment letting me know. Already a fan, you can still play…..just leave me a comment. Winner will be drawn at random and will be announced on the 5th April 2010.

Much Love

Mel

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What’s the best thing about helping making a cake………licking the beaters of course!

Much Love

Mel

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Did you know that you these is a way to keep up to date with all your favourite  blogs without having to check each individual website? All you need to do is download your preferred feed reader, mine is google reader, add the blogs you like to read and it will let you know when someone has updated their blog.

To add my blog to your feed reader, you just need to click on the black and white icon next to the search bar, then just add the URL into your feed reader and hey presto you will know when my blog has been updated.

Interested in setting up a google reader? All you need to do is open google, click on the drop down arrow and select reader

If you already have a google account (if you have gmail you already have an account), then you can log in using your exisiting account detials. If not, you can easily create an account. If you are interested in finding out more about the uses and benefits of google reader, click here

Hope that this helps make someone’s life a little easier, I know it made mine easier.

Mothers day special and a competition will be announced in the next few days, so stayed tuned.

Much Love

Mel

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For the last week or so Gypsy (our family dog) has been staying with us, during the day she often likes to hang out with me in the office. Now it would be nice to think that she likes to hang out with me, but I am pretty sure that it is because the office is at the front of the house so she has a clear view of what is going on in the street. Gypsy is a nosy dog, likes to know everything that is going on, the slightest noise and she is at the window checking it out. She is such an affectionate dog, always wanting to be right next to you, will do everything she can to get your attention. Because of this it is difficult to get a photo of the little girl, she always ends up right next to me and way too close to the camera for it to be able to focus on her.

The other day I took Gypsy on a little excursion to my sisters kindergarten classroom, not only did the kids love seeing her but Gypsy loved all the attention and it must have tired her out. Once we were home, Gypsy curled up on her favourite armchair in the office and actually stayed put while I snapped a few photos of her.

Much Love

Mel

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Happy Endings, handsome princes, love stories, the ability to call animals to them, all things that Aurora, Cinderella, Belle, Jasmine, Ariel and Snow White have in common. My niece loves them, and I mean LOVES them! Actually she loves any story where a love story is involved, that girl loves love and even more than that she loves to dress up. Issy has more than enough costumes to last her entire childhood and have some to spare. When I came across this adorable Snow White costume while browsing on Ebay, I knew she needed it, it was too cute to pass up.

For a while Issy has been talking about dressing up as Snow White and having her photo taken. Now this is major, normally I am begging her to give me just 2 mins and even then she often turns me down. Issy gave me exactly 19 mins before she decided that it was done and we now needed to act out the story of Snow White, 19 mins where she cooperated for most of that time, 19 mins I am grateful to have.

She wasn’t very good at playing dead, she wanted to keep talking….hehe

Issy was pouting because she wanted a butterfly to land on her hand. In fact she was disappointed because we didn’t have any of the animals that Snow White has!

Snow White with Attitude!

Much Love

Mel

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