Sweetarts 3D edible art workshop

Yesterday K enjoyed a fun afternoon creating some 3D cake pops and figurines with Jacki of Sweetarts.

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My favourite are the Minnie mouse and the pink teddy bear!

Jacki is passionate about sharing her talents with youngsters and inspiring them to be creative.

If you would like to book a workshop with Jacki, you can visit her website here: 

 Sweetarts special occasion cakes and confectionery 

Sweetarts edible art

Last week K had the pleasure of enjoying a Sweetarts workshop...

Edible art!

The girls got to make sushi cakes, cake pops and pot of gold rainbow cupcakes...

Her brothers are already putting in their requests...

Jacki, the owner of Sweetarts, began running her business full-time in January 2012. Prior to that, her baking was purely a hobby, despite the fact she realised the potential for a lucrative business. She began charging just to cover costs and improved her skills by watching programmes such as Cake Boss, The Next Great Baker and Ace of Cakes. 

She knew she was on the right track as there was an awakening and people no longer wanted ordinary...there was a growing demand for 3D cakes and edible art with that WOW factor!

When asked why she bakes, her response is as follows,

"The joy I get from the end product and the excitement I see in the faces of others evoked by my creations far exceeds my previous experience in the boardroom. It is this joy that I want to share with the children who pass through my classes."

And one can see that she is passionate about sharing her beautiful edible art and teaching youngsters!

Her 14 year old son, who has been making dinosaurs and other creatures for years (out of prestik), now uses fondant and helps her create many of her 3D figurines. Jacki loves being able to give young enquiring minds a fun and new way to explore their creativity....

and eat it!

In  her basic classes, premixes are used to simplify things. She teaches the children about the various equipment, safety issues , temperatures for baking, differences between batter, dough and pastry, and ensuring the use of oven gloves...

all this neatly tucked into the lesson, so as not to sound like a list of "do nots".

The girls had a wonderful afternoon with her and we hope to be booking them for another session where they will learn to make a 3D character and 3D cake-pops. 

The girls certainly left her class bubbling with joy,  filled with a sense of achievement and laden with their delicious edible art to enjoy!

If you would like to book a workshop with Jacki, she will be running classes in the school holidays and you can visit her website here: 

 Sweetarts special occasion cakes and confectionery 

Shakespeare Schools Festival 2012

Last night was the culmination of months of practice for the long awaited Shakespeare Schools Festival at the Artscape. The festival is a non-competitive and celebratory opportunity for youngsters to familiarise themselves with Shakespeare through the performing arts. 

 Early this year, a friend of K's sent out an email asking fellow home schoolers if they would be interested in taking part. She had been to the previous year's festival and was inspired to get a group of home educated students together for 2012. K jumped at the opportunity as she really enjoys drama and has taken part in two small productions before. Z needed a little convincing, but accepted the challenge and really enjoyed taking part. 

As the weeks rolled on, the practising and learning of lines became part of our days. The drama practices became more frequent and eventually took up most of last weeks school time. Excitement mounted as the date drew nearer.

Two of the teens in the group took on the responsibility of directing the play and put it together on their own, being the only group participating without the help of drama teacher. Most of their practices took place in a garden and not on a stage. It was the first time a group of home educated children have taken part in the festival. They performed alongside Chris Hani Arts and Culture Focus School, Herschel Girls and San Souci Girls' High.

 Their version of Twelfth Night was outstanding. 

As one spectator put it..

  " they showed real understanding of the material in a beautifully classic interpretation. The acting was superb and the violin haunting! Don't miss it next year folks. Brilliant stuff!"

All made up and ready for the stage!

K as Olivia and Z as Valentine.

It was wonderful to see months of hard work come together so beautifully. 

  I am sure they will want to participate again next year!

Busy "Chaeli" weeks...

The past couple of weeks have been filled with extra activities. Our youngest is a Pay-It-Forward Ambassador for the Chaeli Campaign again this year. As an ambassador, he promotes the Chaeli Campaign's events, attends monthly meetings, and has the amazing opportunity to create his own fundraising project for a charity of his choice.We have found this incredible year long programme to be of huge benefit to all three of our children, giving them so much more than they could ever give back by taking part....

Earlier in the year, we visited The Bean People, the home of bath time fun!

 They make magical bath beans and sprudels. Z approached the owner and asked about selling sprudels to raise funds for his project. We were overjoyed at her enthusiasm to make a difference and support him in his efforts. Two weeks ago he was given an incredibly generous donation of over 400 sprudels.

He and K have been working hard, cutting out stickers for the sprudels and re-packing trays. He has already sold 5 trays of sprudels. He has chosen to raise funds for the Chaeli Campaign. 

In the same week, K, a friend, and I went to watch "Dreams". Students from Wynberg Girls High and the Chaeli Dancers put this short production together after a two week integrated dance workshop.

It was truly entertaining and beautiful to watch the wheel chair dancers and able bodied dancers come together in this production. Of course I cried right through the show.

 We look forward to future productions.

K and J both served as Pay-It-Forward Ambassadors in 2010, and K was a mentor for last year's ambassadors, while J was put forward by the Chaeli Campaign to participate in the President's Award. 

This is a voluntary International Award for young people from age 14 to 25.
It is an individual challenge, as every individual is different and faces different challenges. Participants are encouraged to examine themselves, their interests, abilities and ambitions, and then go on to set themselves challenges in the four sections of the award.

Summed up, the four sections are as follows:

Service - to give useful, meaningful, practical and regular service to others.

Adventurous Journey - to encourage a spirit of adventure and discovery within a team.
      The journey requires physical effort, perseverance and cooperation. At Bronze level, participants journey should be at least two days and one night, with 12 hours of purposeful effort in total.

Skills - to encourage the development of personal interests and practical skills.
 This can be a skill that is new or one that the participant already has some knowledge of.

Physical Recreation - to encourage participation in physical recreation and improve performance and fitness.
 Once again this can be a new activity or one that is already in place.

To gain an award, the participants must show regular commitment, effort, progress and improvement. There is a minimum time requirement for each level, but participants are encouraged to continue their activities beyond the minimum time frame in order to achieve personal goals.

J has worked consistently over the last year and a bit and has attained his Bronze Award. 

For the service component, he raised awareness for the many projects of the Chaeli Campaign as a Pay-It-Forward Ambassador. For his fundraiser, he and K worked together on a family fun car rally and managed to raise a substantial amount for the Pink Ladies Organisation.

His adventurous journey took place at the beginning of this year when he went on a youth camp to Betty's Bay. He participated in team building events, hiking, and a scavenger hunt. Cooking and cleaning duties were shared and teams learned to trust one another and value individual strengths.

He improved his skills by doing a three month karate coaching course, where he was trained to motivate and teach students aged 4 to 13. He has been teaching classes for over a year. This has been a great confidence builder for him and he relates well to students and parents.

Karate was once again his choice for the physical recreation aspect of the award.

Over the past year he achieved well:

Selected for Provincial Trials

Graded to Senior brown belt

Shotokan SA National Champs - 3rd team kata, 2nd individual kata and SA Champ for Kumite 2011

Regional team kumite competition - 2nd brown belt open division, 1st in his age and weight division

Graded to Senior brown belt 2

Regional Kata competition - 3rd 

Western province Champs - 3rd kumite

We are really pleased that he has chosen to enter the next level of the President's Award and that K has entered at Bronze level. 

Last weekend all three kids spent time volunteering their services to the Chaeli Campaign at the Cavendish Square Annual Charity Book Sale.

This weekend and last, J and K have had the opportunity to spend time painting a mural on the walls of the Chaeli Cottage.

We are so grateful for the opportunities that our children have been given through the Chaeli Campaign.

Monkey Town Outing

On Friday we kicked off Z's birthday weekend celebrations with an outing to Monkey Town .

 I have always wanted to take the kids there and just never got around to it, so was really pleased when one of the moms organised the school tour. 

At Monkey Town there are more than 230 animals and 28 different exotic species. There are Koi ponds, Meerkats, birds and many small antelope. Sadly many animals are dumped at Monkey Town when their owners can't take care of them any more.

Our guide, Allan, was amazing, engaging us all with his wealth of information about the apes and monkeys. He knew each one by name too! A monkey named Luke,  followed us throughout the tour, scampering along on top of the cage, and stopping when we stopped, only to move along when we did too!

The Black and White Ruffed Lemurs were enjoying their lunch when we arrived at their area.

The Ring-tailed Lemur is just beautiful. 

(Many thanks to Lulu for the use of her photo.)

The Marmoset monkeys, ever so cute!

See the tiny 5 day old twins on their mom's back?

(Thanks again to Lulu for the brilliant photo.)

We saw many beautiful birds too. A cheeky monkey tried to pull some feathers from the Blue Crane and the Crane spread it's wings wide and scared the monkey off!

We enjoyed watching the monkeys arrive, seemingly out of nowhere, for feeding time.

 There was much screeching and chattering as they selected their preferred food and gobbled it down.

Another highlight....the Chimp sisters.

The children sang for the Chimps and only when they sang Jingle Bells, did the Chimps approve and give them the nod! Allan gave us so much interesting information regarding the Chimps and how similar their lives are to our own. We enjoyed watching them catch their lunch as it was thrown over the moat to them. It was amazing to see how they refused to catch the items they didn't feel like eating, and made a perfect catch when it was something they liked!

All in all a wonderful educational morning!