…kindling some magic…

I was scrolling my phone, trying to muster the energy to leave my nice warm bed, when the first text message came through. 6.02am. “May I get up, mummy?” came the request from a small girl, holding court in the camper trailer after a sleepover/camp out with her friend. I encouraged her to go back to sleep, or at least chat quietly. It was still early, and it had been late when they had finally gone to sleep. The day was going to be long enough, filled with sugar and giggles and excitement. A late night and an early start were not ideal additions to the mix. By 6.30, I could hold her back no longer.

“WAKE UP POTTER WE’RE GOING TO THE ZOO”. My sweet Harry Potter loving girl had come prepared, and had the clip already cued up, and the bluetooth speaker connected, just waiting for the nod of approval for some mummy-sanctioned brother-annoying wake up action. Mischief Managed indeed.

It set the tone for the whole day. With the boys dragged from their slumber with only the bare minimum obligatory brother-grumping, and breakfast demolished, daddy nicked home from work for present and cake time. All week, I had been asking her what she would like for her cake. We were due home mid-afternoon Saturday. The rains were due Saturday evening, along with a high chance of being flooded in until at least lunchtime Sunday. Her birthday was today, Monday, leaving me very little time to source additional ingredients, bake, cool, and decorate, along with everything else that needed to happen. Unpacking from a week away, getting the washing done, setting up for her sleepover, wrapping presents…finishing presents. Miss Now 12 was not making it easy on me, but finally, yesterday morning, I made the rookie error of letting her loose on Pinterest and she finally came up with a cake.

My children seem to have a ridiculously high opinion of my cake making skills, which are mediocre-mumsy at best. I managed to convince her to cull the more ambitious options from her wish list, and finally, we settled on a design I thought I could at least use as an inspiration starting point, and come up with something semi close.

My circular tins are packed away, so there was no option but for a square cake, rather than the round. Madam Butterlfy picked a madeira cake for the flavour, an old favourite, and a familiar bake. Just what I like when on a time crunch. We even were able to use a lemon from our own trees to provide the rind!

I used a single packet of fondant from Coles to decorate it – white straight from the packet for the overall covering, and then the balance was split to make the scarf. I created the grey first, with the very last of a black powder colouring I bought approximately three hundred years ago. Most likely it was for a Thomas The Tank Engine cake? I can’t remember. It’s been an old faithful for a lot of years! I managed to eke out enough for the grey of the scarf, though I was worried there for a moment that I wouldn’t get it dark enough. To create the Slytherin green, I used a mix of Wilton Kelly Green, and Colour Mill Olive Green – heavier on the olive, but just slowly adding until I thought it was the right shade.

Because I’m a Super Profesh Super Fancy Cake Type Person, I made the scarf in a very technical fashion. Namely, rolling it to about the right thickness, then ripping out the old quilting ruler and a paring knife to give me nice straight edges. The base was trimmed to 2.5″ wide, and then I cut 2.5×1″ strips of the green to lay on top. Again, being super technical, I decided the placement of the stripes by eyeballing roughly the gap I wanted, and then trimming off the excess when I ran out of stripes. To finish off, I ran my finger along the edges of the green stripes to smooth and round them, and then used my paring knife to create the fringes at the end of the scarf.

With the scarf finished and draped on the cake, I had some leftover coloured icing, and decided to make a green “e” – Butterfly’s initial – as one of the additional embellishments. I couldn’t get the right kind of dress up glasses locally, and while I had considered making them out of liquorice, in the end I quite liked the green initial instead. To finish off, I grabbed one of her multiple wands, chosing one that was around the right length, and making golden snitches out of Ferror Rochers, with wings attached I cut on my Cricut using this free download. It’s absolutely mumsy as heck, but Miss12 was thrilled with it. When it comes to birthday cakes, that’s a win!

Of course, the Harry Potter madness didn’t stop there. She received Hogwarts lego, and clothes and drink bottles and stickers and lollies and cards. Everyone knows our girl well. We started a tradition, with our eldest, that the children get a kindle for their 12th birthday (or in the case of our dyslexic audio book addict Boy2, bluetooth headphones). Along with the kindle, I also make them a cover. I kicked around a few ideas, but a few weeks back, settled on what I thought would be a fun idea for Butterfly’s cover. I ordered the supplies. They arrived while I was in Sydney, and so I sent Mr Barefoot on an urgent retrieval mission so they would be waiting.

While she and her friend played yesterday afternoon, I got stuck in. I threw Bathurst up on the laptop (go Holden!), and got to work designing the elements I knew I wanted to cut on my Cricut while I had it out cutting the snitch wings. An easy job to knock out, and I got to work, photographing every step and making comprehensive notes on my measurements so I could put together a tutorial for my go-to kindle cover. I sent photos to the chat. I got it together and threw my kindle in it and it was perfect and I was patting myself on the back as I prepped the PNG files to share as a download on the tutorial I knew would go great guns on Pinterest.

Her kindle didn’t fit.

Somewhere between 2018 and 2022 the kindle got an upgrade, and I didn’t check, and the new kindle is 1/4″ wider and 1/8″ taller and it. didn’t. fit. Butterfly was very gracious though, and while she got on with her day and enjoying her other presents, I pulled out the unpicked and the sewing machine and got to work desperately hoping I could make it work.

I did manage to rescue it. No tutorial though, because the thinner frame of the new kindle doesn’t really lend itself to this style of cover. The birthday girl, thought, lost her mind when she saw she has her very own monster textbook kindle cover. She was even happy with the fixed up version.

The teeth and the tongue I just drew up in procreate on my iPad and resized to 6.5″ (teeth) and 0.75″ (tongue) wide in Design Space. If you can use them for your own Harry Potter crafting, I’ve got them as transparent pngs for you to download for free

{DOWNLOAD TEETH TRANSPARENT PNG} {DOWNLOAD TONGUE TRANSPARENT PNG}

The inside is a marauder’s map cotton I picked up at Spotlight** a couple of months back. It makes the perfect lining – even my dad commented on it while he was getting the grand tour!

Lesson learnt – always double check the measurements even when you think you know what you are dealing with!! The model we bought her is the upgraded version of mine and Mr16’s – the 8gb paperwhite. She also got the Kindle Unlimited Free Trial so she can decide if she wants to spend her pocket money on that like her big brother does. (US folks! If you are an Amazon Prime member or sign up for the free trial, the kindle paperwhite is on sale during the Prime Early Access sale the next couple of days – this is how I bought mine on Aussie Amazon, on Prime Day, for 30% off, and if you haven’t tried unlimited yet, you can get three months for $0.99.) {{All Amazon links are affiliate}}

After a big day, dinner out, cake galore, her bodyweight in lollies, and so much magical goodness, our beautiful grown up TWELVE year old is tucked up in bed, with her kindle, reading what else, but Harry Potter. And with that, after 35 days, four cakes, lots of fun and sugar and milestones and celebrating, birthday season 2022 has come to an end. It’s been fun, but man am I glad there’s 11 whole months before we do it all again!

**I am a Spotlight and Amazon affiliate, which means if you click this link and make a purchase, I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only ever affiliate link to products and places I genuinely use and love. Thank you for supporting my blog!