My Cake Challenge, should i accept it.....Thomas The Tank

As previously mentioned i enjoy baking, now i note here that i am not particularly good at baking, each cake comes out with its own set of individual flaws no matter how much i concentrate!!
So why do i enjoy it?
I blame the power that my childhood memories have over me! Some of my happiest memories from childhood involved helping my Nan bake cakes in her kitchen, helping her stir the mixture or fill the tins.......or getting to lick the uncooked cake batter out of the bowl when she was finished!!
As she isn't here anymore and my heart still aches for her everyday, baking makes me feel like i am a little bit closer to her and provides me with a touch of the contentment i imagine i would feel if she was here with me. I imagine she is watching me and laughing kindly whilst i blunder my way through various recipies.........i didn't ever see her use a recipie book, she could just make anything from scratch, she had a natural gift in the kitchen.
I however do not have that natural gift and follow recipie after recipie and still make mistakes. But it is all in good fun.
In 2011 i wanted to start trying to decorate cakes and so i took on the task of making a Thomas the Tank Engine cake for my godson who was turning 3 years old. I didn't realise at the time what a monumental task the Thomas cake was and how even professional bakers see it as a challenge. So i went into the task with enthusiastic naivety (in hindsight that was a good thing). At the time i was 12 weeks pregnant and i spent about 6 hours carving and decorating the cake without sitting down, by the end my ankles were 3 times their normal size.......i spent the rest of the night terrified they would be like that forever......by the next morning normal size had been resumed.
My godson obviously didn't understand the time the cake took, the effort or the physical stress for my poor ankles, but he did enthusiastically recognise the cake as Thomas. I would have cried if he hadn't at least recognised my effort as the right train!!
What do you think? I was pleased with my first foray into cake decorating.


Not bad for my first go, a litte wobbly and i missed some of the details as i was exhausted, but still a good go.
Next cake challenge......Stormtrooper cake for my husbands 35th birthday

House Selling - The Edge of Sanity

My husband and i purchased our current house back in 2004, when i was just 21. At the time we didn’t know how fotunate we were to be able to get enough money from the bank to make a purchase or how timely our purchase was.
My husband (boyfriend at the time) decided he was fed up of renting and wanted to buy somewhere, we hadn’t been together long, just a few months, but i decided to buy with him. So of to the bank we went, no problems there, then off to the estate agents, again no problems. Two house viewings later we found the one we wanted and made an offer. In under 3 months we were in the house. Very straight-forward.
That was 8 years ago and we are still in the same house. Whilst we both love this house, and everything it represents, we have outgrown it and have been trying to move for sometime now.

We initially put the house on the market at the end of 2010 with estate agent number 1, we priced the house at a lower value than they suggested as their valulation was so far above the others in our area. We were on with them for 12 weeks and didn’t have 1 viewing.
After 12 weeks we changed to Estate Agent number 2, they did get us the odd viewing but not much and when we asked for feedback from the viewings they were very generalised, which was no help at all. We stayed with them for 5 months before taking the house off the market as i was then pregnant. So we decided to wait until after the baby was born.
Fast forward 8 months, our daughter was born and was then 4 months old, so we took the plunge and went back on the market. We felt positive as in this time we had a lot of work done to our house including a new kitchen and various pieces of decoration and updating. We went with Estate Agent number 3 this time. We had a number of viewings with them but didn’t get any offers. We even had a few second viewings, but more annoyingly with these the viewers didn’t even provide any feedback!!
So after 12 weeks we added Estate Agent number 4 to the mix……..the more the merrier right? And we figured it would provide a little healthy competition. Really we were just desperate to sell!!
Our desire to move had only increased since our daughter was born, as my husband works an hour away and being at home for 12 hours a day just me and baby is draining without any help. And my husband really wants to see our daughter more during the week as he loves spending time with her. So the pressure was on for us and every day that ticked by without a sale was excrutiating!!
At this point Estate Agent number 2 contacted us and asked if we wanted them to also market our property, so in our hazy, desperate state we agreed and so we were on the market with 3 estate agents! crikey!!!
The viewings flooded in and each one meant i had to tidy the house and then me and our baby girl had to make ourselves scarce for the agent and viewers to wander through our home. Exhausting!
But ultimately worth it. After just a few weeks Estate Agent 2 got us an offer for just under the asking price which we eagerly accepted. Yes i know…..we didn’t even haggle!! Normally i would, but it was a fair offer and there was no way on earth we would risk losing the buyers!!!

So all’s well that ends well.
We were on the market for 5 months and had countless viewings. Frustrating. But house selling always is i hear. But what was more frustrating was the incompetence of the agents! Each one was just as bad as the other. Turning up late for viewings so that the viewers were just stood around waiting, not knowing the details of the house despite having a set of particulars, not following up with us about anything! I can’t count the number of times i heard a viewer ask if there was parking and the agent say “i’m really not sure” when we had told them over and over there was a garage and a parking space! I thought Estate Agents were sales people, but not once did i hear them try to sell the house, just guide viewers from room to room with a cursory “this is the bathroom” i’m so glad we are paying them all that money to state the obvious!!

I cannot wait for this house sale to complete so i can get my sanity back again!!
The purchase of our new house is a whole other story…………….

Homemade Nursery Decorations

When i got married to my husband Simon in 2010 i made a lot of the wedding decorations myself. I'd never done anything like that before and i discovered it was sooo much fun and really rewarding to see how things came together.
After the wedding i didn't really have any need to make anything, so i put my glue gun to one side and got on with life.

Then when we found out we were expecting a little girl i just knew there would be something i could make for her nursery that would sate my need for something crafty.

I had planned on making the decorations long before the baby was due, but as things worked out we didn't finish painting her nursery until about 3 weeks before she arrived and so i spent my last few weeks of pregnancy sat on our living room floor surrounded in tissue paper and ribbon. It was hard work doing arts and crafts with an enormous belly. But, for me, it was totally worth it.

This was a garland i made to hang on the wall above her cot and also to hang from some shelves in the room.

And then these were the tissue paper pommanders i made to hang from the ceiling in the corner of her room. She has loved them since she was very young. She used to lay on her changing table and stare at them and now she is bigger if you hold her she knocks them so they swing around.

 Its lovely for me to know that something i made with my own hands provides her with some sense of enjoyment.

Stretch Marks - love them or hate them

After having my baby girl last year i was left with a number of new stretch marks in various places, breasts, stomach, hips, thighs, knees.......yes my knees (those i hadn't anticipated!)
Some days i feel so much self-loathing for my appearance and the stretch marks on those days definetly fall in the 'hate them' category.
But whenever i read the below poem which i found posted on a forum (sorry i don't know the author) i cannot help but love my stretch marks and feel proud of them. Because they were a small price to pay to experience the miracle of growing my daughter and keeping her safe for 9 months.

So here it is, the poem that inspires me and helps me remember how precious my pregnancy was no matter what marks i am left with.

A mark for every breath you took, every blink, every sleepy yawn.
One for everytime you sucked your thumb,waved hello, closed your eyes and slept in the most perfect darkness.
One for everytime you had the hiccups.
One for every dream you dreamed within me.
It isnt very pretty anymore, some may even think its ugly. Thats OK.
It was YOUR home.
Its where I first grew to love you, where i lay my hand as i dreamed about who you were and who you would be.
It held you until my arms could, and for that, I will always find something beautiful in it!

Rainbow Layer Cake.....lets give it a shot

So i love baking cakes and decorating them, i am not particularly skilled in this area, but i think i could get an A for effort at least.
The last cake i made was for my husbands birthday in September 2011, one month before our daughter Miley was born. That was a stormtrooper cake which i will post a picture of another time.
So as my husbands next birthday approached i decided now was the time to dust of my cake tins and get to work again.
I found a picture online a while back of an amazing Rainbow Layer Cake! It was a stunner! And i was so eager to try it out myself. The first time i tried a few years back it didn't work as i used liquid colouring......big mistake!
So i thought Simons birthday was the time to give it another go. So i bought the good quality gel colours and set to work. I only made 5 layers as i mistakingly bought 2 orange food colours.......doh!
Here is my cake mixture, coloured and all set to go.....

So into the oven they went in two batches. I was very excited and couldn't wait to finish the cake. I followed the original design which i saw online and covered the cake in plain buttercream icing so that from the outside it looks unassuming. Then when you cut into it.......bam.........colour explosion!
Now i must note that it didn't turn out as well as i had hoped but that was down to me purchasing the wrong shade of red and blue food colouring. But i live and learn and will know for next time. But despite that i still think it looks awesome.
For anyone who is interested the colours i used were:
Claret
Blue
Party Green
Primrose
Tangerine
Here is the cake, the outside and then the inside.


Doesn't it look cool! I think i will have to restrain myself from colouring every cake i ever make now!
I think this would be so cool inside a kids birthday cake if it was a surprise for them.
Anyway, it was really easy to make and i think it has a huge impact. The buttercream was quite thick so it held it all together really well so i didn't need any supports for it despite it being 5 layers.
Now when can i make my next cake...........

Hello World

Hello World…..this is me…..and my life……just as i find it!
A little about me…….i am 29 years old, i currently live in Bristol in the United Kingdom. Iam with a wonderful man and have been for 9 years now and we have been married for 2.5 years. And last year our family of 2 became a family of 3 when our little girl arrived into the world!
Becoming a Mum has been the most exhilarating and scary and wonderful rollercoaster of my entire life and i am sure it will continue that way.
One thing i have found since having my daughter is that i don’t have as much of a voice as i once did, or at least thats how it feels. I was so used to working in an office and having people rely on me and respect my knowledge and opinions that now staying at home with my beautiful girl was a bit of a shock.
So i thought starting a blog may be a good way for me to get things of my chest, give me an open forum to say what i think about whats happening in my life and rave about the things i am excited about!!
So this is it, my life just as it is:-)