Home Sweet Home

March is here & has brought with it a whole lot of spring cleaning!  First up was helping my friend clean her newly purchased house.  It’s the first step on the property ladder for her & her fiance & has been a bit of battle to get to this point so I was very pleased to be able to offer my services & help out.  One full day of vacuuming, dusting & scrubbing later and we left a nice clean shiny house ready to be filled with all their belongings.  I wish them both lots of love & luck for their new home.

Our house has been getting the Spring Clean treatment too.  The vacuum cleaner has worked it's rollers off in the past couple of weeks & my elbows are running low on grease but it is worth it as the house feeling fresh and looking sparkly! 

In many parts of the house a spring clean is just not enough.  We have lived here for over 4 years (and Husband was here a fair while before I turned up) but we have been a bit slack in the whole decorating/renovating department & have mostly just made do with what we had.  We have been planning what we want for ages & Husband did a grand job before the wedding planning started by decorating the living room, dining room & bathroom but then we got engaged and kind of just, stopped. 

Money was a big factor in this as anyone who has got married recently, or who is planning a wedding, will tell you weddings don’t come cheap.  They also take a lot of TIME.  So, no money & no time meant no changes to our house. 

Well, the wedding was a year ago & since then we have put our time (and our money!) to finally making our house into our home. 

We have put up photos (can you believe we didn't have a single photo up anywhere in the house?  Not one.)  We now have a lot of photos up.  An entire wall of them, all in black & white, in our dining room for starters.  Filled with memories from holidays, day trips, walks, time with friends, our wedding, our honeymoon.  It's lovely to have a space that is entirely unique to us.  And it's a great conversation starter!

Yes, that is an empty frame; we are still
umming & ahhing about what pic to use!

We have replaced the hand-me-down furniture. We are putting up shelving in the dining room. This last weekend we gutted the front bedroom taking out all grey 80’s fitted furniture & the grey swirly carpet & the grey venetian blind (seriously – it was like living in a rain cloud!)

Rain Cloud Bedroom in the morning

Gutted Bedroom in the evening!

My favourite change is our new kitchen.  I love to cook.  I have a ridiculous cookbook collection; I can’t walk past a book shop without at least browsing the cookbooks.  I have a huge collection of Good Food & Delicious magazines going back to 2006.  I have said before about how much I love to bake.  So having a kitchen that I designed, that is mine is so amazing.  We have so much storage, loads of work surface, a big five ring gas hob & an oven that actually cooks at the temperature it says it is!  I love our kitchen!  It’s not quite finished; we want to change the lights & add some more decorative bits & bobs but that will come.  For now we are just enjoying have a room that feels very much like the heart home now.

The new heart of our home

Apologies for the poor quality photos; I will endeavour to get some better ones as we progress through the rooms.

The Gift of Cake

I never like to arrive at someones house empty handed and I love to bake.  Solution?  Give cake!  Twelve cakes to be exact.  A dozen cupcakes.  I find a box of cupcakes makes people smile.  A whole box of pick-up-and-go sweet snacks, in pretty colours & yummy flavours; what’s not to smile about?  It also means I get to indulge my need to bake by making three different lots of cupcakes.

Friends of ours recently had their first baby (a beautiful baby girl) and, as I had already attended a baby shower where gifts had been given cupcakes was the ideal gift to give.  A selection of sugar-hits was just right to get the new parents through the first few days of being up at all hours with baby!  I had a little fun with a new flavour too; Chocolate Rose.  A rich chocolate cupcake flavoured with rosewater, topped with a dark chocolate buttercream piped rose.  For fans of Turkish Delight it is a must!  Along with some Mint Chocolate & some pink frosted Vanilla there was something for everyone & I didn’t have to turn up empty handed; win-win!

We are visiting with a group of friends this weekend too & they got their requests for cupcakes in a few days ago so today I baked up a storm & we will be taking Lemon Meringue, Chocolate Peanutbutter& Fizzy Cola cupcakes with us.  The smell in the kitchen this afternoon was lovely & I am looking forward to giving the gift of cake tomorrow.

Sharing Is Caring

I love to make things & love the idea of giving things I have made to people.  I say I love the idea of giving things I have made rather than just giving because I am always nervous that people will wonder what on earth they have done to deserve it, and not in a good way, and give it The Look!  You know The Look; the one where a child brings home a, well a something, no one is quite sure what it is that they have made at school in a pottery lesson, filled with glee & pride, the parent looks at it with confusion (and a teeny bit of revulsion) on their face whilst saying “Wow, it’s lovely, thank you so much!”  Yea, well I don’t want that look so I tend to shy away from actually giving the things I have made. 

I have always found that when I am in a crafty mood (one where I want to craft something rather than one where I want to plan devilish plots, just to clarify!) I tend to want to try whatever it is that has inspired me, even if I don’t have a need for whatever it is.  I have made a LOT of fabric flowers, of different styles with different fabrics for no reason other than “Ooo, they’re pretty!”  I have made some paper roses.  I have chalkboard sprayed some bottles.  I have made some mini canvases, with buttons, with pretty paper, with paints.  I have wrapped two wreath forms with wool.  I have even had a go at making baby clothes.  I don’t have a baby.  

I came over all brave at Christmas, filled with the thought that it is a time of good will to all so hopefully those on the receiving end would be OK with some homemade stuff.  Everyone got something I had made myself, even if it was just small.  I made mint marshmallow hot chocolate stirrers, oreo bites, chocolate truffles, rosewater snaps, birdseed hearts, yoyo pins, felt tree decorations & I painted a canvas for my gran.  Woah, written like that it appears I made a heck of a lot of stuff for Christmas.  I’m actually quite impressed with myself!

Canvas for Grandma

Merry Christmas!
Mint marshmallow stirrers, Oreo bites &
Felt decorations

I have given a few more of my creations recently, including my husbands Valentines gift.  I have crafted with the specific intention to give.  So far, so good.  I haven’t noticed anyone giving The Look so I believe people have been genuinely pleased to receive my handy work, at least I hope they have been.

I have over 1000 pins on Pinterest. This need to craft is only going to get worse so I really need to get over my giving fear so look out, nearest & dearest – stuff made by me is on its way to you!

Love, always

Tuesday was Valentines Day and my husband made every effort to make sure our first February 14^th as Mr & Mrs was lovely.  A dozen red roses.  A bottle of bubbles.  I was banned from the kitchen while he prepared an amazing three course dinner, the highlight being a very impressive Flaming Pecorino – a hollowed out pecorino cheese “bowl” with a brandy & gin flame that melts some of the cheese to make a very tasty coating for the pasta that gets piled into it!  It looked amazing & tasted yum!  The time & effort he put into planning the perfect evening means so much – thank you Mike.

For my gift to Mike I wanted to do something to remind him that even in the little minutes I am thinking of him & that I love him.  Inspired by a friends Pinterest pin I found my way to Moorea Seal’s blog & a lovely post that had the perfect gift idea.  On Tuesday I gave Mike his first heart & a jar to keep them in. Over the coming days, weeks, months even, I will put hearts out for him to find.  Tucked under the pillow. His trouser pocket as he gets ready for work.  In a kitchen cupboard.  Where else...His desk?  His bag?  His car?  Where ever & whenever he finds them I know that it will make him smile & he will be reminded that he has my heart forever.

Cake Update

Let me just get straight to the point – The Cake was a success!

I tackled the decorating armed with pink fondant, black fondant, edible glitter & a star cutter.  I was excited about decorating; I felt I had faced my biggest fears with stacking & covering the cake so now it was time to have fun & make pretty. And fun I had!

I had cut some stars out a week ago, set some on wires & left them to harden so yesterday I went crazy with the glitter – no such thing as too much sparkle! The final result was a cake covered with stars; pink stars, black stars, big stars, small stars. Even star sparklers!

I made cupcakes too; 21 vanilla cupcakes with pink vanilla butter cream (and more glitter!)

When they were all together on the table at the party I felt really proud of my handy work. It’s a new feeling for me; to be able to look at something I have done & think “Well done mrs, you did good!” I might do it more often, I think I quite like it!

A Day of Cake

Sunday baking is one of my favourite weekend activities. For no reason other than the mood takes me. Often it's cupcakes to take into work on Monday. I have a cupcake obsession and thankfully work peoples are always happy to indulge! I also find baking very relaxing; it makes me happy. Today I have baked but it has not been as relaxing as I would like. Today I baked for a REASON. And I didn't even make cupcakes.

Tomorrow is my younger sisters 21st birthday. Twenty-one. This makes me feel old. Urgh. Besides making me feel old it also means that my mum has decided to throw a party and has asked me to a cake. "Really we want a 'proper' cake, like we could get from the shop." This is my mums idea of encouragement. I do not feel encouraged, I feel daunted! Still I am not one to shy away from a challenge!



Well used, as you can see from the cake smudges!



I have opted for a three layer chocolate cake with caramel sauce & vanilla buttercream between the layers. I turned to my current favourite cake book for a recipe – The Hummingbird Bakery’s ‘Cake Days’ – and used a recipe for Sweet & Salty Chocolate Cake which ticked off two of my requirements; a three layer rich chocolate cake AND a caramel recipe (yup; I have never made caramel before so of course I would plan to use it in a cake that is going to be served to up my family and my sisters friends!) I followed the recipe for the sponge but I omitted the salt from the caramel recipe as I know my sister is not keen on salted caramel. I ignored the frosting in the book entirely as, as I say, I am using vanilla buttercream & then the cake is going to be covered with rolled fondant icing (which I have also never used before. Hey, if I’m going to be challenged I am going to be REALLY challenged!) Oh and it’s going to be black. Yeah.

I will say that although I have thrown myself into this with additional pressures of baking way outside my comfort zone I did do a test run a couple weeks ago rather than just wing it today! I was pleasantly surprised with the test run. There were a few issues with getting it level and with the fondant tearing (and me nearly crying) but it taught me a lot, showed me where I was going wrong, made sure I liked the design idea and gave me some confidence for the real thing.



Today, I took all my lessons from the test run and tackled The Cake. Things started well; caramel came out better than test run (I might have, maybe, possibly burnt the test caramel a teeny tiny bit) and I managed to fight the urge to just get a bowl of ice-cream & poor the caramel straight over the top. All three layers came out of the oven looking & smelling yummy. I was happy. I was relaxed. It was good.

Then I dropped a layer. On the floor. I was not happy. I was not relaxed. It was bad. It was a Cake Disaster.



Cake down! Badtimes.

I recovered though. I made an additional single layer. I did not drop it. It was good, again. I managed to level them, fill it, crumb coat it and before I knew it, I covered it with black fondant – yay me is all I can say! Tomorrow it will be decorated. Oh, and I will also be making some cupcakes!