Bake Off 2

Bread week on the bake off is always one that I'm not great at doing but this time round they had a quick bread round, sounds more up my street! So we gave soda bread a go! We had some Mexican style chili and lime cheese left so we jazzed up the basic soda bread recipe (which was designed to make two small loaves or more like rolls) with the cheese and jalapenos. Actually it turned out yummy!

I'll have to wait to do the next couple of weeks of the bake off as we're a little busy, but I will catch up at some point!

The Bake Off is Back!!!

The Bake Off is back - yay! So far I have made a black forest gateau cake (minus the topping in the picture as I made it the day before a BBQ and refrigerated the chocolate top and it hardened so had to wait for it to melt again!). I have also made some biscotti, espresso and chocolate chip flavour!

I doubt I'll be able to keep up with every week but so far cake week - check and biscuit week - check, hmmm not sure about bread, we'll have to see what they do. (Or I could cheat and use the bread maker!!)

The Questeds!!

Final wedding before ours is The Questeds! All our weddings this year have been completely different to each other, which is a good thing, and this one is certainly the most different. It is a camping based humanist ceremony in a meadow! Completely as we expected! We took the van to sleep in. Others had either hired tipi's or bought tents with them. The weather forecast was shocking for the Friday and Sunday and it did batter in down all day on both but Saturday was lovely. Luckily the ground was so dry it didn't turn muddy and we were able to wear our outfits without wellies!!

The giant tipi's looked great for the wedding breakfast and bar, dance floor area. The ceremony itself was outside in the meadow area. There was a bouncy castle and a range of garden games, I think the bouncy castle was a little too much for some if they had too many reception drinks!

The day again was lovely as all weddings are regardless of the type of wedding it is. We learnt today that we have now been to a wedding that had already ended in a separation, so sad. Fingers crossed no more do!

I'm glad we stayed in the van as waking up to the sound of rain on a roof is more comforting when hung over than if we were in a tent! We left the newly weds packing up the site with their families, but a great day was had by all, congrats to The Questeds!

So just over a month til our wedding! Very exciting, we are now on countdown!

The Youngers!!

Today we are off to Marlborough, a place I understand to be very posh! And very posh it was! The venue for Chris and Kate's wedding was stunning, a stately home with stables, lots of ground, a very large pond, a fancy garden I could go on. The outside area was set up for the wedding and the weather was stunning. It was the first wedding we have been to that had a friend officiate the ceremony and he was fab with personal stories and jokes throughout.

The canopes were amazing, I think we ate our weight in canopes to be honest, probably a good thing the meal was lighter with cous cous, chicken and salad. We obviously had drama at our table as one of his uni friends was beyond drunk (on the reception drinks mainly prosecco) and dropped the entire bottle of sparkling water...that smashed all over the table...glass and water everywhere! Luckily we'd all finished our meals!! I was just thankful I wasn't the most drunk person as being a lightweight I normally am!!

The speeches were great, a lot of people on Kate's side saying they were looking forward to them moving to Australia and a lot of people on Chris' side hoping it wasn't going to happen too soon!

This was also our first wedding that had a cheese wedding cake, it looked great and I guess it's definitely a way to use all the cake on the day as it was cut up for the evening buffet. Shame I didn't get a picture really.

There were a lot of firsts at this wedding as it was also the first bouquet we'd seen thrown and the first garter to be removed!! Hmmm.

We had a great time! Dancing, laughing at the drunk guy that got progressively worse after the meal! We headed back to our room at a pub in Marlborough that had all their rooms themed. Ours was the King John room, wooden bed, regal in decor, big fire place. But being an old pub the floors were all wonky! You felt drunk as soon as you walked in before drinking a thing!

Anyway another great occasion celebrated today - congratulations the The Youngers!

A Mad Hatter Birthday

I feel old - this weekend my niece turned 18! I remember when she was born, I was at an under 18 rave thing in Blackheath Concert Halls! It's difficult to get a present for an 18 year old as its that type of age where anything you get won't be trendy enough so i went for a gift box option and saw this idea on Pinterest. It's mad hatter themed wrapping! Each item has a label like in Alice in Wonderland.

This box had open me on the lid, then inside it had eat me, drink me, drink with me and wear me. It was a collect of things she likes so the eat me was a box of Oreos, the drink me was a big bottle of a cocktail, the drink with me was an 18 glass and the wear me was an engraved gold bar necklace like the Kardashians wear (who she loves). It was engraved with the co-ordinates of where she was born.

I hope she liked it!

The Eclipse!

Today is a very specially day in the world of space! We are due the total solar eclipse of the sun! Depending on where you are depends on how much you see, whether it will be a full or partial eclipse but either way it's very exciting. As it is happen today it was a school day and luckily I had year 12 so we were fully in eclipse mode. We had the live feed playing on the whiteboard, we made pinhole cameras and we were outside ready to watch.

Now I know you are not meant to look directly at it but that is easier said than done. We did use our cameras and they did work but we also took some pictures too. The big black thing in the bottom of each picture is a building, that is the problem with being on a school site with lots of blocks!

    

My Boyfriend Bouquet

It gets more and more difficult to figure out what to get each other for Valentine's Day especially when we set a very tight budget as there is no need to go all out for this day. Every day should be Valentine's Day really just without cards and gifts!

This year I made a boyfriend bouquet! I found this on Pinterest, a bouquet of all their favourite things! This had a t-shirt, socks, nuts, oatie biscuits, beers and a pack of letters to open at different times of the year. I had to tweak it to be a laying down bouquet as the beers were too heavy to hold up! He loved it - but what am I going to do for next year??!!

The Elliott's!!

First wedding of the year, The Elliott's!! Lovely day, especially as the visitors from across the pond were here to share the day too. The weather was good for the time of year but churches are cold! The meal was delicious and the pud was especially yummy!

As with all weddings the day flies by! Before we knew it they were cutting their half traditional, half Arsenal themed cake, the first dance happened and we were boogieing on the dance floor, with a cone of popcorn for the popcorn cart!

This was one of the few weddings we've been to where we were able to get a taxi home which was nice for a change.

Before the Americans left to explore other parts of Europe before flying back we had a last lunch which surprisingly not many people were suffering at, well one person was late and then proceeded to order the biggest thing on the menu! Needless to say it didn't get finished.

So all in all it was a great wedding weekend and The Elliott's I'm sure had a great time!