Wedding cake..and other stresses

So, one of the first things we looked at when we set the date was what were we going to do about a cake. They are horrendously expensive and to be honest I don't like fruit cake and D's not THAT keen so early on we decided we would be having a sponge. We then thought about buying a few tiers (three maybe) and doing something fancy with it in terms of decorations and toppers. Then, I saw it, the naked cake. If you have no idea what that is, have a look at this..naked wedding cake

Anyway, fast forward a few weeks and a lovely cousin of D said she would be happy to make us a cake-within some boundaries. We have done a test run, she made three tiers in an afternoon and they tasted amazing! However what I haven't mentioned is that by this time we had gone totally mad and bought some tins to make a'wobbly' cake.

At this point we felt it was only fair that we went for the easier 'cover it in buttercream' option. That was until I was looking at the photos I took of the cake a few days later. I realised all the edges were really sharp..and thought how great it would be to have a 'wobbly' naked cake. The compromise has been that I will still make the huge amount of icing flowers to decorate it incase the cake doesnt come out of the tins as well as the first time. So, thats what I'm up to alot of the time now..I have four colours of icing flowers and have made the first colour (pale blue) and started on the second colour (purple). This is a small section of the blues, not a great picture (they're in a tupperware tub with rice on the bottom and a tatty piece of greased-proof paper at the under them) but you get the idea. I am finding though that making something that you are hoping wont be used is a bit of a bummer..and makes it even more boring than normal...

Right I can hear the icing calling me..

Be well x

Two weeks today...

...will be our wedding day!

We only set the date in January so it was done fairly quickly in comparison with some, it worked well for us as I hate things being dragged out.
I had totally intended that I would use this blog as a way of documenting the lead up to our 'big day' but actually I have kind of retreated. Retreated into a haze of pinterest and pukka pads (or the WHS version). I have loved my pad, I have used each section for a different 'bit' of the wedding and it has worked really well-I am normally very unorganised so this has helped a huge amount. I made a section for guests, a section for food (and drink) and a section for stationery- where I included discount codes. We used a site called Zazzle and found the quality and delivery to be great.

These are the save the dates we sent, and a theme began to emerge.
We also used the same website for our invites and again were thrilled with the results. (I'm only saying this from presonal experience and have not received anything to promote them)

We originally said we wanted to do things in a way reminiscent of days gone by where everything was home made or done in a way that wasnt frivolous (or spending for the sake of spending). We have also been extremely lucky in that some family members have stepped up with offers of things such as doing us a playlist for when we come home for the reception, making the cake, making cupcakes and painting us a back drop for our 'photo booth area'. However, we did stick to what some would call a tighter budget, including having the reception back at our house. We have tried to stick to a budget of around £2,000 with the occasional bigger spend on the way, and also were able to buy things each week so that we wouldnt have as much to get all in one go.

As we are having a 'small' wedding we decided we would splash out a little and get caterers to do the food and also have 'silly extras' such as a photo booth - not an actual one but an area with a backdrop and props. These are the things we have gradually stocked up on, hats, scarves, things on sticks..you get the idea.

We also didnt particularly like the idea of getting favours for the guests-with 40 ish guests it could easily have added £100 to the budget for something that would be difficult to get that would suit everyone. We decided to do a sweet bar. Many people follow a colour theme with these, again we decided to be abit less focussed on this with the only condition being it would have to be all veggie. We will have several veggie guests so it will be good for them not to have to worry. We had a couple of containers, not many so I was permanently on the look out and got a selection with things like sundae dishes and jars from various places including Wilkinsons and these from Ikea

I hope that hasnt been too boring and hopefully I will be back to waffle about the likes of dresses, suits and cat outfits!

Be well x

quick helloooo

hi..its been too long, no really it has...
I have no excuse other than life and the fact I've been really feeling a bit down & a bit overcome...with life, and weddings..and stuff..

So I'll just quickly pop in and tell you something highly amusing (to us). Last night we had what is known in the UK as a 'chippy tea'. It had been a long day with lots of stress and not much actually being achieved. The main stress was that all of this involved a certain wedding dress. I will probably blog about this later, so onto the main event.

We got home from manchester and D offered said 'chippy tea', I asked for a potato pie, chips and gravy...mmm gravy, a thing the north was built on. He brings it back and I open it up and it was a meat pie...'aah well, I'll just eat the pastry and throw away the dense ball of 'meat in the middle' I thought.
The tray was on the table, with aforementioned tennis ball sized chunk of 'meat' in it, suddenly Slinky Malinky, the most cosmopolitan of cats (one of his particular favourites is mushroom curry) jumps up, sniffs and steals the meat...it was almost as big as his rugby ball shaped head!. He jumped off the table, landed near Cleo, she dared to look at him so he growled-shockingly as we have had him over 10 years and he has never before growled, and then, even more shockingly he hissed at her before running away with his prize! He ate the whole of the inner pie with no help from anyone else-I had thought maybe I should chop it up-like you would for a toddler but actually after the growl/hiss incident I wasn't getting near to that bad boy!
So, thats it, my beautiful furry baby has turned into a northerner...

Sad news...happy news

For quite a while now Flossie Chicken hasn't been 'quite right'. She has NEVER laid the right sized egg..think on the small side of bantam egg. She was a big girl but this last few weeks she went so thin...and stopped laying at all. She was wormed monthly and had lots of healthy treats but she was just a skinny girl. She could race around the garden and made regular escapes but she was just thin..
On Saturday evening I went out to make sure she had gone to bed-we had made a new table to put their house on-same height and everything, but she seemed a little put out by this. So I went and checked and she hadn't gone to bed. She was hunched up under the table, not in an odd position, just in a 'bugger off and leave me alone I'm going to sleep position.' So I put her to bed so that her and Mrs P could share each others body heat in the night. On Sunday morning Flossie was laid on the floor in the run...stiff. She was probably less than three years old, no age for a hardy chicken like her. But as I said she'd never been 'right' really. She'd had a good last day, they had a lovely treat of plain yogurt, strawberry tops and over ripe blueberries-the blueberries that she very sneakily grabbed out of Mrs P's beak as she was trying to eat them...this was laced with their regular dose of worming tablets to make sure they had them..she was then given free run of all the garden as we were working in their run so could keep an eye on them. She did her usual trick of following me down the 2 sets of steps when I had to go in the house..and also sneaked to the bird table to steal any leftovers the Great Tits had thrown on the floor. I'm sure I'm trying to convince myself |I did all I could-shes only the second of five chickens that have seen their days out with us that has died without assistance and although I tell myself maybe I should have taken her to the vets, I know she had a good life and death and unlike the others I had before her, she never knew life in a cage...RIP Flossie.

So, we couldn't leave Mrs P on her own, chickens are flock animals and need to be together, so we went and got a new pair-so that if one of them pops off, we will still have 2. Meet Hattie and Gracie.

This was within a few minutes of them arriving. They are still a bit stunned at this point. Mrs P was being particularly arsey with them even when she wasn't in the run with them she was squawking and making herself known. There have been a fair few scuffles-strangely all involving Mrs P jumping on them and pecking them in varying levels of severity. We are used to this now, its what they do, its horrible but its how it is! They were better yesterday (Monday) and I am sure today will be even easier.

Hope everyone is well..x

Fantastic art exhibition starting soon!

hi,
just a really quick drop in from me...

A cousin of D's is having his very first exhibition and at quite a prestigious northern gallery- The Salford Art Gallery.
The exhibition starts on 2nd May and runs until the beginning of September.
There's a link to the poster here >>>     The Now The North

We have been lucky enough to be able to see some of the finished artwork and it really is fantastic. Many of Hugh's paintings are of city scenes that will be familiar to those living around the Manchester area

City scapes

but there are also a few that are more rural and just as beautiful.

Landscapes
 I think this one may well be my personal favourite!

If you are nearby and at all interested in art I am sure you would not be disappointed in a visit to see this very talented guys art!

What I did on my Easter holidays..

The short answer to that would be "not much"! Except when you stop and look at it actually there's actually a fair amount been done, only it's maybe not as exciting as I was hoping for.

I have got lots of seeds planted-tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, courgettes, all things I have had an amount of success with but this year I have tried some new things including sweet corn-first sprout pushing through this morning, brocolli and cauli-they came up in about 4-5 days and there are millions of them! Peas and beans doing well and some butternut squash. On a more flowery note I have planted a full packet of sweet peas that are doing very well-they will need to be put into bigger pots this week..they are very important as we want the flowers for the wedding reception..I will be planting another packet of them in a week or so to try and stave off any emergencies.

We have bought three raised beds, two small ones and 1 larger one-I'm not too sure about the longevity of the larger one even tho the wood was supposedly treated to give it 'long life'. (I was going to insert a picture here but the only one I have of our veg plot looks terrible and the raised beds aren't even on it so I'll wait til i no longer feel ashamed of it!)

We did manage an afternoon out and a lovely one it was! On Easter Sunday we headed over to the Yorkshire sculpture park  and had a couple of hours there. The weather was lovely and I had cobbled together a small 'picnic tea' and a flask of nice coffee which made it extremely good value for money! You don't have to pay to get in just for parking which was £5 for up to 2 hours or £8 for the whole day, I would much rather have done the whole day thing but by the time we got organised and got there it was 3pm!

I especially liked a Barbara Hepworth piece and again was rather taken by this Anthony Gormley-we have been to see his installation on the beach 'another place' and really felt quite moved by it.

 So, that was my Easter, what about yours?

Glass- things that make me happy

Something that I have really loved as a thing of beauty for quite some time is glass. I began collecting in a small way pre children so a loooong time ago!

The photos I have taken are not great-again having to use my camera phone doesn't produce the greatest results. Anyway, when we moved to our home last year it was fairly obvious to me that the place to put all my (not a huge amount of) old bottles was on the 'Lancashire range'.

 As we have such horrible wall paper in that area of the house I had to put some plain paper behind the bottles to stop anyone viewing them from being dazzled! (I apologise if anyone has and loves this wallpaper, I am sure if you have chosen it you love it, however, we did not choose it and definitely do not love it and it just doesn't 'go')

Some of these bottles are old photographic ones, used for holding developing chemicals. One is etched with 'Developer Number 1', another with 'Developer Number 2' and the third from the same amateur photographer has a raised line with the words 'Acid Line' on it. I know where these came from-an old lady who's long dead husband dabbled with photography and it makes me happy to think of him in his shed or bathroom with these beautiful glass bottles.
The other bottles are ones that I have picked up over the years and I tend to go for interesting ones with a label or some writing etched or raised in the glass.
I wonder what 'Flowers of Sulphur' were-scrap the query, theres 'POISON' in raised letters on the neck of the glass...hmm
,  I am sure that I know what its neighbour held, each edge has raised lettering spelling out "Favourite, Daddies and Sauce'. There is also a small bottle of Lung Tonic. Its quite sad that these days our bottles of sauces or medicines are simply that, a bottle with something in it, not things of beauty anymore.

We regularly travel to Amsterdam-if once a year can be called regularly, the fact we go on the same weekend each year makes it regular for me I think! Each time we go anywhere I like to bring 'a thing' back as a reminder of a happy time and one year we went to an eclectic shop near Keizersgracht and I was happy to see they had lots of glass-modern but I was drawn by the colours. I got 4 of these balls-one has fallen down from the window so it missed having its picture taken, that'll learn it! When we go to Amsterdam we only ever take hand luggage and I can remember wrapping these glass spheres in socks and then t-shirts and hoping for the best before placing 2 in each of our duo of rucksacks. Happily they survived and now I see them several times each day as the hang on either side of the french doors and it often makes me think back to the city that I love so much.