Olly's 4th birthday

So Olly turned four yesterday, I can't believe it.  It doesn't seem five minutes since we were at the hospital having him.

And so today, this is him with his presents at 7am.  He looks so grown up!

 His new playmobil castle took an entire hour for me to set up, but he played with it for ages, and told everyone who came to see him today at his birthday party about it, so I guess it was money and time well spent!

So, back to the cake disaster...this is the sorry sight that greeted me this morning...

 

 

It looked worse than in this picture.  I managed to rescue the top bit with the balustrade part that took me ages to make, and the whole bottom part got jammed in a large tin for chocolate/cake emergencies, though after today, I can honestly say it will be a long time until I fancy cake again!  One after the other (as I have only one cake tin that size) I baked three more chocolate cakes, stacked them and filled them with chocolate buttercream and this time put the whole thing in the fridge.  While it was chilling, I made some of the fiddly bits to go on top:

 

 

And finally, here it is!

 

 

What do you think?  It went down well at the birthday party!  Fancy dress, everyone came as pirates of course.  I didn't get a picture of Harry, but here's Olly:

And here's baby Hannah, who did steal the show a little...

Doesn't she look gorgeous!  The bandana didn't stay on that long, and she kept trying to eat the frills on her dress.  Aren't the pirate boots amazing?  My very talented mother crocheted them for me!  Here's another couple of examples of her talents:

Pirate bunting!  This are just samples. but the whole thing was brilliant!

The party went well.  We played musical bumps, walk the plank, pin the eye patch on the parrot, and pass the parcel.  After tea we also had a treasure hunt for hidden treasure.  I wish I'd taken a photo of that.  I filled a old wooden box with leather hinges with chocolate coins and roses for jewels and hid it in a cupboard.  I printed out a treasure map on 8 sides of A4.  On the back was a large blown up picture of the cupboard.  The children had to find all 8 pieces of the map, and piece them together, then on the back was the location of the treasure.  They loved filling their party bags with the treasure, but I must say, it broke my heart to cut the cake!

So now a glass (or bottle) of wine and Downton Abbey!  What a lovely day.



Birthday preparations!

My second little boy, Oliver, will be four tomorrow and I've spent most of the last two days making his birthday cake.  He loves pirates and is having a pirate themed party on Sunday, so I really wanted to make him a pirate ship birthday cake.  I baked three large rectangular chocolate cakes in a baking tray, and stacked them with layers of chocolate buttercream.  I then cut bits off to make a boat shape and used the offcuts to build up different layers.  The back did need propping up a bit as the cakes started to fall apart because they were so soft.

I left it to settle overnight and this morning I covered it in chocolate buttercream, "dirty icing" it ready for covering it in fondant.  Then I made fondant planks of wood and covered the cake in these planks, trying to stagger them slightly.

Then came the masts, which were actually heavy duty drinking straws sellotaped together and covered in fondant using more buttercream to stick it in place.

Then I started adding detail, like the sail (ok, I cheated and used paper!) and the balustrade made out of fondant and took forever!  Add a few woody details and the cannons and Mr Smee (Hook and crocodile to come later) and this was the result by about 5pm:

 I'm halfway through making Hook to sit on the top by the wheel, and I have a crocodile to go in the water on the cake board which I'm going to pipe with blue buttercream.

So I looked at this cake and, not meaning to be full of it, I was really happy.  I think it is the best cake I have ever made, and I knew Olly would absolutely love it.  A few finishing touches and it was done and there wasn't going to be that last minute panic at 2am the night before the party trying to finish it.  I was relieved, happy and quite to be honest, quite proud of myself.

It's now about nine pm.  I just went back into the kitchen.  The mast has fallen down and the entire cake has collapsed.  The chocolate cakes were just too soft, and the warmth of the house has probably melted the buttercream in the middle.  Smee fell into the middle of the ship and is covered in buttercream.  I've put in the fridge and propped it up, but to honest, I don't think it can be saved.  Needless to say, I'm fairly devastated.  Tomorrow I will see if I can save it, but I won't be able to work on it secretly as Olly will not be at school, so it won't be a surprise anymore.  Gutted.

On a more cheerful happy note, Olly decided today that Hannah should be a doctor.   I turned around to find her like this:

Busy week!

It's been a bit of a busy week this week, plus I've been ill with a cold and a sicky bug, so that's why there haven't been many posts.  Also, not many pictures as my memory card for my camera decided to hide away for a few days!

So, the weekend was supposed to be about celebrating the autumn equinox.  We had lots of blackberries left and were going to make another crumble, bake some homemade bread and make a nice warm casserole for dinner.  We were also planning to make a season table with some acorns, leaves, conkers and feathers we have picked up during a nature walk the previous week, and possibly do some leaf printing.  But...  on Friday we received the school newsletter which informed me that on the following Monday the children would be visited by a court jester as part of their castles and knights projects and therefore Harry would need to take to school and knight costume to change into for the afternoon.  Right.  Ok.  A little warning would have been nice thank you!

So, out came my shiny new sewing machine!  When I say new, it's never been used but was actually bought as a lovely Christmas present last year by my very kind parents, and with all that was going on with new babies and exams I never got to try it out.  So Saturday was a crash course in sewing machines.  Let me warn you, I don't do sewing.  I am useless at it, hence wanting a sewing machine.  I one made myself a lovely velvet top for my 18th birthday party.  I was so proud of myself, until it promptly fell apart during said party!  But I am determined to get better!

Luckily, I have a secret stash of fabric in my wardrobe.  Some of it is ten years old, from the pre-birthday top fiasco when I fancied myself as a dressmaker!  In said stash I had a lot of silver material, which I think was intended to end up as pyjamas.  A quick trip to Boyes and I began my creative masterpiece!

Three hours later, I finally managed to figure out how to get the thread in the two different places.  Granted, my mother-in-law was very kindly trying to help and had managed to do everything backwards and I had to redo everything after she left!  So, deep breath and gently push foot on pedal.  Cue sewing machine made scary whirring noise.  One panicked phone call to my poor mother later, and she had explained that sewing machines don't really like shiny material, and suggested pinning paper over the top.  It turned out I had to pin it on both sides in order for it to go, and pulling the paper off afterwards may have loosened many of the stitches, though I have been informed by three different people that it was the tension that was wrong.  I just nodded and smiled.

Anyway, I started this thing about 8.30am and by half past five in the evening it was finally finished!  Don't get me wrong, it looks awful, but it stayed together and looked vaguely knight-like.  And the most important thing of all was that Harry loved it.  A few choice accessories and here was the finished result!

And the sewing machine has survived me using it, which is even more amazing!

Wet and Windy Sunday

Sunday began very windy and the prediction was that it was going to tip it down all day.  We decided straightaway to have a pyjama day - having a quiet inside day wearing our pyjamas and lounging around not doing a lot for most of the day.  This worked until I found that our dog Saffi had had an accident in the playroom right next to a big set of shelves.  Worried that it would soak into the bottom of the shelves and warp them, I emptied the shelves, and turned the shelves upside down for them to dry out.  Two hours later, I went back in to check the shelves and found that Olly had emptied most of the boxes of toys onto the floor and the playroom was an absolute tip!

So, I kind of started tidying up, which then turned into a major sorting, tidying and cleaning operation and my lazy Sunday disappeared!  Harry was a big help, and we even got all of the bits out of our games and jigsaws sorted out and put back into the right boxes.  Harry then suggested putting labels on the boxes so it would be easier to put things away, so we made some labels as well.  Six hours later and this was the result:

 So lovely and tidy, and all labelled and sorted!  Even the bookcase look tidy, though I'm not sure how long that will last!  There was plenty of space on the floor to get the train set out as well.

Unfortunately, I only got to play trains for a little while as this little lady woke up from her nap and wanted feeding and playing with.

Three hours of ironing, baths, pizza and bedtimes later, my lovely hubby and I settled down to a nice Sunday evening of a naughty Chinese takeaway and a bit of Vera (though I need to watch the end today as I fell asleep!

Hope you all had a lovely Sunday!

Blackberry picking day!

So here is our first blog post, and we're kicking it off with a busy day of blackberry picking and baking!  My morning was spent tidying up and ironing while the two eldest monkeys watched tv and played horses and cars and the littlest monkey slept as is her usual activity in the mornings.  Lunch was very boring corned beef sandwiches, but afterwards we packed our backpacks with empty plastic tubs, pulled on our fleeces, I put baby Hannah in the sling and off we went to the lane at the end of the village.

It's just a lane giving tractors access to some fields, but hardly anyone ever goes down there and a few years back, Harry and I discovered that there were a LOT of blackberry bushes all the way down.  We stopped for a bit of hide and seek on the way...

...and then we got to the blackberries!  Lots of fat, black juicy berries, interspersed with stinging nettles.  After a few stings (mainly me) we picked a heap of blackberries. A lot were eaten, most of the boys' tubs in fact!

But luckily I had picked enough for all of us to take home.

And there were certainly enough for the crumble, though we added apples and pears as well.  This is it before it went into the oven, but no photos of afterwards as we took it along to my mother-in-law's for after dinner as the boys were having tea there.

It was lovely with hot custard, but I think next time I need to put more butter in the crumble topping as it was slightly powdery, and more oats as well.  I might try adding some chopped nuts too. 

So after a chaotic time at Nana's (two younger cousins were also there and a bed bouncing game quickly ensued) we headed home to put Hannah to bed, have a quick milk and biscuit and an episode of Tom and Jerry before two little monkeys went sleepily off to bed.

So now, I am sitting here watching the X Factor with a nice glass of wine and my crochet, and feeling that it has been a good day all round.

Hope you had a lovely autumn day too!