Things I Love Thursday: Sunshine!

Obviously, along with the rest of the nation, I am loving the sunshine and blue skies this week. There's still a chill in the air but who cares when birds are tweeting and the spring flowers are popping up all over the shop.

Image  ©Ian Britton, Flickr

I've been enjoying going out for walks/jogs this week; it just makes it so much easier to leave the house when the sun is out and you don't have to worry about whether you are going to get rained on mid-way through. 

My favourite moment of my walks this week happened on Monday when I was walking past a house where a little girl was helping her grandma in the garden, and asked her: "Grandma, what was your dream?" I didn't get to hear the answer but I love how the sun just makes everyone feel dreamy and wistful. Or she was just being nosey!

Things I Love: a clean car & a no clothes on my bedroom floor (however temporary!), ice cream, always ice cream, rediscovering old favourite music and discovering new music courtesy of the boyfriend's CD collection, movie dates and book club chats, iPhones - I am so late to the iPhone bandwagon but I am currently loving my yellow iPhone 5c, my new I Quit Sugar book and the excitement (yup, excitement!) of starting a sugar-free adventure, this Nerdy Nummies video featuring Miss Piggy & Swedish Chef - AMAZING!!

And I will leave you with possibly my favourite cat video EVER!

 

Happy Thursday! xx

Things I Love Thursday: Jam Packed

I am currently midway through a busy week full of cakes that all seem to require a lot of modelling. Fish, hairdressers, brides & grooms, shoes: it's been a varied week.

There have been a few blips but I am very grateful for people getting me back on track; the boyfriend helped me stupendously yesterday afternoon after I was having a meltdown as I was convinced I had ruined the wedding and lives of the couple I am doing a wedding cake for - some encouragement to breathe and emergency kittens solved that. I am also truly grateful to my Mum for sticking with me and these darned cakes even though I was a proper horror this morning; I am sure she thought her days with living with a hormonal teenager were over...

But despite all that it has been a good week. I delivered a cake on Tuesday that I cannot wait to share! I think it may be my favourite cake I have ever done; I didn't want it to go away! Now I just need to power through with the rest of this week's challenges and look forward to some down time and maybe a few gins at some point...

Things I Love: Encouraging boyfriends and Mums with the patience of Job, rocking out to the classic rock that is Meat Loaf and singing along to Disney, coffee cake with coffee buttercream, Emergency Kittens on Twitter, this new advert for Three, Charmed, rekindling my love for searching Pintrest, Disney Villain shoes!

Things I Love Thursday: Birthday Cocktails

One day, my Mum and I were in York, and over cocktails we decided that for her birthday we would have a dessert table/cocktail do (with a body shop party randomly thrown in there.) It was all very exciting and as we decided on this in October we really managed to convince ourselves that we would do some good planning and be super organised. Yeah, right...

I was still making scones at 2pm when the festivities were due to begin.

I was disappointed in us. No one else was surprised.

So typically, things didn't look how I wanted them to, the outlook didn't look like it did in my head (there was no beautiful dessert table set up) and we had no time to take pictures of anything. Thankfully my cousins and their iPhones did some snapping for me, which I am grateful for! 

But everyone enjoyed everything, there was a lot of laughter and love in the house, and my Mum had a lovely birthday, which, at the end of the day, is all that matters.

Spotty & Rudolf vanilla cookies

Mince Pies

Pavlova Wreath

Orange cake with cranberries & pistachios, peppermint mocha cupcakes

Things I love: My Mum!  iPhones  vanilla cookies covered in royal icing  my family - extended and otherwise  advent calendars   the strange satisfaction that comes from cleaning the oven  learning about, and watching, Japanese anime, no matter how bizarre, with Kurtis  watching how happy and proud of herself my Mum is using her new phone!  how actually cute my best friend is - adorable!

Things I love Thursday: Baking Books

I probably don't have the biggest cook book collection in the world (although the way my Mum goes on you'd think I did.) But I have to admit I probably have more than I need... They are piled up on my shelves full of recipes and projects that I would love to try but just can't find the time to do.

The Vintage Tea Party is my absolute favourite - I just want to live in its beautiful pages

But when I bought my friend the Clandestine Cake Book as a birthday present, I found it very difficult to part with. It was quite hard to wrap it up and write someone else's address on the envelope. So when I heard the book calling to me from the shelves in Tesco at a fraction of its retail price (damn you, Waterstones, and your full prices!) it might have just fallen into my trolley and made it all the way to the checkout and then home.

I won't go on about the Clandestine Cake Club here as I think most people who are interested in baking are now aware of the concept. It was set up by Lynn Hill in 2010 and is basically groups of people meeting up all over the world and bringing along delicious homemade cakes to a pre-decided theme. The one rule being it has to be a cake. Currently there isn't one local to me and it's definitely something I would love to get involved in setting up. I think it would be a huge step for me and would do wonders for my confidence. My excuse is my odd working days but I realise that's a lame cop out.

You can find all the info you need about the CCC here

The book is fantastic: there is so much lovely looking stuff in there. The thing that caught my eye straight away was the lemon, parsnip and hazelnut cake. Yum! I love the sweetness of roasted parsnips and can't wait to try them in a cake. The blue velvet cake is amazingly striking and I can't wait to fake an occasion so I can give that a go. The book has also made me see how much I need a bundt tin in my life! Maybe even a heart shaped one. A heart shaped cake covered in glacé icing and glitter?! What! Amazing.

I have already had a go at the toffee cake (I bought dates to make a date & walnut loaf for the nice gentleman who brings me eggs at work and thought I would never use them again!) but more on that soon.

The only problem with the book is that it's not helping me work on other sides of baking like bread or pastry and is just helping me continue my cake obsession but if those are the rules...

Vicky xx

I love: wearing gloves to colour fondant *squish* pilates  Super Mario Bros Wii  House (I always love House)  red lipstick headscarves  early morning pre-work jogs  cringing over so-bad-they're-good films, I'm lookign at you Pitch Perfect (loved it!)  train trips to Newcastle eating biscuits with my favourite people parmentier potatoes a cold glass of wine on a sunny evening  summer dresses  watermelon  making plans for visitors  The Temptations  

Things I Love Thursday

One of my biggest blog, and life, inspirations is Gala Darling. Her blog is so full of quirky and magical things and it is a pleasure to read. You too can share in the joy here.

One of the things she champions is being grateful and positive, and one of the ways she does this is through her weekly post 'Things I Love Thursday' and she welcomes and encourages her readers to do the same.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Graphical-Words/3576901

The birth of this new feature on my blog is an active reaction to Tuesday's post. I have a lot to be grateful and positive for (cake included) and I wanted to share that through images that have made me smile, songs, silly videos, whatever!

I've had a little time to gain a little perspective on how I have been feeling and am doing alright so far, after a minor setback with a cake over the weekend, But then it's all about baby steps. I even made a cake I could honestly say I liked!

http://fittingintohappiness.tumblr.com/post/5380031582

This week I have had a little change of scenery at work and returned to Helmsley Castle where I worked when I first started with English Heritage. Helmsley Castle has a big retail space so it has a completely different feel to it compared with being within the peaceful and atmospheric ruins of Mount Grace Priory.

It was nice to have a bit of a change though and to wander around my castle again.

Warrior scultpures by Malcolm Brocklesby standing guard at the south barbican

The east tower

The recent warm weather has meant that the castle walls are covered with the tiny purple flowers of Fairy Foxglove. It's such a delicate and pretty contrast to the strong and imposing walls of the castle.

Fairy Foxglove climbing the castle remains

However, it wasn't my reunion with the castle that made me excited about being back in Helmsley, it was my trip to my favourite bakery, Cinnamon Twist! I had already planned that I would be consuming my favourite raspberry danish but this plan was soon scuppered when I found out that they had been replaced with a blueberry and mango danish. It was still delicious though and TWO of my 5-a-day! I did have to have a cheese scone as well, you know, just to ease the pain about the raspberry danish.

I enjoy my treats sat in the market square on the steps of the monument, along with the many tourists to Helmsley, just people watching: due to the country roads that lead to it, Helmsley is a hot spot for bikers and they always make for interesting watching. I also started reading Around The World in 80 Days but am not sure how long I will last with it before I have to return to something heavily featuring wizards, dragons and attractive beadrded rouges.

But pastries and pretty flowers aside I was happy to be back where I belonged at the weekend.

Mount Grace Prioy's Manor house

I love: the fantastic, super supportive and wonderfully encouraging comments I have received from people over the last week blueberry & mango danishes cheese scones sunshine Abba, for real    Game of Thrones (the TV series - I can't read the books for fear or providing spoilers to the boyfriend!) cherry wine Linda McCartney cheese & leek plaits all things cat related Karen Miller - Kingmaker Kingbreaker yellow nail varnish pretending I am a super important business women reading both inspirational and practical stuff