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!

Star Wars Themed 5th Birthday Cake

Every time I think about this cake I get the Indiana Jones theme in my head. I think Harrison Ford makes Star Wars, and when I think Harrison, I think Indie.

Indie > Hans

I didn't grow up on Star Wars; it's only recently my boyfriend introduced me to it (original, not those new things.) I enjoyed it but it didn't make me want to run off to outer space to save the galaxy in the same way Indiana Jones makes me want to buy a Fedora, run from boulders, destroy Nazis and save all the treasures.

But this wasn't my cake.

Dreams of treasure hunting aside, I definitely did still have a good time making this one. It's fun and not over fussy. I love the 2 tiers with just the stars on and the star impressions on the board. This means nothing is taken from the characters which are really the focus of the cake.

The bottom tier was a yummy chocolate cake and the smaller was a good ol' vanilla sponge.

What do I love most about this cake? Well, obviously that the young chap who asked for it was called...wait for it....

LUKE!

So amazing!

I can't take credit for the design, which belongs to Jane of Jane's Cake Tragedy, although there is nothing tragic about her cakes!

May the Force be with you! (Had to be done.)
Vicky 

Things I Love Thursday: Cake!

I have had such a fantastic little week! The highlight being a lovely little event at the weekend that I am currently unable to discuss (although if you witnessed a moment of bravery and saw my post last week before I took it down you will be already in the know.) But it involves cake and it went swimmingly.

But the details aren't important, what is important is that, being my own self critic, I proved a lot of things to myself and that I am feeling a little bit proud this week (that's allowed, right?)

So I have been riding the happy waves in to the week with only a minor blip last night when I realised how much I've taken on for next week but we'll survive and it'll get done, as it always does :)

Things I love:  blue skies and dry days  Florrie cuddles  Sherlock (yes, I am late to that party)  Netflix on my Wii (yes, late to this too)  watching Chuck on Netflix on my Wii  Valentine's Day loveliness  green tea  cheese scones  It still being cold enough to use my hot water bottle  Body Shop ginger sparkle hand cream  Discovering my G&T is better with a slice of lime rather than lemon!


These super cute bots are by Jenn & Tony. Check out there Flickr here and they can also be found on Instagram.

Cake Time - Pink Cake Box's Two Peas in a Pod Christening Cake

Sarah is a very good friend of one of my auntie's who moved to New Zealand many moons ago now and has just recently started a brand new chapter of her life over there by the arrival of twin boys: Sebastian & Noah. Too cute!

While on holiday with the babies she decided to have them christened and asked us to do the cake!

The picture she sent over was super adorable and I was excited to put it together.

The original design of this cake is by Pink Cake Box, who have kindly allowed me to share my version of the cake. But I must stress that this cute design is all their work and none of mine! And do check out their galleries -  their work is the kind of stuff I only dream of being able to do!

So here is our version. (My Mum & I had some super awesome team work going on with this cake!)

The top tier was lemon and the bottom chocolate.

Big thank you to Sarah for letting us be a part of her special day! Sending all the hugs.

Vicky xx

No More Hiding: Welcome to 2014!

I kind of feel I have been a bit slow about starting my year this year; my head is full of ideas and plans but at the beginning of the month I just didn't seem to have the motivation to even get started with any of them. 

Last week I went on a course for work and I think that was the reason I was unable to progress with the new year. I was going to have to be away from home for 4 days, do things that got me out of my comfort zone and socialise which strangers, something I don't do easily. As a result I had been dreading it for about 6 weeks to the point where I just wanted to hide under my covers. 

As it turns out the course was fun, interesting and useful. And my fellow course-goers were interesting, lovely, and, being also from the heritage sector, very easy to get along with. (2 of the attendees were from Sydmonton Court Estate, country retreat of Andrew Lloyd Webber, dontcha know!)

So, after a weekend of trying to catch up with sleep between work and making cakes, and a lovely day lunching and spa-ing (the massage kind, not the fighting kind) with my lovely friend, I am now feeling ready to start my year...ish. I still have that tax return to do...

So what do I want from 2014? Well, I just want more!

More Positivity

As we have already established I have a general leaning to the negative. This is something I have been working on and intended to continue to do so in 2014. Unicorns and sparkles are the name of the game!

More style

I got a fancy new camera for Christmas and intend to learn to use it as it was intended - not just having it constantly on auto mode. I want to really work on my food styling, you know, get my cakes away from the many plug sockets that can be found all over our kitchen.

More Content

I want to work on my blog this year and I would like to have an actual website, or even just a glimmer of one, by the end of the year. This is going to make my business look a lot more professional rather than directing people to my Facebook page.

More creativity

In summary, I just generally want to be more creative this year in all areas: coming up with cake ideas, business ideas, flavours, crafting, little projects, big projects, everything!

I do intend to set more specific goals within these so I can see what I am achieving. 

Phew, I better get my year started...

Vicky xx

Images ©Earle Hatsumy Thanks to Earle for letting me use her images - check out her Flickr, there's some super kawaii pictures on there!

Cake Time: Every Little Helps - Tesco Van

One of my Mum's colleagues asked her if she could have a cake for her brother's 60th birthday. So with it being a special birthday we imagined that we would be doing something special for the cake.

But that's not quite how it went...

She asked for a Tesco van! The reason being he works at Tesco...and hates it! We though it was cruel and she thought it was hilarious. And it turns out it had been a family decision so the whole family also found it hilarious! So we got in on the hilarity and quite enjoyed it. 

But it got us thinking what would some one have to put on a cake that would really annoy us. For me, hands down, it would be a tin of baked bins. Oh man, how I hate beans!! :( 

I'd love to know what form your nightmarishly hilarious cake would take?

Vicky

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!