Freddie.

It is SOOOO windy outside.  Freddie and I are having a cosy day indoors still in our jammies.  Plan for the day?  Look through photos and drink lots of tea.

Cake.

I love cakes.  Just love them.  I love how they look, I love eating them of course and the urge to make a big gooey cake is always there.  If I see a recipe for a pretty cake I write down all the ingredients needed and if I actually get round to buying them the next stage of making the cake rarely happens.  So I have a cupboard jam packed with cake decorations, icing (in various forms, a few boxes of icing sugar, a pack of royal icing, several tubes of writing icing - some gone hard and some just about usable), every shade of food colour, large quantities of flour... you get the picture.  I recently found THE most amazing blog whilst pinning pictures of baked goodies on Pinterest and if you love cakes you need to have a look at Sweetapolita 

 I decided to create this delight for my mums birthday last week...

 I am aware that I was clearly over estimating my cake making skills which usually consist of buying a box of ready made cake mix but the pictures were just so pretty and when I showed Daisy she convinced me that we could definitely do this.  I made my list.  I sent my man off to purchase everything needed (I didn't realise that ingredients from an American website would have a completely different name here), but with a bit of help from a couple of old ladies he discovered that vegetable shortening is margarine, confectioners sugar is icing sugar and pink gel is a bit like food colouring.  
I am not one for properly reading therefore not properly understanding instructions, I improvise a lot.  I don't have a Kitchenaid - I have a small Magimix food processor given to me by my gran when she bought herself a better one and I don't think it has a 'paddle' attachment which is what the instructions said I needed here.  Please note : this amount of ingredients will not fit into a Magimix.  I discovered this after trying to sieve in vast amounts of flour twice.  I abandoned this idea, transferred it into a big bowl and used an electric hand whisk, circa 1970, also from my gran.  It worked out OK, the whisk did sound like it was going to pass out from the strain of the sheer volume of cake batter but it got there in the end.  So the batter was done and tasting good, the next step was to put this into two cake tins, bake, then repeat as it is a four layered cake.  I weighed out the exact amount of batter, feeling very professional, into my lined, greased tins.  Alas, my tins were smaller than required which resulted in the this...

After cleaning up this mess, feeding the baby, bathing Daisy, doing some GCSE maths with Jacob and chatting to Ben about his new cool hairstyle, I baked the remainder of the batter and it did turn out well in the end.  In fact it was the yummiest cake I have ever eaten.  We covered it in pink ice cream flavour frosting and edible glitter and.... ta da....

Vintage Snapshots

One of our latest auction finds was a huge box of vintage cameras, we had great fun going through them and figuring out how each one worked.  So many fab designs, they just look great on display.  This is exactly why I love what we do ~ my living room floor is covered in cameras ~ never a dull moment...

A Little Shower...

I thought I would brighten up this dark, gloomy, wet June day with some pictures from my baby shower that we had 2 weeks before Freddie arrived (as you can see I was fit to burst - walking, standing, I was finding it all a bit of a challenge).  It has to be my favourite party ever with all of my favourite people.  And lots of yummy food.  We played games and had the most amazing magician ~ I am convinced he was truly magic.  Everyone gave a gift of a book that was their favourite story from childhood ~ a wonderful collection for a very lucky Freddie.

Beautiful pictures by beautiful Emma Case...

Baby Blue

So much time has passed since I last posted on our little blog and so much has happened... Our little boy Freddie was born on his due date, May 7th weighing a very good size at 10 lb 7oz.  It wasn't the easiest labour by any means, due mainly to the fact that I am a just a mere human being of average proportions and surely not designed to produce offspring of that size (the day after Freddie was born we were watching Earth Watch and there was a bear cub, an American grizzly bear cub, a few days old that actually weighed less than Freddie).  It all looked set to be a text book perfect labour, on the morning of the 7th my waters broke at 4am, contractions followed quickly after and by 10am I was in established labour. From there on it quickly changed as he was facing the wrong way and was in distress but cutting out all the gory details he was born with a forceps delivery at 3.24pm and my beautiful bundle was in my arms and I was head over heels in love with my new little man.

We were in hospital for a week while his brothers and sister were at home with my mum patiently waiting for their baby brother to come home.  They just adore him.  Daisy would be full time carer if I let her, she places herself right next to him at all times just in case she's needed.   He is starting to look at her with fascinated eyes and I can see a deep friendship ahead for these two little people. 

~ There is so much that has happened on the run up to little Freddies arrival that I want to share so I am going to go back in time over the next week or so and fill in the gaps of my long absence xx

 

Beach Bums

It has been actually been snowing here quite hard today, yesterday it was too warm to even wear a coat but today I put on my woolly hat and winter coat and planned what to do when we are snowed in.  It has since stopped snowing and the sun is back out so I won't be cleaning out the utility room or catching up on the ironing (as if I was really going to do this).  

Back in half term we took the children down to Cornwall for a little break and family bonding time as it is hard to get the whole family spending time together when you have a 15 year old who thinks we are highly embarrassing and a love sick 11 year old.  But down in Cornwall there is no choice.  There is nowhere for them to escape.  It was a lovely quiet week of not doing an awful lot, cuddling up on the sofa watching movies, walks on the beach, and 5 evenings of trying to light the open fire convinced that the next day the wood we had got would in fact be of dry enough quality to set fire to.   We never had a fire that lasted for more than 5 minutes and we settled for big blankets to add the cosy factor.

It really wasn't as warm as it looked on the beach, it was ear ache cold.  But the beach is just the best place to be whatever the weather, watching the sea and the people out and about never gets boring.  For an adult or child anyway.  According to the teenager it's the most boring and pointless place ever.  Why would anyone want to do this?  Why would you live so far away from major high street stores and grotty parks with grotty benches to sit on with your mates all evening?  But as you can see from evidence A and C there are traces of a smile on his face so we decided that his rants were merely for effect and ignored him. 

Ladybird, Ladybird

You know when you come across a blog that you so wished you had written?  Well today I found that very thing.  We have quite a bad infestation of ladybirds.  I know, I know, ladybirds are sweet and all that but they really aren't when they are coming in through your bedroom windows.  We have to keep the windows shut all the time just so the situation doesn't worsen but still they are in our bed, on our pillows, in the bath...  They are so many of them that I actually find them quite intimidating.  They are really starting to freak me out. 

 So, today, I googled 'ladybird infestation' in the hope of finding someone who has a similar bug issue and an amazing way to deter the little visitors from wanting to live with me.  I did find a fair few people with this problem but the only answers I could find were based around 'you lucky person!  Ladybirds are lovely, we should welcome them in...' etc.  I even found one from a guy asking for the poor ladybug victim to send him some of the bugs so he could start up his own colony.  Not what I was hoping for.  But then I came across one of the funniest things I have ever read.  A kindred spirit.  And by reading this you may have a bit more of an idea of my predicament.

READ ON... 

I think we may have an infestation of ladybirds.

According to my beloved, impolitely reading over my shoulder as I type, infestation may be a little strong, or dramatic, or something.

Revision: Though they may be deviously and misleadingly few in number, I think we may potentially be lethally overrun by deadly ninja ladybirds.

This poses a problem. See, I am not afraid of ladybirds, not like mice. Ladybirds don’t scuttle, or hide under your sofa, or nibble your belongings, and are only really terrifying if they fly at you while you are on the toilet.

The problem is, however, that we mainly seem to have the kind of ladybird who is particularly keen on flying at you while you are on the toilet. You know the type. There are probably dirty niche internet chatrooms full of them.

But I am still confused. How is an infestation of ladybirds possible? Surely the air at this altitude (third floor) is simply to thin for them to live? This is probably the reason you don’t see ladybirds climbing Everest very often, for example.

First there was just one, in the bathroom, perched on the geranium in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. Then there was another, in the living room, skipping sweetly across the window sill. Then there was another, curvy-side down on the rim of the bath, like a tiny tipped-up turtle. Except red. And dead. Then another on the windowsill, next to the first one, which was also dead.

And though they keep dying, they also seem to keep coming, and the problem I have is that I can’t stop the cycle, see, because I CAN’T KILL THEM.

It’s impossible. It’s like having an infestation of fairies. I spent a childhood surrounded by picture books with the little babybug emblazoned in the corner. There were songs about them, stuffed furry ones to cuddle at night and my GOD, they were ALL Over Christmas jumpers - and am I supposed to kill them now?

Spiders, I can happily kill, or at least throw out of a window without a parachute. Midges? Smoke the hell out of them. Kill all bluebottles. Fuck the cockroach community. Wasps? Dead faster than you can say . Mice? Snap their little necks. Ants - spray’em, bake’em, grill’em, fry’em, who cares, they’re ants.

But these? No.

No matter how hard I try to do it, I can’t drop a book on the ladybirds. It would feel like putting a bullet through a butterfly or kicking a kitten in the knees. I keep telling myself that they have poisonous wee, or secret sets of sharp and pointy teeth that in the dead of the night they’ll bite my nose off with, but no. I still can’t do it.

They’re cute. They’re red, and spotty. They flutter, sometimes. And unless they radically adjust the one-out/one-in policy, or, in fact, the de facto one-dead/one-in policy, I can’t see that they’re actually going to be able to bathroomarily overpower me and make me dead.

But damn them for being cute. And damn me for being a wuss about it. It’s this kind of policy of appeasment that started the second world war. It’s a terrifying thought. Today, I allow the ladybirds, tomorrow, Hitler invades.

My flat.

While I’m on the toilet.

They’re a worrying thing, ladybirds. You can see why I might be fretting. 

From : www.littleredboat.co.uk/archives/8