The bad the good and the fabulous

I owe you all an explanation.  I've been really quiet as this year hasn't started well, I've had two very close family members die.  It's been heartbreaking and quite frankly I couldn't cope with it.  The first was completely unexpected and the second, although expected was sooner than we'd all hoped.  Death comes to us all but sometimes it sucks big time and this time it had bells on and everything.  I know some of you have been concerned, thank you thank you thank you.  I really appreciate your thoughts and concerns.  I've tried to write this post a thousand times but found it too hard.

And so to move on as I don't want to bring any of you down with my worries.

The good things that have happened, and there have been good things thankfully, are I've now got back into making things, the only thing I could do at one point was knit so I knitted a blanket in a stupidly short period of time along with eight scarves...grief is weird.  I'm still knitting and I've been getting lessons from a very lovely lady at my sewing class but still need more help to be honest.

It's a multicolour circus but it got me through and it keeps my feet warm in bed!

I've been learning lots of things in sewing class lately, all those who quilt already will know these blocks but they were new to me.  I have to say I really loved hand sewing them, it's been a really relaxing process.  I'm working on an off centre block at the minute in shades of purple, when it's finished I'll share it with you all.

My opal fruits coloured log cabin block

Court house steps in shades of blue

Corner square block in blues and greens

Sorry these photos are a little dark, it was late when I took the picture and I'm just too comfy to get up and take better ones now!  You'll get a good light shot when I've finished the project I promise.

And drum roll please...

The fabulous things are that I'm getting MARRIED!  Eeeeek!  Excited and nervous and giddy and oh I don't know all together!  So I'm going to be showcasing all the little bits and bobs that I'm going to be making to make the wedding more me and J and to keep the costs down as we're on a tight budget.

My engagement ring with Welsh gold and peridots

The engagement cake my work mates surprised me with!  The young lady who made this has now given up work to make cakes full time, lucky thing!

Going back to school times making a lino block print to use on my wedding invitations

So I've bought my dress...I know I know I could have made it but I saw this dress and it was a good price in the style and colour I wanted and with my lack of sewing mojo and me wanting to keep the last scrap of sanity I have left I thought I'd buy it and be done with it.  All I'm letting on at the moment on here is that I have a chiffon underskirt to go with it!  Eeeee!  I love it so!  I have my shoes too and J has his suit, we just need to get him a shirt and me some underthings and our outfits are sorted.

I'm going to make a bouquet from brooches as although I love flowers it's cheaper this way as I have a large collection of brooches anyway.  It also means I can have relatives long gone come along for the festivities as I have brooches that were both of my grandmother's and have asked J's family if I can borrow a brooch of J's grandmother who is no longer with us too.

My next big project will be making masses of bunting and paper flowers to decorate the venue when we find one.  It's a bit of a hunt for hen's teeth at the minute as we just want a room to eat in as we're going to get married in a registry office and think we've found a caterer we like so just need somewhere where our families can sit and have high tea with us!  You'd think that would be easy wouldn't you?  Oh no, nothing is easy apparently as whenever you mention the W word the prices of places sky rocket and won't let you have outside caterers. *Sigh*

So I'll try not to bore you all with wedding stuff and will intersperse other pretty things like sewing class activities and my escapades in knitting just to keep everyone happy.  Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

Pretties and noms

Tell me if you're getting sick of seeing me cut shapes in leather.  I won't listen but you can moan all you want! ;)

I've finished the chrysanthemum and I've made another bird cut out but this time in a circle.

chrysanthemum

bird cut out in a stripy circle

I really like how they look held up to the light:

bird cut out held to the light

chrysanthemum held to the light

The chrysanthemum makes me think of the inside of a lotus root.  I didn't do a pattern for this, I just cut and am amazed at the pattern I can see in it!  I find it a bit mesmerising.

And so onto the noms.  We have a blueberry bush in the back garden and so far this year it's yielded 210g, so I made them into muffins!  Mmmmmmm!  Haven't tried one yet as they're hot out of the oven.  I've also just finished making blackberry muffins too as had five punnets for £1 as the green grocer was trying to sell them off at the end of the day.  Have to say they're the most enormous blackberries I've ever seen!  So that's one punnet down, only four more to go!  I'm thinking pie...

blueberry muffins mmmmmmmmm

Can't you just smell them?  Go on then, have one!

Red Velvet Cake

It's not the best looking cake I've ever made, but since I've been wanting to make this cake for ages and needed to make it this week before the ingredients went off...I baked a cake on a work night *gasp*!

Here's the proof:

I've got this wonderful cake tin from my boyfriend one Christmas that's the shape of a huge cupcake, unfortunately my awful icing skills mean you can't see the shape of the cake very well.  Also there was a slight accident with the top so the large amount of icing was slightly necessary!

As you can see this is not a 'how to' post, it's most definitely a 'how not to post' but mostly a 'I finally made one!' post!  It's proof that I finally got to try a red velvet cake as a friend of mine always has a normal size cupcake version of this cake whenever he can and had urged me to try it.  Sadly he lives far to far away to have a piece, but since we have spent many a happy afternoon drinking tea and eating cake with edible glitter on I think he won't mind that this one got away.  Then again he might be extremely glad considering the state on it! haha!

And my verdict, hilariously enough I'm not fussed!  Awful isn't it?  It's a bit too sweet, but that could just be me making too much icing and the cake wasn't exactly red either as couldn't lay my hands on coloured paste and had to do with the liquid which wasn't bake stable I found out after I'd poured it in the mixture...D'oh!

Have you ever made a cake with great expectation and then found when you've spent all that time slaving over a hot stove that you actually don't like it or aren't that fussed?