Jo's Bookmark and Cake Making Marathon

At long last here is the photo of the lovely bookmark made for me by Jo. Don't you just love the colours and the dangly beads? And not only a bookmark, but an interesting looking book to put it in! Thank you so much Jo, I just love them. I really enjoyed the swap - making the bookmarks was fun and getting those little packages through the post was even better. Thanks again to all of you who took part:)



Well, today was my daughter's 9th Birthday and I spent most of the day making this cake. Well, it would have been most of the day had I not locked myself out of the house in the morning when taking the children to school - again. Not only that but I had to borrow a mobile phone to call my brother in law to drive me too my mum's to get my spare key (again). I was not a happy bunny - all my carefully laid cake making plans were dissolving before my eyes. Never mind, after a coffee and a 'putting the world to rights' chat at mums, I got home and started on the cake. Usually a reasonably simple task for me - I am reasonably confident with cake making and decorating as a rule. Today was different. My baking was fine, but my decorating? Ha! The first time I tried to apply the fondant icing it was too thin and split. I made some more icing. On the second attempt the icing was thick enough but a bit fell off and left a huge gap. Everything that could have gone wrong was! By this time I was cursing like a trooper I can tell you! Eventually I managed to patch things together Frankenstein style and (to cut a very long and boring story short) by the time I had finished sticking the little stars on (helped by my other half making the green ones) I was reasonably pleased with it. I might also add that I had to change my clothes and mop the kitchen floor - twice! Everything was made alright again when my daughter got home from school, took one look at her cake and said 'wow, I love it Mum!' - that just made it all worthwhile - know what I mean?

The Birthday party went well, all the children had fun and were nice and tired by the end of two hours running around, eating and dancing! Here are the birthday girl and her brother - before the tiredness set in!