my birthday week

me and my papa  -  my mum and my dad  -  a bird managed to get inside the feeder  -  dinner with dad

a new aloe vera plant from lidl  -  blue araucana eggs  -  birthday moon and a cat on a roof  -  birthday makeup in b&w

casting on new knitting projects  -  knitting in the garden  -  our pak choi flowering by mistake  -  finishing my yellow hat

my mum fashioned a shirt/dress from a scarf with a leopard on  -  strawberry birthday cake  -  a church in buckinghamshire  -  my dad taking me to the best field ever (more on that tomorrow..) 

I've had a really relaxing week this week - I turned twenty-four yesterday, which feels really weird. I feel like I've had a lot of mental stuff to deal with this year, and its made me feel a lot older, but after getting over a cold and finishing a horrible week of shifts at work, I've enjoyed doing homey things, like going to the allotment with my dad, organising his party with my mum, managing to get to the gym every day this week (oh yes) and then having a very relaxing weekend, with a little excursion today that was lovely lovely. I honestly couldn't be bothered to get all the stuff together for a weekend wandering today because I've had such a chill day, so you'll probably get a bumper edition next week! 

Right then, hope you've all had a great weekend and got a little bit of sunshine wherever you are - I'm off to eat dinner, a saffron and lemon chicken recipe from my new cookbook - Persiana!

oh gosh

I am fully aware that I have already posted once today.. but I didn't think that I would have such an enjoyable day that I wanted to post when I got home! (Or have the energy! Hence the scheduled post.) Anywayyyy, me and my mama popped upto London today - it was sort of my birthday treat, because I didn't really do anything with my parents for my birthday earlier in the month. I got a pair of beautiful sunglasses, but my mum says she would've given me money towards them anyway, so she wanted to treat me, and goshhh, did she treat me! My mum wanted to see something at the Royal Academy, and I wanted to see something nearby at the Haunch of Venison, so we thought we would have a little wander around the area, something I haven't done in a long while. We had a lovely lunch at The Living Room (and a few Pineapple Sidecars..!) and browsed many a shop. My huge treat was something I've had my eye on for a while - a perfume from Penhaligon's.. more on that in a later post though! I also tried the Laduree macarons for the first time, popped into Illamasqua and saw a bit of art.. so all in all, a very lovely day for me! Right up my street, so to speak.

So even despite the overwhelming humidity & heat, I had such a lovely day and feel very spoilt and it was so very lovely.

How have you been enjoying this heat? I saw this online earlier today, and it accurately describes how I was on the tube this evening! haha.

There have been too many exclamation marks and elongated words in this post.. oops! And another one.

birthday stories

Birthday cake!

Dress from Billie & Blossom at Dorothy Perkins

Massive cocktails and geeky presents!

It was my birthday on Thursday, and whilst it didn't get off to the best start (I woke up feeling really sick and quite depressed because of a few things) so my housemate Alex and I drove through the pouring rain (which wasn't helping my depression!) to Winchester, and I actually ended up having a really lovely day, mostly thanks to Alex! We found a really cute little coffee shop with amazinggg coffee, found a great vintage clothing store, and an amazing Oxfam bookshop with an extensive collection of 60's penguin books and short stories, vintage sci-fi novels and old postcards.. It was so good!

In the evening I went for amazing mexican food with my two good friends from uni, and then went to my universities degree show. Afterwards we had lots of cheap cocktails and came home to eat cake! 

I came home on Friday and saw a couple of other friends from home and went to the pub and had cake at home.. so I was really lucky to have lovely friends to keep my mood up. 

On a side note - isn't my cake amazing? My mum always comes up with amazing cakes for my birthday - see tiger cake and rainbow cake - and I didn't know how she would come up with cakes better than those.. but she did. This was a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing and chocolate dipped strawberries on top! There is this running joke in my family that when I was little and wouldn't go to bed, I asked for chocolate and strawberries together and I would do as I was told.. so this combines my two favourite things!

you got your hair slicked back and your wayfarers on, baby

Hello everyone, guess who is 22 tomorrow?! Oh yes. I am now old! I definitely feel old, because for my birthday I asked for a new carpet, a couple of books, and a portfolio, haha. I mentioned to my mum that I was going to get myself from prescription sunglasses because I do really hate wearing contact lenses when it's sunny. She came with me to help pick them.. and ended up getting me them! They came last week and I wasn't supposed to be able to have them until my birthday but she let me have them a bit earlier. I have wanted Ray Ban's for ageeees, I adore the Wayfarers beyond words, but I told myself I wouldn't let myself have them until I could be trusted with nice things. Both my brother and I have an unfortunate habit of buying sunglasses and then leaving them in places (mine are usually cheap H&M sunnies, but his have been Oakley's, Ray Ban's and a pair of Prada ones I dare not mention to my mother!). As these are prescription lenses, they don't have the iconic Ray Ban logo in the corner but I can live with that to be able to wear them to wear them when driving and such.

(PS, if you love Boys of Summer as much as me, you are amazing, why aren't we friends?)

Happy Birthday to me!

Well.. not anymore.. it's now Tuesday, but we'll ignore that fact (and the fact that I should be in bed but I can't sleep!). Just wanted to say thank-you for all the birthday wishes I got.. and show you the amazing birthday cake my mum made me! It is absolutely unreal...haha.


The outside.. 20 candles, count 'em! You may notice it is quite a tall cake..


And this would be why. Layers of rainbow cake.
My mum makes some pretty awesome cakes and when she asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I jokingly said I wanted a rainbow cake. Then yesterday we spent a good few hours in the kitchen making the layers and perfecting the food colouring.. I love it so much and almost didn't want to eat it. Cutting into it was the best thing ever.
I saw this idea forever ago on i am baker's blog where she made a green cake, and didn't think it was possible because it's a right pain in the bum to find white cake mix here, but me & my mum made a batch of pale cake mix, and managed to successfully add colours. We also found this recipe really useful, too.


A slice.. (: You will not need second-helpings. Trust me, haha.

For two layers of cake you'll need:
4oz of butter/marg
4oz of flour
4oz white caster sugar
2 large eggs
As much food colouring as you like!
2 small pans (I recommend small, thin pans, mine were probably like 20cm across)

Basically you just mix the cake like you normally would, then add the food colouring, making sure it's super vibrant, as it fades a tad when cooking, then cook the cake like you normally would. The outsides, where they cook, will go a strange colour - a sort of dull, greenish version of the colour you made.. but do not despair. Layer the cakes as you want, and I used some Betty Crocker icing inbetween each layer, and then smoothed around the top & bottom (I say *I*, my mum did this bit because I can't ice cakes for shit!). And then have the time of your life cutting into it. I am going to bedoing this for all my friends now, haha.
If you opposed to such things as E numbers, i am baker also does one coloured by natural substances like strawberries, blueberries and kiwis.. which I really want to try.
And I would highly recommend trying to find an American food shop (I'm visiting this one later this week haha) to get white cake mix because that is a, cheating, and b, a hell of a lot easier, haha.

That concludes my food-themed-blog post, haha. Hope you had a good day, too. (: