Jubilee cupcakes

It was a class cake sale today and although I am not as keen and eager about cake sales as I used to be when my kids first started at the school (the number of times recently I’ve bought in Mr. Kipling or the equivalent) but hey, it’s the Jubilee and my Jubilee plans have been significantly quashed, so I thought I might as well make some Jubilee cupcakes whilst I could.

The cakes were made with the vanilla cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery: Cake Days book (not quite the same recipe – but very similar is The Hummingbird Bakery recipe from their first book here). The recipe from The Cake Days book did have significantly more sugar though and the result tasted overly sweet (which is saying something for a cupcake). The recipe did call for a buttercream style icing but I wanted something a lot simpler (and less sickly), so went for a simple icing sugar icing, coloured (admittedly pastelly), red, white and blue. However, although the cakes were too sweet, they were lovely and moist.

(A sign that I have way too many baking books, I had thought I hadn’t cooked from Cake Days before but a quick check on the blog, I’ve cooked not only from this book but the same recipe before and for another royal occasion)

I also attempted another Jubilee cake today but it really didn’t work, the cake didn’t rise enough, or should I say there just didn’t seem to be enough mixture. Also the cake wasn’t blue enough, I was too paranoid about avoiding what the instructions advised against, adding too much blue dye so that the cake turned green, in the end I just got a blue tinge. The cake was also a bit dry.

(Union Jack cupcake decorations made using this (scroll down to the ‘ribbon’) and cocktail sticks)

Toy Bags

Me and Mr. Lacer have been on holiday for most of the week; which has been really nice because usually if I’m using up annual leave there is to be honest not that much difference, I just get to avoid getting up at 5.40am for the early morning shifts and I get to watch more telly because of no evening shifts. So having Mr. Lacer around has made things feel distinctly more holiday like. Not that it’s been that holiday like, although at least the weather was positively barmy for the beginning of the week.

This week has gone far too quickly though; the kids had their sports days on Monday and Tuesday, the school switching from cram the whole school on the playing field at once to having individual time slots for each year (which meant parents with more than one child in school didn’t have to flit between the year groups). Sports day this year was olympic themed, so no more teddy bear relays and dragging each other around on plastic sheeting, instead they had hundred metre relays, hurdles, shot put, javelin, the works. Now I hated sports day as an absolute rule as a child, so it was really nice seeing both kids grinning their heads off as they raced. Now, not that surprisingly, Boy Lacer is not athletically inclined, but he still had fun doing it. Girl Lacer on the other hand, well I don’t know what quirk of genes occurred there but she’s *shock* actually good, I never dreamt I’d have an athletic child but in her two individual events, she came 1st in the 100m hurdles and 3rd in the 100m sprint.

Anyway, other than watching sports days, me and Mr. Lacer have been sorting out some storage issues in the flat, you see when we moved into this flat, when Girl Lacer was 9 months old and Boy Lacer wasn’t even on the scene, we confidently predicted that by the time Girl Lacer was 5, we’d move to a bigger place (as the flat was and is tiny), well, she’s 8 1/2 now and we’re unlikely to move for at least another 3 years. So, the flat, which we thought would just about get us through the baby – toddler -preschool years, has had to stretch into the infant and now the junior years. We hope to move by the time Girl Lacer starts secondary school, but just as we hoped we’d move shortly after Girl Lacer started primary school, I’m realistic about that not necessarily happening.

Soooo, we’ve been struggling recently with trying to work with storage solutions that worked with smaller children that now no longer work as well with bigger children. For a start, the large chest of drawers that comfortably held all their clothes when their clothes weren’t much bigger than a hankie, was now over flowing and constantly breaking. So, Mr. Lacer hit Ikea and bought two child sized wardrobes, a cupboard and a toy chest, as well as a TV bench with three large drawers for the living room (to replace the toy storage that we did have under the TV, in the theory that now that they’re older they should have less toys (she laughs manically)).

Mr. Lacer spent yesterday and a good bit of today assembling the furniture (whereas I yesterday hid out in the garden enjoying the sun and embroidering *blush*). Today I started the task of getting all the toys that had been scattered everywhere into their new storage (whilst Mr. Lacer did the clothes). I hadn’t been completely idle yesterday, as the embroidery had been labels for toy bags, my own designs, I had got fed up of small toys getting separated and scattered everywhere, so the idea of labelled toy bags, maybe, just maybe, things will stay a bit more together (plus switching from trayed toy storage to drawers, I just knew if I was not careful, the drawers would become a sea of junk within about a week). So, excuse the mess (we’re still trying to find places for everything) and excuse the bad photos, light wasn’t good and the photographer was knackered.

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The Glass of Time

The Glass of Time by Michael Cox is a melodrama set in the late 1800s and is the sequel to The Meaning of Night, which I loved when I read it, eek six years ago. In The Meaning of Night we follow the character of Edward Glyver, who is being thwarted by his enemy Phoebus Daunt, in and around London and the Northamptonshire estate of Evenwood, in The Glass of Time, which is set about 20 years later, we catch up on the results of the machinations between the two men, as we follow further events at Evenwood that have a direct link to what had occurred earlier. There are orphan maids above their rank, mysterious house keepers, haughty Ladyships and secrets everywhere.

The close link between The Meaning of Night and The Glass of Time really made me wish that I had reread The Meaning of Night before reading The Glass of Time because although you can follow the story well enough without having read the first book, which in effect I almost was because I could only just remember the plot, I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I had read one book after the other.

So, in summary The Glass of Time is fantastic if you like period melodramas (and I’ll admit the melodrama does get a bit OTT sometimes), some of the plot points were screamingly obvious and it was a little soppy but the characters were sympathetic and the bad guys convincingly three dimensional, so if that’s your sort of thing, read it but read The Meaning of Night first.

May 365

1. 365:121 Starting the celtic cross, 2. 365:122 More celtic cross work, 3. 365:123 Yawn, 4. 365:124 Hirst statue outside Tate Modern, 5. 365:125 Embroidering some Summersville fabric, 6. 365:126 More stitching on Summersville, 7. 365:127 Visiting farm, 8. 365:128 Hurriedly grabbed bluebell photo on school trip, 9. 365:129 Mess, 10. 365:130 May embroidery journal, 11. 365:131 Planning and cutting for a cushion cover, 12. 365:132 Guess yet?, 13. 365:133 Tiny bit more, 14. 365:134 Cow parsley under bench, 15. 365:135 Unpicking , 16. 365:136 Looking more like what it’s meant to be . . ., 17. 365:137 Sewing day, 18. 365:138 Finished for the day, 19. 365:139 Looking more obvious now, 20. 365:140 Finished the bottom of the crown! Starting at the top again., 21. 365:141 Ran out of black pearl cotton!, 22. 365:142 Weeds and moss, 23. 365:143 Cow parsley, 24. 365:144 Made a few mistakes, only one is really noticeable though (to me), 25. 365:145 Allium, 26. 365:146 Watering, 27. 365:147 Snail still life, 28. 365:149 Crown cont., 29. 365:150 Working on some patterns of my own, 30. 365:151 Working on more patterns

A fairly satisfyingly varied creative month this month.

Related articles

• March 365 (lacer.wordpress.com)
• April 365 (lacer.wordpress.com)

Snail still life

Spotted when I was putting up the washing this afternoon, yep that’s a piece of embroidery thread there, it gets everywhere.

(Also today I was up at the allotment again, planting potatoes, tomatoes and peas and I got my legs scratched to pieces, the weeds are literally fighting back)

Sacrificial Magic

I love the Downside Ghosts series by Stacia Kane, it has a fascinating post apocalyptical premise (ghosts, some 20-30 years earlier had broken through on a murderous ramage, completely changing the remaining surviving society, so that the Church – a group of witches, now ruled everything), the main character Chess (a debunker working for the Church) is strong yet weak, totally and utterly flawed and completely believable and the on and off romance between Chess and Terrible, the feared enforcer of one of the local drug lords Bump, is beautiful and heart tugging.

If you’re new to the series start with the first book, Unholy Ghosts^, I will admit it took me a little while to get into the first book, the dialogue in particular is unique but only in that the characters do sound that either they’re some sort of puritanical throwback to the founding fathers or that they live extremely hard lives on the street (I recommend the audiobooks of the series, they’re read beautifully and the dialogue isn’t so hard to get into).

Sacrificial Magic^ is book 4 of the series; Chess has been sent to investigate a haunting in a school on the other side of town, the side of town that happens to be controlled by the drug lord Slobag, whose son Lex she used to sleep with. It’s also a side of town where the Church is treated with a scepticism that we didn’t get to see much of in earlier books. At the same time Chess is happily back with Terrible but is having trust issues, specially when Bump’s buildings start getting torched and it looks like Slobag may be getting inside information.

I don’t know if anyone is particularly going by my book reviews, but in case they are (“hi you out there! *waves madly*), I should emphasise that the Downside series is grittier than most of the books I normally review, there is heavy drug use (although explained throughout why and there’s a scene in book 3 (I think) guaranteed to put anyone of the thought of drugs for life), profanity, gore and fairly graphic sex scenes, you have been warned, but don’t let that put you off

^Amazon affiliate links (when adding them I noticed that Downside book 5 is out in August, AUGUST! Exciting, considering Sacrificial Magic only came out this month in the UK and ooh, how the book ended . . .)

Watering

Popped up to the allotment to water between shifts today (I’m currently working loooong hours at the weekend, so thank goodness for an excuse to get my eyes temporarily out of the house and away from the screen, my eyes feel soooo tired). Everything is already looking parched and dry

Quick heads up….

I’ve just spotted (yes, I’ll admit it, I was ego surfing, although I did know this was going to be happening at some point) that the how-to for my Microbe Hankies from Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery (affiliate link) is up on The Denver Post, which is a little surreal (I’ve never made my local newspaper, yet I get in one way across in the States). Anyway, link here (however it doesn’t unfortunately include the actual embroidery pattern, maybe in the dead wood version it did?).

Constant gardening

I went to the allotment today, the first time in about a week (is it sad that I’ve been staying in just to wash clothes? You see the drier part of our washer-drier is chronically faulty, the *ahem* Bosch engineer may as well camp out at our house, soooo because about 95% of the year it takes a long time for me to dry clothes, when the sun comes out for a good period of time I need to stay home and constantly feed the washing machine, so that I can turn our over flowing laundry baskets into something a lot more manageable, you know I actually managed to empty the kids’ laundry basket this week? That never happens). Anyway, this isn’t about washing, this is about how a week of inattention from me + a week of hot sun = green explosion, I could say the weeds are winning again, but they’re always winning, they’re just winning a bit more right now. But although the first words out of my mouth this afternoon as I got to my plot were “F*** weeds” (allotment gardening – it makes you talk to yourself and swear), the second thing out of my mouth was “Wow”. Now the below is not a good Hipstamatic photo (so they do exist) but this is what made me go wow.

My little flower area I scattered seeds on last year is really going OTT for a second year running, in fact a lot more OTT than last year.

Anyway, I had plants to plant, I’d ordered a constant garden from Rocket and the first instalment arrived today. Now obviously I had realised these plants were coming at some point, so I’ve been spending the last month or so digging over about a third of the plot, making sure that I was regularly hoeing those areas already dug over whilst I dug over new areas and that had been keeping things pretty much under control, even with the weeks and weeks of rain we had but I guess that was it, sunshine was missing (oh how it was missing, as one news report I read yesterday said (we’re British so we like news reports on the weather every time it does something other than be a bit grey and cloudy), we’d gone from mid winter to mid summer in a week this week, it won’t last). Anyway, all those weeds had obviously been underground, soaking up the rain, waiting for those first rays on sun and then bang, aforementioned green explosion. So before I planted I had to hoe and weed again.

Anyway, today I planted some salad leaves (planted the furthest corner away from the fence the adjoins my allotment, in the vain hope that the rabbits that get under the fence are lazy rabbits and won’t want to go that far (last year my salad was virtually next to the damm rabbit run and I lost so much), however considering my neighbours, Super Allotmenters have recently upgraded their rabbit protection to a Fort Knox like level and they’re even further from the fence, I’m not hopeful).

I also planted three different types of cabbage, onions, leeks, carrots, courgettes, beetroot, perpetual spinach, sage and chives (as if I don’t have enough feral chives popping up all over my plot).

I still have peas, tomatoes, potatoes, mint, rosemary and strawberries to plant, I will have to squeeze in time over the weekend (she  laughs hollowly). As it was I went to the allotment twice today, having to fit it in around other stuff and my feet are killing me now But at least during my second visit I got a visitor.

Is that a frog or a toad? I think it’s a toad and I used to teach biology, sigh. Anyway, I had been wrestling with the netting tunnel that the rabbits laugh at and I saw something move out the corner of my eye, on the path that I was standing on, I clock what it is and immediately do the girly thing of doing a little scream and jumping back a little (I am such a wuss). The toad on the other hand clocks me and decides to act like a stone. I eventually finish trying to get a good photo of it (braver, but still slightly paranoid that it was going to suddenly leap on my phone as I was taking the photo, yep, I’m not worried about it leaping on me, I’m worried about my phone #priorities) and move me (and my bag, which is on the path a bit behind me) out of the way, standing off the path and watching the toad now moving along the path in it’s own measured, purposeful way. Don’t know what it’s plans were but it was going back down the path about 5 minutes later again. Poor thing, I have no idea where it’s come from, I don’t think there’s any suitable water for it on the site, probably come down a rabbit hole . . .

Cow Parsley

Personally I think weeds can look prettier than any formal arrangement, so take that allotment committee (actually not taken at the allotment, these were taken down by the river today, spotted from the bench we were sitting on, having a picnic tea, anyway the weeds in my allotment are mostly not that pretty).