Miss Senior Secretary!

Just a short post to share with you all some news...

My work have promoted me to Senior Secretary! Whoop whoop!

Tomorrow I shall be meeting my friends for lunch and proposing a trip to Selfridges to finally, yawn, buy the French Soles I have been dreaming about.

Hopefully I'll be skipping home with a yellow shoe box shaped bag!

Betty Silver

A friend and I hadn't made plans for the weekend so decided to treat Betty Silver to an outing and get together for a sewing day. Once she arrived the boyfriend was put to good use and sent for wine and Maltesers. One wine bottle turned into 3. I don't know what's worse, the calories or the units?

10 months a go I bought some black and white flock fabric from material heaven Abakhan. It was a bargain and I had every intention of making cushion covers but never quite managed to make a start.

With my friend's encouragement we made a return trip to purchase the cushions needed and with scissors in one hand and wine in the other we began our envelope cover mission with a little help from Kirstie.

We had a great afternoon, I was so chuffed with the end results! The boyfriend has been warned that if I find a single droplet of spilt tea on my beautiful cushions he'll be shipped back to his mum's!

To my sewing partner, thanks for all your help! x

Baby Shower

Baby showers are an American thing recently adopted by us English folk, although suitably toned down, thankfully. No-one could compete with the Tiffany gifts given at Miranda’s baby shower as seen on Sex and the City. Lets not be silly.

A friend of mine is 8 months pregnant and as I love to bake and feed people I suggested we organise a small tea party/baby shower for her and some friends. One last get together before the baby arrives and life is never the same again.

After being told not to ‘make a fuss’ I decided to ignore the boss and secretly ordered some decorations from babyshowerhost.com. Who knew these websites existed? There must be some keen baby shower hosts out there. I was also directed, by the gorgeous Nigella, to a fab online specialist cake company where I found the rather cute cookie cutters, as pictured above.

Then I set about planning my menu. We decided against alcohol from the off, if the star of the show couldn't drink I didn't think it was fair to let everyone else get giggly on the wine (plenty of time for that after the stork drops off the new arrival). As afternoon tea was the theme I decided upon smoked salmon sandwiches and cute cup cakes plus one show stopping cake to grace my Nigella cake stand. Any excuse to show it off.

Saturday was spent tied to a hot oven wishing outdoor kitchens existed. Then Sunday arrived and we whizzed through homemade lemonade, chocolate and Guinness cup cakes, a stunning red velvet cake with American frosting, rocking horse shaped double choc chip cookies (the Flamingos were sadly made redundant – their skinny legs and necks made transporting the pre-cooked cookie from work top to baking tray near impossible), sandwiches and orange jellies with jelly babies hidden inside. What a mission but 2.30pm arrived and we were ready. There was a slight last minute rush but my friend’s husband helped out by getting the ladders out and putting up our bunting!

We had a great afternoon, two of the girls bought their children, one being just a year old and the other only 7 weeks! Gifts were given, photos were taken and it was a really lovely occasion.