Cake and camping

I made a really nice cake at the weekend, for Jasper's Christening - even if I do say so myself! It was a 6-egg lemon madeira sponge, in three layers with home-made damson jam and I wanted to ice it with lemon butter icing with a blue ombre effect. I found a great example on Pinterest, courtesy of The Hungry Housewife's tutorial and decided it didn't look too difficult (famous last words!). I didn't have the specified size of icing tip and so I just used some disposable piping bags and cut the ends off without putting a tip inside. It seemed to do the trick and my cake didn't turn out too badly (at least I didn't think so!):

Not a bad effort?

The day went quite well, although it did start to absolutely pour down just as we left the church. The after-party was to be held in our garden and as we don't have an event shelter/gazebo (we live in a very windy location and our last one blew away!) we decided to put our tent up instead. There were about 60 guests in total and so we were a little nervous about squeezing everyone in if it did rain but it worked surprisingly well! We bought a new tent last year (the Outwell Montana 6, complete with the awning) and it would appear that it doubles quite nicely as a garden party shelter :-) so that's handy to know for the future!
We also took a gamble and got Sainsbury's to make up some sandwich and wrap platters for us. They were a lot better than I was expecting, and very good value I thought (Sainsbury's, that's your cue to send me lots of free groceries...). We also got free glass hire from them, which was handy! As it took me forever quite a long time to ice the cake, I was very relived that I wasn't then going to have to stay up even later to make all the food for the next day! 
As we had the tent up anyway, the girls and I camped in it for the night whilst Daddy and Jasper stayed in the house. Unfortunately, we are riddled with birds where we are, due to our rural location, and the dawn chorus was tremendously loud! Especially at 5 o'clock in the morning. Still, at least the girls and I managed to fit in thousands a few egg and spoon races before breakfast! Always a fun start to the day!

Well, here it is! The inaugural blog post!

I have absolutely no idea if anyone will ever stumble across my humble little blog but it will, nonetheless, provide an outlet for my incoherent ramblings thoughts. I hope to write about the children, progress on our house renovations/works, sewing (possibly some tutorials) and perhaps the odd bit of recipe sharing! First and foremost I want to share real life. I'm not a Stepford wife or Nigella Lawson and doubt I ever will be. My house is cleaned and tidied fairly regularly (particularly in those frantic 10 minutes before a guest arrives) but isn't immaculate. It used to be a lot better pre-kids but with all three of them at home at the moment it's a thankless task trying to keep it show-home pristine, much as my husband wishes it was. The kids do drive me to distraction on occasion and I do admit to resorting to cBeebies once in a while, in order to give me a break whilst the baby is sleeping!

I guess the first thing to do is to introduce myself:

I am a thirty(something) year old harrassed mother of three little darlings, un-domestic goddess/wife of a hard-working husband, sewist extraordinaire (not really, but I do have a teeny tiny sewing business - www.facebook.com/byebabybunting - that provides me with a pathetic modest income) and more recently an accidental smallholder.
The latter sounds more grand than it actually is - we actually only have eight sheep (Zwartbles breed) at the moment and they'll be reduced to four come November (shhhhhh, don't tell them that!!). We may have chickens and ponies by next year but as we are also saving for a much needed extension - that came in at quite a lot more than we were expecting - then the other livestock may have to go on hold for a little while!

As for the little darlings themselves...First we have Ellie, the eldest at the grand old age of nearly five. She is the peacemaker of the family; a lover of animals, food and books. She's about to start school and is desperately excited about it.
Tabby comes next. She's three and a half and suffers from that terrible affliction, Middle Child Syndrome! She has three main aims in life: to have hair as long as Rapunzel (a rather ambitious wish as she currently still has very little hair!), to beat her big sister in a running race and to eat as much porridge each day as she possibly can.
Jasper is our last, and most definitely final, child. He's almost 10 months and a complete menace joy. He's been crawling (in a Platoon extra, shot in the legs manner) for three months now and we are thinking of hiring him out to building firms due to his uncanny ability to locate even the most hidden wires/cables in a room. He is a generally chilled out, happy, smiley baby but if he is remotely hungry or tired then the whole world is quickly apprised of his situation.

My husband is a metrology engineer. Ever heard of one of those? Nope, me neither. It means he gets to go and visit places like F1 factories, aerospace and military installations and measure stuff for them/sell them stuff to measure their stuff. It's all terribly exciting and glamorous. Actually, it really isn't, but he's a bit of a geek so he loves it :D
In his spare time, my darling hubby is a bit addicted to building sheds. We currently have three in the garden and he has just designed a playhouse for the girls that will be being built soon (he assures me). He's also just in the throes of designing a shelter for our sheep. No doubt it will be bigger and better than they actually need but he'll have fun doing it, which is the main thing.

I think that's probably plenty of writing for a first post, particularly one that doesn't actually have any readers yet! Further posts to follow hopefully...