Move Over Nigella

This is the cake that Lily baked for David last weekend. It was her birthday present to him: a gingerbread cake with white chocolate cream cheese icing and sprinkles in 'gunners' red. All very much her own work. Not bad eh?

A New Year + Distance

So here we are in a new year: 2013. The decorations come down tomorrow and all traces of Christmas will be gone, packed away in the loft for another year. It was a good Christmas with lots of time spent relaxing with family and good friends; all the day-to-day stuff that dominates the other fifty weeks of the year firmly pushed to the back of the mind.

In our home the start of January is never dull as we have a very important birthday in the house (David's: today), it seems to just gate-crash itself into the tail end of Christmas and therefore extend the kid's excitement somewhat. They both have an effortless ability to get more enthusiastic about our birthdays than we do ourselves.

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However, the new year hasn't been rosy everywhere. Someone I'm very close to lost her father on New Years Eve. It was unforeseen, cruel and shattering and I can't begin to understand the emotions that she must be experiencing at this time. There's roughly 350 miles between us. I want to be there. To do what, I don't know. I just want to take round a cooked meal for an evening that ends a tough day. I want to take her little girl, who has lost her granddad, out for a milkshake or an ice cream on the windy beach (I'm certain she'd have no problem eating ice cream in January). Just lots of little nothings. How I wish that distance wasn't so great.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! What I really love about Christmas is the time spent with family and friends. So far there has been time spent with my family, the one I grew up with; my family that I married into and old friends, many of whom we've known for so long that they are considered family. Happy, relaxing, warm times with great company and delicious food!

And it's not over yet: we're off to the Isle of Wight tomorrow for a few days to do 'Christmas' with my parents, before arriving home in Hove to see in 2013. Perfect.

Merry Christmas - enjoy the rest of the festive holiday. X

The picture in this post of the Pistachio and Boozy Cherry Pavlova I made when friends came over yesterday evening. This morning only a lone slither remains in the fridge.

Realignment

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I had given up with Buttercup days: it's been so long since I have written a post. I haven't given up at all, just taken a bit of an unplanned break. 

I've been doing this blog for near on two years now and it can at times be all consuming. It's odd as I am obviously doing this blog off my own back and can indeed stop at any point, but as with so many things you start, build up and put loads of work into, it can be hard to just end it all: it would be like it was all for nothing.

But the truth is, over the last month or two life has been really busy. Nothing special, but just every angle of it demanding my time, energy and attention. My work / home balance has been somewhat off kilter during the last quarter of this year, which can in turn make for quite a stressful time. Family and friends are forever telling me that I take on far too much. They are probably right. So I am trying to cut myself a bit of slack and clarify what is important and deserves my time; saying 'no' to stuff, which is not in my nature. This blog is important to me, but not essential, so I put it on the shelf for a month to give myself a chance to slow the pace and get the other stuff done.

I've altered my work hours in the business too and am only taking on non-business work projects that I really want and, more importantly, have the time to do. For example, I was heavily involved with Lily's school in the run up to Christmas: organising and doing Christmas crafts with years 5 & 6, running the crafts at the school Christmas fayre and sourcing and collecting prizes for the school raffle. I was doing all this whilst working to launch our new business blog (the final part of our rebrand), writing my weekly food posts for Heart Home blog and getting everything ready for our family Christmas. So when the notice went up at Arthur's play-school asking for help with their Christmas fayre, for the first time ever I didn't put my name down. For me that was a hard thing to do. I turned up on the day with a batch of homemade mince pies, no flash cake, and that was it. 

I have just one more day at work tomorrow then it is headlong into Christmas. I really can't wait: we have some great days planned seeing family and friends, some days we're having family trips out and other days the four of us will just hang out at home doing nothing in particular, which is a pretty rare indulgence. It should be time enough to recharge ready for the new year ahead. So please bear with me, the regular post are coming back. 

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The pictures attached are of the kids making Christmas paper-chains for their bedrooms. They so can't wait for the festivities to begin and neither can I.

Here we go: the countdown to Christmas starts here

How the devil are we back here again with Christmas just around the corner? Tomorrow sees the start of many festive activities that our weeks are peppered with from now until the end of the year. It's not our lives that are a social whirlwind, but rather those of our children. As of next week come the nativity plays, carol concerts and parties. 

Tomorrow is Lily's school Christmas Fayre. Again this year, I am 'head of crafts'. Sounds a rather grand title, but it basically means I spend the duration of the fayre and the two weeks running up to it knee-deep in glitter and spend many hours pre-folding paper and cutting out cardboard reindeer antlers and such like. It should however be fun and a fitting excuse to eat a mince pie.

Fireworks + Politics

Yesterday we took the kids to see our local fireworks at Hove Cricket Ground. I love fireworks night: I've never grown out of it. It hasn't been until recent years that Lily has embraced fireworks. We had a couple of false starts taking her to displays when she was younger only to have to leave seconds into the display as she was clearly petrified of the bangs and unfamiliar darkness. So it was with a little hesitance that we took Arthur to his first fireworks display last night, aged three. He told me that he really wanted to go and that he didn't mind loud bangs as he was three and could deal with it. He was right. He was so full of expectation. He sat, as good as gold, waiting for the display to start and when that first rocket launched and exploded into a riot of glitter in the dark sky his eyes were wide and his smile was priceless. He sat there drinking it all in. As a result, I think I spent more time watching his reaction than the actual fireworks. 

On an entirely different note, though equally topical, Lily today asked, in all sincerity, if she could vote in the US elections. She was rather miffed to hear that she couldn't. She has apparently been following the pre-election campaigns on Newsround and had already decided who she would vote for. 

It says a lot when a seven-year-old can clearly see who should win this election.

Poster Lust

 

I recently stumbled upon Swissted, an ongoing project by graphic designer Mike Joyce, owner of Stereotype Design in New York City. Drawing upon his love of punk rock and swiss modernism, an unlikely pairing, he has designed these fantastic typographic posters. I absoloutely love them: they remind me of Penguin book covers from the 1960's. The question is would you opt for your favourite band or your favourite design? Your answer probably says quite a bit about you.