Anniversaries :) (by sarah)

This weekend saw my brother and sister-in-laws 1st wedding anniversary (well not actually it was like the weekend before or something but close enough) 🙂 I made cake and things - photos of that will be on here as soon as I can get Al to upload them off his phone!

It was also my mum and dad 34th anniversary on the Sunday so we had some lovely outings 🙂 And I'm looking forward to doing a large 35 cake for next year 😉

We went to the Cathedral and the Beatrix Potter place and cream teas were involved.

Dad’s 65th Birthday – A Discworld Adventure (by sarah)

It was my dad's 65th birthday (his actual birthday was the 3rd but what with all the well everything that we've been doing - we decided to post pone it!). My dad is a massive fan of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchette - I introduced him to them when I were back at university.

SO I themed his birthday. We had:

The luggage and Friends:

Wizard Hats and white chocolate stars:

I made one or two of them 🙂 If my Bro and his wife could have made it I was going to do chaos butterflies and Death cupcakes but as it is I already made far too much!

And of course we had the main cake - the Great Star Turtle A'Tuin rinding through space with the world on his back, held up by four elephants - who admittedly look like some sort of elephant/mouse cross bred.

Dad seemed very please even if we did have a clash of the culinary cultures over his macaroni cheese and fried onions (Alaric put them in the actual macaroni cheese which was great but as we had never had that before and the only thing like it had been a horrible celery in the macaroni cheese - we initially all reacted with horror which we tried to cover up as he had been cooking for ages making all the sauce and everything - poor Alaric). We had pear cider and opened the Cider Brandy Alaric's Step brother Simon got us.

Dad's reaction to the cake was great - he says he loves the elephants and the fact I put the mountains in too 🙂 The Luggages didn't not come out as well as I wanted but Jean who had been watching The Colour of Magic and The Hogfather with Ferfer came into the kitchen and exclaimed 'Mummy you've made Luggages!'

I think the box set of Discworld films was greatly appreciated by Dad as well 🙂

Brilliantly Big Birthday Bonanza BBQ, Banquet and Baffonary (by sarah)

Friday it all started with the arrival of the alien shroom

a.k.a. my father or Ferfer as he is better known. This was accompanied by the rest of my family as in my mum.

My bro and his wife all of whom got family snuggles 🙂

Jean had been preparing treats for the last few days 🙂

Which she forced people to eat - especially people with April birthdays

I'd been baking too.

Lots of DIY and work on the house was done then Saturday night more madness ensued with the arrival of friends who also had April birthdays - they bought yummy vegan cake with them 🙂

We ordered take away - I set the table up nicely - the 'new' table as in my grandmothers dinning table which had come up in my parents car on Friday. It has leaves that fold out to make it a big table - but there were now 11 people in the house so I went for buffet style.

Food arrived - a mix of pizza, chips, curry, and chinese food. Everyone was catered for 🙂

Including the baby

Aunty Michelle kept giving in and feeding her 🙂

The next day - with five birthdays to cater for we decided BBQ was the way to go 🙂

the neighbours bought round cake too as it was their easter celebration 🙂

Of course it had to be lit first

Then the celebrating began 🙂

My Bro on his birthday celebration 🙂

The weekend also saw scrabble playing

And Music!

A good time was had by all 🙂

p.s. almost forgot to mention the welding and papier mache that took place too!

Notye (by sarah)

SO I've had this idea of making Alaric pose as Gotye for photos but then this week I've had my younger cousins staying and the result is that we made a video of it!

It is a spoof of this Gotye song with elements of this cover by Walk Off The Earth. It is made with the laptop which had limitations but I think it's pretty good as a first film/music vid 🙂

Michelle’s Hen Do :) (by sarah)

My Brother is getting married next month so the last two weekends have seen the stage and hen dos! I am still awaiting Alaric to post about the stage 🙂

For the Hen Do we went to a hotel in London for a Murder Mystery Event involving Professor Bugle, Flossy the maid and Lady "Rochy", the dectective Sherlock Holmes and his arch nemisis Moriaty.

It was 1920's theme dress up and because it was her hen night Michelle ended up being part of the show 🙂 I did take video of the performance which I'll attempt to put up here soonly!

This was all over dinner in the lush hotel and was followed by a cheesy disco which we shared with Welsh Chemists 🙂