Let Them Eat (Christmas) Cake

It is officially my favourite time of year and (if we set aside the ever building family drama and the fact that I have no money for presents) all is well with the world. Very soon I will be driving home for Christmas with my wonderful man/partner/boyf/boy (I'm still deciding on what he should be referred to - ‘Partner’ drives him mad, so obviously it’s more tempting to use.)  It’s actually embarrassing how long I was looking forward to being able to do Christmas blog posts, but now the time has arrived I feel totally unprepared and as usual, I have little to no time to actually write anything!

Anyway, enough moaning about 4^th year. Christmas is coming! And what does that mean? It means advent calandars, Christmas songs, trees, baubles, tinsel, stockings (all of which my super star mum is waiting for my sister and I’s return to put up – bless her!), actually seeing my family and friends, snow in Yorkshire, and the food. Oh the food. So much food. 

 So. Much. Food.

I’ll start there then, specifically, Christmas cake. You can tell all I’ve eaten today is crisps. We’ve seen some absolute beauties in my house over the years from the Grandma’s, my Auntie and my Mum. One that really sticks out for me was my Mum’s creation. A standard white round Christmas cake, but on top were the cutest little clusters of marzipan presents you’ve ever seen. All of them were red and green with bows in alternate colours. I can’t imagine how much time it took making ribbon for all those little presents. And I can’t imagine the inner horror when my cousin Ben ate half the presents off the cake before anyone else even got to see it! True story, and it reminds me of one of my all-time favourite posts at Hyperbole and a Half which I seriously suggest you have a look at for a giggle.

So here’s to cake and to Christmas. If you are a regular you can expect a few more holiday posts over the next few weeks, I’ve got oodles of love for baubles which should make an appearance.

 

Red gingerbread man cake - From cakecentral.com, Xmas cake with holly and red ribbon - From google.ie, Ruffle white with trees - From iammommy.typepad.com, Big bow and robins xmas cake - http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/, Christmas tree cake - From familyfun.go.com, Snowman cake pops - From grinandbakeit.com

Little Piece of Paradise

As you may of noticed I've been a little absent from the social networking world this last week, the reason for this is I've been taking a break, in Florida, as you do! 

For the same 2 weeks every October for the last 19 years my family have enjoyed going to a villa at White Sands in Longboat Key, Florida. Throughout my childhood I was lucky enough to go with them most years and this beautiful place holds many happy memories for me. Due to A levels and university I hadn't been for 6 years, until last week. In need of a time out from 4th year life I made the somewhat spontaneous decision to join them, I didn't realise just how much I needed the space until I was there, and even more so, how much I needed to see my Mum. I'm incredibly lucky that my time out happened to be somewhere so gorgeous! 

I just thought I'd share some bits of my little piece of paradise...

My wonderful Mum and I