Week Off

Last week I took a week off work, with the best intentions of getting some wedding to do boxes ticked, and other general household bit's and pieces done.

Well I did some stuff but I'll have to admit I wasn't overly productive.

I made these...

Home made lemon curd, Italian meringue and waffles, from the Meringue Girls cookbook, seriously scrummy.

Played with fire (BBQ at a friends house), had a couple of sessions with my personal trainer, and went to the cinema to see X-Men Days of Future Past, which I loved. Did some wedding crafts,

more on those later.

Knitting,

yoga mat bag that I may have ruined with bad wool, damn me trying to be thrifty with left overs...

And enjoyed a happy hour with my fella.

So I guess I did do stuff, just not the stuff I wanted to do, oh well no point fretting, I had fun at the time.

Surely I'm not the only one that unintentionally wastes time on things not on my lists? Am I?

Wedding Cake

I don't know how you feel about wedding cake, but personally I think they are overrated. I love cake as much as the next girl but seriously it's just a pretty cake, can you really justify the cost when weddings cost so much already?

So as I've mentioned before I'm taking the plunge and making it myself. I've done the cake decorating classes got all the kit, and now to pick a recipe.

We are both lovers of the traditional fruit cake so it makes sense to stick with that, it also means I can make it weeks in advance as they just get better with time. Preventing last minute cake related stress, see perfect. So far we have done dummy runs with The Fabulous Baker Boys and Nigella.

I think this was the Baker Boys recipe, and maybe Nigella's didn't last long enough for a picture. But ultimately Nigella won out, if only because she gives the quantities to cover 3 different sized cakes. Anything that makes the process as simple as possible is a winner for me. It was also a more suitable cake than the Baker Boys. As lovely as their cake was it was too cakey for us, what we were really after was a heavy, fruit laden, brandy soaked cake, which is what Nigella delivered.

So there we are, now I just have to find the time to bake the 3 different sizes (not eat them) and feed with bandy until it's time to decorate.

Invites

Finally we set aside some time to pick and order our wedding invites, after a quick to and fro with the vendor, our final design was received and ready to print. Yes you heard me right we opted to get a PDF design from a lovely lady on Etsy at Sweet D Stationary and print them out ourselves. I had originally hoped to design them myself, but after a couple of attempts I just couldn't get the look I wanted so admitted defeat and hit Etsy for inspiration. I originally picked out a load of designs and after days of going through them with Adam we finally decided on this one. 

Thankfully we are both really pleased with how they have come out, and at a fraction of the price of some other invites I've seen. We also asked for a blank border so we could fill in all the other necessary wedding info, to go with the invites, but I guess we could also use it for any other paper goods we need too, brilliant. We are just waiting for the card I ordered to come in and then we can start getting them out to people. 

A lot of the planning decisions left to make depend on who's coming so it will be a huge weight off once we get these out and the RSVP's start rolling in. We should be able to get everything else ordered, scheduled and planned out. Less than 6 months to go....

What do you think of our invites?

Practice Cupcakes

Not too shabby if I do say so myself. Just threw together some basic vanilla cupcakes they weren't really the important part. I just needed something to practise my newly learnt skills, and ideas on.

The flowers are maybe a little big for cupcakes, but I wasn't going to buy 2 different sized cutters just for practising.

It also gave me a chance to have a play with the colouring, surprising how little you need, I might have a bit more fun with it next time though and make the flowers a bit darker in the middle.

The top 2 cakes on the right were done utilising a lattice stamp that gives a quilted effect, you are meant to rock it around the side of a big cake, but it gives a rough idea of what it should look like.

Overall I'm pleased with how they came out and feel pretty confident that I'll be able to decorate the final wedding cake without it looking too, ''homemade''. Think a little more practise is in order, but at least I can make some tasty mistakes.

Do you think I'm mad trying to make and decorate my own wedding cake?

Sugar Roses

I don't know if I've mentioned but I am planning to make my own wedding cake. They just seem so expensive and putting the word wedding in front of anything seems to bump up the price ten fold, so I though I would give it a bash. 

We had decided on a traditional fruit cake as this is on of our favourites, it can also be baked months in advance so that would take some of the pressure off. But I still wanted it to look a bit fancy so on Saturday I attended a cake decorating class with my mum and aunt to learn how to make sugar roses.

We started with a tear drop of icing and just started adding petals.

They shape up quite quick,

It can be fiddly and you have to remember to do things in the right order,

I was super pleased with how they came out, a little direction goes a long way.

Also had a quick bash at buttercream roses, they are crazy easy when you know how and have the right tools.

What do you think? Not bad for a first attempt.

We took the class at Dee's Creative Cakes she does do scheduled classed, but you can also book in for a private class if there is something specific you want to do, like we did.

Save the Date

I can't believe September is over, where did it go?

September was the month I was supposed to send out save the date notes, but it just didn't happen! 
We gave notice of our marriage today though, so the countdown officially begins. Less than a year until M day. The big stuff is done, venue, food, registrar, photographer and dress, so now it's just the fiddly details. 

We keep changing our minds, with regards to save the date notes. Should we just call or send e-mails. Or is that too impersonal. Should we send cards, but then what style. Like a greetings card or just a postcard. So much to think about and they should have been done already!

Rustic Style Wedding Invitation by doodle love

nala save the date balloon by White Knot
Save the date Rubber Stamp with Border by English Stamp

All above save the date options available from Not on the High Street

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