Simple Fairy Cakes

It's been ages and ages since I have had one of those days where I find myself drafting a blog post in my head. It's been so long since I last did a post that I was beginning to think that I had completely lost the bug for it!

Then one day this week I saw a tweet - I think it may have been from the fabulous Thrifty Mrs - or she may have re-tweeted someone else ... But the essence of the tweet was

"what had happened to simple fairy cakes with a dollop of icing and a cherry on top?"

It made me think about everything - how I feel that life had become so complicated and at times, as I face Miss Plum (now 18 months) pushing her boundaries further and further, I just don't know what happened to my nice simple life! Each evening this week I have struggled to get Miss P home from nursery as she refuses to get into her pram. I end up carrying all 24lbs of her to the bus stop and pushing the buggy one handed. I live in London, remember, don't expect much help!

I then spend the evening trying to get her to eat a little snack which generally gets thrown over me!

All quite funny really - but what really topped it off was listening to radio 2 last night and the "Sounds of the 20th Century" focussing on 1994. 18 years ago, and it feels like yesterday ... Oh my god! I am getting OLD!

Anyway, having come to terms with life being more complicated than when I was 17 ... I decided that today me and Miss Plum would bake!

She helped me stir the cake mix and was in charge of chocolate button and star placement! I think she ate more buttons than actually went on the cake!




But here we are ... Simple fairy cakes with water icing and chocolate buttons!

And a few stars ... Are the stars too fancy?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone. Isn't that a pip?

Baby Knitting!

Two friends of mine are about to have babies ... so I have been busy knitting little bits for very little people! I have a huge amount of this lovely Rowan wool and find it is perfect for keeping precious little newborns warm.

This cardigan, hat and booties is for the baby who is due ... any time now!! The patterns are from the lovely "Vintage Knits for Modern Babies" by Hadley Fierlinger.

So now I need to get knitting for the December baby! And start various Christmas knitting projects! I'm finding that there really are not enough hours in the day to get anything done anymore!

Winter Knitting Part Two!

 Here they are!! I showed you one glove back in August and I have finally finished the second one!

Now that Little Miss Plum (at 13months, can't really call her a baby anymore!) is in bed at a reasonable hour (6.30pm!) I have time to get some knitting done in the evening, I have also started up a knitting group where I work and joined the new local knitting group which meets every other Friday! Knit-tastic!

I have just started to cast on a beret for Little Miss Plum using the same wool as my gloves. I think that it will look very pretty!

My best ever jam!

I must tell you about my jam!

This isn't like my blackberry jam which was rock solid ... or my rhubarb and ginger jam which turned to toffee in the pan.

This is lovely, 'firm' (can you use 'firm' to describe jam?) strawberry jam!

Remember our allotment plot? (More of that another time ...) well, this summer we picked 11lbs of strawberries from our patch! 11lbs!! Most of these were scoffed, still warm from the May sunshine ... but a good proportion were picked by Mr Plum while I was staying with my parents and bunged in the freezer.

So I defrosted ...

After my runny strawberry jam incident, I made sure I got sugar suitable for strawberry jam!

I popped to John Lewis and got a sugar thermometer 

Sterilised my jars 

Mmmmmm 8 jars of delicious jam! I will have to make scones this weekend!

Happy Birthday Baby Plum!

Can you believe that my beautiful girl is one year old?

Here is the card Mr Plum slaved over to send in to Cbeebies. Hopefully they will show it!

Happy Birthday Baby Plum!

We are having a party this afternoon - so will let you know how it goes!!

Baby Plum is Almost 1 Year Old!

Baby Plum is One year old on Saturday!

Can you believe it? Where has this year gone?

We are going to have a little tea party to celebrate and I have been busy baking today, while Baby Plum settles into her nursery.

I have baked some lovely cupcakes - which, unfortunately I am unable to share with you as Blogger won't let me upload the photo ... and of course, a "Number One" birthday cake for the birthday girl.  When I dropped her off at nursery this morning one of the staff said that they were going to have a little tea party for Baby Plum tomorrow afternoon and I could provide a cake if I wanted...so I knocked up a victoria sponge! How exciting!

I'll post more cakey pics on Saturday.

Winter Knitting

I know what you are probably thinking .... gloves in August? Has Victoria Plum gone stark raving bonkers??

Well, having spent the last year or so knitting baby bits for Baby Plum and other babies I thought that it was about time I knitted something for little ol' me.

I wanted something quick and easy ... and I figured that this was the right time of year to start my winter knitting! Here is the first glove!

I picked up this lovely multi coloured yarn in the John Lewis sale and thought that it would be a perfect match for a bargain jacket I got in the Joules sale which has 3/4 length sleeves. Perfect.

Anyway, enough nattering on here ... I'd better get on with my second glove!

For those who follow me on Twitter, you'll know that the London riots were scarily close to the Plums. Mr Plum wrote about them on his blog - if you are interested in those awful few days from our perspective have a read here. Thank you for all the lovely messages of concern.