It's my birthday!!!

We got a letter from Canada this week!!!

OOOOooo!!  That blue circle looks like a pawprint, doesn't it??

It's an epic missive from Sandy Bear!!!  With two postcards!!!

Wowzers!  And very informative too!

Then I was surprised with a coffee and walnut birthday muffin with cream on the top!!!

And everyone squeaked me "Happy Birthday"!  Including Andrea

She said that our trip to visit Bob and Dilly was my present, and this is the cayke!!!

It's yummy!!!

 

We got a posh present!!!!

At lunchtime today we had a big box delivered!!!  But we didn't buy anything!!!

OOOOOOOOooooooooo!

It's a posh present for Andrea's birthday from her brother!!!!!

It's a posh box of straw???  We can't eat straw!!!!

Oh wait a minute!  There's stuff hidden in it!!!!!

OH WOW!!!!!

We got a tin of Royal Blend loose tea, a box of chocolate hazelnuts (we already ate half of those!) a tin of salted caramel bis kwits, a tin of lemon curd bis kwits (we love those!!!) and a jar of raspberry preserve!!!  We had a go at making scones this afternoon - we got some clotted cream from Tesco's - to go with the raspberry preserve and it was yummy!!!!!

What a brilliant present!!!

Then for dinner, we got a king prawn dansak curry from Ashoka's!  Andrea let me eat all the popadum!  She's good like that you know.

The Great Beanie Bake-Off Challenge!!!!! (updated)

Remember those roses we brought back from A Lotment on Monday?  They're opening up now in time for my birthday!  Isn't that brilliant!!

It's really horrid weather today though.  What shall we do?

I KNOW!!!!! Let's have a Bake Off Challenge!!!  Today's challenge is Cake!!!!

I love cayke - and it's the perfect challenge for a birthday!!

Right, first we measure out the self raising flour....

Then it's the same amount of castor sugar

And then sieve it all through.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Butter.  We need to measure out lots of butter....

And then chop it into the flour/sugar mix.  Andrea helped mush it all together......

Until it looked like this!

We decided to squeeze some ginger in because we have some ginger root lying about.

And three eggs.  Then all that got mushed up some more with a wooden spoon.....

Until it looked like that!!!  Then we turned on the oven and greased up a cayke tin.....

And put the cayke mix in the pan.  Which went in the oven for cooking!!!

Later on, when it had cooked, we got it out of the oven!

It came out of the tin - eventually - and there was only a little bit stuck to the tin!

Because it's my birthday cayke, I was allowed to decorate it!  So I chose a fudge topping.....

And squeezed it out over the top of the cayke with a bit of elderberry sugar on top.

Ay Viola.

Baking wiv Beanie.

Cayke.

Mine.

Yum.

A Posh Present!

We got ANOTHER even BIGGER box today - from Fortnum & Masons!!!  Andrea's brother sent us a £50 gift voucher which we spent online - and this is it!!!

BUBBLE WRAP!!  BRILLIANT!

OOOOOOOooooooooooo!!

We got our favourite bis kwits!!

And we got a box of Turkish Delight!  Yummy!

And we got a jar of orange and whisky marmalade!  We can have that on toast for breakfast tomorrow!!!

Ooo!  And a jar of stem ginger in syrup!!!

It's got a dragon on the label!!!!!

Oh what fun!

Third present

We got another package today too!  It's one of the ones we'd ordered last weekend for Andrea's birthday!!

Let's see now, what have we got?

OOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!

We got a lime green Happy Bag!!!

We got a bag of Thick Rayon Floss threads!!!

And we got a Peppermint Destash Bag of speciality threads!!!

That's the other side of the destash bag.....

Oh what fun!!

Our second present!

We got another package today!!!

It was the new lino we'd ordered last weekend!!!

Hurrah!!!

To celebrate we made some "Om" cards with a new lino carving we just made!

Champers!!!

It's Andrea's birthday today.  Normally she'd take us away for a couple of days with a slap up dinner but we can't this year.  So we've opened a bottle of champers that was in the fridge, and we're going to order a curry delivery later for dinner.  And then we've got lots of prezzies being delivered over the week!!!!!!!!!

That'll do us!!!!

Hic.

We had a Thornton's chocolate cayke too!!!  Andrea got a slice and we got the rest of it!!!!

Then for dinner, we got an Indian curry delivered!!!!!

We got some papadoms, pillaw rice, King Prawn dansak, garlic naan bread..... this was FABEROONI!!!!

And we also got some onion bhajees with a little pot of dip stuff.  They were proper nom too

We were completely STUFFED!  And there's enough for tomorrow too!