Poor excuses and Red Death

Well I dont have any proper excuses why its been over a month since I have written anything but life has been a bit hectic with two family Christmas gatherings and the ledgendary friends Christmas (Which was fantastic and really lovely to recive some handmade goodies from my lovely girl friends) plus I was miserable with flu for nearly three weeks including Christmas day so thats the best I can do.

When things get busy I always forget to take pictures and since Matt has got a new good camera hes taken to hiding it under the bed - not sure of the logic but its away from muggers and not to handy for me either. So point being my attempts to make presents for my friends this Chrismas has gone completely undocumented.

I did treat myself to a new sewing machine (that is so easy to use, actually light enough to carry, and doesnt fight back every time I use it) and as im a complete begginner I opted for a pretty basic model with 14 different stiches. Thought this seemed alot after the previous machine had three but been having a little bit of decorative stich envy after reading moogsmums blog. Oh well probably more important to focus on sewing in a straight line for now as I find that hard enough.

So as a close friend got engaged over christmas the idea arose to throw a surprise engagement party. Have to say I wasnt sure about this at first due to organising party overload but my friend Renee is so amazing and took on all the hard work so it turned out to be a great night. Think this was the first surprise party Ive been to that was actually a surprise and the engaged couple looked pretty shell shocked for the first ten minutes so it was obvious they didnt know. The room looked beautiful with ballons, streamers, candles, fairy lights, flowers, and a hand painted congrats sign - Renee again - Isnt she clever!My one responsibility was to make the cake and as julie is texan and as a homage to steel magnolias I thought I would try a very scary southern recipe known as Red Velvet cake. Bit of a joke really as it basically boils down to being a slightly chocolatey cake with lots of red food coloring but thought it would be fun. Did try to ease my issues with food colouring by using natual red first but you wouldnt have known there was any red in there so if you want RED cake its has to be as unnatural as food colouring comes. Isnt it scary - Well it actually tasted really nice and it was all gone by the end of the night so the red didnt seem to put people off. Im future I think ill steer away from, brightly coloured cakes but it would certainly be a winner for valentines day or halloween!