You may have noticed that the blog has been looking a bit strange over the past few weeks please bear with it. The blog is undergoing a bit of a revamp, stay tuned for the big reveal . . .

Progress on the embroidered bar sign has been pretty slow going of late, although I'm determined to get it all finished by the time my parents come down at the end of the month to go off on holiday with us to Switzerland.

I'm currently working through the seemingly endless task of stitching all of the cream areas on the first half of the sign which I'm aiming to hopefully have finished by the end of this week. Here's progress so far . . .

After a busy few days, we decided to have a relaxing day out and about in Beaulieu. It's one of my favourite places to visit in the New Forest as there are always donkey's strolling around as well as the odd pony or two, and there are some great little shops to pay a visit to.

Today we bumped into two incredibly fluffy donkey's waiting right outside one of the restaurants, they were ever so friendly and were very interested in my camera!





The trees were also covered in various types of moss in lots of different shades of green. 


I cannot wait to get back out on my bike in the spring and summer and explore more of the forest . . .

This weekend we went over to the IOW for Jason's Grandma's 80th birthday. It was a surprise trip across to the island with Jason's sister and her husband, and I think I'm safe in saying it was most definitely a surprise for both of Jason's grandparents, which was lovely!

I was asked to bake a cake for the celebration and decided on a three tier vanilla sponge cake with vanilla frosting. I then decorated the top of the cake with some pastel coloured confetti sprinkles, which I stumbled upon in the baking aisle of Sainsbury's (I also came across some pastel glitter strands, which I can't wait to try out!).


I used a recipe from the Great British Bake Off: How to Bake book to make the sponge, I had to double the recipe as I wanted three large tiers, not the two that the recipe made. I then made up a batch of frosting, using green food colouring with a few drops of blue to get a nice minty green colour. 

I was really pleased with the end result, the sponge was lovely and light, so all of that whipping of the butter and sugar in my KitchenAid paid off! My icing technique could do with a bit of refining as I can never seem to quite manage a nice completely smooth finish! Although this may have had something to do with the temperature of the frosting, as I had put it in the fridge for a little while to firm up.