The World of Siân

For the fantastic Mr Bus’ birthday we celebrated in style all weekend.  The proceedings started with coming home a day early so I was there to wake up with him on his birthday.  I brought him breakfast in bed while he opened his cards and presents. Unfortunately as where he works they don’t have flexible holidays (archaic if you ask me) he had to go off to work.  In the mean time I did some boring chores and then made his wonderful Despicable Me Birthday cake. Upon his return we had a spot of lunch and chill out before getting ready for our meal out in the evening.  We decided on booking a table at the Swan Hotel in Stafford as it had recently been renovated and the menu looked delightful.  The fantastic Mr Bus’ parents joined us for our meal, which was lovely.  We had a very warm welcome and they showed us to our table.  This was a great booth out of the way and we were pleased far from the hen party that was booked in that...

It only seems like the other week I was making Mr Bus the Campervan cake for his birthday.  This year I decided on a minion cake from Despicable Me.  Then a flash if inspiration hit me, this is what happened: Cake pops are incredibly hard to decorate.  I had done ones in the past with chocolate which were a nightmare, this time I used the proper candy melts, this was still tricky but I think might be improved with practice.  It also made me realise I need a proper cake pop stand!! To make Gru I used a pyrex bowl to bake the cake for his head and iced it, then baked a small round cake for his shoulders and iced that separately, fixing them in place with buttercream.  Not much is needed in the way of cake filling due to the icing as you don't want it too sweet.

It’s that time of year again the fantastic Mr Bus’ birthday.   Now last year I decided to design and make him a digger cake, this year of course I had to equal that effort or go one better.   I had a few ideas in the pipeline and decided to ask the Birthday boy what he would prefer.   We went with a VW Bus cake. Now I started with baking a lemon drizzle loaf cake, whilst this was cooling had the daunting thought this was not going to be high enough, so baked another lemon loaf cake, this time without the drizzle, so that I could square off the top to sit the other one on top of it.   After these had cooled down, it was time to build, placing the loaf cakes one on top of the other with a layer of vanilla butter cream in the middle, I covered the cakes all over in butter cream.   I then set about with the icing.   I thought it best to start with the white top and draped it over the cakes, just leaving enough for a slight overlap at the bottom. ...

         I was given this book “How to be a Woman” by Caitlin Moran for my birthday off a dear friend of mine. I was unsure what to expect really, and it wasn’t something that I would have picked up off the bookshelf myself. Well… the first few chapters freaked me out and I thought they were really gross, it was like a car crash no matter how much I didn’t want to read any more I felt myself compelled too. Reflecting back it was a good start following Caitlin into adulthood and her experiences, so it did progress at a good pace. To be fair you could start reading this book from a young age and just read a chapter at a time where things correlate with your own life, I think it is most insightful in that respect. As the book goes forth so does Caitlin into womanhood and I found some areas really interesting and that I could relate to most things she was saying, she even covers issues like sexism, feminism, children and abortions. I think...