Next Day Tea & Cake Party

For the Ski Trip reunion party I hosted a Tea and Cake Party (Only after a night of excessive drinking, awkward but awesome shapes on the dance floor, and an impressive inability for one particular guest to avoid pressing the 'attack' button on our burglar alarm).

Here is the delicious cakey spread served to my hung over guests:

(Click on name for recipe)
Oats & Raisin Cookies
Carrot & Walnut Cake
Banoffee Muffins
Banana Bread (with added chocolate chips)
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Cheese Scones (baked by Chloe)
Poppy Seed & Orange Cake (baked by James)
Sainsbury's Chocolate Brownie Bites
A Giant Jaffe Cake Cake (See Recipe below)

Giant Jaffe Cake Cake

Ingredients:
Sponge Mix:
175g Self-Raising Flour
175g Caster Sugar
175g Unsalted Butter
4 Eggs
Jelly Filling:
1 pack of Orange Jelly
4 tbspoons Marmalade (without any bits)
Buttercream:
100g Icing Sugar
50g Unsalted Butter
Chocolate Topping:
3 x 100g Dark Chocolate (70% cocoa +)
1 pack of Jaffe Cakes

Recipe:
1) Line one of the cake tins with cling film. Pour jelly (made via packet instructions) & marmalade into tin. Freeze until set.
2) Preheat the oven at 180 degrees. Grease two cake tins.
3) Cream the sponge mix's butter & sugar together until light & fluffy. Add the eggs & mix well. Fold in the flour. Separate the mix equally into the two cake tins and bake for 25 minutes (until golden brown).
4) Leave sponge on a cooling rack until cool.
5) Make the buttercream by creaming the butter and icing sugar together. Then spread liberally over one of the sponges.
6) Place the jelly ontop of the buttercreamed sponge. Place second sponge on top.
7) Melt the dark chocolate & pour all over the cake.
8) Whilst chocolate is still setting, stick Jaffe Cakes around the outside of the cake.
9) Leave to cool before serving.

All in all, the party was amazing. Thank you everyone who came for a lovely weekend!

xxx

Becoming a Foxy Lady

As you know, I have just hosted a Zoo themed fancy dress party.
For this, I made a fox costume... and now I'm going to show you how.

First off, I bought a brown top & orangey-brown skirt from some charity shops (always great for a bargain!)
Then I bought some white fur (70cm) & some brown fur (1 metre)... and I bought way too much... I probably only used half of it! Anyway....

The belly:
Simply cut out an oval from some newspaper (I'm such a fan of using newspaper to make my patterns) and pin to the white fur. Then cut out the oval shape on the white fur, pin & hand sew onto the top (I didn't dare use my machine with fur fabric!)

The Tail:
A big ol' fluffy fox tail :)
For this I made a pattern out of newspaper. I'm not sure how to word the pattern, so hopefully the pictures will explain it.
This is how to make the pattern for the orange/brown part of the tail. Sew together by hand, make sure its inside-out so you cannot see the seems.

For the white part (again I cannot verbally describe the shape of it so please use the pictures), make sure the width is half the width of the end of the brown tail piece pattern. Also, you will need to cut out 4 of these, this will make your tail 3D. Sew together by hand & make sure you sew it inside-out!
Lastly, sew the tail onto your skirt.

The Ears:
This is probably my favourite part :)
Unfortunately, I got a little too into making them & therefore didn't take enough photos of how to make them.
I will try my best to explain how.
First cut out a large & long fox ear shape out of some newspaper. Then use this to cut out 4 pieces of orange/brown fur. Then cut out another pieces of newspaper which is the same shape as the last, but smaller. This will be the 'inside' of the ear and your'll need to cut out 2 pieces of white fur with it.
Sew 1 white piece onto 1 orange piece, it should look like this:

Then repeat with another piece of white fur & another piece of orange fur.
Next you need to sew the backs of the ears on. To do this, sew one piece of orange fur to one orange & white piece. If you sew it inside-out, you will not see the seems. Also, try to leave the bottom of the front & back pieces unattached. Then you can wrap them around a hair band & sew them into place.
If you managed to understand all that, your finished ears should look like this:

AND, if you've done all this... your'll have a costume that looks like this:

:) I'm a very happy fox indeed xxx

My Durham Zoo Party

Last night I celebrated my 21st (and 1 month) in Durham!!
It was our first house party so we made lots of vodka jelly shots & vodka melon (with food colouring):

And we all dressed up as animals:

And my boyfriend destroyed Derek in one go...!!!

...So everyone got lots of sweeties (and had a little to drink)... and I took too many photos...

All in all, it was a great night :)
Tomorrow I will blog about my foxy costume xxx

The Diaries of Derek the Donkey: The End

Derek took a few days to dry again... but today he was ready for some fur...

Starting with the feet...

... and now he is complete! :) I think he looks pretty awesome...

...also, for all of you excited guests: Jenni has just informed me we can use her old hockey stick!!

I cannot wait for tomorrow xxx