Afternoon Tea

Today I enjoyed a lovely afternoon tea with some of my best girls!  I invited my girlfriends round to watch our wedding DVD (while Nik is at work) and belatedly celebrate my 30th (as so many of them were away or couldn't make it over the Christmas period - annoying birthday that I have!)  I LOVE being the hostess and getting to make and bake yummy things for my friends and making the flat look all pretty.  Unfortunately as organised as I like to think I am, I always end up rushing around at the last minute!  (Luckily Anne arrived early so helped me make the sandwiches!  Thanks Anne!  Oh and she also gave me a super cute green birthday card with a dragonfly on it!)

The flat has been a bit of a tip lately (as Nik's been working so much and I've been obsessed with my books) so we still haven't put the Christmas decorations back in the attic (they've now been shoved in the spare room), the study has been at a standstill since getting it liveable for visitors over Christmas and the washing/ironing has been piling up!  Hence yesterday was spent frantically trying to sort out the study and rest of the flat on my own.  It does tend to take an event of some kind to urge me on to tidy properly and get rooms finished!

The study is now pretty much finished - just need the last few files and papers sorted by Nik and a couple of boxes of 'memories' sorted by me (currently also shoved in the spare room so I could show everyone the new study today!)  I can't wait to show you the before and after pictures!

Luckily I planned ahead a bit and on Thursday I baked a blueberry & lemon drizzle cake and macadamia & chocolate slices.  Then today I made the rest of the goodies I had planned - cherry brandy muffins, cumin seed wafers, sour cream and chive muffins, Yorkshire puddings and bread.  (Nik mainly did the bread, I just baked it.)

Blueberry and Lemon drizzle cake

The treats went down really well (I was even asked for doggy bags as there was so much food)!  I will post recipes soon of all the cakes I made but in the meantime here are a few pictures...

Couldn't resist these green meringues from Wholefoods Market!

Lemon Drizzle Cake

Green Meringues

Cherry Brandy Muffins

Macadamia Nut Slices

Earl Grey or 'normal' tea

Sweet Chilli Pistachios in my cute new bowl from Sarah

Cumin Seed Wafers with cheese and olives (and other crackers)

YUM!  Yorkshires!

The savouries - Yorkshires with Roast Beef and Horseradish Cream
Ham Sandwiches (made by Anne) on Sesame Seed Bread or Parmesan and Tomato Bread
Sour Cream and Chive Muffins

We enjoyed stuffing ourselves (I made waaaay too much as usual - I always seem to pick dates when so many people can't make it, either that or maybe they secretly don't like my food  :-/ or me!? :-(  In the end I was expecting 8 and 5 of them came so we had plenty of food to go around) and then we settled down with the popcorn to watch the DVD.  I love watching it and could happily watch it over and over (in fact I did watch it twice today as Julie couldn't come until later so wanted to see it from the start :) )  Thankfully they all seemed to enjoy it too and it wasn't just me grinning away at our wedding day.  Cherry Tree Films really edit it in such a way that it's fun to watch and not just a series of events as they happened.

They have put our 3 minute highlights film on their blog if you would like to see what they had to say about our day (they said some lovely things!) and leave them a comment or have a look at some of their other beautiful films (I think I've watched all of them!)  The lovely Steve has also given me permission to embed ours here so here it is...





I am a bit annoyed at myself for talking so fast (as usual) and, like most people, cringe listening to my own voice but I still love it!