A unique collaboration between a British actor Joseph Fiennes and British rap artist Devlin inspired by the work of William Shakespeare.

Just goes to show Shakespeare’s work still holds relevance in today’s society and rap can hold real meaning and depth.

For more on this collaboration and the reason behind it visit the dailymail.co.uk

This is an extremely popular cake in England and derived its name from Queen Victoria. Its simple and quick to make and the mixture can even be poured into small cake cases to make buns instead. There are a few different recipes out there for this but I thought I would still share my favourite.

For a while now we have been considering getting another dog so Simba would have some company as we noticed he missed having another dog around since we lost Freda. We also often look after both my sisters dogs when they go on holiday and he would always pine when they went home. Our initial thoughts were that we would like to take on a rescue dog preferably a boy, not a puppy as we did not think we could go through training again and definitely not another Jack Russel like Freda as from pass experience they bark at the slightest sound and we also did not want a dog who was too energetic for Simba and I.

However it seems this was not meant to be as we somehow found ourselves with Poppy

Poppy at 3 months old

Poppy now at 5 months old

Poppy is basically everything previously described she is a Jack Russel cross Pug puppy. To say she is the most active pup/dog we have ever known would be an understatement and she has required quite a lot of training and still does. I blame my sister for this happy occurrence as she took Poppy in for a week to give her previous owner a break as Poppy was just too boisterous for her to cope with alongside her 5 children. It took us only 1 visit and 1 walk with her to completely fall in love and offer her a home when her previous owner decided she would have to sell her on. She is exhausting, destructive (our sofa is ruined) and noisy  (she definitely has the jack trait of barking at everything) but we now wouldn’t be without her. Plus I don’t think Simba would have ever forgiven us if we had let her go to someone else as he became instantly smitten.

I am hoping to start posting regularly again and I apologise for my long absence. My health got pretty dismal for a while and I am still having some difficulties but I’m getting there. One thing I am grateful for this time is that I have had no mood swings and until Monday, which only lasted Monday I’m glad to say, I have been pretty upbeat considering.

My current positive mood has a lot to do with the time of year and Christmas being just round the corner which has to be my favourite season. Sometimes it surprises me as my family always seems to dread this time of year not only the cold and possibility of snow, which I have always loved, but also the stress and family politics involved in the Christmas season. Happily I always find organising Christmas to be a joy and look forward to it each year much to the bafflement of my mum but then as she says I have only been doing this a few years whereas she has had a lifetime of the drama
For me Christmas is the perfect time/excuse to do all the things I love. Make lists, buy presents and craft, bake and create to my hearts content (health willing).

What is your favourite time of year?

I have often been told that I am an awful person to buy presents for. I never wear jewellery and I don’t like makeup. I like random books and music rather than a set genre. If there is a new game out that I like then I have already bought it and clothes are more of a necessity for me than something I enjoy buying or receiving as a gift. Which leaves Craft items and Cookery equipment. Craft items I receive rarely if ever because I can be quite fussy about what I like and use and I have accumulated so much over the years people no longer know what I do have and what I don’t. Which leaves cookery equipment which I absolutely love receiving as gifts because I usually end up with things that I would never normally think to buy myself .
This leads me onto the latest blogging topic set by the The Quilting Bee which is:

“What was the best gift you’ve ever received and why?”

I think every gift I receive is the best because I know just how hard I am to buy for so I know a lot of thought has to have gone into what to get me and I think the thought behind a present is more valuable than the present itself
That being said there is one gift that springs to mind which is a book called Cakes to Inspire and Desire which was given to me by my sister as a Christmas present.

This book not only contains many delightful decorated cakes with full instructions on how to accomplish them but the first section is completely dedicated to explaining all the basics needed to decorate a cake, from recipes to creams, to how to professionally ice a cake, to basic decorating tips. I now use this book every time I make a cake no matter what size or shape this book tells me the exact ingredients needed and the amount of icing and marzipan required. It has become irreplaceable and was the inspiration to design and make my very first cake which thankfully went very well as it was my sister’s wedding cake.

This post was written for a blog challenge as part of  The Great Bee*Mee Derby being held by a cute Pixel Club I belong to Called The Quilting Bee

I was so happy and surprised to find out that Balqis had passed on the following award to me

and now I will happily pass it onto a few others as is the rules

So I award:

• Balqis  from Part and Parcel of life … – I’m probably breaking the rules here but I can’t not pass the award back to the person who awarded it to me not because of that but because this award is so fitting.  Balqis you are a much appreciated reader. I always look forward to your comments on my blog, they often make me see things differently and they keep me blogging so Thank You Balqis
• Kim Gillick from Mindful Moose – This award is for answering all my questions on your blog, I have learnt quite a bit so thank you,  and for your comments here.
  
• Moonomo from Moonstruck on Earth – Your comments always make me smile and you can’t ask for more than that
• Kitty from Kittys Pitara -  I love getting comments from you and I wish we really could go walking together
• Odliam from Tony’s Blog – I’m happy every time I get a comment from you

It was really supposed to be 6 bloggers that I passed the award onto but I’m not active enough in the blogosphere yet to find 6 unless I wanted to get very random but then the awards wouldn’t mean anything and that I think defeats the point.  So what I will do is award it to anyone who may have been following my blog but not commenting any silent readers there may be out there because I appreciate you reading my ramblings

Now I need your help. As I have said I’m not as active in the blogosphere as I should be and I’m trying my hardest to change this but I am struggling to find blogs I want to follow, when searching they all blur into one and I just end up with a fuzzily head.  So I am asking you to help if you can by leaving a comment with recommendation’s for blogs you like reading. Oh and feel free to recommend yourself

I have never really done anything extremely adventurous in my life the closest I’ve come to adventure recently is a 3 mile walk

If I had not become ill I may have chosen to be a more adventurous person. I have always quite liked the idea of sky diving or bungee jumping and I would love to someday visit places like Sweden to stay in the ice hotel or Africa to go on a safari or even to take a trip around places like Thailand. I have always loved learning about other countries and different cultures so to actually visit the places I have read so much about would be amazing. Whether I would have the guts to actually do any of these things if given the chance is an unknown quantity hopefully I will someday get the chance to find out.

Probably the most adventurous thing I have managed to do was back in 2000 when I was 13 years old literally months before I first starting getting severe chronic fatigue symptoms. It was a visit to a theme park in England called Alton Towers. I had been waiting many years to grow tall enough to be able to go. In the summer of 2000 I finally was, so me and my dad took a long car trip down to Staffordshire where I was finally able to go on all the rides I had heard so much about. We spent 3 days there as the place was quite large we would have missed out on quite a few of the rides had the trip been shorter.  I was most excited about going on the rides “Nemesis” and “Oblivion”.

Nemesis was extremely fast and the most enjoyable. I was more worried about losing my shoes than anything else I think we revisited this ride at least 4 times.   I found a video of the ride on the Alton Tower website which can be viewed here if your curious.

Now Oblivion was the first vertical drop roller coaster in the world and was the ride I most wanted to try. I had no idea it was going to scare me quite as much as it did. It was so bad I only tried this once and I am never ever again going to try a vertical drop ride again, well probably not. The weird thing is it was bad in a good way. I kind of got the feeling of “Wow its great to be alive” when I got off. The scariest part was the anticipation of waiting. First the train takes a very slow climb upwards then it stops for what feels like hours but is more like seconds at the highest point with you facing down.  I’m not scared of heights but this ride made me rethink that especially as we had managed to get seats right at the front. The only thing I could see was air, the bottom of the track and a big hole in the ground that I knew we would be heading for. Then when I’d thought I was calm and ready Wham!! It dropped. Not a slow descent more like a freefall so fast that I literally could not breath, no gasping it just felt like my heart and breath completely stopped. I was very very happy to get my breath back and step off of this ride and I so did not want to tempt fate by having another go. I think that this is the most adventurous thing I have ever done and I still can’t believe I actually got on the thing and if I was asked to do it again I think I would be likely to say “No Thank You I’m quite happy being alive”

I don’t believe this experience really changed me as a person except to make me a little afraid of heights, although I did learn that it is possible to survive on just KFC for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 3 days but that it isn’t really advisable

This post was written for a blog challenge as part of  The Great Bee*Mee Derby being held by a cute Pixel Club I belong to Called The Quilting Bee

I also have to thank Nathan my nephew for reminding me about this trip, do not know how I managed to forget 

I really should be resting but I could not resist baking this chocolate rum cake yesterday. After all it is Easter and I love any excuse to eat chocolate

I put together the recipe for this cake a few years ago. I really love alcohol in desserts especially with chocolate though I usually hate the taste of it on its own so when I came across a chocolate cola cake recipe I went about altering the original recipe (which I have yet to try and make and can be found in the James Martin Desserts cookbook) to incorporate rum instead of cola and I came up with this.

I will be taking this to my sisters house on Monday as we have been invited to a BBQ there so this is currently sitting in my fridge, which I am currently avoiding opening as much as possible because it looks way too tempting

What are your plans for the rest of Easter?

Next week we have an appointment at the vets for Simba, my King Charles Spaniel. It is a regular visit to have his nails clipped but he now requires sedating before the appointment because he has a severe aversion to his feet being handled which causes him considerable stress.

So Tuesday morning I went with mum to pick the tablets up, not owning a car we went by bus which took us about 5 minutes. After collecting the sedatives we knew we would have to wait another hour before another bus could take us home and as the clinic was the only place in easy walking distance we had nothing to occupy our time. So we thought it might be a nice idea to walk home. We thought we knew what we were doing and how far we would be walking but we did not fully realise just how far it really was or quite how hot the day would turn out to be. The sign on the junction outside the vets informed us it would be 3 miles, though I have a suspicion we walked a longer distance than that in the end as we also thought it would be a good idea to take 2 detours from the straight road home. First we took ourselves off the busier straight main road onto a quieter country lane which did in fact take us out further back the way we came before curving the way we wanted to go (though a nicer view and less chance of being run over) and then we thought it would be quicker if we took a detour across the fields via a public footway only to be unable to find where it lead out to and had to retrace our steps back to the roadway. In the end the journey back took us 2 hours and 20 minutes. Had we waited for the bus we would have been home at least an hour before less tired and less hot but then we would have missed out on the fun of getting a little lost, nearly getting run over, finding 2p on the roadside and me looking like a mad person, wearing a long sleeved rollneck top in the baking heat and taking photos of absolutely everything in sight

If your wondering whose silly idea this was it was mine and it really was not a sensible one. I had set out knowing full well that I would at some point, probably in the next week, pay for this little outing as I exceeded the activity level I can currently cope with without causing an onset of symptoms.
So I am now resting up hoping to minimise the damage

I think it was worth it though as its been too long since I have been able to walk this far out of the village or anywhere near this distance. As a child I walked this far and further frequently, as a family we often took a picnic and spent a whole day out walking the back fields and roads. But then when I became ill at 14 even walking for 5 minutes was too painful and exhausting, for many years I thought I’d never be able to enjoy walking again so to manage this and pain free as well felt really great

In my previous post I said that I recalled  “a manic 2 days of embroidery – why? because I am obviously completely insane” and I promised to explain more in my next post so:

Why did I insanely spend 2 of my days trying my hand at embroidery something I have only ever tried once before?

I thought it would make a nice card to give to my Nan for Mothering Sunday. Now I could have chosen numerous other ways to make a card but I had a creative idea and I just had to go with it

The reasons this was an insane choice were

1. I have only a basic grasp of sewing
2. I had left it to the last possible moment to start something like this
3. I also had a card to make for mum
4. It was my own design and I was embroidering it onto card not material (been here done this, not easy)

Even with these obstacles I still decided to go for it. (Like I said insane )
I made a few mistakes but I don’t think it came out too bad

The design

If you would like to use the design you are welcome to just click on the image to be taken to flickr where you can download it in several sizes.