Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Its time for another wedding series post.
Following on from the cliffhanger end (sort of) to my last wedding blog post, you've probably already worked out from the above title, that the Routemaster bus ride destination was the beach.

After a 20 minute (longer than planned for) ride through various Northumberland villages, down narrow rural lanes and past many bemused holiday makers, we arrived.
Of course, Dave had to make an exit from said bus by giving a waiting audience a little pole dance action:

The bus pulled up at the top of a cliff beside a slightly awkward path leading down to the beautiful Northumberland coastline looking out over to Bamburgh Castle.

Dave and I had visited this beach on several occasions in the past but never had it been quite so busy. The sun had attracted LOTS of people. Luckily the bit of beach we were on was tucked away at the end of the stretch so we mostly had it to ourselves, aside from bothering a family of four who obviously thought this was a nice quiet spot - WRONG!

Once down at the beach the champers was doled out from the pre-cooled ice boxes into sunshine yellow cups (very fitting).

Of course once on the beach stood next to that beautiful blue, cool sea in the blazing sunshine, a paddle was practically compulsory. Knew those wellies would come in handy!

This has got to be one of my fave pics - my uncle making sure the remaining bubbly didn't go to waste:

As the day was fun packed, we were running a tight ship and only had about 25 mins on the beach. So after a quick paddle I spotted a perfect photo opportunity & swiftly rounded everyone up for a 'WEDSTOCK' shout out pose...

before we all hiked back up the hill towards the bus -

Let the festival fun commence!

Wedding post 4 - Magical mystery tour

Did I tell you what a packed day it was on our wedding? With all the stuff that we'd planned for the day it wasn't exactly a leisurely event, but it was masses of fun.

So after the ceremony, ...

a few photos, ...

and much throwing of confetti,

it was time to pack up out cool boxes of champers

and hop on to the Circa 1960s London Routemaster. Aka the Wedstock Fun Bus for a magical mystery tour.

I took this opportunity to slip on some comfortable, festival friendly footwear. I don't do heels not very well anyway! Plus where we were going I knew the wellies would be a better option that 4 inch satin stilettos. NOTE: I hadn't accounted for the possibility of it being a 30 degree day when preparing for this, so it wasn't exactly a cool option.

Unfortunately the bus company had misheard the name of our little do over the telephone so we ended up with an, as the kids would say: epic fail! Spot the error -

Tune in next week to find out the mystery tour bus destination.

Wedding series 3 – Cakes and favours

Yes you heard me right: ‘cakeS’, there were plural.

Originally the plan was that my mum would make the wedding cake, as she was a dab hand in the kitchen, but unfortunately that was not meant to be.
Instead we put the cake bake challenge to my sister Jennifer, my close friend Rachel and Dave’s mum Ruth with the idea of splitting the task & having three different kinds of sugary baked goodness to appeal to different tastes.
They all went above and beyond the call of duty and the result was an amazing cake extravaganza!

Jennifer's 2-part cake feat was festival woodland themed and came complete with Glastonbury backdrop. A delicious Madeira sponge with a white chocolate buttercream filing – YUM!! She stayed at our house a few days before the wedding to prepare it and put in some seriously hard graft.
The use of the Syllvanian Families characters is a stroke of genius.

 Rachel’s creation was woodland festival inspired. A nut free (as I’m allergic) carrot cake, topped with butter cream and decorated with mint foliage – mmmmmmm! This was surrounded by several flower ‘chocolate pots’ complete with a crumbled Oreo soil. Sadly somehow I missed out on these…too slow.

Last but not least was Ruth’s very elegant and traditionally styled, wedding fruit cake, decorated with individually cut, white icing flowers.
Dave and I polished the remaining piece off a couple of week’s ago. I’ll admit I’m not usually a fruit cake fan but it was damn fine cake!

Do you remember I mentioned that my good friend Helen from White Fox a Fortnum and Mason supplier, was providing us with chocolate wedding favours as a gift? Well at the time I didn’t want to give the game away but now I can say that the favours were actually milk chocolate, muddy wellingtons. A seriously talented chocolatier Helen went to all the trouble of creating a left and right boot complete with top buckle and tread. They were awesome! Unfortunately one thing we didn’t consider was that the weather would be quite so hot on that day, so most of the wellies melted in the sun. It was such a shame walking into the marquee & seeing in place of the boxed up wellies little chocolate puddles. Still they were tasty puddles! Luckily I took photos of the samples we were sent pre-wedding:

Without a doubt the tastiest wellies ever to be made!

Sampler

Yay i've finally managed to get round to doing some professionally printed sample booklets of my work. I had planned on getting these made up many months ago but with  so much going on didn't mange to do them until now. Better late than never I guess. Each booklet has 10 images including the front and back covers.

I'll be sending these round to publishers and a few agents in the hope of getting on a few lists - wish me luck!

Wedding installment 2 - The Makes

It didn’t take long after accepting the marriage proposal for my mind to jump to all the stuff I could potentially make for the big day….
Hold on, time out!  Before I continue with this post & the remaining installments i’ve just decided, for ease t refer to the wedding day itself as ‘bd’ – (I hope to God, that acronym doesn’t stand for some kind of rude phrase anywhere) short, of course, for ‘big day’!

Ok so back to it, I realized that the 'bd' was the perfect excuse to indulge my making addiction. Woohoop!
Now lets see what did I make:

• 1x15 foot long vintage bunting created over several sittings, using mostly scraps from an extensive stock of fabric

• 8 large applique flags with help from a good friend (Binny – thank you). These were put up around the garden in our ‘main stage’ area. Will show some pics from the stage later. Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of all of these when we made them & i've since given a few away, but heres a pic of one I still have  -

• 16 table trees and stands - part of our table decorations. There were 2 trees different per table. A great idea initially but unfortunately they didn’t go quite to plan as the card I used to print the design onto turned out not to be sturdy enough to enable the tree to stand un-aided. I only discovered this after printing all the trees…that’s a lot of printing.
  So the only way to make them stand, was to design & make each one a separate card stand with a lot of help from my now husband…still can’t get used to that word. All in all a hell of a lot of work!

• Yes and the list goes on.....8 table wigwams & mini flags. Like the trees these were my own designs printed and cut from card. They were then rolled up and the sides sewn together. Each one then had a bbq skewer split and put inside to give them that authentic wigwam look. Then  a little cocktail stick flag with the number of the table drawn on was put in the top of  each tent.

•  8 lengths of mini bunting which was stretched between the table trees over the wigwams.

• 2x rainbow raindrop decorations to hang from the trees.

• Signs – oh hold on now Dave did most of this so I can’t take credit. A must for any festival, otherwise how will people know how to find the 'long drops' after several pints of cider.
  The signs were produced from thick, brown box card as it looked kind of like wood and attached to a wooden garden stake

• Cloud pinata. Actually again i had minimal involvement in this, as it was Dave's baby. The photo below is of it in the making.
  Soooooo much work went into this giant creation that mentioning it briefly in this post wouldn't really do it justice so i'll come back to this much loved make in the not too distant future: 

Hmm, so  guess I/we got a little carried away - but its a one off right!

P.S. Oh and did I mention the 60 festival programmes/ order of services, the 8 medicine bottle decorations and........okay, ok i'll shut up & go away.