baking and birthdays...

The last week has seen two of my lovely housemates turn 21, well, Katie won't be until tomorrow, but as she's going home today, we had a pre-birthday breakfast for her. We did the same for Rachel, as she went to Paris on her birthday. For Rachel, I baked some apple and walnut bread with cinammon and sugar topping, and some chocolate hazelnut balls (which tasted very much like ferrero roche), as a birthday cake wasn't really transportable. For Katie, we put greek yoghurt and honey in wine glasses with passion fruit topping, wrote her name in skittles (her dream is to have a bath of red skittles for her birthday, so this was a slight compromise!!!) freshly baked, warm raisin bread (courtesy of petrie, my breadmaker), and delicious home-made chocolate (see right). I love being creative with food.

Today saw even more baking - with Madeleine!! Our first ever baking session. We made lemon muffins with pink icing. Of course, Madeleine's favourite thing to do while we baked was to stick her fingers in anything and everything, including the lemon juice. Having stuck her whole hand in the juice, she promptly put her whole hand in her mouth - I thought this was the best way to make her realize that lemon juice really isn't great. Turns out, she loves it. Just like my sister. I have been quite industrious on the interior design front today too. I finally framed and hung a couple of photos that we've been wanting to have on our walls for a long time. Having thoroughly impressed myself with my ability to hang pictures singlehandedly, I got slightly carried away and added a few more tacs to my bedroom walls to change my wall decoration. What fun.

I have to echo my big brother's response to the wonderful news of Jo and Steve's beautiful, beautiful baby girl being born. There is something that goes way beyond words when a baby is born. Not simply the miracle of a new life being brought into the world, but this beautiful sensitivity and humility that seems to shine in parents, and never fails to make me cry.

Just for your ammusement, I have this phenomenal ability to break things, and the list of things that have fallen prey to me is growing exceedingly quickly....

***coffee table broken

***rachel's radley umrella - dead

***celine's bowl smashed, when being put away

***rachel's gap jumper - now suitable for a 4 year old girl, due to shrinkage

***flat intercom phone killed following a meeting with my foot on the decent of a handstand

In the last 2 weeks...

***rachel's photo frame - smashed as I was trying to fix the wire in the back

***contact lens broken in my zip, having fallen out of my eye

***ipod lost, having fallen out of my pocket

***sarah's jumper ruined - got bleach on it when highlighting martin's hair

***bag of couscous dropped and split in sainsbury's

***big cup of coffee that I bought as a treat for all my hard work, knocked over by my armful of library books trying to escape from my arms, spilling coffee onto one of the library books (10 mins after dropping the couscous)

Approximate cost of my mishaps (in the last 2 weeks) totalling....£160

Please pray for me. Seriously, I'm not joking.