Busy again!

Another two weeks have passed, my feet don't seem to touch the ground at the moment.

So, last weekend Jude and Craig came to visit.  They arrived on Friday night (Tom was already in bed).  Saturday they stayed all day.  The weather wasn't particularly good in the morning, so we had a quick walk around the village, including a pit stop at Neptis - it has to be done!  Craig, Jude and Matt had coffee and cake, whilst Tom and I made some paper mache Easter Eggs ready for the village Easter Egg hunt.  I wasn't sure how to do paper mache, but Rachael as always had everything ready at Neptis, so we had a quick lesson and got stuck in.  It was quite therapeutic actually, smothering a balloon in wallpaper paste and getting mucky.  To my surprise Tom also got stuck in and mucky which was good and before too long we had two eggs ready for drying.

On our walk

We then continued around the village and then as the weather was looking better we headed out to Ribblehead to the The Station Inn for lunch and then went for a circular walk around the the viaduct.  It was a little miserable with some rain, but Tom with his walking stick and Jude and Craig to entertain did really well, not even a tiny whinge, he happily walked round.

On arrival back, Craig and Tom played trains whilst the rest of us attacked the garage.  We found it!  The garage now has some order to it, which means I can find my cake stuff without much swearing and huffing and puffing, which is fab, as my cake business seems to have had lift off, with 3 cakes booked this month.




Sunday we woke up to snow, so Craig and Jude left early (they were off to Durham to visit Craig's mum).  As the weather wasn't great, we had a useful day, so loaded the car up with all the rubbish we found in the garage and headed to Settle to the dump.  We then popped into Booths to get dinner (ended up spending over £100 mostly on booze!) and then to the Watershed Mill for lunch.  This place is quite useful in that it has a working model railway (keeps Tom happy), a whisky and beer shop (keeps Matt happy) and a cook shop (keeps me happy).  The rest of the day was spent tidying up.

On the boat to London

Outside their little house

On Tuesday we had a treat, Rose and her immediate family were up in the Lake District on holiday and  contacted me to see if we could meet up. We were free Tuesday afternoon after pre-school so we headed over to Brockhole for a meet up.  Luckily the weather was good to us, it wasn't bright blue sky, but it didn't rain, so we were able to go for a walk around the grounds and spend quite some time on the adventure playground.  When the clouds looked threatening we headed inside for tea and a bun and then spent the rest of the day enjoying the soft play area, in fact we were there until closing time.  Abi and Tom were on really good form, playing really nicely with each other.  They gave each other a really nice hug when we said goodbye.

Concentrating on the wobbly bridge

Rose and Martin are getting married in May, unfortunately it is the weekend of my 40th - which we are spending in Edinburgh so we are going to miss it.  They asked me to make the cake and everything.  I was gutted, but that's life, Edinburgh will be fun.

On the way home, I was unfortunate to fall victim to a lad with road rage, he was beeping me and doing hand gestures at me every time I slowed down (I was doing the speed limit and slowed down when the car in front slowed to turn right)  It got so bad that I pulled over at a petrol station to let him pass.  He beeped me again, and in a moment of stupidity I beeped him back (I was stressed).  He then pulled over to the petrol station ahead of me and started to get out of his car, I didn't hang around.  Luckily we have a fast car so I was able to pull off quicker than he could.  He didn't catch up with me, but I was pretty shaken up - Tom was in the car after all, I was looking in my rear view mirror all the way home, working out what to do if he was following me (my plan was to go straight to the police station in Ingleton and hope it was open)  It spoiled a really lovely day.

Rugby Ball Cake

This week I had two cakes on: a rugby ball for a Sedbergh student and an artist's palette for a 60th birthday.  All was going well until Friday came upon us.  It snowed overnight, but worse than that it was very very windy - we didn't sleep very well as we could hear the roof slates moving around all night, Matt even went out to move the car worrying about loose slates hitting it.  The wind also meant we had drifting.  The weather was so bad that we couldn't even tell if it was snowing or not because the wind had picked up all the snow into the air.  Ingleton School closed for the day, I think mainly because it was dangerous for the children to be out trying to get to school rather than being at school itself.

I was supposed to be delivering the artist's palette cake in the morning, but I was too scared to venture out - from a driving point of view and I was also worried that the cake would get destroyed by the snow and wind.  Luckily my customer was very understanding and told me to stay still - it wasn't needed until Saturday so we had a day to play with.  We didn't go out at all on Friday morning, our afternoon out with a friend with Enjoy-a-Ball was cancelled (it took her over an hour to dig out her car).  Matt gave up working in the afternoon - he couldn't even see out of his window as it was completely iced up.   The wind was abating a little so he agreed to drive me to my customer.  She was only 7 miles away, but it might as well have been another country, no snow and no wind.  I delivered it and then we returned to snowy, windy Ingleton.  Matt thought it would be interesting to see Ribblehead so we headed up there.  We managed about 1/2 a mile and realised it was a bad idea, it was a complete whiteout up there and the roads were absolutely clogged up with snow, we quickly turned round and came back.

Saturday was just as windy and snowy again, so we didn't stray far.  We went to Bentham in the morning - Tom had a haircut at the barber's (went very well) whilst I went looking for cake ribbons at the Haberdashers.  We then headed back to Ingleton and tried out another pub for lunch (Craven Heifer).  The afternoon was then spent doing some more unpacking and sorting.  Not very interesting for Tom but a necessary evil.

Our paper mache Easter eggs

Sunday, it was still very windy, but a little warmer and the snow began to melt, but still not a day for being outside - Tom hates the wind.  We looked into going to the cinema but the kiddies film was about Jack Frost - we didn't think it would be to Tom's liking, so instead we went swimming at Hornby pool.  We had a great session there, Tom swam really really well and for the first time was jumping in by himself.  Fantastic.  We rewarded him with lunch at Carnforth Station.  Once home we popped into Neptis with our completed eggs (Tom made a Thomas egg, I made a cupcake egg and Matt made a Japanese egg) before heading home.

Not the most exciting weekend I know, here's hoping the wind dies down soon - were does it all come from?

Next week will be a little manic, I have about 20 creme egg animals to make including 2 orders from Smile, and a repeat order from Kitridding Farm - they have sold much better than they thought.  In fact Prince Charles is visiting them on Thursday so I'm going to do my best to get them finished and round to them on Wednesday afternoon - just in case, especially as they said the press will be there.