Matron of Honour in Training

I haven’t weighed myself in a couple of weeks but I have a new battery for the scales now so I will see how I’m doing in the morning.

Eating has been average this week. Went to the gym on Tuesday night and am going to go again on Friday night.

I’ve been quite tired for a while now, if it continues I may need to go to the doctors to get it checked out but first I need to kick my blue “V” addiction which I have an inkling may be causing my tiredness. I haven’t had one this week, the last time I had it was Saturday morning when I had two, yes TWO, cans because of my weakness for the endless deals that are one for “V” drinks at service stations. Goodbye “V” hello water!

I will be uploading more photos from the engagement party soon, so please stay tuned!

So, back here I told you about the cake that I was making for the engagement party and here is the final result…duh duh da daaaaa

Chocolate mud cake covered in white fondant and painted with gel food colours

So, what do you think? Serena absolutely LOVED it and so did the Groom so YAY for me :), I was nervous but she did a little dance about it and kept showing people all night so I’m happy!

Unfortunately I didn’t take any progress photos but basically I did what I said I would, covered the cake in some blue tinted swiss meringue buttercream I had frozen from when I made cupcakes a few weeks ago then on top of that went the white fondant. That was hard! I am going to have to practise covering cakes in fondant as I wasn’t 100% happy with how that looked but not too bad for my first go.

Because the cake was frozen and it was still defrosting, it caused the fondant to become sticky! So I had to pop it into the airing cupboard for an hour or so and then I resorted to using a hairdryer to finish it, problem overcome. Earlier I had traced the peacock onto some baking paper so once the fondant was dry I traced the outline on. After drawing over the outline with a silver grey edible food marker I starting adding the colours which were teal, regal purple and navy blue. After that had all dried a bit I added definition with black and then finally the gold details on the tail feathers.

On Saturday morning I bought some ribbon and fresh flowers to finish it all off.

Close up of the tail feathers

Close up of the head

I loved the purple flowers I found for it

Everyone has a body part they wish they can change. I have a few but the thing I hate the most is my ankles.

I refuse to use the word “cankles” as I think it is the most degrading word EVER!

I know it’s impossible to spot reduce but I’ve been investigating (aka Googling) exercises that are best for helping tone up chubby ankles.

It is recommended by various sites that you do these exercises combined with cardio such as jump rope, stair sprinting, hill running and swimming.

1. Standing calf raises
2. Jump squats
3. Seated calf raises
4. Stretching exercises with a resistance band

I really hope our bridal party dresses will be long. Two of the other bridesmaids have fat ankles but are slim enough it’s not noticeable like mine. I hate my ankles, did I mention that?

I’m going to incorporate some of the above exercises to try to reduce the size of my horrible ankles.

If anyone out there has any success stories please share! I would love to know what worked for you.

Tonight I have eaten a cupcake (from hubby for Valentines day) and 2 pieces of camembert cheese with pate.

FAIL.

The cake is cooling and I’m off to the gym!

Catch you later

Today I am making the cake for the engagement party. Why so early you ask? Well I’m using a fantastic recipe from the KiwiCake‘s forum which tastes better if you bake it in advance and then freeze it for about a week. I used this recipe to make this cake

My son's first birthday cake

Well, the ball is the chocolate mud cake I’m baking today and the “field” was banana cake iced with lemon buttercream tinted green

So the plan for the cake is to bake it today, obviously, then I’m going to wrap it and freeze it until next Friday. Next Friday I will crumb coat/dirty ice it with some Swiss Meringue Buttercream that I made last week for icing some cupcakes I took to a baby shower. It’s flavoured with vanilla bean so should go nicely with the cake. Then comes the tricky part – covering the cake with fondant. I used fondant with the soccer ball cake but I cut pieces out and stuck them on to get the panelled effect, covering an entire cake with one piece of fondant is an art apparently and I have been watching lots of video tutorials to pick up all the tricks of the trade.

Once its covered with the white fondant hopefully I will have a nice smooth surface and then I am going to paint one of these babies on it;Pretty cool huh? I have this image in my head and I really want it to work out, fingers crossed! I think I might end up being up till midnight again with this cake. That’s about what it took with the soccer ball one. I was going to make cupcakes as well but that ended up being delegated to one of the other bridesmaids, I was going to attempt to make them look like this;

Isn’t it gorgeous! Anyway I have to let somethings go don’t I? This way I can focus on getting the cake perfect.

I’ve ordered my supplies from Kiwi Cakes and they should arrive early next week. I’ve ordered gel food colouring in Teal, Navy Blue, Black and Regal Purple, Metallic food paint in dark gold and an edible marker pen in silver grey.

My plan:

• Trace the image of the peacock onto the cake using the edible marker pen, I got the silver so that it’s light enough to be covered up with the “paint” but still easy to see.
• Paint the areas gradually mixing the colours together to create the right look
• Outline the image in black and then do all the details in black to
• Add the gold highlights

Depending on how it looks and whether I’ve got enough fondant left over I’m going to attempt to make some flowers out of fondant that look like the flowers on the paper

I may be being overly ambitious but this is what I really want to do for them so I’m going to work my hardest at it.

I’ll post a photo of the final product, maybe even some of the process depending on how it goes of course

I haven’t posted an update about the wedding for a while – shocking!

So..the engagement party is next weekend (18th) and the invitations got finished on Tuesday night, yep bit short notice huh?

We looked at Footbridge in Bombay on the Monday, it was okay. Would be fantastic for a casual, country/vintage type theme but not really suitable for the “feel” of Serena’s day. Also although the lady said it could seat 100 guests the reception room was cramped and the tables weren’t all the same shape. So it’s a pass on that one.

It seems the wedding venue is going to be….Cassels in Waitakere. The bride, groom, aunt & grandmother of the bride and the parent’s of the groom visited Cassels on Saturday and it seems they all loved it. I was a bit disappointed I didn’t get invited to go but hubby and I think we know why.

Th aunt of the bride (and my hubby) is trying very hard to fill the gap left by my mother in law passing away, she invites herself to all the viewings and in my opinion may be bossing Serena around a bit, but that’s not my place to say anything. On Sunday night Serena text me to say they were going to visit Footbridge and did I want to go with them? At the end of the text she said ” I don’t mind if you don’t want to I know you’re really busy with (son) and the house and stuff”. We’ve never, not done anything because of (son) or the house and especially when it comes to the wedding I have said she can call on me for any little thing. What hubby and I think happened is that AOB (Aunt of Bride) has said something to Serena along those lines and made her feel bad about asking me to visit places etc.

Apparently both AOB and MIL (mother in law) used to do that frequently since (son) was born, the cousins would plan something and AOB and MIL would say not to ask because we would be busy with our son. We LOVE family events and said right from the start we wouldn’t be the type of parent’s who would be stuck at home because it was “too hard” to go out with a baby. It’s not hard it just takes organisation. I didn’t know this but I was so angry when I found out!

So anyway, vent over, sorry. I think I need to write a little card to Serena and clarify the point that anything she would like my help with or company on, that I am more than happy. I love weddings and being able to help plan her’s is a dream come true!

Anyway, Cassels it is, the date has to change and they have to decide which option to go for, I think either the 22nd of Feb or the 15th of March. I get to visit the venue with them again on Sunday morning – yay! It looks amazing in the photos, they have a French ( I think) armoire behind the bar that holds the spirits and there are french style chairs/loveseats. I can’t wait to see it!

Apart from the venue and engagement invitations there has been heaps of ideas thrown around which is always fun I’ll put together a post of ideas and pictures soon!

83.3kg. A loss of  200 grams. I know I should be happy it’s a loss at least but I’m very disappointed.

Everyone keeps saying you’re building muscle but when does that stop and the losing starts?

*sigh*

Weigh in day today and guess what? I gained 1 kg, a whole freaking kilogram! What the frick is up with that?

I am hoping like hell that it’s me building muscle and that I will start to see a real decline in the scales in the coming weeks but I tell you I am already in the “what’s the point” frame of mind.

I know what I need to do; I need to drink more water, I need to watch what I’m eating.

I’m working really hard at the gym, I’m running more than I have in years and I’ve never been a running person. I’m still not, don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to go out for a run just for the fun of it any time soon, actually any time.

The gym was closed on Monday so so far this week I’ve gone Tuesday for a Power Plate session and last night (Thursday) and did my program. I do admit that last night I didn’t do as much running as I usually do as my calf muscles locked up something shocking and I only managed 5 mins at the beginning and then another 2 mins at the end. I think it may be because I’m not hydrated enough. Need to work on that, that’s an ongoing struggle for me – drinking enough water.

For lunches this week I’ve had

• chicken patty sandwich (Tuesday)
• hummus on cruskits (Monday & Wednesday)
• Subway 6 inch Chicken Teriyaki on Honey Oat bread with Swiss cheese, carrot, lettuce, cucumber and sweet onion sauce – no mayo! (Thursday)
• small amount of leftover Butter Chicken (made from sauce in a jar mix) & brown rice (today)

I did baking on Monday (Auckland Anniversary day so no work) as we have had a lot of plums thanks to our neighbour’s tree that hangs right over our garden. I had made one lot of wholemeal plum muffins last Friday to try to use them up but still had enough left for another 2 batches on Monday and a batch of jam which we made on Monday as well. While I did eat a bit of the batter (naughty, I know) I haven’t had that many of the muffins.

I guess it’s all those little things that add up, I wouldn’t have thought it would add up to 1 kg’s worth but obviously it did

Still a work in progress…

You know that feeling when you think you really really want something but then after you have it you just feel sick?

I just had one of these;

Yep, a McDonalds hot fudge sundae. And now I feel like guzzling a bottle of water. I feel sick yet I thought I really wanted one.

Bleurgh