According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term ”Weekend” is defined as:
Noun
Saturday and Sunday, especially regarded as a time for leisure:
“She spent the weekend camping”
Verb
[no object, with adverbial] informal; spend a weekend somewhere:
“He was weekending in the country”
Now, neither did I spend the weekend camping, good God no (imagine my forlorn self wandering around a tent looking for a socket to plug my hair straighteners into), and neither did I “weekend” in the country. In fact, both these definitions couldn’t be further away from the truth. Quite the opposite actually!
Saturday was spent with the girls in the capital city of our home nation, eating Latin American and drinking cocktails (no tent or rolling hillsides in sight). I’m pleased to report that the closest we came to anything to do with the great outdoors was walking within a two hundred yard distance to the Cotswold Outdoor store.
It was simply a great day. It started well with a few preambulatory glasses (slightly pushing it there as they were actually plastic) of bucks fizz on the train followed by a leisurely stroll into the city centre for a little window shopping… I challenge any fashion loving female to resist the lure of the window displays of Kurt Geiger and Reiss.
An hour later and we were all gossiping with the accompaniment of some very sensible coffees, or Mocha in my case (hit of caffeine without the calories of a hot chocolate…perfect) before hitting Las Iguanas. And this is where it went slightly awry…through no fault of our own of course, but more due to the buy one get one free offer on the cocktail menu. Let’s just say that a significant proportion of the final bill was taken up by Cherry Fizz cocktails…
Following a short peregrination of Cardiff’s finest drinking establishments, we ended up sampling some absolutely delicious cocktails…I can highly recommend a strawberry and vanilla daiquiri should you ever come across it.
No w as I read over what I’ve already written, our jaunt to Cardiff comes across as quite a tame, respectable affair, and indeed it was until our final stop…Caroline Street aka “Chip Alley”. For those of you unaccustomed with the cultured streets of Cardiff, Caroline Street is a side street with more fish and chip shops and take-away outlets than you would care to imagine, hence “Chip Alley”. BUT, as much as one may disparage and admonish such a spectacle, I am 100% sure that this little transgression from the norm was our saving grace come Sunday morning…sans hangover!
We took the short walk back to the train station…we were tired, we had aching feet, but we’d all thoroughly enjoyed. The conversation on the journey home included lots of “pyjama” and “cup of tea” and “collapsing in front of the tv” references and this is exactly what I did: I got home, I put on my pyjamas, made a cup of tea and promptly fell asleep on the sofa before I’d even drunk it…I think it’s a cert that the Rock’n’Roll lifestyle just isn’t for me!
On Sunday morning, boy was I glad that the hangover haze didn’t feature…it was an early start to get two dozen cupcakes made for a party that afternoon. The KitchenAid was at full speed by half past eight and 100 royal icing flowers had already been prepped (organised, I know) ready for the decoration. I can’t say hand on heart that they were the most complicated cupcakes that I’ve ever made, but they certainly looked very pretty! Pretty that is, until PSB (perfect second born) got his hands on them…I’d put them on the dining room table so that I could clean the disaster zone that was the kitchen and ten minutes later, it occurred to me PSB was being unusually quiet. Although I seriously hoped that he was entertaining himself with toy cars in the conservatory (not likely) I knew in my heart of hearts what he was up to…he was redecorating my cupcakes! The cupcakes that I had painstakingly decorated to make sure that all the flowers faced the same way and were of equal height. The cupcakes that had caused serious tendon damage in my hand from a way too full piping bag and even harder butter icing. The cupcakes that were due to be delivered to a party in around an hour.
I was almost afraid to look but when I eventually did, a very proud looking PSB was sitting on a dining room chair, carefully removing small icing flowers and placing them tidily in a row and not so carefully squashing the larger flowers into the actual cupcakes, completely wrecking my carefully piped butter icing grass effect. Cue frantic retrieval of piping bag, removal of all cupcake decoration, re-piping of the grass and replacing of the flowers. Crisis averted. (NB…I negated to tell anyone of this heart attack inducing moment on arrival to the party…so Mel, now you know what I had to deal with!)
All things considered, I think the cupcakes were a hit and in the end, they did look party-worthy!
The party was a lovely ensemble of pinkness with nail painting, dancing and butterfly tattoo application with a handful of boys, including my own, refuting any form of girlyness by playing the Xbox for the duration, only looking up to collect the coveted party bag at the end. My face painting efforts were a hit too and to be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in pink, purple and silver butterflies instead of the usual tigers and pirates that tend to be the norm at home.
And then it was home and feet up.
Last night, I sat on the sofa wondering how it was possible for a weekend to pass so quickly. But then, that’s the way isn’t it: on a “quiet” weekend, you desperately look for something to do to occupy the children and on a “busy” weekend, you covet a “quiet” one. Seriously though, if next weekend is as busy as this one has been, I think I’ll be incapable of functioning in a logical and rational manner.
Needless to say, it’s an early night tonight (if only to stop me from me from eating anymore…I’ve managed to scoff my way through an industrial sized bag of popcorn whilst writing this)…nos da pawb x
Fabric and Fairy Cakes 