Nothing Less » is what you’ll see in me

Today was my best friend Alison’s birthday! We didn’t do anything special, just had a relaxed day (she was staying at my house), but we did bake her birthday cake! And it was a nearly-from-scratch one too where we had to toss eggs and milk and water and oil etc into a big bowl and mix it! With the electric mixer!! That is pretty advanced, for me. :P The cake turned out beautiful in two cake tins, and we then slathered the top of one with icing, put the other half on top of that to make a “sandwich cake”, and coated the entire outside in chocolate icing too. Finally, I used writing icing to write Ali’s name on the cake and decorate it a little. I kind of ran out of room after writing “Aliso”, so had to squeeze the N in at the end lol. Much giggles were had in the kitchen!

Ali’s dad and brother came by in the evening and we all watched TV (2 episodes of Picket Fences on DVD, and then The Eye with Jessica Alba, which was actually pretty decent). All in all, Ali assured me she had a lovely birthday, so yay!

(this is a photo from last night, so I am slightly cheating, seeing as today is Friday. But I’d already posted yesterday’s photo by the time I took this one!)

It was Pancake Tuesday here past Tuesday, and in spite of me buying pancake mix and syrup, I completely forgot about it! I only remembered yesterday, so Ali and me made it Pancake Thursday instead. :P

The Tesco mix is sooo easy to use – just add milk to the plastic bottle, shake it a bit, and tada, all done and ready to pour into the frying pan – no mixer, no bowl, no eggs, no mess. Just the way I like it. ;) The pancakes turned out gorgeous!

Peaches a mili-second after yawning.

In other news, my downstairs toilet has finally been fixed after not working for over 6 months. I know – ages and ages but there was this ongoing drama with the plumber claiming the pipe work was at fault, so it needed to be dug up, but the pipes actually go under my neighbor’s property and driveway, not mine, so there was hassle getting permission and so on. Today finally a company called Drain Man came out to take a look at it all. They flushed out all the pipes with big machines, and found around 10 of the metal rods the first plumber had used to try and unclog the pipes. Rods that had broken off, and that the plumber had just LEFT in my pipes without telling anyone!! Bastard. No wonder it wasn’t fixed!

Starring Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Bought the mobile in the Guggenheim in New York, and filled it with photos of the kittens, printed as Moo postcards. Makes me smile every time I walk past it.