Stitch a Photo - Week 1

It's been a week since I started my wedding Stitch a Photo kit. So far, I've got as far as stitching the very edge of Bren's side and my neck and top part of my dress. There are lots of colour changes!

The photo I'm Stitching.

The first few stitches of Bren's suit.

The start of my veil.

More veil!

Such a huge chart for a small piece of fabric!

The start of my dress

Start of my shoulder

Starting to look a bit more like me!

The chart - Page 5 of 9

There's a lot of fiddly stitches at the bottom of the page which I'll tackle this week - I think that's where my bouquet starts. Bren's suit is a lot more straight forward, but I may decide to change the colour of his tie, as it was more blue in the photograph than the purple that it was.

Overall, I'm pleased with my first week's progress! This week is Activity week in school (less marking so more stitching opportunities) and then 2 weeks for Easter holidays (more stitching opportunities!) so I may get this page finished. After that, progress will most likely be slow. I think the original finishing estimate of *years* may still be accurate!

1st Wedding Anniversary Baking

Today is my 1st wedding anniversary - crazy! This time a year ago, we'd literally just been pronounced husband and wife.
So, to mark the occasion, I made butterfly fairy cakes. Aside from the fact that my Nan used to make wonderful butterfly cake, our wedding theme was Butterfly Garden.

Despite the fact that it's a simple recipe, I've never managed to successfully make butterfly cakes. Until today!

 I mixed 110g of self-raising flour, 110g caster sugar and 2 teaspoons of baking powder, then added 110g butter, 2 eggs and 3 teaspoons of vanilla extract and mixed it all together. Then, I spooned the mixture into cupcake cases and baked for 20 min at 180°C. While they were cooling, I made the icing with 220g of icing sugar and 110g butter - mix half the icing sugar with the butter, then add the other half of icing sugar with a splash of milk and more vanilla extract.

 Once the cakes cooled, I cut off the tops, spooned some icing into the middle, cut the tops in half to make wings and put them in the icing. Finally, I dusted them with icing sugar and added sugar pearls - purple to match our wedding theme, of course!

Bren and I have sampled the cakes and agree they taste yummy!