Tiffin!

As many may know, I love baking! I love making pretty cupcakes and even use to sell them before I started university. I find it very therapeutic baking anything and making them pretty! I also love Pinterest for having SO many recipes, the only problem is they are pretty much all American, using American measurements and American ingredients. After spending many hours whilst baking flicking from measurement conversion charts and Google trying to find alternative ingredients that we have here in the UK, I decided I will write a post or two of my favourite recipes suited to a British Baker!

So today's recipe is Tiffin! Which is a fridge tray 'cake' covered in chocolate.

Ingredients:

10.5oz/300g Milk Chocolate (a mix of white chocolate and milk is the best)

8oz/225g Rich Tea Biscuits

4oz/110g Butter/Margarine (I generally use margarine personally)

2 tbsp Golden Syrup

2 tbsp Caster/Granulated Sugar

4 tsp Cocoa Powder

1 handful of raisins (optional, or could add marshmellows for a rocky road type cake or nuts etc. the possibilities are endless...)

Method:

1. In a pan melt the butter, sugar, golden syrup and cocoa powder together, stirring to make sure it doesn't burn, don't allow to boil.

2. Crush up the biscuits, they can range in size but you don't want any bigger than a 5p piece roughly or you'll get gaps in the base.

3. Add the crushed biscuits and the raisins to the melted mixture (if you have extra sauce add a biscuit or 2 more to make it a bit stiffer).

4. Spoon mixture into a 9x9 inch pan and press down firmly until evenly spread in the pan and flat. (You can add grease proof paper to be able to take it out of the pan just for convenience, but it doesn't need greasing)

Something like this...

5. Melt the milk chocolate and pour over the mixture. If using a combination of white chocolate too, pour in horizontal lines of white chocolate down the milk chocolate, then using a cocktail stick or something of that shape 'draw' vertical lines down the chocolate, causing a pattern to form.

6. Place in the fridge to set for an hour then cut into pieces.

7. Then enjoy!  

I might do another recipe post soon as we have our baby shower/leaving party next week that I'm going to be doing lots of baking for! :D

Baby Envy

Over the last two days HRH The Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to the next-next heir to the throne and two friends have given birth to a baby girl and boy. Seeing the gorgeous photos of their brand new babies has made me even more excited for our baby and very jealous that their waiting is over. And then there are another two friends who are due this week and next!

We also spent the last couple of days with Ethan's family up north and one of his cousins has a cute 8 month old daughter and his other cousin has 2 year old and 10 months old boys who are also ridiculously cute! While we were there they kept telling us how much we are going to love being parents and how wonderful it is! The end of October seems such a long time to wait for something so wonderful and life changing (a lot of hard work too I'm sure but 100% worth the lack of sleep etc). In reality it will probably go really quickly as our next month is jam packed with good things happening that will fill the waiting time and I'm sure you can never prepare too much for a new baby :)

Until then here are some photos from our weekend up north :)

Nancy working the sunglasses!

Ethan's interesting choice of attire for the day...

Seth, Kels and Rachel :) 

Ethan and Gabe playing 

Gabe dribbled right into Simon's mouth! (If you look closely enough or click on the photo you can see the dribble!)

The ball provided hours of entertainment haha

Ethan stole Barney's hat I think

SO cute!

Seth and Barnaby

Introducing Our Baby Dragon!

I feel its time to officially introduce the world to baby dragon. We've nicknamed the baby this since the very beginning when we found out but for some reason we've only really used the phrase around our families. At the beginning it was our way of making the abstract idea of a baby that we could neither see or feel a bit more personal and real, but now it's just our little affection way of referring to our little baby!

It started because when we were living in our flat we didn't use the heating over winter because the radiators we had were pathetic so it seemed a waste of money to use them. So often when we'd breathe out you'd get the steam or whatever it was appear that made you look like a dragon which led to Ethan naming me Jo the dragon, leading to baby dragon :) 

And today our little baby dragon is 26 weeks, which means the third trimester has started! Amusingly we had a midwife appointment last week and somehow I had managed to lose count of the weeks and thought I was 24 weeks and was actually 25 which was a very nice surprise, it felt like I had been told I was only to be pregnant for 39 weeks rather than 40 which is always a nice surprise because 40 weeks is a long time to be waiting for our beautiful baby! 

So I've decided the best way to get through these next 3 months is to not keep track of the weeks and then suddenly I'll have the baby and think 'oh are those 3 months over already?' ...haha something tells me that is not going to happen! 

The second trimester has been everything people say it is. I've been felling great, no sickness, aches or anything unpleasant, my bump has started growing and my hair started to be in really good condition (I only need to wash it twice a week now, it's wonderful!) and lots of people said I was blossoming which was just lovely to hear! 

However in the last 2 or 3 weeks my ribs and coccyx have started aching whenever I'm sat down and my back has just started aching a lot, particularly when I'm sat down or laying down. And sadly I imagine its only going to get worse as baby dragon grows more over the next 3 months! 

The good thing is it's definitely worth it, we cannot wait for our gorgeous baby boy to come, we already have so much love for him but apparently that feels like nothing compared to the love you feel for the baby once it's born! We genuinely can't wait! :)

3000!

My blog reached 3000 views today! This is probably not that many to most people that have blogs, but it makes me really happy because I never expected anyone to read it accept maybe Ethan and my sister... Haha!

For some reason the photo wouldn't crop, my apologies.. But look 3015 views!

And I know it's not them looking at my blog 3000 times just to make me happy as there are views from all sorts of places like Russia, I don't know anyone in Russia! So if you're reading my blog from another country (or from the UK) I think you should comment as to why you are currently reading this post (although you have to have a Google account to comment I think so I won't hold it against anyone for not commenting...)

34 views from Russia, 23 from Italy, 11 from the Netherlands! Crazy!

School Regret...

I had the best friends when I was at school, we use to have such fun! But when we all finished our GCSEs some went to College and others went to Sixth Form and so in school (for me in 6th form) our friendship groups changed slightly but not enough to stop spending time outside of school all together. However for some reason I decided that as we got older we kind of drifted apart as we had different interests etc and I had lots of church friends that I enjoyed spending time with. In reality we never actually drifted apart, I think I had decided once we left for uni I would never really see them again so there wasn't much point in making an effort to remain good friends with them, so when they made plans I would often come up with an excuse or something to the point that I think they gave up asking me in the end (which was quite fair enough). (Also that makes me sound as though I just sat at home on my own all the time, that's not true, I just spent way more time with my YSA friends). I think I felt that because they were going out and dressing up etc which is something that I didn't really do, that I wasn't as 'cool' as them and that I didn't quite fit in as well as I had done when we were younger. But in reality they totally respected who I was and that I didn't drink alcohol and probably thought no less of me for not doing those kind of things, but I just let myself think that they thought that because it was easier I guess.

These were some of my best friends at school, it's telling that the most recent photo that I can find is of our year 11 prom. I'm hoping they won't hate me for including it... haha

It's only now that I have started to realise what a sad unnecessary thing that was! It might be because being married and expecting a baby does change the life you're living, with more responsibilities and having more than yourself to think about, that I've realised that in honesty the likelihood of me ever 'reconnecting' with my old friends has gone down heavily, which is actually a really sad thought! Also Ethan still keeps in contact with a lot of his friends from when he was at school (in fact we just had a lovely day with one of his old friends today!) even though he finished school 4 years ago and still has a really good relationship with those friends. Whereas I on the other hand, have only really kept in contact with my best friend that I've basically grown up with and even then I distanced myself from her for a good while too!

I don't really know what the point of this post is, other than maybe hope that some of my old friends might read it and know that I genuinely did value our friendship. It's also made me realise that you don't have to have the exact same interests to be friends, it just brings variety and different view points and thoughts that can enrich friendships. If I could re do my last few years in school I would do it completely differently! But I can't, so maybe from now I'll make more of an effort with the wonderful friends that I have now, particularly as we leave the country for a year :)