Let Them Eat Cake ...

Look at this ... doesn't it look good enough to eat?

As you may know, those of us having a stall at the Vintage & Handmade Fair next Saturday each take a cake or equivalent to ensure that the Vintage Tea Room is kept supplied throughout the day. I am no cake-maker! My 2 claims to cake-making fame are: (1) binning the first Christmas cake I ever made in 1971 (I tested it before buying the marzipan and found I couldn't get the knife through the crust(!!!!!) so St Michael, Mr Waitrose or Mr Tesco made my Christmas cake for the next 35 years, and I don't buy them now), and (2) making a coffee and walnut cake about 10 years later, I was convinced the recipe didn't call for eggs. A beautiful flan shape (quite tasty, I might add) came out of the oven, more biscuit than cake I'd have said. A couple of months later I thought I'd try another one and there, staring me in the face on the page the list of ingredients stated, as large as life, 3 eggs (not one, not 2 but THREE). Heyho ... actually I continued to make that cake for a couple of years and every time it was a great success, but now it's not safe for me to make any sort of cake as it would be 3 slices for me and one for Pauley, so I have conveniently forgotten how ...

Consequently ... rather than take a tin of shortbread to the V&H Fair as I did last time ... the above was brought to me at Dairy House today by a lovely customer who makes cakes for the Pythouse Walled Garden a couple of miles up the road. Those of you who have visited Dairy House may well have been there for coffee or lunch before or after your DH visit. Glenda very kindly agreed to make a spiced apple cake for me, brought it in today and I now have to freeze it. Will someone please remind me to take it out of the freezer on Friday evening, and put it in the car at crack of dawn on Saturday morning!! Isn't it wrapped beautifully with its spotty cellophane, raffia, alchemilla mollis leaves and gorgeous white hibiscus flower. You may need to click and enlarge to get the full effect!

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Hannah's florist needed lots of old bottles for a wedding this weekend, so I rummaged through 4 tucked away boxes I'd forgotten about, soaked them all in Oxi-clean and lined them up on the window sill. Jo now has 2 full boxes, but I kept these lovely aqua and blue ones. I can't decide whether to take them to the Fair or whether they would be better on our bathroom window sill. I have a few days to decide. What I have packed for the Fair are a number of clear bottles very similar to those that Kirstie purchased from a reclamation yard. So, if anyone wants to follow in Kirstie's footsteps, I've probably packed 20!

This lovely hexagonal quilt topper came into my possession at auction last week. It's going with me to the Fair, as are the millinery flowers below.

I'll also be taking a few Scheurer fabrics, other fabrics, haberdashery bits and pieces, vintage embroidery silks, ribbons, buttons galore, possibly eiderdowns and Welsh blankets, and anything else that I can fit in the car! Let's hope the weather is as good next Saturday as it has been today!