A hectic weekend

It's been a hectic weekend, but I have done lots of lovely things! Well, I say lovely, but I'm not sure the first one was.

On Friday night Mr W picked me up from work and we went straight to the cinema to see The woman in black. I've been looking forward to this for ages - the book scared me enough to give me nightmares for several days, fortunately I was a bit less scared by the stage version. However, the film should come with a health warning - it was at least ten times more scary than the book, and I can't believe it had a 12A certificate. I'm glad to have seen it, and although I am less than convinced by Daniel Radcliffe, the settings and the atmosphere were top notch. Plenty of moments when the film made you jump as well as be absolutely chilled by it. Even Mr W admitted to being scared. Came home and we had to put all of the lights on, and sleep with all of the lights on too.

On Saturday, I went to a workshop organised by Free Cakes for Kids Oxford - a lady from the Sugarcraft Guild had volunteered to come over to spend the afternoon with us to show us various sorts of ways of writing on cakes. I learned to make a piping bag out of greaseproof paper (no more expensive ones from Lakeland for me!), and to use it to pipe royal icing with. I also learnt two different ways of making roses - bit more practice there I think! Nice to meet the rest of the volunteers.

Finally, on Sunday, Mr W and I had a masterclass with a man called David Thornton. Unless you are into brass bands, this name will mean nothing to you, but he is a virtuosi euphonium player who plays with the Black Dyke Band (my favourite band and arguably the best in the country). We are helping out another band with a competition called The Areas in mid-March (Mr W on trombone, myself on the timps), and he had been invited along to put the band through their paces. As a euphonium player myself, I couldn't decide whether I was relieved or disappointed to be playing the timps. Very useful workshop for the band and at the end he played a virtuosi solo "Grandfather's clock" which was great!

(Oh, and talking of Free Cakes for Kids, my butterfly cake that I posted a few weeks ago is their "cake of the month" and you can see their blog post with a mini interview with me here.)

Apologies if this week is quiet on the blogging front, a family member has to go to hospital for an overnight stay and I'll be on taxi and visiting duty. I also have a crazy amount of things in my work calendar to get done before I have a week off, and somehow I need to pack and leave lots of surprises for Mr W around the house.