Picnic at Mount Stewart

As a birthday treat George and I went out to Mount Stewart for a picnic with our friends Kerry and Felix. It was a gorgeous sunny day, the first proper day here you could sit outside in short sleeves.  It was even quite warm in the shade.

We went for a bit of a walk after eating lots of lovely food.. My favourite thing about our buggy is that I can fit my wicker picnic basket underneath it!

and were accosted by some very loud and nosey ducks!

They got really close!  I suspect they maybe wanted some of our picnic!

The National Trust have recently bought more land around the estate and have open up some bits that I hadn't been in before.  This was the dairy which leads of a walled garden.

There were some beautiful tiles on the walls.

I think this was a rather ornate old fridge.

This is the walled garden, it is pretty derelict at the moment, I'm not sure if they have plans to reinstate it.

I loved this cheerful, if slightly grubby door!

My first sighting of a bluebell this year!

Views of the lake.

We managed to get a quick peek round the downstairs of the house which has been newly renovated but we didn't get a look upstairs so I will have to go back another day.

Two parties in one day....

On Saturday I experienced my first ever surprise party! My sister organised a surprise baby shower for me and my friend Kerry.  I honestly wouldn't have believed that they all could have pulled the wool over my eyes so completely but they were very sneaky and I didn't have a clue until we pulled up at my house and there were lots of cars outside and balloons at the door!

It was great fun although it took my a while to get over the shock!

There was lovely bunting made from old book pages.

Our Mexican bunting was still up (I had wondered why when I suggested taking it down both Dee and my mum said why not keep it up!)

Lovely marbled balloons (from the pound shop of all places!)

Me and Kerry the mums to be.

There were baby themed party games including guess the flavour of baby food - which I am demonstrating above and sniff the nappy and guess its contents which my mum looks mightily surprised at here! (they ranged from pesto to nutella and I can tell you what would normally be perfectly tasty took on a whole other dimension in a nappy context!)

All the guests had a go at decorating some baby vests.  They were very cute indeed.

The house is now filled with lovely flowers and feeling positively spring like.

As I was completely unaware that this party was on the cards I had also organised a birthday party for Dee that evening.  After all the excitement of earlier, I didn't take many photos that night but I was rather proud of the cake I made (4 layer salted caramel and chocolate) so here are some photos of it!

It was iced with a chocolate ganache and I sprayed it with edible gold spray paint.

The layers were from the bottom up... vanilla, caramel, chocolate caramel and chocolate all sandwiched together with salted caramel.  It was very yummy even if I say so myself.  You can find the recipe here.

It was certainly a party filled day and I was knackered by the end of it but I wouldn't change it for one minute (although I may have put more make up on before I left the house, as well as made the bed and cleaned the bathroom had I known so many people were going to be in the house!)