Guilty pleasure confession...

No not Johnny Robinson. How is 'you're my guilty pleasure' a compliment and why did Tulisa and Kelly keep telling him that? They were basically saying that despite that the logical decision should be to not like him, that they still did. I think I'd take offence if my boss or friends said that to me.

Anyho, back to my guilty pleasure (and in this case I do mean I shouldn't like it but I do)

I'm currently embarrassingly in love with Cher Llyod's new video for her new single, With Your Love. I'm not a closet Cher Llyod fan (she freaked me out on X Factor the other week with her weird eyes and old lady make up) but this video is shot with a beautiful vintagey tone, like it has had an Earlybird or Toaster effect put on it from Instagr.am. Plus the balloons floating through the sky are awesome (even if they've been added by a computer, I'm not sure); I wish I had more colourful balloons floating through my life.

Anyone got any embarrassing obsessions they'd like to share? This is a safe space you know. 

xXx

Heavenly Chocolate Cake

I had a play with my new marco lens whilst I was constructing the cake

I made myself a birthday cake last weekend (not quite as sad and lonely as it sounds; I'd rather have fun baking than buy one). It was a Mary Berry recipe called Heavenly Chocolate Cake and it was indeed fairly heavenly tasting, if I do say so myself, but it wasn't so heavenly to make.

It involved splitting egg yolks and whites (I can't remember ever having to do this without adult supervision but I managed it without loads of shell going in the mixture, bonus), melting chocolate and butter before mixing it with the other ingredients, and 'folding' the mixture. I know egg whites need to be folded but surely cakes are normally 'throw everything in one bowl' recipes! I ended up creating about 3 times the amount of washing up I usually do; the dishwasher was so full I even had to wash things by hand, wtf! ;)

The middle of the sponge was nice and fluffy

It was delicious in the end, especially with the addition of some M&S giant buttons (which were even gianter than your typical giant buttons!), but I'll read a recipe through next time before I embark on doing it in case it involves all sorts of trickery like this one!

Humongous buttons! 

The recipe said to cook for 50mins,
I did it for 40 and I still managed to burn the edges a tad! 

Look how close my new lens can get, you can almost taste the sponge! I'm so in love with it. 

I baked more chocolatey cakes this weekend as well (more on that later); there is a bit of a running theme when it comes to baking in my kitchen. What can I say? I was raised as a chocoholic and those habits are hard to grow out off!

xXx

Are you ready for your close up?

It was my birthday last week and I got a new macro lens for my Sony NEX 5 from my wonderful Dad as my present. I was chuffed to bits (especially as Dad was told there was a waiting list of 3 months but he managed to get it in about 3 days!) so as soon as I got home after I'd opened it I was itching to take some pictures of any super duper close up! So here are a few very random (and potentially very boring) pictures of things I found to photo nice and close...(I haven't included the one of my nose where you could see all the pores, it seemed unnecessary, for your sake)

Husband's t-shirt, I know, wow right?

Husband's jumper, even better!

Use by date of an empty 2L bottle of Diet Coke

My Ironman running watch

Don't even know what this is - some kind of writing I guess...

And finally, the end of my water bottle! 

Impressive much? OK, no. But still, look how close! My normal telephoto lens can't handle the pressure of getting this close to objects so I was pretty much blown away by the skills of my new lens. And it was late on a Friday night, there wasn't much to take pictures of in my house. 

xXx

Sunsets



I love sunsets, and especially taking pictures of sunsets.

This dusk picture is from one cycle home a few weeks ago,
when it wasn't completely dark by 5pm!

Unfortunately I'm more often found gazing wistfully at a sunset commenting that 'I wish I had my camera', than being in the right place and time ready to snap away. I love photographing them so much that when we were on honeymoon I made my lovely husband wait in Kings Canyon National Park until the sun was going down so I could get some pictures. We had to race back up the tiny little vomit-inducing winding roads to where we'd remembered there being a good look-out point to see the sun disappearing behind the mountains. He was We were driving 4 or so hours to Yosemite after that but bless him, he still waited.

I think it was worth it...

But I'm not sure he does.

We also saw a tarantula going about his evening business whilst we were watching the sun disappear. 

This was as close as I wanted to get and this is using my zoom!

Turns out once the sun goes down, national parks are kinda scary places to be in. Nightime is truly dark there.

xXx