HE DID IT!

My brilliant brilliant husband ran the 2009 london marathon yesterday. SO SO PROUD. will be back to update with all the exciting photos (I managed to just catch the back of James's neck in one photo and you can just about make him out if you really really zoom in!!). I generally failed to get any good "running shots" of him, mainly because once i spotted him it was all to quick and I was all too excited to have seen him and intent on giving him a quick "keep going" kiss. That photo's went right out the window.

He pushed on through hot hot weather to make it in 4hr 24 minutes. Amazing.

As for me I had just the best day cheering him on. I had a packed schedule to get round to 3 different cheering points with my friend Cassie and we had a 100% hit rate with spotting him at each spot, and it's thanks to cassie that I spotted him at all at point 2. Oooh it happens so quickly.

He did so well, I am bursting with pride today.

The time has come!

IT IS THE MARATHON ON SUNDAY!!!!!

woo hoo. I am really excited (I think James is starting to get more nervous than excited now!).

I think I might be quite emotional on the day, I am so proud of him doing this. It meas such a lot. It might also make me quite emotional to think that I had breast cancer and I don't ever want it to come back because then I wouldn't get to see things like James run a marathon (I don't think he should do another one for quite some time though, if ever - it's real hard work!).

Anyway, It's just amazing what we have managed to achieve on the fundraising. By my calculations we have a little money to add into the offline total and I think we may have smashed through the £3000 mark. It means so much to give this back to a charity that will be supporting others going through what I went through those 2 years ago.

Thanks so much to everyone who has so generously sponsored or eaten cake to help us get there, and if you haven't sponsored yet - there is still time. Just £5 goes such a long way to helping put people with breast cancer in touch with others going through the same thing.


Biggest Biggest Thanks You's everybody.

Standing out from the crowd.

Now that James's training runs are getting shorter again, I have been out and about with him taking some action shots. His Breast Cancer Care running vest has arrived, hopefully it will make him easy to spot on the day....



Run James, Run! I love you for it.

What to do on a Sunny Easter Sunday?

Sit inside a village hall all day :-(

That's what I did with my lovely sunny Easter Sunday. But each time those pennies fell with a clank into the collection tin I remembered that it was all worth it. I took a flask of coffee and my little pack lunch and did my best to sell my goodies.

And, I think it was a success. Well over £60 for the charity pot from my stall and I still have stock to sell at the coffee morning this Saturday so hopefully that total will keep going up. It's a big THANKS to Hannah and her Mum because without their hand-made efforts I wouldn't have had much of a stall to talk about.

Battenburg Cake.

Today I have spent my time making a Battenburg cake. Just because it's got pink in it! It's such fun (and lots of faff) to make. A valiant first attempt at a not-that-straight-forward cake I thought.

Taking Stock!

Easter Sunday will be my big-stall at the Gargrave Flea Market.

Things for this are progressing really well and I am starting to build up my very exciting stock, thanks to the generosity of some busy little friends.

Hannah has gone all out on knitting and making things to sell... tote bags (which I am secretly hoping the geometric print one doesn't sell so I can have that all for myself - but I doubt it somehow), purses, rabbit teddies, key rings and pins.



Hannah's mum has also got in on the act sending some lovely hand-made bead jewelry.



Then there are the seed cards I have to sell. These cars were donated by a work collegue and they go down a storm (they have little parcels of seeds inside the card and instructions on how to sow etc).



So a pretty full up 6ft table!

Egg-stravaganza!

Someone at work is going off on maternity leave just before Easter. As a leaving treat, she decided to leave some Easter Eggs for our floor. To make it more interesting she is raffling these off, proceeds going to my good cause. How nice is that.

Pound a strip, I've got my ticket.

I will be in charge of pulling the winners out of a hat on Wednesday.

Still baking!

Nigella vs Delia - The scones challenge!
I provided scones with jam and cream at work the other day, but with a twist! I tried out Nigella and delia recipes to see which might be best for the WI cake stall.



Scones A won!
However, as a scientist I am annoyed that I didn't make this a fair test with all the appropriate controls. I now cannot tell whether the Delia (A) won because they were the best recipe - or because they had the addition of dried fruit. I should have made the Nigella with dried fruit for a proper test.

I also made some Burn't buttermilk cupcakes, there were not mistakenly burnt - that was part of the recipe where you heat and "burn" the butter to make it taste all nutty.

ROCK ON!

The Pink (Floyd) Rock Band Party!!
Raising money for Breast Cancer Care


The Wigs make a return (His and Hers).


Top marks for getting the Breast Cancer Care colours in the outfits (Pink Legwarmers and Purple hair streaks).

And we all "Rock On!"

James's Half Marathon.

Last weekend James successfully ran the Silverstone Half Marathon.

I am so proud that his training is going well, but I am really feeling for him as I don't know how he could run the same distance all over again for the big one.

I really enjoyed the spectating though. Sitting in the grandstands, finding strategic places on the course to cheer him on and being the official race photographer. Can't wait till the London Marathon.

Dolly mixtures on parade.

Dolly mixture cupcakes netted a grand £33 for my charity. The cupcakes themselves are the work of moments to knock up, however I can spend hours (very therapeutic hours indeed) icing and decorating each little beauty. ahhhhhhhhhh.

Yikes, this could be a problem.

My scales may not be accurate!!! shock horror, this development could throw the baking into jeopardy. I am not sure if it is just today because the batteries are flashing up as "Lo", but I know they are dodgy as on measuring out 100g of apricots to go into my experimental "Runners Oaty Nut Bars" (rocket fuel for James's running), I managed to add in nearly the entire of a 250g bag of said apricots. Somethings not quite right. In true Dawn style, I decided that this would not adversely affect the process and proceeded full steam ahead. The bars are now out of the oven and cooling and only time will tell later as to whether they have come out unaffected by the inaccuracies in measurements and stay stuck together when you pick them up.



I have also decided as this blog seems to be temporarily turning into a baking blog while things are all quite on the "cancer world" front (backed up my GPs test results that came back today saying that my liver, kidney, bone markers, anemia, blood glucose and thyroid tests are all normal. The upshot of these results being that we can conclude that I am just feeble and lazy and have no underlying reason to be a bit tired!). Anyway this afternoon I am going to do the very exciting task of getting the recipes for the cakes I have done so far up on the blog.

hmmmmm... a long days work

Well, this weekend I managed to sweet talk the local lady who runs the craft stall/flea market to let me have a mini practice stall to see if things would sell. Great, I thought. However, when I turned up they were full up of stalls and managed to find me a small bench in a quite side room/corridor and I even had to go get my own table (went home and got our mini occasional coffee table) - not a great start. It didn't much pick up either. As I had laid out my wears on a bench in a corridor-esque room, I felt like a beggar sitting there asking for money as people went by. 10-3pm I sat there. £26.50 I made.

Great you say, and yes £26.50 is fab-a-roony for my charity. But for all day long, I think i may be tempted to stick the money straight in the pot myself. Especially if I had been paying the £10 fee for this privilege!

Ho Hum. On the real thing I will have a stall with pride of place in the busy main room so it should be a lot better. But I will then have to be paying for the table.... £10! I am going to have to weigh this up I think - I have the WI coffee morning the week after this stall and that might be a better place to concentrate my wears. What did go down well was the Seed Cards my friend from work has donated for me. They are great. They have little packets of seeds as part of the card and the picture on the front is what they grow into ... "cards to grow". The little old dears loved them!

Oh well, for the time being I will carry on.

On a Happier note - we have made it past the 50% mark in our fundraising total. You don't know how much I appreciate all the donations that are coming in and the sponsorship for James. Even more so as I don't think I could bake my way to the total all by myself. Thanks. (and don't worry, I won't stop making cakes just cos you sponsored... that will continue till the WI day.)

Cappuccino cupcakes

These are supposed to look like little chocolate dusted cappuccinos. Tasted quite nice, but probably not my favorite of the recent cakes though (the carrot cakes.. or maybe the chocolate espressos are... but then again I can eat my way through a lot of the gingerbread - I may need to make them all over again to make that final decision).

Another year, another MOT passed.

Yesterday was my annual check-up appointment at the Breast clinic. This went smoothly enough. James and I went in together and after the usual hours wait for these things, we were in to see a very nice lady doc.

She first told me that my mammogram showed no obvious changes from last year, which is good. She told me my kidney and liver function tests were normal, which is good.

She gave me a jolly good examination... prod, prod, prod, no slippery little lump was going to evade her probing, which was good.

She asked how I was feeling........ now I did try and avoid giving a list as long as my arm of my woes, but then the point of these check-up is just that, to check whether anything's up. So after telling her about a few of my continued tiredness issues (which could just be my natural feebleness now!) and some achy-ness I had been getting in the bottom of my back, and the little lump in my neck that was still there.... I stopped. Neither of us was particularly worried by any of these symptoms (not even symptoms really) but she did put me on a 3 month check-up, just to see how I am feeling again then.

But generally, I think I have passed the MOT with flying colours. What's more it is now my day off and I am going to do some more baking. I think I am doing well on the whole baking challenge. I have to confess to not taking out my "expenses" from this total that I keep totting up. Not that I am planning to either.... but I suppose I should work out what I am making for the charity over and above what I could have just thrown into the collection tin myself. But, I don't think that is the point and I can't bring myself to work it out either! I enjoy the baking and I have wanted to try out all these recipes but couldn't face eating all the cakes myself, so what better opportunity. So today I am going to have a go at the cappuccino cupcakes. This weekend we have friends to visit and so Baileys muffins are on the cards for a bit of baking "just for ourselves".

Please don't snow!

I have a baking craving hitting me, and not wanting this crave to also hit my waistline, I really would like to be able to get into work tomorrow so I can experiment with the Cappuccino cupcakes and Espresso cupcakes this afternoon and have people around to eat them for me.

I will report on how they go later on!

And here they are... well the Espresso cupcakes at least. As the snow started to fall Sunday evening I wimped out on making a second batch of cappuccino ones to go with them (I can make those later in the week now).



I think they went down well again and had all gone by mid morning.

phew, luckily I didn't bake!

Well, it's a good job I decided to have a week off my baking challenge. Otherwise I would have been chomping my way through 20-40 (depending on how carried away I got) cupcakes because I haven't been able to get into work today due to snow.

So, I have been working from home and I have enjoyed having some time to really get stuck into some thinking for work. Although, I have found half an hour to bake myself a small helping of some chocolate based cake refreshment. I had to - otherwise I might have gone and punched the boy next door. Teenage boy, loud thumping music and trying to concentrate do not go together well. I am much calmer again now and settling down with tea and cake to work some more.

It is also lucky that this cake was "just for me" as being an eager beaver and not being able to wait to get into that chocolate cakey goodness I tried to turn it out of the cake tin too early and left half of it behind. It's not even fit for a picture.

Gingerbread with Lemon Icing

Thursday saw me taking Gingerbread with Lemon Icing in along with my collection tin. I split these between both Level 8 (where I am now) and Level 6 (where I used to be). They went down well and got me another £25 in donations! Hoorah. I put some little pink ribbons on them again (the featured cake in the picture is one of the last ones I had left to grab a quick snap of, the pink ribbon ones all got snapped up).

I think opinion is split over the favorite between Carrot Cake and Gingerbread.

I might have a quiet week on the baking front this week. And return with a vengence the following one. It's really hard not to get over excited and try out every recipe on my work collegues - perhaps the scientist in me should plot out the average weight of participants in the cake challenge before and after I have exhausted cake possibilities.

One thing is certain "Nigella: How to be a domestic goddess" is getting it's fair share of use. I love that book!

My First Pennies!

I have raised my first 20 pounds for Breast Cancer Care! I am so chuffed.

My Carrot cakes went down a storm on Monday, flying off the shelves by 11:30 in the morning. I had some very positive comments, 2 requests for the recipie and many dissapointed faces when I came in empty handed the next day.

Therefore, spurred on by this sucess I knocked up a new batch of Chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing and bought them into work to take to my old department (I have moved levels at work) to taste test on them. These went down equally as well. What's more when I counted up the pennies in my collection tin and worked out what I was getting per cake (market research on pricing you see), despite being different cakes and different groups of people the average pence per cupcake was exactly the same to the nearest penny. Incredible! and I can report it was a very generous amount of pence at that.

I have also had some really enthusiastic feedback about my fundraising and offers of things for my stall and help with the fundraising effort. I am quite touched. I think the bringing cakes to work has plenty of legs in it still and so for the next few weeks I have my little baking projects to focuss on.

Ballons, badges and cupcakes.

My Parcel of goodies arrived on Friday. It contains pink balloons and a Breast Cancer Care banner along with some pink ribbon pins and a collection tin. I am ready to fundraise!


I have also had another bash at cupcakes.



Todays attempt is carrot cake with a cream cheese icing and little rolled-and-cut-out icing ribbons. I am much happier with how they are starting to look and after making 20 I am starting to see which ones look the best. I need to perfect how to get enough mixture in the case to give a nice big cake but without them growing like volcanoes in the middle. Some of them I chopped off (and greedily ate) the peaks in the middle so I could ice them flat, others I just left nice and big. I am going to take them in and try them out at work and so will be interested to see which go down the best.... do I go for visual perfection or rough and ready!



I also went and did " Market Research Part 2". I went along to Gargrave Flea Market in the village hall to see if I should hold a stall there. I think it could work. I have to pay a small fee to rent a table but they said they had around 300 people walk through the door on a good week, with Easter Sunday which I am planning for usually doing very well. They have craft stalls and general bric-a-brac so my ideas could fit in nicely. I sussed out that the village hall sells slices of cake for 60p (quite small peices too) but they wouldn't mind me doing a cake stall for charity.

Practice makes perfect!

hmmmmm... I think I am going to need to practice my cupcake baking skills.

On Wednesday I made a victoria sponge and some cupcakes. After a very successful first attempt the previous week (with free range eggs that my mum's chickens had laid), this week my cake was a bit of a flop. To make matters worse I sent it into work with James to share round. Doh! oh well not much of it came home so I guess it couldn't have tasted that bad.



I have had a first bash at the icing of cupcakes (I only made a handful of cakes). This needs a lot of perfecting and I am going to look into rolling out thick icing to loop over into pink ribbons rather than icing them. But as this is the first time I have really ever iced anything you have to start somewhere.

However, it has convinced me that I need to practice this skill. Especially if I am to be making them for the WI!

I have decided that my work collegues would be excellent candidates as taste testers over the coming weeks. Plus if I leave some in the kitchens at work with a collection tin and a note about my fundraising it will start to get the word out. Killing two birds with one stone.

I have contacted Breast Cancer Care and I have a fundraising pack coming to me which I am quite excitedly awaiting the arrival of. This will contain collections tins, banners, balloons, posters and pins. Everything a budding fundraiser could need.

I have also got a second event lined up in the next village. I can have a stall on Easter weekend at Gargrave flea market. Woo hoo! I am therefore going to be going to do "Market Research Phase 2" on Sunday to check out what goes on at these events and whether I will be able to make some money for the charity this way (I would have to hire this table for a small fee).

Feeling the pinch.

Owch..... my 2nd annual mammogram is now complete. I went earlier this week to get "evil" and "good" boob squeezed into impossible shapes no breast should be squeezed into. Just when you think the nurse can contract 2 plates together no further... oh, there you go a little tighter still. Combine that with needing to stand with your feet here, face your body here, relax you shoulder here and hold the other boob out of the way (;-D) here. All in all it's a bit of a giggle!

I go into clinic in a couple of weeks to find out the results.

Market Research

This morning I have been out doing some market research and schmoozing with the coffee morning crowd. It's been a very productive morning and I am all fired up and excited.

Last week I contacted the lady who organizes the village coffee mornings..... who contacted a lady from the WI who would be running a coffee morning in April..... who put it before the WI committee.... who decided to let me have a stall at their fundraiser coffee morning. Woo Hoo!

So I am going to be able to do a special Breast Cancer Care cake stall (I am thinking pink ribbon cupcakes and pink ribbon cookies). I had quite a great response from all the ladies I chatted to. I spoke to the lady on the cake stall to find out the best sellers and prices. I chatted to the lady on the hand-made card stall, who offered to make some cards for me to put out on my stall to sell too.

So step 1 has been taken and now I have to refine my stall ideas.

That time of year again.

My annual mammogram and check up appointments have arrived. So I will have to be popping in and out of work a couple of times over the next few weeks to go to these. Hopefully they should all be pretty straight forward; I am not expecting any nasty shocks - but then no-one ever does I guess.

Work is going really well. I am still doing 4 days a week, with Wednesday as my day-off. I am actually pushing myself quite hard and doing quite long days which actually feel really good and I am feeling really motivated about it all.

I am also getting back into exercising. What with the cruise and then Christmas it has all fallen by the wayside. But I am going to try to get out walking most days with some swims and Pilates thrown in for good measure. Saturday's should start working out really well. I can drop James off by the canal in Gargrave for his long training runs and then go off to the swimming pool to be finished for when James runs to meet me in Skipton. I am working myself up to getting back on the bike alongside him (I might have to look at alternative routes other than the canal for this first).

Happy New Year!

Well, it's 2009 now so I had better get started on my new fundraising challenge for this year.

The first steps have been taken. James has started his training and this morning he went for a long-ish training run along the canal. I went too, only this time I was simply a spectator and was in charge of taking a photo of him "in training" so he could set up a a running blog and a fundraising JustGiving site (links to the left).

Now I have to start thinking about the other part of our challenge; fundraising parties and other things. I have a few ideas in mind to start researching and throwing myself into for the new year. James and I are going to throw a big party (pink theme and date to be announced shortly). I quite like the idea of organising some kind of small-ish pink champagne and pampering event. Also, after the success of my macmillan cake making frenzie last year, I have made a contact in the local village coffee morning organising committe and I am thinking a mammoth pink cup-cake baking effort could be on the cards. So first things first I will have to take myself off to a coffee morning one Saturday and find out how these things work. I am also going to get in touch with breast cancer care to get some pink fundraising accessories and collection tins to complement any events I might do.

So I plan to put my best foot forward alongside James and match his effort in this fundraising work.