5 Reasons Why Baking Pretty Much Sums Up Life!

The time as I look at the clock right now is 6:10am and  I have already been up a while. I am sat in my bed with my first coffee of the day - black, because I need all the caffeine I can get at this time of the morning and on this little sleep (let's block those Adenosine receptors) and slightly frothy thanks to the beautiful invention that is my coffee frother. As I sit here, I am contemplating yesterday's antics. I accidentally spent 8 hours baking.

Firstly, you may wonder what kind of person gets up and immediately starts thinking about cake. Well, that would be me, because cake it awesome... and also, coffee goes perfectly with cake - just not at 6am. Secondly, you may wonder how you 'accidentally' spend 8 hours baking. In summary, what was intended to take a few hours to make two big cakes, a reasonable size batch of cupcakes and experiment with making some mini cheesecakes for the first time took a little bit longer than expected. But this has just got me thinking about how baking (and cakes) is essentially just life life. Sometimes (like in the instance of yesterday) you go off course and thinking turn out differently or take longer than expected, but you always seem to get there in the end. So here's a few reasons why baking pretty much sums up life (featuring a pretty picture of my BIG baking session yesterday)!

From left to right: Red velvet cake, mini cheesecakes, white chocolate chip cupcakes. chocolate fudge cake, vanilla cupcakes with chocolate fudge icing.

1) Life is not just one, simple thing. It is many things. Just like how a cake is sugar, flour, egg and more. It is more than one simple element. Some of these elements you may like more than others (of course we would all rather eat a bag of sugar than an egg - unless it's nice, and poached, and on toast... mmm). However, sometimes, when all the different elements come together in the right quantities, they create something beautiful - so embrace all the elements or ingredients of life!

Red velvet cake with extra colour!

2) You have got to mix it up! You cannot just leave the ingredients sat there in the bowl, the eggs un-whisked, the mix un-stirred. Mix it up every once in a while - because that's what you're suppose to do. Or you will sit there and stay the same and never create anything beautiful. 

Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate fudge icing (and lots of smarties and colour)!

3) You will rise... and sometimes you will fall. There is nothing more satisfying than sitting like a small excited child, right next to the oven door, and watching your cake double in size, while it's beautiful odours fill the kitchen as if you were in Hansel and Gretel's bakery. And watching your cake rise comes with a feeling of accomplishment, success. We all love to rise and be our best - and rightly so! But sometimes, like the occasional cake, we will fall. We won't rise. It is impossible to have a 100% success rate and that's ok. Sometimes you won't have done anything wrong, or you'll make a minor error, forget a vital ingredient, skip a step, and things won't work out - but that's ok. It happens. You'll rise next time!

Chocolate fudge flower cake.

4) Things do not always go as planned or expected. Sometimes a 3 hour baking sessions takes nearly three times as long. Sometimes you made more cake mix than expected so, rather than throwing it away, you decide to make twice as many cakes. Sometimes the buttercream won't co-operate but you are going to stand there until it does anyway... and suddenly a whole day has done by and your kitchen is obliterated and you cannot feel you fingers anymore (it wasn't all bad... honestly)! In life, we go off course. We set our sights on something and sometimes it takes twice as long. Sometimes we cannot make something work, no matter how hard we try. Sometimes we see a picture or we have one in mind, and no matter what we do, we cannot make things match this image that we have. We make messess... we clean them up. Things go wrong... we work to fix them. Things take time... we make time. We encounter minor hiccups or big obstacles... so we try climb on over them. Things won't always go our way... but sometimes they do... and then it's incredible!

Mini cheesecakes (which turned out pretty well, for a kitchen experiment).

5) It is not always pretty, but it's still cake... I mean life. I hate to say it, but sometimes when it isn't pretty and it's all going wrong, that's 'just life'. And even when the cake is sat there on the side, undecorated, slightly at an angle, missing a chunk because you got ravenously hungy and the heavenly fragrances of your homely bakery just got too much - it's STILL cake! So, when you think about it, even when it is not perfect, it's still a cake - and cake is NEVER bad (all cakes are beautiful!!!). So let's apply that to life. Even when life isn't perfect, it's still not that bad. 

Just a couple of cakes.

Keep on persevering and creating! 

Notebook: All of these cakes were made to support a fundraiser for Macmillan. Every September they run a coffee morning fundraiser. We are doing ours slightly early this year in memory of a lovely colleague and friend we recently lost at work. So, to anyone who is not already doing the event, get involved, get creative. Get out your ingredients and make those cakes. No matter how small, tall, wonky, chunky or funky. Bake, bake, bake. 1) It's for a great cause. 2) It is more than acceptable to eat 20+ cupcakes for a great cause. 3) It's SEPTEMBER (hello autumn), so goodbye Summer bodies... we're all going to need that winter layer... CAKE, CAKE, CAKE!

10 Things I Learned in Bali

Ok, so I have accidentally been a little bit slower than I intended in starting my blog. Sometimes life just decides you are just going to be really, frantically busy for a while. So let's rewind...

One month ago today I completed my final voluntary project in Bali, Indonesia. I spent a month working abroad where I helped with mental health, special needs and English teaching. The experience was absolutely incredible and saying that it ended a month ago seems surreal. However, even though the trip experience may have ended, I have memories to last me a life time, and that's what I want to discuss today. So, out in the beautiful island of Bali, with people I had never met prior to my trip, approximately 7,800 miles from home and out of my comfort zone, here are some of the thing that I learned. 

1) Do things that give you life long memories! All the hard-work, the graft and the occasional bad stuff, that may not be a nice feeling right now but that's temporary and feelings cannot last forever. Memories, however, can. So go and completely immerse yourself. Somewhere, anywhere, or into something, anything.For me, all the hard-work that had gone into being able to volunteer abroad was more than justified when I watched the smiles of the local children I played games with in the street or as I looked up to the trees of the jungle from my water raft. There are some moments your life that are truly special and surreal - but to acquire them you need to put yourself out there!

2) One person CAN make a difference. What does it matter if it is on a small scale or a large scale? Happiness is completing a project and seeing a child smile, or press your hand to their forehead as a sign of respect. I don't think I have ever felt a greater sense of purpose in my life, so far, as when I completed a project out there and felt I had made an impact on someone's life, or even somebody's day. Even beyond this, I met some incredible people on my trip and we were their a long time together, all far from home. Friendships and bonds were as inevitable as the hard times that was occasionally experiences. What makes a difference to these hard-times if the things one person does for another, or says to another. One person CAN makes a difference. They can positively impact upon another person, who in turn can make a difference to somebody else and suddenly you have this beautiful chain reaction.

3) Be flexible! Try something new! You might not love it, but at least you will have tried it. Trying something at least gives you an opinion on it, a new view. And experiences and like experiments, they come to be a source of knowledge to. Bali meant being flexible everyday. From my daily routine, to the things I tried to eat, to everything I did and saw.  Adaptation is a powerful skill. P.S - things that are more flexible are less likely to break, they merely bend and bounce back instead.

4) BE YOURSELF! And be whatever version of yourself you feel like being that day, because we all have more than one version of ourselves, play more than one role. Life is too short to waste time trying to exhaust yourself by playing the role of someone you are not. 

5) Give - but it's ok to take too. A very smart lady in Bali told me that "People call each other selfish like it's an insult, but it is not always selfish to put oneself first, it's good for you sometimes and healthy. We should not be afraid or insulted to be called selfish". She made a very good point. By no means do I think you should spend all 24 hours of the day thinking of yourself and only yourself, but it's ok to thing of yourself sometimes too. To put oneself's first and close others a very close second, because ultimate, you have to live for you. To give a little and to take a little is fair, it is balances, like scales... and good balance stops you from falling. So give, give, give. So out there and make a difference. But treat yourself too, allow yourself a little something back. Share and care but take, make and create!

6) Some people in life give and forgive, some people will get and forget. This is not unalike point 5. A lot has gone on in my person life the last 6 months and I think I have spent a lot of time upset with people who have let me down, especially the people I felt I had given so much to in the past. However, and as much as I loathe this expression, 'that's the way life is' sometimes. Some people just get and forget. But you should aspire to rise above this. Keep on giving and forgiving. It can be easy to get caught up and become resentful of other peoples wrong-doings. We all have 'what's the point' or 'who would do the same for me?' moments, but work past these. It's good to be an above average person! Keep on giving - be it your resources, knowledge or time. And forgive those who don't do the same, you never know what you might teach them along the way.

7) The world is a big and beautiful place, but you have to keep your eyes, your mind and your heart open to see it. The world IS an incredible place. The more channels you keep open, the more of it you can let it. See it with your eyes because it is beautiful. Open your mind because the world is full of differences and they are exciting and we can learn from them. Keep your heart open too - that's what helps intertwine the moments and memories with the feelings. 

8) BE BRAVE! Sometimes we want to do things, and we don't for silly reasons. This speak true of the younger version of myself so, so much. As a young, shy girl in class I recall wanting to answer the question but being too afraid to put my hand up. sometimes we want to say something, and speak up, but the words just won't come. Or we want to do something but we fear the consequences. I think that sometimes we crave to be brave. It's as if we are standing on the edge of a cliff, wanting to jump and experience the free fall, but we are standing, waiting for someone to push us because we cannot quite take the leap of faith ourselves. Sometimes we have to just DO IT, be brave - or regret it all the way to be brave. Here's what I found - it gets easier each time too. The more times you step out of your comfort zone, the more it actually stops being 'out of' your comfort zone and starts becoming a commonplace. SO BE BRAVE! 

9) The biggest journey you will ever have is your own life. Cliche, I know! It's all be said before, but it's true. But on all great journeys you make discoveries and the greatest discovery you will ever make is yourself! So enjoy your journey! 

10) Always be open to friendship. I have decided that friendship is one of the most beautiful things that was are blessed to experience in our lifetimes. Some friendships may be lifelong, while other friendships may just contribute to lifelong memories. And both is fine because both enrich you in some way. I met a lot of incredible people in Bali and I feel so incredibly humbled and blessed to have had this opportunity. You should always be open to a new friendship, there's no such thing as too many. A month later I still talk to some of these amazing people everyday, while others I speak to on rare occasions - and this probably resounds for many people with their friends in their everyday life. Both is fine. Friends, when absent, stay in our thoughts, our memories and our hearts and they are a big, big part of both who we are and are experiences. So makes lots, have lots - because this means lots of experiences and lots of extra elements to ourselves. Friendship is partly such as incredible thing because of how it can both blossom and survive in any conditions!

Beginning to Blog

As a child, almost every birthday and every Christmas I would be given some form of new diary / journal / notepad. These blank books were probably some of my favourite gifts ever and in the weeks and months that would follow, I would fill those miniature books with all of the ramblings that came straight from the mind of the younger version of myself. Blank pages became stories and secrets, moments and memories, and with a little amount of time, an empty journal evolved into a small novel.

I always adored this process as a young girl. Just watching my words fill page after page, recording my thoughts and feelings somewhere safe, so that once they had passed with the moment that they existed within, there was still some evidence of them left behind. I always hoped that one day I would fill one of my journals with an incredible story, that I would have some extraordinary tale to tell. So I would wait and wonder when I would document this epic story. However, what has occurred to me since those days, is that if you still and wait for the events to unfold, what you have is an ending and you have omitted the story. Life's big moments are built on the foundations of all the smaller stepping stone moments.

There are many things we forget about our childhood, sometimes we choose to forget, sometimes we forget accidentally. It is quite easily to grow and to forget the things that brought happiness to your youth. I had forgotten my love of writing and story telling until a short while ago.

On my 20th Birthday, my best friend had me feeling like the 8 year old version of myself again when she gave me an empty journal as a gift. Just like the littler version of myself, I felt the same feelings of excitement over the gift and the same anticipation about what stories and words that journal would come to hold in due time.

So recently, this journal, travelled more than 7,000 miles around the world with me and fulfilled its purpose of becoming the official document of all the ramblings that came straight from the mind of the present version of myself. And every time I wrote an entry in that book, I felt that same youthful enjoyment I did for all those years as a child. I enjoyed all the time I spent processing my thoughts as I transferred them from my brain to my book, I adored playing with words as if they were a construction toy and I was building and creating something exciting and new. It was like falling in love for a second time.

Since I have completed this journal I have bought more to continue to write and fill, but it has also inspired me to take the plunge and begin blogging. I have always had this conception that to be able to blog you need to be an extremely interesting person, who lives an exotic lifestyle and is immensely fascinating and appealing to all other human beings. That may well be true in some instances. But, I am hoping, you can also be a relatively good, or at least moderately interesting, at blogging if you have an original thought and an inspiring story, or little stories, to tell.

So here goes nothing. Welcome to my blog...