My sister turned 32 earlier in October and she asked me to make her birthday cake. But of course it couldn’t be any ordinary birthday cake, she requested a Hello Kitty Cake with Keroppi cupcakes.

This took a fair bit of research and design from my point of view but I came up with a couple of ideas including pink macaroons. The pink macaroons were later binned as I couldn’t get the colour right at all even though they tasted great.

Anyway, I decided to go with red velvet sponge for both the cake and cupcakes. I made the main Hello Kitty sponge about two weeks before my sister’s birthday and froze it so that it (in theory) would be easier to ice and decorate. Freezing it paid off and I will definitely do it again if I have to make any similar cakes in the future.

Hello Kitty took me about 3 hours to decorate including fixing the neck where I practically garotted her and the Keroppi cupcakes took me about 4 hours to make and decorate with some help from my sister and a bottle of wine.

The m&ms made life a little interesting. You can buy them online but the minimum order fee was £65. I would have been eating m&ms forever with that quantity. So I decided to visit the m&ms store in Leicester Square. Just a word of warning, it is 4 floors of tourist heaven (hell) with a Red m&m being chased around the store by children when I popped in! Also be prepared for the vast array of colours available to buy. I just wanted pink m&ms and was confronted with at least 6 different shades!

So here it is, all the hard work was really worth it and my sister was really chuffed:

So we headed down to Epping in the car and jumped on the tube. First stop was the British Museum to check out the Mummies and Romans (Deaghlan is a big fan at the moment), then off to London Bridge and a walk to and around the HMS Belfast. We finished the afternoon and early evening off with a wander around Southbank. Deaghlan got thoroughly soaked in the ‘Disappearing Rooms’, watched the skakeboarders and rollerbladers in action, checked out the beach huts and the roof garden before walking across the Millennium Bridge to Embankment and back again.

We had a fantastic day and to top it off, the weather was stunning.

So I’m counting the huge amount of walking as Day 2′s Juneathon contribution. I have no idea how far we walked but my feet are still killing me on the morning after. Gary still managed a 10km bike ride last night and I have no idea how!

Anyway hoping my feet recover over the day as I’m scheduled to run 6.44km tonight.

Distance: No idea but very far
Time: 10am – 7.30pm

Gary and Deaghlan decided that Mothers Day would be the ideal time to look over the bikes and check all was in order, pump up the tyres and take the bikes for a spin. So we headed out into Highwoods Country Park which we live right next door to and then onto Colchester town centre for lunch. Other than the uphill journey home, we had a very lovely morning.

Deaghlan then spent the rest of the day asking if we could cycle to school this week. I had mapped out the journey previously and it’s 2 miles from home to Deaghlan’s school and then a further 3 miles for me to get to work.

Entirely do-able you would think…… hmmmm

Not with a 7 year old boy who currently has the attention span of a goldfish whenever he is required to concentrate!

Hooning around on his bike in Highwoods Country Park – not a problem.

Using cycle paths and being aware of traffic and pedestrians – a whole other ball game.

The cycle route is relatively safe but the majority of it is shared with either vehicles or pedestrians. It is also on a bus route and a housing estate with plenty of driveways as well as people going about their daily lives.

So plenty of obstacles and potential hazards ahead, I spent a lot of time directing Deaghlan to be aware of his surroundings and making him stop. Trying to do this without putting him off getting on his bike again was very difficult. It took us 30 minutes to get to school but he went in happy. My 3 mile ride onto work took 15 minutes in comparison!

I stumbled across this blog post later in the day by BikeHub, which I found very interesting and would urge you to have a read. I’m quite happy for Deaghlan to speed off on his bike avoiding trees, low branches and tearing up and down hills. He has had his fair share of falls, scrapes and bruises but has always jumped back on his bike again. In his mind, cycling is all about having fun.

But learning to cycle the school run requires attention and discipline from him and a whole heap of patience from me. I know that I really have to educate him on the rules of the road, but the trick is trying to do that whilst keeping it entertaining and making sure we make it to school on time and in one piece!

I am beginning to think that teaching him to ride his bike was the easy part of learning this life-skill……

The first one was Gary’s twin girls who turned 7 earlier in the week, so I have recently been scouring the web looking for birthday cake ideas. I came across The Pink Whisk‘s blog sometime ago and after look through I came across her How to post on Puffle Cupcakes. Great idea I thought as the twins absolutely love Club Penguin.

It took me two solid evenings to decorate 15 Puffles and make the scenery and compared to the Pink Whisk’s instructions I cheated alot.

But I was pretty pleased with the result:

Erin and Piper really loved their birthday cake so all the hard work was worth it.

After dinner and plenty of cake was consumed, Erin, Piper and Deaghlan decided to partake in a spot of indoor snorkelling as you do!!

Indoor Snorkelling

Swimming any significant lengths with my 7 year old with you is practically impossible. He did however ensure that I had a pretty good workout, swimming for weights at the bottom of the pool and a fair amount of walking in the water whilst I helped Deaghlan improve his swimming.

So we have rewarded ourselves with cheese and crackers (plus wine for Mummy) and Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Well done to everyone finishing week 1 of Janathon