Hen Party 1: 4 days to go

The preparations for Bride 1's hen party have hit fever pitch. With the Chief Bridesmaid en route from New Zealand the majority of the work has fallen to us lesser mortal bridesmaids. My week is shaping up to look like this:

Monday

• Job interview for really good job that I'd love

Tuesday

• Get up early to buy tax for car which ran out two days previously
• Pick up parcels from Post Office (for hen party 3)
• Go to two different supermarkets to buy ingredients for baking for hen party
• Get bridesmaid dress fitted 
• Go to different shopping centre to try on potential dress for Wedding 2
• Learn how to make meringue
• Practice baking for the hen party

Wednesday

• Make up mix CDs of cheerful songs to play at the hen party
• Finish sorting out my room and do laundry

Thursday

• Bake butterfly cookie lollies for the hen party bags
• Bake mini chocolate cupcakes
• Fill party bag with goodies for the hens

Friday

• Prepare mini lemon meringue and strawberry cheesecake pies
• Decorate butterfly cookies
• Ice cupcakes
• Buy helium balloons
• Drive to Rugby with baked goods and balloons safely in the boot
• Distract Bride whilst we sneak surprise mystery guest into her house (her sister who is chief bridesmaid and supposed to be travelling in Asia on her way home from living in New Zealand for the last two years)
• Bridesmaid sleepover
• Freak out because I haven't heard about the perfect job yet

Saturday

• Get up at the crack of dawn
• Drive 4 complete strangers to the canal
• Have a lesson in driving a narrowboat
• Decorate said narrowboat with balloons and banners
• Drive narrowboat for 3 hours to the nearest pub for lunch whilst the hens drink pink fizz and eat cupcakes
• Drive narrowboat back again
• Drive 4 not-so-strangers back to Bride's house
• Cook BBQ and mix cocktails for the hens
• Be a gracious hostess (ie try not to get drunk and embarrass self in front of new friends or fall asleep in the corner)
• Wrap Bride in toilet paper wedding dress
• Play other cringingly embarrassing hen party games that I am yet to research
• Wash up and generally clean up
• Collapse into bed (hopefully!)

Sunday

• Bridesmaid day of fun (yet to be determined fun)
• Drive home again

Shouldn't be too hard or much work, right?! What could possibly go wrong?? Well I was thinking about this in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep before the job interview and wrote a little list:

1. Bride thinks it's all a lame idea, hates it and is disappointed
2. Mystery guest surprise goes all wrong or someone lets the cat out of the bag
3. Hens don't get on and are stuck on a very small boat for six hours of awkwardness
4. Boat crashes or sinks or refuses to move
5. We balls up the locks and have to get rescued, and end up looking ridiculous
6. Canal is ugly, boat is horrid and pub is non-existent
7. All the baking gets destroyed in the car or is just generally vile
8. Being unable to drink all day because of driving duties will make me very in need of a drink by the time we get back to the Bride's house and I get sloshed whilst cooking the BBQ and embarrass the Bride who promptly disowns me
9. So tired from all mad preparations, sleepless nights of worrying, getting up early and rushing around like a blue arse fly that there will be no energy left for small talk - will be miserable antisocial cow with eyebags the size of shopping trolleys and will probably cry
10. We give all the guests food poisoning with the BBQ food

Surprisingly enough writing this list didn't cure the insomnia, I expect it made it worse! To top it off I had a chat with my bridesmaid counterpart who will be joining me in this list of joy, she has chewed off all her fingernails. We make quite a pair but at least we're in it together! 

If I survive this weekend I will be giving a full report next week!

Another worrying realisation...

Last night I fulfilled my grand-daughterly duties and stayed in for dinner with my beloved grandparents. Dinner with them can be a bit of a minefield at the best of times (best of times = having siblings plus their other halves as backup), trying to dodge the jellyfish comments takes an awful lot of energy or an awful lot of wine (particular favourite, Grandma circa 2001: "you don't really have the complexion to pull off dark hair" not so much jelly fish as electric eel!) Anyway last night we got round to talking about next year and what a big one it is; the schedule of celebrations goes like this:

• Mum and Dad's 35th wedding anniversary
• Grandma and Grandad's 60th wedding anniversary (quite how they've put up with each other for that long I'll never know!)
• Sister's wedding
• Great Aunt and Uncle's 40th wedding anniversary
• My 30th birthday

Wait a minute...did I say my 30th birthday?!?!?! I'M GOING TO BE 30 NEXT YEAR. Cue severe depression. Now, I have never been very good at dealing with my birthday, the awkward moments of opening presents in front of people and having to feign sheer delight at the contents, the cringingly embarrassing singing of happy birthday whilst everyone looks at you, the endless photos that you have to be centre of....etc etc. All in all I'm just not very good at being the centre of attention and I hate it! Also there's the awful knowledge that for another year, no progress has been made whatsoever in my sad pathetic life. 

Last year, for my 28th, I decided that the only way to deal with the impending doom of being another year older and no further on with becoming a grown up was to run away to the middle of the desert with Kirsti and to watch sunrise over Uluru. This was a desperate attempt to feel insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe, my birthday wouldn't matter compared to such ancient history and cultural wonderment. Hmmmmm can't say it worked really. I still turned 28, I just had to get up at 4:30 after sleeping in a freezing cold tent and then tramp around the surprisingly humid desert (stupid La Nina ruining the weather!) without having washed my hair. With the power of hindsight I can perhaps say that it wasn't my most brilliant plan. Still I got to see Uluru, which was fairly spectacular, I wasn't at work, I had a birthday curry and I didn't get homesick because I couldn't ring home with no signal in the middle of the desert. Result! I actually had a really good time and it's certainly one to tell the grandchildren that I'll never have (no jellyfishing from this imaginary Granny!) 

So my plan for dealing with the big Three O...well I reckon there are three options:

1. Pretend that it's not happening and hope that it'll go away by perhaps staying in with a bottle of wine and some chocolate in my pyjamas singing "All By Myself" Bridget stylee; or
2. Run off on holiday to somewhere fantastic, drink pina coladas on the beach and flirt with inappropriate backpackers and/or diving instructors; or
3. Stick two fingers up to 30 by throwing a massive party, insisting everyone brings a single man with them and having a wonderful drunken time singing along to "I need a Hero" at the top of my voice with all the people I love most in the world

I'm kind of liking option number 3, if I start planning it now with 16 months to go I might be over it by the time  it arrives. It's certainly overshadowing the impending doom of turning 29 in three and a half months (who's counting?!) which in it's self is excellent news! And how will I be celebrating this year? I'm going to someone else's hen weekend of course *rolls eyes*

Domestic goddess-ing

So today I took a leaf out of Kirsti’s book and decided to do a bit of baking. I’ve been helping out the lovely folks at my old office (for my sins) mostly as a way of catching up and having a good gossip. Ever since I got back, my ex-colleague Jordane has been bugging me to bake her cupcakes. Tomorrow I’m going in to deal with a massive mailout and taking these with me: 

Hopefully yumptious marshmallow cupcakes

From the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, they are ordinary vanilla sponge fairy cakes but you melt some marshmallows in a bowl over some hot water, pink ones of course, scoop out a bit of the cake fill it with the melted marshmallow and then ice with buttercream icing mixed with mini-marshmallows. Turns out that it’s easier said than done to get melted marshmallow to behave itself in any way, shape or form. I ended up covered in sticky pink mess along with every item of cutlery in the kitchen and there wasn’t much marshmallow inside the cakes at all! 

Melted marshmallow

Big sticky spidery marshmallow mess!

The long and short of it is that I was planning on making these for Bride 1’s hen party but considering the mess they made, I may have to come up with another wee plan! Suggestions on a postcard please....

A progress report

The last few weeks have been a total blur of catching up with people, gadding about the country generally having a marvellous time. New houses have been visited, babies cooed over, engagement rings admired, fiancés met, vast amounts of BBQ/picnic/pub food and cider/Pimms/bubbly have been consumed, all helped out by the unseasonably beautiful weather that we have been blessed with over here. I’ve even celebrated Easter Christmas (a new family tradition that involves Christmas dinner on Easter Sunday complete with crackers and decorations because I missed real Christmas last year!) and been on a living room safari camping trip with my godson, George.

It hasn’t all been fun and games though, I have also put some serious hours into planning hen parties for weddings 1 and 3 as well as trying on 30+ bridesmaid dresses. The good news is that we have chosen a dress (well a skirt and top) for wedding 3 and they’ve been ordered, (and not in size 18s either! Hoorah!) and are well on the way to having a most excellent hen party for Bride 1. I’m 10 days into a 2 week kick start diet and have lost 5 pounds already, which unfortunately means that eating no chocolate or cake really does pay off and it’s not just a vicious rumour circulated to make women feel guilty and miserable.

Is it any wonder that job hunting has taken a back seat when there’s so much fun to be had? or that I’m no further along with my moving to London plan? In fact I’m beginning to go off that idea...