Our Easter weekend

I know it's a bit late but happy Easter to ya'll. Did the Easter Bunny visit?

Mr C and I were both off Good Friday and Easter Monday so we had a really lovely long break. We didn't get up to much on the Friday, in fact we had a lazy start, which is always nice, we pottered around the house in the morning and as the weather was good we did the obligatory stroll to the pub in the afternoon! Be rude not to right?

The gorgeous olive tree against the blue sky made being down at the local feel rather Mediterranean.

We were hosting a dinner party on the Saturday night and spent all of the day prepping food! I'm certainly not a good cook, basic I'd call it, but Nick and I do like to go all out when we're entertaining. In fact I don't know what came over me on Saturday, I went all Delia!!! And Nick turned into Paul Hollywood baking his own bread! I started off making my white chocolate and mascarpone tarts whilst Nick was kneading away on the other side of the kitchen.

Ta Dah!

Watch out Paul is all I can say, the bread was totally delicious. Red onion and balsamic vinegar rolls and garlic and rosemary focaccia, heavenly. Now although Nick normally makes his bread from scratch, and by hand, no bread maker in sight, this time he picked up a James Martin bread mix which was the flour, yeast and herbs all in one, which was great, as we didn't 'knead' to get individual ingredients. It's not cheating before you say it, as you've still got to put in all the hard work, mixing, kneading, proving and baking. Phew, I got a sweat on just watching him kneading it for 10 minutes at at time. Don't worry people I caught the sweat drips off the end of his nose before they dropped into the dough! The mixes are on offer at the moment. Click here to see the ones we bought. Oh, and by the way I couldn't resist a little nibble on a tart. It is VERY important to do a taste test before you serve to guests!!! So just you remember that ok.

I then moved on to making the batter for my chocolate fondants, and chilled ready for cooking later. 

Why stop there I thought, I was on a roll, so, as I was baking anyway with ingredients scattered around the kitchen, flour everywhere (why does it get literally everywhere?) I made some cupcakes!

I love to go all out on the laying the table too. I'm a total perfectionist so everything has to be just so, even to the point of getting down to eye level and making sure the place mats all line up. Anal I know but has to done.

Check out the pictures of my beautiful table.

   

We even prepared a menu for our guests!

Not quite sure what's going on here, is Rob in pain?

A brilliant night was had by all and we kicked the last ones out just after 2am. Bit of a sore head in the morning mind you.

After a (very) slow start Sunday morning we knew we wouldn't be up do doing much so in the afternoon popped along to the East Midlands Designer Outlet village for a mooch. Some of the shops weren't open which was annoying, why some and not others? Although, I actually find this outlet village a little disappointing shop wise. We went into Kurt Geiger for me but Nick ended up coming out with some shoes for him. He got himself some new sunnies from Fossil and we got ourselves this little beauty. Chuffed to bits with it, only cost £35, total bargain. 

All we need now is the sunshine and were good to go on some romantic picnics!

Sunday night we made a spur of the moment decision to 'pop' to London, as you do, on Monday for the day. I'll update you on our adventures in the next post. 

See you very soon.