Happy Birthday hubby / It doesn't always go according to plan

I haven’t been able to post frequently lately as March and April is birthday season in the snipsnaphappy household. I think everyone I have ever met ever has a birthday in these two months. Well ok not everybody, but a lot of my immediate family and close friends. So there has been a lot of organising going on – arranging to meet up, buying gifts, having lunches, dinners, drinks, baking cakes, wrapping presents, making presents too of course.

At the same time my father went into hospital for an operation on his spine (he’s fine!) and we found out about Lillia’s primary school placement (she got our first choice!)  So things have been a little distracting.  Enough of the excuses though!  How about some cake?

 Thanks Nigella for this glorious old fashioned chocolate cake recipe!  I baked this for hubby's birthday (we won't say how old, just that he is older than me!) today and it is just divine.  Myum myum.

I also made him a "macho" handmade gift...

"Patch" is made entirely with scraps of organic cotton fabric.  I used a lovely pattern from DS Quilts and I chose dark colours, blues and greens etc. to make it a bit more butch!  Though I did manage to sneak in a little floral pink...

My finished dog isn't quite how it is supposed to be however.  There is supposed to be a strip of fabric runing between the two sides of patchwork but my rather questionable sewing skills left the dog a little wonky, a bit scary looking actually.  So I unpicked it and just sewed the two sides together for a less three-dimensional version!

And it came our rather well!  Not to plan but still really good.  Kind of like the story of me and hubby.  We've had to face things that we would never have planned for in a million years (hubby was diagnosed two years ago with the same autoimmune disease that I have had since I was 19 years old) but our life together is still really bloody good.

So happy birthday hubby, you always ask me if I am writing lengthy posts about how great you are..well you are! 

Oh, and I'm sorry about the girly wrapping paper, it's all I could find! 

xx