April

Last year in April, I made.....

A pinata cake! It was from one of the fantastic Sandra's books.....but I only glanced at the instructions in the book, perhaps I should have taken more notes because it was trickier than I thought! I made a small chocolate sponge (checking that the bowl I was going to use to make the chocolate "shell" was big enough to cover the cake tin). Then I melted a huge bar of chocolate (500g at least!) and used the melted chocolate to cover the inside of a clingfilm lined bowl. I let it set in the fridge, then removed it from the bowl, placed it over the cake and stuck some smarties on it......It looked pretty good! So when we sang Happy Birthday to Niamh (she was turning 7!)...she had a hammer to "crack" open the cake. Well that was the plan anyway! What really happened was that the chocolate had gone soft in the humid Australian climate, and so the hammer just sort of dented it! In the end, we just pulled the chocolate apart to get to the cake. Perhaps not quite as dramatic, but still good fun (and we all got chocolate, and we all got cake! In April we also made.......

An Art:illumina Exhibition! With my other hat on, I run Art and Spirituality workshops. This is a photo from the exhibition we put together in our house. This particular course was for lent. It was art-journalling course for the 40 days in Lent, with a simple creative task to do everyday. The results were great, the artwork produced look wonderful, as well as providing the people taking part with an opportunity to use Art as a spiritual activity. This year's course (Stations of the Cross) is still available online here: Art:illumina Stations of the Cross