Please don't take a picture...

Yesterday was a bad day! I started to blog about it last night, but the emotions were still too raw! so here I am this morning trying to work out what went wrong! First of all let me explain that our 'exciting news' referred to in my previous post has quickly progressed past the exciting phase and is now in the super stressful phase.  Endless phone calls re: visas, police checks, regulations etc with everyone telling us something different, so we have the flights booked for 17 days time and police checks that are required for our working visas that have a turn around of 26 days - see the problem! We have contracts coming out of our ears that needed to be paid up in full before we go - ouch, in the U.S if you are locked in a phone contract and can produce documents proving you are moving abroad they will cancel it with no extra fees but no here in the U.K they like to drag as much money out of you as possible so yes you have to pay the full amount.  To top it all off we got a nice little letter from Reading council claiming we had driven in a bus only lane and received a nice little fine as if we didn't have enough financial outpourings at this point! They even include a little picture of where the deed was done...I categorically insisted I had never driven in that lane before! and so we worked out it was actually Byron! Great...my turn for reprimanding came later though so I didn't feel smug for long. 

In between all of this commotion I made some cupcakes for a Church BBQ, I had signed up on the sheet saying I would contribute dessert so I had planned to make some cupcakes.  However, it was such a chaotic day that not much planning went into these and I just baked some good old brownie cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting, they never let me down.  I didn't think I could take any more disasters...little did I know what was coming! I also put a few in an egg box and adorned them with chocolate letters spelling 'Thanks' to take to my employer as we said our goodbyes.  I had planned to make my own chocolate letters but with time running away I just bought some silver spoon ones at the supermarket.  I was pretty impressed with them and would definitely use them again:

Here's a close up so you can see the flecks of vanilla bean! yummy...let me also say that probably adding to my frustration yesterday was the fact I'm on my special K Carribean diet and so could not partake in any cupcake eating at all! I do not recommend baking delicious cupcakes whilst on a diet!

I crumbled some flake on the rest and here they are on my cute little mini cupcake stand:

So I packed them up and hopped in the car, on the drive to the 'Summer BBQ' it poured down like you have never seen! I could hardly see the road there was so much rain! I arrived at the road where it was being held but it was a busy main road with nowhere to park along side, I drove up and down for a while trying to find somewhere to park to no avail so I decided to turn up a side street and find parking there - big mistake! You know those bollards that restrict access for wide vehicles, well there were two of those at the bottom of the road and as I squeezed through my car didn't quite make it all in one piece! Let me also rewind to the rather ironic conversation we had on the way back from the supermarket earlier in the day where I told Byron I had been really paranoid driving around in the car the past few days worrying I might have an accident, because while we are away our car is being loaned to a family member to use,  and so by this stage I had a rather large scratch down the side of my car and decided to give up and go home.  So the cupcakes never quite made it to their destination but I'm sure everyone at Byron's work will enjoy them today! 

In my head right now the two events are inextricably linked...I wasn't really in the mood to go to that BBQ anyway considering the day I'd had, and all the packing I could have been doing instead...but pretty much the only reason I ventured out was cause I'd signed up to bring desserts and I didn't want to let them down so for me it was all the cupcakes fault! Cupcakes = Expensive car repairs.

Don't expect any cupcakes from me for a while, I don't want to tempt fate!