Banana Buns | Fairy's Tales

Today I am: 32 Weeks

I thought I'd do a bit of a different post today. I haven't always got something pregnancy related to update you all on and I do have other interests. When I created the blog I didn't even know I was pregnant and I was just going to blog my stories of moving to a new city; obviously when I found out I was pregnant I thought it would also be a good place to share those stories too but I never intended for it to be purely bump related!

I love baking, and whilst in Brighton for my birthday weekend we went into a little homeware shop that I cannot for the life of me remember the name of...Burt's possibly?! It had loads of gorgeous homewear bits and they were all reasonably priced! I've been looking at buying a bun tray for a good while but every one that I've seen is close to a tenner which is just ridiculous! I managed to get one in Brighton for £3.99 - bargain. I also got 100 bun cases for £1.99 and a tin to keep them all fresh in; so I was looking for a reason to get my bake on! I couldn't let them sit in the cupboard getting dusty.

I love Banana cake, it's one of my favourite cakes that my mum makes and what with the weather being so warm it's getting harder and harder to keep bananas fresh. They're ripening much too quickly so what better way to eat them? In cake, of course! 

I use an app called "Cook" which is a free app where you can upload your own recipes either privately or share them publically with other Cook users. You can find anything on there, simply by downloading the "recipe books" by catergory eg: British, Baking, Desserts, or you can search for a specific ingredient or recipe. It's a great tool to use although some of the recipes you would need to convert measurements or temperatures but that's nothing a quick google search can't do!

Banana cakes aren't difficult to make, it's just a basic sponge mixture with a few over ripe bananas chucked in but I always like to follow some sort of receipe to make sure the measures are going to work! Here's the recipe I used for my buns.

I intened on making a toffee buttercream icing to go on top but I couldn't find any toffee sauce in Lidl which was annoying. I did however add a bunch of white and milk chocolate chips to half of the mixture for a bit of added je ne sai quoi! It says that this recipe is enough for 12, but I had a lot of mixturre left over so after the first 12 came out of the oven (the tray only holds 12 cases) I popped an extra 4 in! So I'm left with 8 plain banana and 8 chocolate chips! My OCD for even numbers is very happy with that!

The only thing left to do now is wait for the fiancée to come home and tuck in! Oh and the dreaded dishes of course!

What are your favourite cakes to bake? Leave me a comment and let me know!

A Birthday in Brighton | Fairy's Tales

It was my birthday on Thursday 17th July; it was also the first birthday I celerated without my parents! Lee and I ventured down to Plymouth on the 12th to have a little get together with my family, though it's not quite the same as it being on your actual birthday. My sister and niece came up to visit me on Thursday as I was going to be on my own as Lee was at work and we headed into Bristol. We didn't get up to anything exciting but it was a nice day and I got to get lots of cuddles and kisses from my favourite 1 year old. 

Friday was the day though, we (Lee and I) headed to Brighton for the weekend! Neither of us had been to Brighton and all week we were checking the weather forecast which looked gloomy! Luckily someone must have been looking down on us and we only encoutered light rain on the Saturday, the rest was glorious sunshine and heat! We stayed in a lovely boutique guest house called Fab Guest on Charlotte Street, a short walk away from the pier. The room was lovely, though very warm. With an en suite wet room with added ambience from the LED lights - there was supposed to be some way you could play with the lights by downloading an app, however we tried and couldn't get it working. Never mind.

The guest house was full of quote art work like these two that were above our bed.

I especially loved that there were 'F' mongrams everywhere too - it made it feel like it was especially for me, haha! Friday night we had tickets booked (courtesy of mummy) to go to the Komedia Krater Komedy night, neither of us knew what to expect but we were both pleasently surprised! Although the place we chose to sit in was definitely not suitable for someone who's 7 months pregnant, I honestly can say I have never laughed so much in one night! There were 3 comedians, 4 including the compare and there wasn't an awkward silence all night! It was such a great night, and it was really good to discover amazing comedians that aren't plastered all over the panel shows on BBC1 but that are still incredibly talented. If you live anywhere near Brighton or you're planning a visit I would definitely recommend attending one of their comedy nights!

Saturday morning we headed for Bill's - I'd made reservations, and thank god I did! It was so busy, but the food didn't take too long to arrive thankfully, because we were both starving. We both went for the Bill's Breakfast which was really lovely, although there were 2 fried eggs each, and I can't eat runny yolk so Lee got 4! We both opted for beans to go with the breakfast; who even has a full English withough beans?! The beans however, were an extra £1 which I wasn't too pleased about. I'll let them off though, because they do the worlds largest pots of tea! £1.95 for this huge pot and it was all for me!! I got three cups out of it and there was easily another 2-3 cups left in the pot, I obviously could in no way have finished the lot. It was really good tea though, I'd love to know where they get their tea bags from..maybe I could buy some from them!

We had a walk around some cute little independant shops where I bought some cute little homeware bits and pieces with my birthday money. You know you're getting old when you spend birthday money on kitchen and bakeware! We then found our way to the highstreet shops and shopping centre where we found some baby bargains in the Next sale - we hadnt realised the sale had started on Saturday, if we had we would have got there earlier, but we managed to get some nice things. Including a red and white t-shirt that says "GOAL" on the front in age 12-18 months for Lee as it's Bristol City colours - although if it's Bristol City maybe "GOAL" isn't really applicable ;)

My feet started to ache after that so we headed back to the hotel, via the beach where I had to rest for a bit. We had fun throwing little pebbles and trying to get them to bounce off a bigger one. It sounds sad but we're so competitive with each other it was hilarious! When we arrived back at the hotel we found a card, some fudge and a bunch of roses for my birthday! Lee had told them that we were celebrating my birthday weekend so this was really lovely of them.

Lee and I love the 2p slot machines, in fact it's a problem. If ever we come across an arcade we have to go in, Brighton Pier was no exception! On the Friday we arrived we popped in and managed to win a little telephone box and taxi from the 2p machines! We got so caught up in trying to get the damned things out I think we used £3 worth of 2ps! Haha. Then on Sunday, our last day, we decided we'd go for the tickets to try and win something! We managed to get 153 tickets and won a Monsters Inc mug...we won't go into how much we spent there but it was fun and that's all that matters. 

This has been such a long post and I'm sure I've missed out loads but I hope you enjoyed reading! Speak soon

Summer Coolers | Maternity Clothes | Fairy's Tales

Today I am 28+2 weeks

I was going to do this post on Wednesday, but after an accident with a hot chocolate last week and one of the dresses I had to wait for it to come back from my mother-in-law! Luckily the stain is pretty much almost out, good enough to wear and hopefully after a few more washes it'll be all gone! Yay.

Anyway, these are just a few pieces that I've been wearing since the weather has been warm(er) and currently all but one of these items are now in the ASOS sale! 

First up is this lilac skater dress with a pocket. It's a speckled material which I couldn't quite capture in the photos. I'm not usual a fan of high necked anything because it's just not flattering on my boobs, but with the slight round neck it isn't too high and I really like it. I bought a size 10 which is a little looser than I would like, but with my ever expanding belly at least I know it will last me all summer long. It was £25 but is now currently £12 in the sale and comes in 2 colours! (Link)

This is said "hot chocolate dress" absolute disaster! Luckily for me it was the very last dregs of the cup! I was just about to throw the cup in the bin and was slurping the last sip and it went everywhere! All the way down the dress. Horrific! Thankfully my mum had a hoody with her that she wasn't wearing so I chucked that on top and hid away from the world! Again I bought this in a size 10 which is a bit big on me. I thought this dress was going to be very similar to my Elephant Print dress, however the material of this one is much lighter and more flowy (is flowy even a real word?). It's also higher in the back with a sweetheart neckline. There is a double insert over the boobs which you can just about see in the pictures, doesn't quite reach the bottom of mine! It sits just under my nipples, but that's not a dress fault. This dress was originally £20 - comes in 4 different colours and now starts from £10! Absolute bargain, I'm tempted to buy all the colours! (Link)

Lastly is this combination. I bought this red stripe dress from Primark quite a while ago. When I bought it I could wear it as a dress by it's self (it's not maternity so there's not much give in the material) but as my bump has got bigger I've been pairing it with these scalloped edge linen shorts. These are so comfortable with an under bump maternity band in a silky material so it's really lovely and soft! Although the shorts in black are still full price on the website the same shorts in white are £10! I originally wanted the white pair anyway but thought better of it. If the hot chocolate episode was bad, who knows what would have happened with bright white shorts! (Link Black Link White)

I hope you enjoyed this and it gave you some sort of inspiration of how to keep a little cooler in these summer months!

Speak soon, 

Fai x