We moved from our old, very tiny apartment in Ottawa to a much larger and nicer apartment in London, which is also wayy closer to my family. While I was excited for the move and to be closer to home, I also miss my friends, coworkers, clients, and the vibrant city. But now you can finally get a glimpse into the great working space that I had! What, you don't think my cubby hole of a kitchen is decent? The fact that I had to put my microwave on top of my apartment-sized fridge, and have only one counter space to work on (since my dish rack would always be on the counter in the picture to the right by the sink)? Common... still no? Well, I do have a much larger kitchen now, although I don't have pictures yet of the new place; it's still a work in progress.
We were lucky to have 4 amazing friends help us move. Although with our small elevator, it still took us over 2 hours. At least it was easy to pack our massive truck! FYI, we did not choose to rent a truck this big, but they didn't have the size we asked for the day we were picking it up so we were 'upgraded'.
After staying at my parent's place overnight, we left bright and early the next morning to be at our new apartment for 8:00 sharp, as we had the elevator booked. Unfortunately, 5 minutes before arriving, this happened:
That's not our truck; that's the truck of an 18 year old kid who smashed into the back of our Uhaul, which we did not buy the insurance for. I mean, how do you not see a big, looming 26 foot truck in front of you?? 2 hours later, after getting a toe truck and making a police report at the reporting station, we finally arrive at the apartment building. We had to haul butt because the elevator was booked at 11 for another person, but luckily they didn't arrive and we managed to get everything up in just under 2 hours! That was with the help of my one friend Carolyn for about an hour, and just Sean and I after that. We took care of returning the Uhaul and dealing with the accident, unpacked for a few hours, and headed back to my parents to spend the night again.
After 5 days of unpacking, doing lots of shopping, errands and settling in, we picked up the newest addition to our family: Tucker!!
He is the cutest, sweetest little boy who's smart too. But after a week of having him, he's come out of his shell and has plenty of attitude and is chewing on everything too!
Case and point.
This weekend I had originally planned to go to an outdoor country concert on Friday, featuring Tim McGraw and various other artists, and then head up to my friend's cottage. Unfortunately, the weather was crap, cold and raining, and I decided not to go. At least I hadn't purchases tickets beforehand, so I wasn't out that way.
As a result, my best friend's mother asked me somewhat last minute to make a cake for Emily's family bridal shower on Saturday. Of course I said yes, and my brain went into immediate spinning mode on what to make. What I chose to go with was a 3-tiered square cake, featuring a vanilla cake on the bottom, chocolate in the middle, and cherry chip (Emily's favourite) on the top.
I wish I had a better picture, or more pictures, but I was extremely pressed for time. I wasn't completely satisfied with the final result, but I had put in around 11 hours and worked up until the last possible minute, and frankly just ran out of time. This is by far the largest cake I have ever made, and was not difficult except for the math it took to make the recipe larger. I used a simple vanilla buttercream for everything, except for a chocolate buttercream for the middle of the chocolate cake.
I haven't been completely happy with chocolate and vanilla recipes that I've used in the past, so I decided to try out 2 new recipes and crossed my fingers that they turned out OK. And boy, were they delicious! The yellow cake was sweet, moist and fluffy, while the chocolate was fudgey, very moist and dense. I will definitely be using these in the future. To make sure they remained moist, I brushed them with a simple syrup the night before assembling them.
Thanks to Annie's Eats for her Fluffy Yellow Cake, taken from Cooks Illustrated, and her Chocolate Cake, taken from The Barefoot Contessa. They were truly great cakes.
That's it for now! Thanks for reading! Pin It
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