Little Elephant Baby Shower Cake

On Tuesday, a special friend, Heidi, had her baby shower for her little Liam who's due in January! All the girls have been so excited and we had a really lovely night celebrating! This post is all about the "in-the-making" stages of this little cake I made for her to see (and eat haha) on the night! I'm so so glad she liked it, and everyone said such wonderful compliments that made me feel really happy! I wanted to try my best to make sure it was really special and memorable for Heidi for years to come as she's been a great friend for so long, and I just know she'll make a wonderful mum :)

I went for really pastel-baby colours as I wanted it to look really soft and cute! A lot of the ready-made fondant icings that I would usually buy (Renshaw ones) seemed a bit too dark for this so I ordered these fondant colours (the powder blue and dove grey) online from cakecraftshop. They came within a few days and I just loved using them! I think the brand of the blue one was called Sattina, which came in a little bucket- great for storing and reusing it! I wanted it to look really modern, cute and a bit different so I went for the little elephant and balloon on the top! Both of which I modeled with the same fondant used for the cake. Matthew made the little twirls to line each tier which I really really liked! The bottom tier had three sponges, and the top one had two, with wooden skewers to hold them in place. It's by no means perfect as I've never had any teaching on how to make cakes properly (although I'd like to someday!) but I tried super hard and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out in the end! :)

My little helper for the day(s)! Cutting the cake was such a good decision to ensure it went really smoothly on the outside- yay for Matthew on this one haha! 

The white fondant was from a little local cake shop me and my family always go to- we've kind of become regulars there now and she gives us lots of good tips which is really helpful! We ended up buying 5kg of white icing as it was a better deal haha- I only needed about 2kg/1.5kg though! Getting it to roll out with no cracks and sit smoothly on the cake has always been a bit of a challenge as I'm definitely not a professional- but this was my best attempt yet :) 

Thank goodness mum had gone out, she would not have been pleased to see Matthew and I drawing monsters and playing games of naughts and crosses on her kitchen worktops! 

This is my mum's little summer cake stand that had little painted red strawberries all over it... so we decided to cover it with a circle of white icing and leave the little blue lines around the edges as they were rather appropriate! Although, I loved seeing it like this before we cut away the edges as it looked like a little table cloth!

Little elephant coming to life using my hands, and straws to help mold his legs!

The baby shower was just beautiful! I'm so glad the cake matched all the colours and even more happy that Heidi loved the cake! I had loads of fun making it and it's even better getting to give it to all the girls! Also... a little note to say thanks again to Heidi for my special gift- I will keep it always! Not long till baby Liam comes now... so exciting! :)

Warner Bros Studio Tour!

First of all, what a magical place!? After a couple of hours of driving, Matthew and I arrived at the Warner Bros Studio Tour and on top of all the exciting pictures spread across the walls of the building both outside and in, there was music playing and such a nice atmosphere!
I've not really been a #1 Harry Potter fan, not because I didn't like it- just because my 6 year old self was instead preoccupied with snow white and Cinderella haha! I have watched about four or five of the films and found them all to be equally brilliant, so I'm working on getting through the others asap, especially after this trip! Also, Matthew's been a big fan for years so it was really special to share it with him! 

After having tickets since Matthew's 19th birthday back in July 2013, we FINALLY got to go! Going to have to start organizing our time better hahah! On the plus side- we did get free badges and I got my favourite little plant character on my ticket! Yippeee!

The Great Hall was pretty, well... great!! I loved how the cinema screens opened to reveal the doors too as it really did give you the whole "behind the scenes"/"the real thing" kind of feelings!

Mid way through this first part of the tour, Matthew spied a green screen room. People on brooms. Green screen. Film crew to edit in Hogwarts as a background. Enough said, we were in the queue and he insisted that I should get on a robe, and go and have a go at quidditch haha! Although it was possibly the most embarrassing thing ever, Matthew stood at the side absolutely laughing his head off with the people in the queue- I'll take that as I was rather good hahah (not!) He then proceeded to spend a fortune and buy the DVD and multiple photos!!! He added "whenever I'm down, I'll just watch this, funniest thing I've ever seen!" 

We'd gone at the time of their Dark Arts feature so there were snakes everywhere- including real ones which we could go over and see! 

 

"Laura lets take a photo- oh actually- we just look like we're stood outside a random house haha"

Yay for our badges - said the geekiest version of me, ever!

:) :) :) :) :) :) 

My favourite little things! Wish they were real haha

Some (all) of the art work was just so amazing! If we could 1. afford it and 2. carry it to the car I think we'd have bought some!

 

Such a magical ending to the tour- the lighting and music was so perfect at this point too! We found a little bench at the back and just stayed there for a while taking it all in- still unbelievable how extremely well made all the films are! Each set, each scene is all so well designed and thought out- definitely something we got from the tour!

Gift shop shenanigans!! Having way too much fun in our wizard hats haha! After a really special day, we picked up a few souvenirs along with plentiful volumes of embarrassing Laura-playing-quidditch photos/videos! Such a happy place to go, and even if you haven't seen all the films or read all the books- it's definitely worth going! And it's actually made me want to read them all now... just a decade too late there Laura! Overall- AMAZING day out with my best buddy :)