As a Father’s Day gift, I took my family out to Taste London in Regent’s Park. I often find it incredibly difficult to find presents for my parents (my Dad especially) that they genuinely like, but I think I did quite well this time. However, his birthday is in just over 1 month and the almost impossible  present brain storming starts all over again!

Yesterday I joined the battle against evil in an augmented reality games called “Conspiracy for Good”. You get put into teams, each with a Nokia phone, following clues (in the form of videos, texts and the Conspiracy for Good scanning app & walking into random shops down Brick Lane muttering random words and winking) &fighting off evil bad guys (actors, but take their roles very seriously!) The plot for this one was to find the good guys’ HQ. The star heroine this time was a violinist named Anne-Marie (!!! which made it all the more fun for me!) and the endpoint involved us congregating on a rooftop near Truman Brewey in an abandoned warehouse (with Ruby Wax). It was fun, it was pretty creative (and confusing!) and it was very tiring! And as a “prize” for completing our mission, we got tickets to the 1,2,3,4 festival! The story is created by the guy who wrote Heroes, Tim Kring(he made an appearance to the first event last week) and it shows with its creativity.

Find out more at http://www.conspiracyforgood.com/faq - there’s 2 more events over the next 2 weeks!

Popping candy tarts, flowering jasmine tea, sugary sweet cocktails, “hot and cold” pineapple lollipops, peanut butter and banana smoothie (in a chocolate tea cup and liquorice straw!) and rainbow coloured sandwiches, all set in an open air courtyard garden, sounds like the perfect Anne-Marie combination for a Sunday afternoon. I’d set my heart on trying out this afternoon tea for months since it opened in March, but it had always been fully booked.

However, I finally made it there today (with a very ill bf) and I was pretty disappointed. The Courtyard Garden isn’t nearly as spectacular as it looks on the hotel website (pretty, but not the magical fairytale place I’d imagined) and the afternoon tea didn’t taste too fresh. At £74 for 2 afternoon tea sets, a cocktail (which tastes identical to my ex-favourite drink at a far less classy establishment) and a glass of water, I didn’t think it was particularly value for money for the quality or quantity that you get at other places across London either. At least my curiousity has been cured!

On the hottest day of the year, we went strawberry picking! 2 full baskets later, we had the following for dinner:

Friends say that I have a ridiculous obsession with all things sugary and I guess two cake posts in succession doesn’t really help my case, but I suddenly felt the desire to finally break my blogging hiatus and since it’s my mum’s birthday, thought it was appropriate to post a photo of the cakes I made her. They’re gluten free and made of mash potato!

Thursday night used to be dance class night. I’d do 2 hrs of ballet class and then go straight into a hip hop class at Pineapple Studios. This hasn’t happened since I got back from America. I think America has encouraged my inner glutton/lazy arse to come out of the closet so instead of putting on my dancing shoes, tonight I baked the ultimate chocolate cake. I was mean and sent the bf out on two separate shops to Waitrose for ingredients and then got incredibly impatient when it came to waiting for the cake to cool down so I could put the ganache on it properly. (A lot of the ganache actually ended up in my stomach without the cake…I have no self restraint!)

Maybe dance class next week?