Yaaay ..This is Me! ... (and I'm pretty sure there's a song in there somewhere ;) )x

No don't worry I'm not actually gonna start singing .. or dancing for that matter (although I was actually in the primary school choir but that pretty much ended as soon as it started ... and I am fairly sure I was born with 2 left feet ;-)

Anyway, back on track with a little bit of background info ... :)

My journey into the world of cake began way back in the mid 1990’s when our 3 now grown up daughters were very small. Thanks to my own mum I have always liked to think I have a bit of an artistic streak and quite a creative mind, particularly enjoying sketching, painting and story telling from a very early age. At 8 years old I actually remember telling my parents that I was going to go to ‘art school' ... which sounded like a very cool and grown up thing to do to an 8 year old! The nearest I actually got to doing this was an O' level Art certificate at school and then many years later stumbling upon an art group which just happened to be run by the very wonderful Mr Holdsworth, my old art school teacher :).

I had always tried to encourage our girls to get involved in creative and messy play at home just as my mum had encouraged me, So lots of sticking and gluing and cutting and making of just ‘stuff’ ... even making our own play dough and custard slime! Which OF COURSE smelled much nicer then the rank smelling 'PROPER' stuff that you could buy. I also knew exactly what was going into it and of course I could make as much of it as we needed ... (and we got through lots!) ... in absolutely any shade that a combination of the supermarket food colours could offer! Looking back now this was probably my children’s first proper introduction to art, colour mixing and the colour wheel! How cool is that!

A few years later however ... after partaking of numerous Colin the Caterpillars and Smarties covered cakes I decided that as much as we all loved Colin and Smarties my girls were going to have something a little different for their next birthday's ... so my very first attempt at making and baking was about to occur.

Okay so looking back, my very first birthday cakes attempts for the girls and the occasional cakes made for friends and family could perhaps at the very least have been described as ‘not too bad’ and at the very best would have been ‘not too bad at all’!

The fact that they weren't the creative edible masterpieces that I had envisaged and hoped for didn't really matter though, because of course my children already thought I was wonderful ... and now I was even more so ... so it was a win win!! ;).

Despite the lack of cake finesse and actual baking ability at the time, this new found hobby served to reignite my creative passion and helped to keep my soul topped with an energy that was sometimes an actual necessity with 3 young children. I took some evening classes, loaned some books from the library, bought some basic equipment and began a journey of learning.

Fast forward to a few years later ... much later down the line and 2007 to be exact, having not baked or decorated a cake ( actually I do remember one cake ) since going back to college to retrain, and working for over 10 years as a Nursery Nurse / Early Year’s Practitioner ... along came one of life's 'blips', which led me to re-evaluate my life path, and in 2009 after 'playing around with cake' for a couple of years, Dream Cake Designs was 'officially' born. If anyone would like the recipe for the play-dough just let me know :). Oh and and if you ask me nicely (and give me enough encouragement ;) ) ... I might even be tempted to dig out some of those early years cakes :) x