Pleased to meet you.

Ok, an introduction is in order i think. Shall we start with who is who? I am Suzi Houston, I am *cough* years young, married to Neil who is even older and mother to Finley (6), Valentina (3) and Madison (2). That lot are a full time job in themselves but as the old cliché goes "money makes the world go round" and while we do alright, we question whether that is good enough? How do you create the best start possible for your children? We are in a society where you are expected to have the best of everything, the big house, big holidays, 2.4 kids, a labrador and a Volvo, hubby works 9-5 while mum either does the housework or more increasingly has her career while the kids are in daycare or school or wherever. Well...thats not for us I'm afraid. It never really has been although we have both worked "normal" jobs we found it difficult to sort the work/life balance. Before this all kicked off Neil was seeing the kids on a Sunday and that was pretty much it. We talked about how to go about working from home etc etc but never really had the balls to say "Lets go for it!". Turns out we didn't need to. Neil was made redundant as a result of the recession. I would have said thats the cue to panic and spend nights staring at the bedroom ceiling worrying about bills but you know what? Its been great! Sure, its been hard and we are far from being a wealthy family but we are a happy family. We spend a lot of time together. No longer is dad just "that bloke we see on a Sunday."

So our new life then, well...its not a million miles from our old life, just scaled down and with new elements added. I've been a farmer since I was a child really. It was a childhood hobby of sorts, turned to student cash, turned career until the kids came along. Working on dairy farms here in Ireland and large organic mixed livestock setups in the south of England. That's a story for another day though. Now we rent a plot and have our own little slice of "The Good Life" keeping chickens and ducks for the eggs and a couple of geese and turkeys that we breed for...um...Christmas purposes?

And so to the point of all ages this. I'm told I'm  a rather talented baker so it made sense to turn it into a business. Fledgling at the moment but we are working on it. Cakes and cupcakes (buns as they're known here in Ireland) for parties, weddings and so on. Markets, fayres and charity events. All baked with love using our own eggs and other ingredients locally sourced where possible. There's a lot of experimentation with flavours going on and i hope to inspire you to have a go yourself with these while Neil, being the perfectionist will talk you through some nice quick icing techniques and sugarcraft doodahs to make your buns look as good as they taste.  There is so much to talk about but I'll get to that later as I've rambled enough ha ha. I've been accused of being many things but a writer is not one of them. I guess we'll all be learning as we go along.

Have a great day all.

Love, Suzi xx