Memoirs with a glass of champagne

18 January 2011

Things I am loving right now

Dying to get my hands on a copy of this book, it has had such wonderful reviews

Anthropologie: Blooming Lattice Cardigan, I fell in love with this cardi as soon as I saw it on line. I eventually managed to get my hands on one of these and it is currently winging its way across the ocean

Samsung Galaxy Tablet, this is wishlisted for way in the future, I have to heed my own advice, and not buy gen 1 of any electronic equipment, she is so lovely however, perhaps the Blackberry Playbook when she comes out might be even cuter

Anthropologie: Peppered & Stripped Skirt

Now this is an odd one, I have used the same fragrance for probably 9 years (Ralph Lauren, Blue), but I have really started to like Chanel No 5 as well. What do they say about variety being the spice of life

Steve Madden Boots, definitely on my wish list

Macaroons

Till next time

xoxo

05 January 2011

A Christmas to remember

Well, Christmas is done and dusted, and it is with mixed emotions that I come out the other side of it.
Due to the very untimely passing of my wonderful Aunt prior to Christmas, my mother made her way to Scotland to be with the family and left me with the instruction, "to ensure that our family this side of the world had a lovely Christmas". So now being seconded into the Chief Christmas Fairy role,I promptly seconded hubby into my role of Mini Christmas Fairy and Dad into Chief Christmas Elf. Dad arrived down from Botswana on 21st December and was immediately whisked away on a boys night out by Grant, his brother & father, I honestly only got to speak to my Dad for 10 minutes before he was hot footing it out to wherever boys go on boys nights out (I think it is best not to ask). Due to fact that all my in-laws were going to be away for Christmas we had them over on 23rd for present swapping. Glen & Debs brought a ham, I made Christmas mustard when I got home from work to accompany the ham and we ate it on fresh rolls with salad. I then spent the 23rd running around like a chicken without a head getting the last of what I needed. I didn't quite manage to do everything on my list so I outsourced half the list to my Dad and the other half to Grant and they promptly went off on the 24th and got everything on the list (except for Paxo stuffing, as they were sold out, however I had a box of it in my pantry, so wasn't concerned, how wrong I was).
Christmas eve was spent setting the Christmas table, wrapping the chipolatas in bacon and boiling the ham in coke and then glazing it so all I would have to do on Christmas day was crisp up the crackling under the grill. All set for Christmas, we made our way down to our local Italian restaurant and had a lovely meal. Having had made the decision earlier that we were going to do Christmas dinner instead of lunch I woke up at a leisurely pace on Christmas day (there is advantages to having a teenage daughter, they sleep late).
We woke up to a huge pile of presents that Santa had very kindly delivered during the night. Donna & Jason arrived, I served up a Christmas brunch of croissants, cold meats, cheeses, pancakes, chicken skewers, muffins, yoghurt's & bagels, which was set to keep us going till dinner time. Jordy played Christmas elf and handed out all the pressy's. We were all pretty emotional with Mum not being there. I was spoilt rotten by absolutely everyone, Jordy & Grant got me the 3rd Professor Layton Game for my DS and a Kenwood food processor with all the bells and whistles (this was quite fortuitous as when I opened the stuffing, I found very unwelcome weavels in it, so I ended up making a stuffing from scratch using my food processor), Donna and Jason bought me a beautiful Ritzenhoff champagne glass to add to my collection, it has the prettiest butterflies all over it. I then opened the pressy's from my Mum and Dad, the first of which was a picture of me done by an artist in Zimbabwe, what a strange feeling to open a present and see yourself staring back at yourself. It is done so well, the artist even got my cotton wooly hair down pat and by the time I opened my string of pearls from Mum & Dad, that was me finished, tears were streaming down my face, Dad & Jordy's too. We then spent the rest of the day playing with our pressy's, swimming and mucking about. The entire meal (Turduckin included) came together beautifully and we sat down to a lovely dinner. Just after we had our main meal Grant set off the hugest poppy thing that proceeded to spew an enormous amount of confetti all over the table, and floor, it was absolutely everywhere. Grrr there went my beautiful table decorations. After cleaning up we moved outside to play games on the patio and much hysterical fun was had by all. All in all a really successful day, we just missed Mum ever so much, however she was needed far more by the family back in Scotland.
Our thoughts and prayers are with them all. Merry Christmas everyone.
Till next time
xoxo

05 December 2010

childhood memories

Silver Cross dolls pram (mine was beige & brown)

The Wombles

Winnie the Pooh

Nancy Drew Books

Scoobie Doo

Worzel Gummage

Peter Rabbit

The Mr Men

The Magic Roundabout

The Lion, the witch & the wardrobe

The Famous Five Books

Playschool

Charlie & the chocolate factory

Making daisy chains

03 December 2010

Christmas Countdown ... 21 days to go

With 21 days to go, I seem to be pretty organised. I got the Chief Christmas Fairy (CCF)and my Dad to agree to having Christmas dinner instead of Christmas lunch, shew, so grateful as it is just so very hot during the day, that it is almost impossible to enjoy the meal. I also got the go ahead from CCF to try out a Turduckin this year. The only thing about this that I am a teensy bit concerned about is ..., well I called our butcher to place my order. So bearing in mind there is only seven of us this year, I order a 1.5 Kg deboned lamb, a 2 Kg ham and a Turduckin. So I ask my butcher (innocently) so how much does a Turduckin weigh, only to be told 5.5 Kg's. Now this is solid meat. Absolutely solid meat, no bones whatsoever, So all in all I have now ordered 9 Kg's of solid meat to feed a grand total of seven people (anyone want to join us, I see loads of leftovers in our future) bear in mind we still have the wrapped chipolatas, 3 kinds of vegetables, bread sauce, gravy, stuffing and of course the roast potatoes. I really do think we may have a tad left over afterwards.

I also managed to find exactly what I needed to do the table decorations this weekend and started a little of the Christmas shopping. Plan is on track for now.

Signing out

Mini Christmas Fairy

Till next time

xoxo

What a Turduckin looks like when carved

30 for 30 done and dusted

As I mentioned previously we partook in the 30 for 30 challenge. It could be described as torturous fun, although we had a great time doing it as a team, not being able to wear anything but the 30 items became a real pain, but definately stretched the imagination in terms of remixing those darn 30 items. It was however so lovely to be able to choose any pair of shoes I desired this morning. I missed them so very much.