Well, what a ride this year has been! Got fit & healthy (ish) again and lost 18kgs in the process. Injured my ankle, battled crazy-weird rashes and other strange ailments, planned my wedding & then got to marry the love of my life. That was the most amazing part of all!! Oh, and I got a new hairstyle on xmas eve. I promised I'd tell you more about that ... it involves a kind-of sideswept fringe. Not really a fringe, but gee it was weird having hair across my forehead for the first time in years! I will hopefully get some photos tonight (as we're having a party here at home) & post. Everyone loves it & keep telling me I look so much younger. I'm just hoping it's not a mutton dressed as lamb scenario. My sister in law assured me that one doesn't become mutton until 45.
2011 has a lot to live up to, but I'm excited about it. I'm going to get back on track with my fitness & eating, after relaxing & treating myself a bit too much the past 2 months. This is also going to be the year I finally give up smoking. Yes, I know - filthy habit and absolutely MUST give up well before beginning any babymaking attempts. Oh yeah, that's the other thing on the agenda for 2011. Well, maybe ... we'll see how we go. I also need to change jobs. Even though I just did in May this year, I don't like it & it's not for me.
Have a wonderful NYE everyone, and all the best for the new year. I am cooking up a feast for our little party tonight, so better get back to it!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Christmas Fare
Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas! I had waaaay too much to eat & drink, of course ... and have eaten more today.
On Fri night, we had a BBQ here and my parents (who had driven up from Canberra) came, along with my brother, his wife & their 2 kids. Also, my friends M & C (my Mate of Honour & his partner) came along. I was under strict instructions from my mother not to go to any trouble, it was to just be a simple BBQ as they were all (well the family members, not my friends) then leaving when it got dark to take the kids to see the Christmas lights in Five Dock. As Friday was my first day off work, and I spent a couple of hours of it at the hairdresser (more on that next post) I didn't really have time to go to much trouble. But we did have yummy cheese & crackers - oh, how I love cheese- my famous tuna dip, much much better than it sounds ... and then sausages and marinated chicken kebabs on the BBQ. When I said previously that I do all the cooking in this house, that includes the BBQ by the way. I also made a green bean & tomato salad with a red wine vinaigrette, and a leafy salad with semi-dried tomatoes and Parmesan shavings. There was no time or room for dessert.
However, I was in charge of dessert for the next day and I was making a pavlova, so I did have to make the base before everyone arrived on Friday. Here it is just about to go into the oven. I know, not as smooth as it should have been.
And my trusty mixer (I call her Joan, because that conjures up images of a no-nonsense old CWA lady who makes awesome scones, cakes, lamingtons, etc), who really did the hard whisking work there.
This was all I had time to take pics of on Friday. But here is the finished product pav, just topped with whipped cream (again, thanks Joan) and fruit - at my brother's house, just about to serve.
It cracked a bit as it cooled down, unfortunately ... but it tasted beautiful. Wish I'd taken a shot of the marshmallowy meringue centre but we were all scoffing it down too quickly to think of that. My husband ate 3 pieces.
Earlier in the day, it was all food as well. I made scrambled eggs for our first Christmas brekkie as husband & wife. Then my parents came over & we had a champers, then they drove us all over to my brother's house. There we had delicious crusty bread with yummy, crumbly vintage cheddar and the most delicious ham. This was just for grazing but was yummo. Then we had a late sit-down lunch/almost dinner, around 4pm, which consisted of roast chook, with a lovely baby spinach, avocado and orange salad, and a delicious potato, dill & mustard dish. By this time I'd had several more glasses of bubbly and then switched to red and had a few glasses more! We followed this with the pav and then eventually rolled home, where my husband & I spent the rest of the evening polishing off chips and the leftover tuna dip from the night before. God knows why, we certainly weren't hungry!!
Anyway, Merry Christmas all! And just to finish off, here is the bike my niece Eve got for Christmas, complete with baby seat for Dolly. I want pink streamers on my bike too!!
xxx
On Fri night, we had a BBQ here and my parents (who had driven up from Canberra) came, along with my brother, his wife & their 2 kids. Also, my friends M & C (my Mate of Honour & his partner) came along. I was under strict instructions from my mother not to go to any trouble, it was to just be a simple BBQ as they were all (well the family members, not my friends) then leaving when it got dark to take the kids to see the Christmas lights in Five Dock. As Friday was my first day off work, and I spent a couple of hours of it at the hairdresser (more on that next post) I didn't really have time to go to much trouble. But we did have yummy cheese & crackers - oh, how I love cheese- my famous tuna dip, much much better than it sounds ... and then sausages and marinated chicken kebabs on the BBQ. When I said previously that I do all the cooking in this house, that includes the BBQ by the way. I also made a green bean & tomato salad with a red wine vinaigrette, and a leafy salad with semi-dried tomatoes and Parmesan shavings. There was no time or room for dessert.
However, I was in charge of dessert for the next day and I was making a pavlova, so I did have to make the base before everyone arrived on Friday. Here it is just about to go into the oven. I know, not as smooth as it should have been.
And my trusty mixer (I call her Joan, because that conjures up images of a no-nonsense old CWA lady who makes awesome scones, cakes, lamingtons, etc), who really did the hard whisking work there.
This was all I had time to take pics of on Friday. But here is the finished product pav, just topped with whipped cream (again, thanks Joan) and fruit - at my brother's house, just about to serve.
It cracked a bit as it cooled down, unfortunately ... but it tasted beautiful. Wish I'd taken a shot of the marshmallowy meringue centre but we were all scoffing it down too quickly to think of that. My husband ate 3 pieces.
Earlier in the day, it was all food as well. I made scrambled eggs for our first Christmas brekkie as husband & wife. Then my parents came over & we had a champers, then they drove us all over to my brother's house. There we had delicious crusty bread with yummy, crumbly vintage cheddar and the most delicious ham. This was just for grazing but was yummo. Then we had a late sit-down lunch/almost dinner, around 4pm, which consisted of roast chook, with a lovely baby spinach, avocado and orange salad, and a delicious potato, dill & mustard dish. By this time I'd had several more glasses of bubbly and then switched to red and had a few glasses more! We followed this with the pav and then eventually rolled home, where my husband & I spent the rest of the evening polishing off chips and the leftover tuna dip from the night before. God knows why, we certainly weren't hungry!!
Anyway, Merry Christmas all! And just to finish off, here is the bike my niece Eve got for Christmas, complete with baby seat for Dolly. I want pink streamers on my bike too!!
xxx
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Should Have Been a Vet
Lucy had a little visit to the vet the other day. She is very healthy, but the last time she had her general check-up and immunisations, the vet commented that she was getting some build-up on her teeth that would need to be removed by scraping it off. Now, obviously dogs will not do what they're told and just lay down for that kind of shit (especially not Lucy!) ... so this had to involve a general anaesthetic. Do I hear a *ker-CHING!*? Well, you'd be right. Minor dental procedure, in & out in few hours - but they managed to relieve us of $444 along the way. Nice work if you can get it! I will definitely be encouraging vet as a solid career option for any future children. My boss remarked that they have recently purchased their vet a Porsche, and I think he was only half-joking. My other boss made the rather distasteful (but true) observation that a new dog would cost us less. Let us all hope that no more visits to the vet are needed for a good long while.
In other news, my husband's omelette on Saturday morning was very tasty. It may have been a tad over-cooked, but who of us can claim to have never over-cooked an omelette ... and it was his first attempt people; go easy. He was way too hard on himself, of course. He did chuck a little tanty actually, looking all sulky and muttering about how he'd "f*#ked it up" (I admit, I may have been laughing at him a wee bit at this point, which probably didn't help) and refusing to believe me that it tasted good. Only after he'd had several bites himself did he calm down a tad and grudgingly admit it did "have a lot of nice flavours". This is what one gets for marrying a moody Scorpio. Lucky I love him!
I also took a couple of Panadol and got amongst the shopping hordes. I braved the CBD and thoroughly inspected the new Westfield in Pitt St Mall. Rather swish ... although how much do the staff at GAP love themselves sick?? Hilarious. I'm pleased to report that I did eventually have success with my shopping. I had already bought for my nephew, so needed to buy for my niece, my husband and my mum. In my family, we do a draw amongst the adults so I only needed to buy for Mum and my husband bought for my brother ... but we have also still bought for each other. I hope all my gifts go down well. Just need to finish wrapping them now.
We just had a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and some chocolate covered strawberries in the office this afternoon. How civilised is that? After a very long lunch yesterday catching up with a lovely friend I had not seen in AGES, this week is becoming almost bearable. One more day of work - yay!
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Cooking
I do the cooking in this house. Almost always. Sometimes the Mr will do things like prep veggies for a stir-fry while I'm at the gym (not that this has been happening much recently!). But generally, I do the cooking and he does the washing up ... and I like it that way.
However, while we were on honeymoon it was agreed that he should try to cook just a little bit, and build up a repertoire of a few dishes. So we agreed that he would make one meal per week, most likely on a weekend as he would have time to potter about and not get panicky or stressed. So yes, we have been back from honeymoon for over a month but this is going to be the first attempt (in fairness to the Mr he was away in South Africa for work for over a week of that time). He is in the kitchen right now making us breakfast - omelette. I'll report back on how he goes.
[Update: bless him, he just came running in to tell me he didn't know which pot in the backyard was Basil.]
Meanwhile, I'm sipping my orange juice here, nursing my headache from far too many red wines last night at the work Christmas party. Aside: got the train home - it was an all stops train, and honestly was the slowest trip ever. Thought I was going to vomit, seriously. We only live at Ashfield, but it seemed to take forever and I was *this* close to getting off at Stanmore so I could throw up then call the Mr to come & get me. haha Glad I didn't. And I have about 75% of my Christmas shopping left to do, and it must be today.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
On the Blog-wagon
Yep, I've finally done it ... jumped on the blog-wagon. I don't know that I have anything particularly exciting to share but I'll see how I go.
So, a little about me just to set the context for my (fabulously glamorous, of course!) life. I'm in my mid 30s, and in October this year I married my darling husband. We're loving married life so far - although nothing has really changed in our day to day life, we're still just ridiculously excited about calling each other husband and wife and say it about 20 times a day. You'll hear more about him. Here is a picture from our wedding day.
We have a little dog called Lucy, who is a ball of energy and of fur. She is constantly hilarious and lights up our lives, even though she is very naughty. I'm sure you'll hear more about her too. This is my favourite photo of Lucy.
Yes, okay ... I admit it. I get her to type up these entries for me. She's a demon at HTML too.
My other loves are holidays (umm yeah, like who doesn't?), cooking and drinking wine. I also like trying to keep fit - well, sometimes I like it. At other times I hate it, but it's a necessary evil. And I do love getting fantabulous results for my hard work. No pain, no gain as they say. I have always wanted to know who "they" are, and why "they" have so much to say about everything. These questions and more will be explored at a later stage.
Until next time ...
So, a little about me just to set the context for my (fabulously glamorous, of course!) life. I'm in my mid 30s, and in October this year I married my darling husband. We're loving married life so far - although nothing has really changed in our day to day life, we're still just ridiculously excited about calling each other husband and wife and say it about 20 times a day. You'll hear more about him. Here is a picture from our wedding day.
We have a little dog called Lucy, who is a ball of energy and of fur. She is constantly hilarious and lights up our lives, even though she is very naughty. I'm sure you'll hear more about her too. This is my favourite photo of Lucy.
Yes, okay ... I admit it. I get her to type up these entries for me. She's a demon at HTML too.
My other loves are holidays (umm yeah, like who doesn't?), cooking and drinking wine. I also like trying to keep fit - well, sometimes I like it. At other times I hate it, but it's a necessary evil. And I do love getting fantabulous results for my hard work. No pain, no gain as they say. I have always wanted to know who "they" are, and why "they" have so much to say about everything. These questions and more will be explored at a later stage.
Until next time ...
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