Don't tease the robo-raptor

We had a very very successful Christmas day. No fights, no anxiety attacks, no tantrums, no drunken scenes - even the kids played nice.

If you don't want to see the result of evil mass-consumerism and brainwash by toy catalogue saturation, please avert your eyes.


Don't panic, he got some books as well. And I personally was not involved in the purchase of either object in this picture.

I managed to buy Alan a present and get it under the tree without him knowing a thing about it!!! (ie: I even kept my own trap shut for once).



We've been being baristas all day.








But the quote of the day award this year goes to my own mother who proclaimed:

"Louis, stop teasing the robo-raptor".

I had Christmas Syndrome

Christmas Syndrome is something I suffer from each year. It results in an irresistable urge to spike all the food with cloves.


bread sauce - push cloves into an onion and simmer in milk with a bay leaf until nice and infused - you can leave overnight if you like (I did). When ready to eat, reheat mixing with cubes of stale white bread and plenty of butter. It looks ugly but tastes divine with roast turkey.

While you're at it, make some mulled wine. Stick cloves in an orange and heat it up with some red wine, water, brown sugar and brandy.
To glaze and bake a ham stick cloves in the ham fat and press mustard powder and brown sugar all over the meat. Roast in a medium oven until it is all sticky and brown.

It's boxing day today. Time to put the cloves away until next year.

Twas the night before Christmas...

Christmas eve dawned hot and overcast. We went to the beach to gloat because we didn't have any more shopping to do. YAY!!


We made some sandcastles.




We ate fish and chips for lunch. Yum.


The surf was perfect, albeit a little chilly.



And Diana has reincarnated and is baking danish down the local beach cafe with Camilla. It's true.

Pictures!

Here is my blocked shawl and my little blocking buddy. Isn't he cute?


I am not going to knit anything except UFO's and one Christmas gift until the new year. I just don't have time.

Therefore I probably won't blog either. Christmas Day here will be spent either in the pool or lying prone on the sofa with the air-conditioning turned down as low as it can go.

On Christmas Eve we'll go to the open air mass at Market Square and sing Christmas Carols and have communion in the sunset. I would like to go to midnight mass and have homemade sausage rolls when we get home (like

Delia

does) but the children are too small.

Maybe this year we will open one present on Christmas Eve. We haven't done that before.


On Christmas Day we will eat:

Cold prawns w various dipping sauces for starter - I'm going a wasabi mayonnaise, a traditional seafood sauce and a vietnamese nuoc cham

Stupidly we'll still have roast turkey w sage & onion stuffing, baked ham, roast pumpkin and potatoes, wilted English spinach and bread sauce. If you haven't heard of bread sauce and you like stuffing you should really think about giving it a go. It's absolutely divine - see Delia for recipe.

Dessert will be sherry trifle which I will eat way too much of and we'll do christmas pudding with brandy butter and brandy cream even though I don't think anyone likes it much.

There will be cherries and nuts and shortbread.

There will be beer and wine and port and coffee and petit fours.
There may even be some frangelico and glayva later in the evening day.

We will play Neil Diamond's Christmas carols (shut up I don't care how daggy it is), some choirboys carols (I like the St Martins in the Field recordings too Glacia - I've even been to a few recitals there) and some modern ones. I hate 50's style jazzy carols, I only like proper religious ones and popstar ones. Frank Sinatra and the like I can't stand. Sorry Bing.

All this on a day which could be 40deg C. (V V hot in anyone's language.)

We used to walk down the beach with the cricket set and play an extended family game of rounders in the late afternoon, but since mum and dad moved we can't walk to the beach any more. Chateau le huge mortgage has a pretty big pool in the back yard so we make good use of that instead these days.

The kids rip open their presents and I always think we got them too much. Usually the cheaper things amuse them for the longest.

Mum and I usually have an argument over the food. Dad usually goes to sleep with the kids crawling on him on the couch after lunch.

I love it, but I am always glad it is over. Maybe I'll do a little pictorial this year, for the blog.

Happy Christmas all of you

Doing your block

I have been having the Mexican standoff with the blog.

"I refuse to blog about knitting until the knitting is finished" I threaten the blog. The blog just sits there and says nothing.

"I refuse to blog about the boring minutae of daily life unless I find it funny". The blog says nothing, secretly smirking that nothing much funny is going on.

I have been laying in bed at night composing interesting, witty and succinct blog posts only to forget them while I sleep. I am thinking of changing the whole thing, the name, the content, pity about the author - chucking the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.

I want one of those cool blogs, the artistic ones. I want you all to love me. No, scrap that, I don't give a stuff if you love me or not. So obsessed am I with the blog posting thing the pressure makes me freeze, unable to write anything.

Since getting the new computer and then the new new computer I lost all my favourites and have therefore neglected my friend Taryn. I promise I will be knitting some socks for the summer sockalong thingy. I haven't been to see Glacia in ages. Or Dani, my gorgeous secret pal from sp6. Or Grace, who I sent to in SP6, I wonder how she's going with that boy of hers? Is the boozehag's bump growing I wonder, did you know she's having a girl? And for a while there I was pretty pally with that chick calls herself skinnysomething and now I can't even remember her name!! No wait, its coming to me ...... Slimissa! What sort of blogmate am I? And Jussi, she's just gorgeous, how is she since she left work? Is her cold better, and moreover, can she come for coffee on weekdays now? Donna, I promised you something and haven't sent it yet, but I fully intend to do it soon. And preciouspreciousprecious I have been meaning to comment on your newborn blog but have been unforgiveably slack.

The pressure of having a blog is getting to me.

Still haven't bought a single Christmas present.

Still got a school bbq, a dancing xmas party, a surfclub xmas party, a party of my own to organise, heaps of tribe gifts, food to organise, and I want to get a list going of what I'm going to knit in 2006. And get a flickr album of finished items going.

Not only that, but my Elvis period is really going to have to end. 2006 is to be the year of the fit me, not the (insert elvis voice) 'cheeseburger momma' me.

On a positive note, beyond the silence of the blog there has been progress. Here's what a mystery shawl 1 looks like without the glaring errors.

I can't believe it. Blogger photos is down again. AARGH!

Does anybody else get like this?????

The knitting tree

The tree is up. Now comes the food planning! I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!!

I have decided to part company with the mystery shawl 2. I'm going to frog it. There are too many mistakes and I'm not wanting to finish the border because I know I won't be happy with the final product. But I think I will knit it again in the new year.

I am doing another mystery shawl 1. This time I am taking my time and really making sure there's no mistakes in it. It's teeth grinding knitting - my favourite kind. Wanna see?


Wanna see close up?

Neither of these pictures shows the true colour of the yarn, which is in fact quite nice.

Not much happening here. What about you??

Reasons to hate the office Christmas Party

1. The conga line
2. Nutbush City Limits
3. The Macarena

Reasons why the Office Christmas Party is unmissable:

1. Finding out that a senior staff member who shall not be named but could be your manager drinks bundy'n'coke from a can right throughout dinner, when you thought he'd be a 'pass the chateu neuf de pap' kinda guy.
2. The five hour free beverage package.
3. All that alcohol fuelled candidness.

Anyway it's over. I stressed about what I was going to wear, as usual. I bought something new about two hours before I was due at the pre-dinner cocktails, as usual. Once I got there it didn't matter what you looked like as long as you had a good time - which I did, as usual.

SECRET PAL

My secret pal was Celia, and she sent me as my final gift a veritable yarn stash. Check it out. Ramie, silk and wool blend, paint your own and cashmerino. Clearly a woman of impeccable taste, I got a great sp once again. Lucky me.



And I got a book of a thousand sweaters, the one where the pages are split and you pick a neckline, a sleeve and a body shape and the pattern is presented on the page. It's a really really really good resource.

I'm running behind on sp6 and still need to get another package off to my giftee secret pal. She's just found out she's having a baby (what is it with these blogging breeders?) so there's a realm of possibility there.

Anyway, we're off to buy a new Christmas tree now and some new ornaments. My old tree is looking a bit tired, after all it is three years old (I'm such an evil mass consumer). This year I'm tossing up between gelato colours or plain cream and gold. But I'll need new lights to do either of those. Last year I had red and gold and green. The year before was all turquiose and silver. I have all my ornaments boxed in colour themes.


Don't ask.

But there will be pictures later.