What I immediately imagined

Cheryl began to worry that Damien and Les might be taking the dare a little too far.

Parents visit

Ann & Les (aka Mum & Dad... or is it Nanny & Poppy? :) arrived safe and sound in Adelaide last Thursday afternoon. Damien whipped up some lamb kebabs for dinner, yum! Friday Damien & I worked, so Ann & Les spent part of the day at a nearby shopping centre, and then the rest of their time fixing things around the house (Parents... bless 'em!).
Today we drove out to Willunga to have a look around the local farmers market. We ended up with a lot of yummy (and cheap) grapes & strawberries. Les also managed to find some lemon flavoured olive oil and dukkah (both for dipping bread into).
Next stop was McLaren Vale, one of the large wine regions in Adelaide. We stopped at about four wineries and then had a break at an olive farm where we enjoyed a platter of local produce for brunch. We then went on to four more wineries.


Our last stop before home was a bakery in the town of McLaren Vale for a late lunch/afternoon tea. After a bit of a rest at home we were out of the house again, this time to the local beach, Port Noarlunga, for fish'n'chips and a bit of a dip in the ocean.

(It was a little chilly & I think they were daring eachother to go deeper into the water, hehe ;)

I've entered a book design comp !

well I found this comp in a girlfriend mag and really liked the sound of it see the details here. well when i get on my computer i will post a pic of my book cover.

A White Christmas..

It's about time for an update.. I know there's a few trips I've not mentioned yet.. I'll get to them soon.. *grin*.

Christmas didn't really feel like Christmas this year.. probably a combination of it being cold, no decorations at home (I still don't want to buy too many 'non-essentials' - though I did buy a stick-mixer to make soup today.. but that's another story), no pressies to unwrap (I bought boots from Nana and Mum and Dad They're great! *big hugz*) and we didn't have a real Christmas lunch. Nevertheless, there were sparkly Christmas lights in both Manchester and Budapest, there were some pretty Christmas trees in Budapest (including the one to the right which had HUGE decorations!) and it snowed on Christmas Eve in Budapest so I got to have a white Christmas. *grin*

Budapest was good. I took a LOT of photos, so I've got the Highlights set with 111 photos and the Everything set with 257.. I think I need to cut down the highlights some more. There are comments on most of the photos, so if you view the pics as a slideshow, put the cursor over a photo and click the "i" to see them.

Highlights of the trip:

• Snow the night we arrived - I know this picture looks fake but it's not!
• Very sweet hot spiced wine (it was mostly white wine - I'd only had hot spiced (mulled) red wine before)
• Entertaining Hungarian guide who showed us around the Royal Palace and told us good stories
• The post-Christmas Christmas market (I bought a hat that makes me think of Dr Seuss - blue and black on the top right)
• Beautiful buildings and churches

Lowlights of the trip:

• "Hungary doesn't do vegetarian" muttered the Concierge when we inquired about where we might go for food on Christmas Eve..
• Chapped lips and bad skin from the cold (-5 degrees Celcius)
• There wasn't enough time to see everything.

Overall it was a great trip - lots of fun and definitely somewhere I'll return to... sometime.. (possibly when it's warmer. *grin*)

It was good to hear from everyone and great to see the photos of Aussie Chrissy. *big hugz*

Christmas photos and videos

Ok, this is mainly for Dayna, Glenn and Dee.. I've posted some photos up on Flickr here and also a couple of videos here. The trin_foxy.avi is well worth watching if a little bit gross :)

In other news I've been pretty sick - I had a stomach virus that hit me Wednesday night. I'm getting better but still feeling a bit dodgy... Cheryl stayed home Thursday to look after me, but neither of us really got to enjoy our "day off". We got our new kitchen table and chairs and a bookcase delivered on Thursday too, and i've already filled the bookcase... but i still have boxes labelled "books".. whoops.

We're looking forward to Mum and Dad visiting next week, hopefully the weather is nice so we can drive to the beach or over to McLaren Vale (since it's quite close to us now).. there's also a Hardy's Winery just on the corner near us. I'm going to try to clear out the spare room this weekend so they don't have to share the space with all our boxes.

Ok, that's enough from me. I hope you enjoy the Christmas pics.

Thanks for the prezzies

well thanks for the prezzie dayna i had trouble getting it to it as u said. it was funny to watch everyone try to open it we all thought that there was no key with it until we noted that it all slid the get to the key. this is my e-mail address kittycatcarolynn@yahoo.com.sg .

This one is for Lisa...

Apparently this was played on the ABC between shows back in the 80s.

Roger Glover and Friends - Love is all

Gee that brings back memories :)

Ahaaa

** Happy New Year! **

Let me be the first to wish everyone a fantastic 2008.... woohoo.. and as my friend Toby said, I'm from there, so my new year has started already.. yay!

..now to clean my house....