And how was your weekend?

Happy Tuesday, my friends! Did you have a nice weekend? We had a rather busy one.

We were supposed to be going to a classical concert outside San Jose State University on Friday night but I was exhausted and incredibly sore after a new routine at the gym and three hours of baking, so we joined the neighbours for some wine and hot tubbing instead. It was a wonderful way to spend a Friday night and my
muscles were very grateful!



Saturday morning we were off to the Guglielmo Winery nearby for their quarterly bottle your own wine event. This is a great wee event where they blend up their excess wine and sell it off for $7 a bottle, and if you buy a case you get free access to the buffet of sausage, garlic bread, cured meats, cheeses and baguette.

The wine can be a bit hit and miss depending on the blend, and sadly this was not one of the better ones. It's still better than a lot of the crap you can get for the money in the supermarket so we got a case to put by for when Greeny & Nadine get here next month (5 weeks today to be precise - WOOHOOOOOO!!!)




Once we were home we had a short space of time to frost the mountain of mini cupcakes I had made the previous day to take to John & Teo's housewarming party. Luckily my handsome assistant, aka the Hubby, took care of the frosting duties while I was busy clearing up and working out how to successfully transport 70 mini cupcakes on a train. The answer? Carefully!!!

The featured cupcake this weekend was the butterscotch with salted caramel frosting, and everyone appeared to enjoy them. They might even be rivalling my chocolate chip cookies and my Oreo truffles for the top spot in my friends' affections!!

Fun times were had at the party, including a thorough testing of John's new BB gun. No people or animals were injured during these tests, but a Diet Coke can was disintegrated and a broken garden chair was, well, destroyed further!

Just another Saturday night in sunny California!!











After a brief hangover on Sunday I surprised everyone, including myself, by making it to the gym - more for a muscle stretch than a real workout it, but I felt better for at least trying.



In the evening we finally made it to one of the free classical concerts that Symphony Silicon Valley and San Jose State University put on every summer. We really enjoyed the ones we went to last year with Eric and Rose and were looking forward to them again this year, but unfortunately we managed to miss all but the final one on Sunday :-(

We spent a lovely hour or so listening to the music in the sunshine and enjoying a glass of wine and some leftover cupcakes. Oh yeah, and some free ice cream! :-)

Well, I'm off to the gym now. I have a fun afternoon of tidying out my shoe closet to look forward to - but don't worry, I'm not getting rid of any of my babies!! We just ran out of room so we got some more shelves to help make them more comfortable :-) If you behave yourselves I might show you some pics when I'm done ......!!

Laters .... x

Happy New Year!!!

Welcome to 2012!! How did you all spend your New Year's eve? Hubby and I ventured up to San Francisco to a rather interesting club night called Sea of Dreams, which was a wonderful mix of awesome music, trapeze artists and other performers, and some of the most eye popping outfits I have seen!



I would dearly love to have more pictures to show you, but after my first couple of attempts I realised that I was missing about five other things while trying to capture one, so you're just going to have to take my word for it!




We were told that most people dressed up for this night, so hubby and I went for a vaguely Victorian theme. This is not my finest photo (although it is a particularly fine shot of my nostrils) but I couldn't resist showing you how handsome Hubby looks in a bowler hat! I'm actually really disappointed that we didn't get a decent photo of us in costume as we looked pretty awesome! :-(




A fun night was had by all, and I have to thank Rod, Jami & co for a memorable NYE , and also for giving us somewhere to crash until it was time to get the train home! We had a lovely sunny walk through the city this morning to get to the train station - the streets were all but deserted but the after parties were still raging and as we listened to the music bouncing off the surrounding buildings we were both wishing we had the energy to start again! We managed to tear ourselves away though, and after a few hours sleep this afternoon we are both feeling vaguely human again.

So, i suppose now is the time to talk about those pesky new year resolutions. I have been been mulling them over for a few days now and this is what I have come up with:

1) Obviously the top spot goes to that age old classic - diet and exercise. *sigh* I have gone up a dress size since I moved over here and am really struggling to shift it. Shopping for my NYE outfit was the final straw so I am aiming to have a super motivational January to kick start some healthy habits and get back to my former fabulousness!

2) Blog more!! This was supposed to be a way to say hi and keep you up to date on all the wee things we get up to and I have been a bit negligent of late - sorry! I will try and do better!

3) Work on my guitar and sewing machine skills, or lack thereof!

4) This is a silly one, but I want to make an effort to look after my nails better! They are always dry and cracked, and I can pretty much guarantee that anytime we have somewhere to go my polish is always a mess and I don't have time to fix it :-(

That should be enough to keep me busy for now - and hopefully give me lots of ammo to keep you entertained and/or bore you silly for the foreseeable future!!

As a little reward for getting to the end of this offering, I will leave you with this pretty picture of some cupcakes Hubby and I made on Friday. Yes, I know my icing skills need a lot of work, but how cute are the fondant flowers?!?!?!




Until next time ..... xxx