That's Us: Cleverly Disguised!

Christmas in London - Part 2

It's not even 2pm on Christmas Day and P and I are stuffed! We started cooking at 10am and just had our lunch. This is the 'before' photo of the food:

And the after:


Of course the portion on the left is mine and the one on the right is P's ha ha. It was pretty good for our first ever meal cooked together (ah married life, it's bliss!) and we hoovered it all up in less than 10 minutes ha ha. Yeller Fever and the Gorgeous M: You guys will get to taste this on 25 December 2008!

The great thing is that we have enough leftover to fry up some bubble and squeak tomorrow woo hoo! I have also had four glasses of Mimosas...burp. ;-p

The weather has become a milder with a touch of rain. P is trying to convince me to go out for a walk but it's so nice and warm in the flat and I really can't be bothered! Top of the Pops in on the telly, a real British classic.

We spoke to Yeller Fever and the Canadian Family this morning. He is over at their place stuffing his face with turkey and all the trimmings. The mum is a fantastic cook (I know as I've had her leftover turkey dinner, yum!) and I'm sure made 20 portions for only six of them!

We hit the sales tomorrow and I just cannot wait! Yahooooooooooo!

Christmas in London - Part 1

I'm sitting here in fleece booties, jogging bottoms, long-sleeved top and a throw around my shoulders listening to Josh Groban singing Christmas carols. P has gone to the office to earn a living to keep me in the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed and I am chilling out at home. :-)

The last few days have been amazing. I have tried every mulled wine stand in the vicinity and stuffed my gob full of mince pies. Yes it is cold outside, but with the heating on, the flat is lovely and cosy, so much so that my roses and lilies have really bloomed:



We have also hit the pre-Christmas sales and picked up tons of clothes. So far besides the knee-high boots, P has bought me four V-necked jumpers, a grey cableknit turtleneck and lots of lovely moisturizers and stuff. I love Christmas!

We have opted to make our own festive lunch tomorrow. That should be interesting, considering I've never made a roast beef with all the trimmings before! We will have brussel sprouts, parnips, carrots, cabbage, peas and yorkshire pudding with gravy. Yum. If nothing else, this will be good practice for Christmas next year as we've invited Yeller Fever and my American Friend the Gorgeous M to stay with us over the festive season.

Hopefully, the weather will be clear in the afternoon and we can take a walk by the Thames. I think we will both need it after our huge lunch! Anyway, I need to pop out to get another lot of mince pies as I ate the last one this morning ha ha.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr it is!

Well I've landed on Brrringland's surprisingly sunny shores and it is absolutely freezing. However, the air is beautifully crisp and as the sun hits the streets, the sillouette of the bare trees against the clear blue sky is simply stunning. A perfect place to spend the festive season. The shops are all brimming with Christmas goodies and everywhere you look, decorations abound.

My 13-hour flight landed at some ungodly hour, but P was there to meet me at the airport. He surprised me with a beautiful hand bouquet made up of cream roses and lilies, which I thought was very sweet. Am I the luckiest woman in the world or what?!

After a nice Thai lunch (you can take the girl out of Asia but you can't take the Asia out of the girl), I hit the shops near P's office and bought myself a gorgeous pair of black leather knee-high boots for only £45 on sale! They will go perfectly with a tweed skirt suit P got me.

After work today, P and I will head down to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. There is ice skating, a fairground and a German Christmas market. It will be cold of course, but this is how I deal with the weather. I wear long cotton leggings under my jeans and a thermal shirt beneath my cashmere turtleneck. I top it all off with Timberland boots and a ski bunny white down jacket, cashmere hat and gloves.

If it's extra cold, I will have a hot toddy to help me along the way hee hee. I have a feeling that I'll need to drink a few glasses of mulled wine this evening to help keep me warm! Here's to your good health!

Life as an M R S

I’ve been married for over three weeks now and I love, love, LOVE my new husband. I never thought I would say this, but married life (even if it’s the second time round) is GREAT! Bet most of you thought you’d never hear those words pass my lips, huh. Don’t worry, you’re not the only ones. Even I never thought I would hear those words pass my lips!

It’s been crazy running around seeing friends and getting organized for Brrringland over the Christmas holidays. I’m also putting my wedding scrapbook album together and that has been really wonderful. I can relive the evening over and over without the nervousness and without being pulled in a hundred different directions at the same time. Not that I’m complaining, I loved our wedding day and cannot begin to tell everyone who was there how much it meant to me.

I also want to thank all of you who took photos during the wedding and sent them on afterwards. P and I have laughed our heads off at those taken during the drinks party. I took the CD round to the Canadian Family’s one evening and banished the kids to another room while we howled over the photos.

There is a great one of P on the dance floor sans shirt, another of my good friend’s boyfriend dry h*mping my new husband and some of Yeller Fever (or should I call you White Fever now?!) dancing with this girl, then that girl, then yet another girl, etc. You get the picture.

There is even one of us (bride and groom, our parents aged 60, 62 and 70, various friends, etc) doing a group hug thingy on the dance floor and jumping up and down to the band’s version of our first dance song, “Chasing Cars”! I don’t think anyone else in the crowded club understood why we did that, but it was just brilliant. It still makes me smile whenever I think of it!

P and I often talk about what a top night it was and how we wish we could relive the entire week again, starting from our combi hen/stag night where we went to the Four Floors in the back of the lorry! How drunk were we? OMG.

My ex-husband Mark also flew in for the wedding, which both P and I really appreciated. The evening before the big night, a bunch of us were out drinking (surprise surprise). Mark and I had a very good talk about his mum (whom I adored) and my friend Lane, who both succumbed to cancer a few years ago. It was a bittersweet moment, remembering lost loved ones on what was one of the happiest weeks of my life to date.

But it made me realize something: That not only do I have the best husband in the whole entire universe, but I am also truly blessed that my ex-husband is one of my most treasured and trusted friends. I really am very lucky.

I didn’t realize that I hadn’t written in on the blog for quite a while until the mother in the Canadian Family mentioned it last night when they came round for dinner. I’ve just been so busy working and running errands that one day just rolls on relentlessly into the next and before I’ve realized, it’s a week short of a month since we got married.

Last night while we were waiting for Yeller/White Fever to show up before we started eating, the Young JC from upstairs texted and asked if he could borrow my iron. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang and I saw my frazzled neighbour wearing jeans and an unbuttoned, wrinkled shirt. He came in, said hi to the Canadian Family and told us that all the power sockets in his unit were on the blink. That is not unusal as this is a brand new building and there are still kinks to work out.

I plugged in the iron and set up the board in the hallway, but for some reason, that particular socket didn’t work either. The one in the living room did, so the Young JC had to sort his shirt out where we were all sitting ha ha. If you can imagine, the poor guy had to make conversation with us and pretend that it was a normal occurrence for him to iron without his shirt on in front of people he hardly knows. The Canadians’ 11-year-old daughter’s face was a picture!

I couldn’t help laughing and told him that it was going on the blog. I guess I should thank him for keeping us all entertained.

Anyway, it’s late Sunday evening and I’m enjoying my new Christmas-scented candle (present from the Canadian Family). I’ll end here for now because I want to lie down and read a book. If you don’t hear from me for a few weeks, don’t fret. It’s because I’ll be frolicking in Winter Wonderland with P!

Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!