Happy Holidays!

That's all really. Have a safe and happy Christmas and New Year!

See you in 2012!

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Last night I cooked dinner!

Not a super thrilling statement in itself, but given poor A has been lumped with most of the cooking for the last, oh, 3 months, it was pretty exciting that I actually felt like doing it!

So, Japanese it was. And it was pretty awesome if I do say so myself!

In the very middle, tofu with soy sauce, ginger and spring onion. On the left Nasu Dengaku from momofukufor2. Really simple, but could possibly do with a bit less sugar?? And on the right, soba noodles with tofu, carrot and zucchini - hot for A, cold for me. 

A quick hello from Axel - he has an obsession with bags/boxes/tiny-Axel-sized-spaces and will happily clamber his way in for a sneaky nap. Very cute.

Anyway, today is get ready to go on holidays day. Get new tyres, clean out the cars, finish staining and sealing the outside of the doors in the picture above, set up watering system and so on. If yesterday's effort is anything to go by I predict I get less than half done and need about three naps so I best get to it!

The 'tip' chairs finally meet the new table!

So in all the excitement of finishing up the school year and spreading the word about little Baby A I never finished the chair and dining table story.

After about 6 friday nights of A being out during the football season and me ironing, stretching and staple gunning I finally finished all the chairs! Phew! The very next day we went out and bought ourselves a new dining table. I think that it is actually the first brand new piece of big furniture that we've purchased (flat pack desks and office chairs don't count). We'd seen the table a while back and both agreed that it was what we wanted. We checked out prices online but they turned out to be more expensive than buying it locally so that's what we did. The lady who served us was an absolute riot and spent most of the sales time telling us about meeting footballers when she worked in a store in St Kilda. So funny.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the table and chairs, together, in our dining room!

The table extends out at each end so we can fit 8 people easily and 10 at a squeeze. It makes such a difference to the space from the round table we had before and the chairs are much more comfortable. 

Table and chair project - complete!

Liebster Blog Award, holidays and those cookies

Firstly, thanks to Natalie over at inthenightsky for the blog award. You should definitely go check her blog out if you haven't already! This award is for bloggers with less than 200 followers and in accepting it you are asked to do the following...

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

2. Reveal 5 blogs you have chosen for the award and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog

3. Copy and paste the award to your blog

4. Request that people you have sent the awards to forward it on to their favourite bloggers

As my corner of blog world here is pretty small I'm passing it on to just two blogs at this point.

1. Sammie at Marriage Renovations And...

2. Relatively new blogger Yaeli at Mummy In Progress

In other news, I am now on holidays! Cue fireworks and happy cheers. No more work until February 1, 2012. Gosh that feels good to say. And even better than that, then there'll only be 10 working weeks until I start mat leave! 

The cookie in a jar thingys were a hit! They were easy to make (once we hunted down the right size jars)  and they taste pretty good too. How do I know this? I got to the last of 8 jars, was about to put the lid on and thought - hang on, did I put the baking powder and bicarb soda in this one??? So I tipped it out, added them (possibly for the second time), made that batch of cookies for us and refilled the jar correctly! All's well that ends well! I also got inspired and made Christmas cupcakes to farewell my year 7s. They were meant to look like santa hats - not too bad I guess although I could do with some piping practice! Sorry for the grainy iPad photo but you get the idea.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

And there goes another two weeks.

Time really does fly at this stage of the year.

Thankfully I've now finished reports and am feeling pretty darn excited that I won't have to write any more probably until November 2013! There are 4 days of work left until the holidays. Life is good.

Today I'm making Christmas gifts for my staffroom. I'm attempting these cookie mixture in a jar thingys from Bakerella. I hope they work out OK. I'm going to try substituting some things to make different flavours so some cranberry and white choc instead of milk choc and m&ms. Cross your fingers for me (and my workmates)!