Having lunch on Jo's new patio.

Dinner at Liz

Matthew in heaven

Easter with the family

The highlight of Easter for me was hiding eggs for the kids in the garden. I hid some in the car too and then hid the keys to the car in the garden too.  So much fun!  

Last year, I hid eggs in the house and some of the eggs remained hidden until they were found 10 months later.  But not the one I hid in the toaster (the smell of burning plastic made sure of that; maybe not the best hiding place! )  I wonder how many eggs remain yet unfound this year?  The gardener may find he has a bumper year for chocolate!

Then the Boting clan came round for a delicious Easter lunch.  Followed by dinner at Col’Cacchio.  Needless to say, by the end of the day I was stuffed!

David's birthday party at Bondi Pizza in Parramatta

A fun and animated evening with hiking buddies.  A super pizza restaurant too with gorgeous thin crust and thick topping. Elna and I shared a Lamb and Feta and a Chili prawn and Chorizo and we found it hard to decide which was better than the other!

Xmas at Brendan and Eva

Xmas with Eva and Brendan is always so special.  It feels like I'm amongst family.  The food was out of this world and the company was wonderful.  As usual, mum's potato baked was in great demand. I also made chocolate mousse this year which went down very well.

Dinner around the table

 

Just a sample of the amazing food.

Eva hand painted these table settings.  Beautiful.

Xmas decorations

Such lovely, lovely people.

Making the most of the beautiful pool and warm weather.

Such a perfect house for parties!

The queen of the leaps. What amazing technique.

Sue's 70 th birthday

We all celebrated Sue's 70 th at a wonderful restaurant overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House. One of the best views in Sydney!  It was a fun and delicious evening with lovely people.  I had grilled calamari risotto (yum) and Sue brought a divine Pavlova.  All washed down with beautiful champaign.  Gorgeous!!

After the party, I snuck into Luna Park and took some snaps.

Gavin and Tanya's Xmas party and food fest.

Gavin invited us round for his annual Xmas party. It was a wonderful evening with lovely people and AMAZING food. Haven't eaten so well or so much in ages.

I'm the ghost figure at the back.

Elna and Srini

Gavin and his mates wore very interesting Xmas outfits!!  Love it.

A vast array of delicious food.  Everyone brought a dish. The highlight for me was Tanya's ice-cream cake, packed full of Ferrero Rocher.  Yum!!

The evening ended with Secret Santa. I was no 4 so got to choose early from the big pile of gifts.  I got a blow up boat and can't wait to try it out.

Gavin's very gorgeous cat.

What a great evening!!

Do I know how to pick house-mates or what?

Matt, my new house-mate, is a gourmet chef and I got to enjoy a succulent meal of medium rare lamb and truffle mash.  So delicious.  The big question is, what can I make in return.  A little bit daunting!

Celebrating my 44th birthday with Sue at The Oaks

It was lovely to spend time with Sue as always and getting to hear all about her recent trip to Poland, The Arctic and Iceland.  The highlight food wise was the enormous apple, raspberry and rhubarb crumble.  Almost as good as mum used to make!

Farewell dinner with Chrisèl

Chrisèl leaves on Saturday for South Africa where she'll spend the next year.  Needless to say, I'm feeling sad and will miss her enormously.  To say goodbye, we went to Radio Cairo (which appropriately is an African themed restaurant) for delicious boerewors, lamb sosaties, succulent pork ribs in an amazing sauce, Mozambican chille prawns, crème brulee, mint tea ice cream and a Mozambique tartlet.  We enjoyed every mouthful!

Sydney chocolate tour

For my birthday, Chrisèl treated me to a chocolate tour in the city. We spent a wonderful morning, walking between all the chocolate places, sampling the delicious chocolates, drinking hot chocolate, hearing fascinating facts about chocolate from the friendly tour leader and talking about chocolate with the fellow tour attendees.  The highlight chocolate was a cherry liquor one that tasted like heaven. By the end of the tour, we were both totally stuffed but on a huge sugar high.  Definitely one the best and most memorable birthday presents I've ever received.

After all the sweetness, we felt like something bitter.  So what better than a big jug of beer in Hyde Park!!

In the evening, we met up with  Spanish friend of Chrisèl (Angel) who was visiting Australia with three friends.  Chrisèl hadn't seen Angel for 11 years so there was lots to catch up on.  They were a super bunch of people and we had a great night out, that ended in this very atmospheric, lesser know pub with moose heads on the wall!

Another relaxing weekend on The Central Coast

Some highlights of the weekend included ...

• A walk past lovely jetties.
• Watching The Notebook - what a wonderful tearjerker!
• A scrumptious sea food pasta meal at a delightful local Italian restaurant.  The dessert was especially delicious. It was lovely eating and listening to the rain outside.
• Trying out yoga which I loved.
• Lovely fresh veggie juice at the local mall, followed by iced chocolate.
• The sun coming out on Sunday afternoon - motivating us to go for a walk along the beach.
• Orange and cinnamon tea - yum!  
• My first taste of Halloumi cheese.
• Listening to great music in the car - including Chrisèl's wonderful 80's CD.
• All in all, another super weekend.

Orgiastic desserts

Chrisèl loves jeeps!!