My Valentine's Day Gift.

What to do if you get nothing on Valentine's day?

Why buy yourself a beautiful red ring of course!!!

A Christmas Gift...

Before my computer went died on me I took part in the Christmas gift exchange and received the most beautiful angel to hang on my tree. Many thanks to Sarah who sent me this delightful decoration (unfortunately my photography is too bad to do it justice) but I really do love it. Also many thanks to Julie who arranged this swap.

Following my experiences this Christmas I thought I'd offer the following bits of advice:

1) Do not leave the inside car light on the night before you travel as the battery will be flat.

2) Remember to bring the camera cradle with you if you plan to download photographs.

3)Do not concur to your mother and shove the 1.1kg bottle of Daddies brown sauce into your suitcase which is already at its maximum weight. This will only result in you having to throw said bottle away at the airport.

4) Make sure you pre-book a taxi to take you home, at midnight on new years day the queue for taxis will be out the door and down the road.

5) Ensure that all the tools needed to recharge the car battery are in the house (when you know for a fact that the battery dies if the car is not used for 10 days). It is not fun having to go and search for the tool box in the back of the shed at 1am nor will your wife appreciate the mucky floor as your walk all over it in wet, muddy shoes.

Only one of these bits of advice did we follow, which one do you think it was?

Note to Self II

When you find a picture of a great new hairstyle you want put it immediately in your handbag, do not leave it on the table because when you get to the hairdressers no matter how much you describe said hairstyle or wave your hands around you will not end up with the style you wanted!!!

Some advice...

No matter how tired you are or how busy you are, never, ever be tempted to put your favourite brown jumper in the washing machine on a cold wash. It is not the same as hand washing in cold water. It will shrink.

Your eleven year old daughter may be delighted as she will have gained a new jumper.

Sherbert Shame

If you find some interesting, small green grains on your daughters recently cleaned floor you may consider using your senses to work out what the aforementioned green grains are.

You can see that they are green, sparkly, sherbet like grains.

They are inanimate so you can't listen to them.

You may smell them but if you've a bad sense of small like me that won't help.

Touch them and yes they feel like sherbet.

BUT

Do not taste them....

You may gag and feel like vomiting, you may then half fall down the stairs and nearly break bones in your rush to get a glass of water.

My advice would be to wait for your daughter to get home and ask her what said green grains are to which she may reply 'oh yes, I spilt magic sand everywhere'.

If you're even more unlucky she'll repeatedly ask 'why did you eat it' and laugh!

Sod's Law and the Hair Dye.

If you have been dyeing your hair for 20 years and have never spilt so much as a drop of dye on your clothes and...

...If you decide to dye your hair at 5:15pm when you are leaving for a party at 6pm...

Still take the time to put on that old black t-shirt otherwise sod's law!

Decadence.

A while back Terri posted a recipe that immediately caught my eye, it was for toblerone cheesecake. I admit this caught my eye because I don't like toblerone and my family does and as I'll be in France with all my husbands family in less than four weeks I was delighted to be able to make my family something new and delicious safe in the knowledge that I wouldn't be tempted and I might yet look half decent in a bikini. Of course as I licked the bowl, expecting to not like the taste, so began a new love affair. It was delicious. This is the easiest, tastiest recipe ever made and I don't think it will be too long before I make it again. Next time I make it I will double the ingredients for the base as it was very thin compared to the thick toblerone cheese topping.

The Recipe

Base:
1 cup plain chocolate biscuit crumbs
80g melted butter
1/4 cup ground almonds

Filling:
2x 250g block Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
1/2 cup caster sugar
200g Toblerone Milk or Dark chocolate, melted
1/2 cup thickened cream (I used a pot of cream)

Method:
1. Combine biscuit crumbs, butter and almonds, press into the base of a lightly greased spring form pan. Chill.
2. Beat Philly for two minutes or until smooth. Add sugar, melted Toblerone chocolate and cream, continue beating until well combined.
3. Pour onto the prepared crumb base and refrigerate for 2-3 hours until set, or overnight. Serve topped with Toberlone shavings.
Serves 10

Wendy is currently hosting a meme in which you download a picture and play around with it. So I have turned this:

into this:

Finally may I recommend that you ask your husband to please remove his beer glass from the floor when he goes to bed then you won't get woken up at 8:30am by your six year old saying 'somebody left a glass on the floor and by accident I knocked it over and it's smashed'

10 things not to do the morning after the bender the night before...

1) Wake up!

2) Be on cleaning up duty at 10am (cleaning the hall used for the bender the night before).

3) Be on tennis mentoring duty from 12.30-2pm against hard hitting 14 year olds.

4) Drop youngest son to a party at 2pm.

5) Drop daughter to a party at 3pm.

6) Collect youngest son from the party at 4pm.

7) Drive to collect take away for dinner (hubby and eldest son were working all day at hubby's work as the business is moving premises, there is no weekend off for hubby so he was unable to join me on Friday night for the aforementioned bender).

8) Take daughter to accident and emergency to get her wrist and elbow x-rayed as she fell at the aforementioned party and couldn't move her arm which was badly swollen.

9) Collect eldest son and friends from a gig at 10:30pm.

10) Stay up reading when you should be tucked up, fast asleep in bed!

Some advice...

Mr Bean's Holiday.

Second row from the front.

Not recommended as a way to pass 90 minutes.

My debt is paid.