Entries from December 2009 ↓

Great surprise yesterday – Benjamin came into the office wearing his Xero vest so I grabbed him for a photo. What a cutey!!

Had a nice day getting into the Christmas spirit yesterday. Lots of shopping at Moore Wilson’s stocking up for Christmas Eve/Christmas Day and then a coffee and Christmas mince pie afternoon tea in the park.

Then off  to my first Christmas carol evening in, I think, ever! Family and friends gathered to sing, yep even me although The Mister was convinced I was going to embarass him with my off-key “sommmmme-thing-or-oooooooother” because apparently I never know the words!

The kids were pretty cute too – here they are all lined up for the New Zealand  version of ‘12 Days of Christmas’.

Hope we’re invited back next year.

Spotted my first full red tree on the way to Nikau today – they really are pretty amazing.

And a couple more spotted when walking around town after Christmas – this one on Oriental Parade

And this one right in the city on Taranaki Street

Went over to Martinborough for our Christmas party yesterday – we went on the train and toured 2 wineries and an olive grove before ending up at Murdoch James for more tasting and dinner. It was a pretty cool afternoon – can’t remember laste time I went on  train locally and the trip to Featherston went by pretty quickly.

It was really windy in Martinborough but it was cool hanging around chatting with everyone. At Palliser ,

And wandering through the olive grove at Olivo.

Train got us back into town by 10pm so all in all a good afternoon and a nice break from the city.

Saw this in the New York Times – just amazing – hundreds of cookies as part of a wedding tradition. Very cool.

Had my little team over for a Christmas afternoon tea party this week – thought I should try and be sociable or at least organise something social, and not being one for the pub I offered to bake and make coffee. One of our party is gluten free so that was a bit of a challenge.

Had a couple of goes at making a chocolate brownie but am still not sure it was successful despite being gobbled up and told it was delicious as it seemed to rise up very high in the oven then sink dramatically and crack on top.

Did have success with  a fancy white chocolate rocky road, although had to leave out the marshmallows as every packet I found listed some kind of wheat stabilizer on the back. However, hunted around for the Turkish Delight set with corn starch and found some gluten free nougat to use in place of the marshmallows.

Stirred it up quickly and poured it into the dish before the melted chocolate could harden again.

Fantastic looking and tasting result!

Here’s the lovely platter all made up – the chocolate brownie, rocky road and Christmas mince pies with last year’s boozy fruit mince.

It was a very pleasent afternoon indeed.

Man, it’s been a real Susie-Homemaker weekend! Today after going into the office all morning I spent the afternoon baking and ‘gardening’!

Made the first batch of Christmas mince pies for this year. I didn’t make fruit mince earlier in October as I have 2 jars left from last year – I got Mother to sniff it when they were here in October to make sure it was still OK and her verdict was good … mind you the amount of brandy I ‘whoops’ when measuring (Christmas baking or tiramisu!) is probably enough to ferment anything!

Then out into the increasing wind on the balcony to plant this year’s basil. Good stiff breeze to blow away any nasties in the potting mix though.

However since planting it about 3 hours ago I’ve watched out the window in horror as Wellington delivered stronger and stronger wind (gusting up to 74km/hr according to wunderground.com) battering around the poor tiny plants! Oh well, they’ve got to get used to it!!

So while I was busy sewing yesterday the Mister took care of Saturday night’s Orange Kitchen experiment. His first almost all by himself pie (I rolled and fitted the pastry). Kumara (sweet potato (kind of) for my American readers) pie with a delicious onion, garlic and currant base.

It’s an adaption of the Pumpkin & Kumara pie in November’s Cuisine magazine (2 kinds of kumara instead of pumpkin and pinenuts instead of walnuts).

Yep – the tall building research in Wellington continues even at the weekend – yesterday it was the Plimmer Towers. Although we’ve had the contract through for our 29th floor apartment in New York so it’s a bit late to back out now!

I didn’t think I’d be able to get into Plimmer Towers and certainly not at the weekend – however the glass doors opened when I approached them so there was no stopping me. The Mister followed with trepidation muttering that he’d never been in there before and how would we know where to go?  I just hissed that we should act as though we knew what we were doing for the benefit of the security cameras so I followed the sound of the ‘ding’ the lift made when the person who we’d tail-gated into the building called it and (thankfully the doors closed on her before we got there) punched the call button. Lift arrived, got in, noted the number of floors, got out and left the building as swiftly as we’d come.

31 floors.

This has got to be a classic New Zealand shot – Christmas trees leaning up out the front of the petrol station. It’s truly Christmas time. These in Miramar yesterday.