Resolve

One of my new year's resolutions was to use my extensive collection of cookbooks more often rather than just cooking the same meals over and over. This evening I served this up to my hungry mob of men...

...it went down a treat :-)

Nom nom nom

I had a serious dose of baking fever yesterday morning and whipped up a whole batch of goodies for my little men and their pals to enjoy in the lead-up to Christmas!

This Christmas tree chocolate cake was so easy. I bought the cake tin in Kmart, made up mixture for 12 cupcakes (Humming Bird Cafe recipe), poured the mixture into the mould and popped it into the oven for 25 minutes at 175 degrees celsius. Then when it cooled down my two littler boys "helped" me dust it with icing sugar and put some M&Ms on as baubles :-)

Next I made 2 dozen choccie cupcakes (Hummingbird recipe again, always a winner). Things went a bit awry with the food colouring and I now have hulk hands.

Some mince-pies for my hubbie :-)

We're pretty strict with our kids' diets. Our eldest never ate chocolate until he was five and a half, the others younger of course. I wanted to hold off for longer with them too but trying to watch all kids with an eagle eye is impossible sometimes. D had his first taste over a year ago when I saw him ambling past at his friend's party stuffing a Lamington down his throat with glee and S had his about a year ago too when he was handed a slice of cake unbeknownst to me at another party, there he was sitting at the top of the slide with choccie all over him looking like he'd just discovered gold!

So now, we do let go when it's special occasions like parties and Christmas or special playdates. I'm happy to say that they still have very healthy diets and appreciate treats for what they are - special and not the norm :-)

Oh, if you'd seen the happy little chocolate-covered faces here yesterday after all this baking :-)

Living

The house was looking a bit tidier than usual this morning (not THAT tidy, still could do with a dust and vacuum), so I thought I'd get the camera out and share some photos of our living room before we decorate it for Christmas :-)

Various art is framed and hung on the wall, from left to right, an original etching of a mother and baby from an artist at Paddington Markets, a tapa cloth painting from a holiday in Fiji, an original oil painting of Sydney harbour (one of my favourite finds), an etching I found at a market and some studio photos of my littlest munchkin.

We are lucky enough to have a working fireplace, many lovely evenings were spent last Winter toasting marshmallows with our boys, it's also a lovely focal point for Christmas decorating. I've mentioned before we are renting this house, so I have no choice on the cream carpets and walls and gold-brown curtains. Thankfully they are pretty neutral and non-offensive, so easy enough to work around.

All of our furniture is suitable for our stage of life, i.e. we have 3 little boys who love to climb and race toy cars and jump around, so we don't want to be too precious by having glorious antiques and top of the range designer furnishings, I like that they can play to their hearts content without me yelling "NOOOO, not on the solid mahogany table, OFF the Venetian velvet sofa boys, GET DOWN from that Louis xiv chair right now"!!!

The Christmas tree will go into this corner, I'm itching to put it up!!!

The mantlepiece is a nice spot for displaying "things", such as some of our favourite photos, some pottery vases, my little pair of peacocks, my favourite ever blobby wooden vase and a pair of sandstone candle holders we bought on holidays at Hyams Beach (one of my favourite places in the world).

This table is another nice spot for bits and pieces including the painting I commissioned from an Etsy artist, some photos of our boys and bowls, lamp, books etc.

It's a long room with a space at the end which incorporates stairs down to the playroom, 2 windows, some built-in cupboards and the doorway to the study. This could easily have become dead space with no wall-space for furniture but instead it's become a nice little play-area for the boys when their toys overflow into the living room.

These drawer units are perfect for storing all that random kiddie stuff, bits of lego, blocks, cars etc that we would otherwise spend our lives tripping over. On top are some Schleich dinosaurs (unfortunately not thrifted, couldn't get that lucky ;-) a vintage globe, cowboy lamp and "Melissa and Doug" barn.

That's it! Hopefully by the weekend it will be looking very Christmassy! I will have a little team of helpers, you know what that means, all the decorations will end up on the bottom half of the tree as far as their little arms can reach :-)

Christmas Classics

For me, one of the best parts of the lead-up to Christmas is watching my favourite festive ads and movies that I can't see or won't let myself watch except at this time of year, it keeps them special not to watch them all year round.

First, there are my old favourites...

Top of these is "The Snowman", a short beautifully animated movie with haunting melodies, made in 1982, it never dates...

From 1989 onwards no Christmas in my home was complete without watching "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation", so many lovely memories of watching this with my parents and sisters, all of us in stitches laughing :-)

No Christmas ad will ever beat the 1987 Budweiser commercial for me, it will always be my favourite and this time every year I bookmark it in youtube and watch it almost daily :-)

But of course, I do have new favourites too :-)

My little boys are big train fans, so every December when we take out the "Polar Express" DVD there is huge excitement. I feel a viewing coming on in a couple of weeks, can't wait to see their little faces :-)

My favourite Christmas song? Mariah of course!

But a new contender is George Michael's "December Song", my boys are obsessed with this video for some reason, the animation is beautiful, my littlest man loves the lights on wheels and squeals when he sees them. Something that makes my 3 boys stop in their tracks and sit still? How could it not be a favourite?

My fave newer Christmas movie has got to be "Love Actually". London at Christmas, fab!!!

And lastly, although this little film "Lost and Found" has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, I think it may become my newest favourite of all. The boys were given the book a few years ago as a gift and loved it, then last year the animated movie was shown on tv at Christmas and they were spellbound.

Anyway, enough about me! This post was a great excuse to gather all my favourites into one place but I'd love to hear from others out there on your favourites at this special time of year :-)

PS. I know I've used the word "favourite" way too many times in this post but the only equivalent I could think of was "bestest" and that's not a real word now is it?

Cosy

All I want for Christmas is these socks...

Available here

But with temperatures in the late 30s (celsius!!!) this week in Sydney, I think I could look slightly ridiculous and may have to give them a miss :(

Old and New

Old: Me. I turned 38 today!

New: All the gorgeous pressies I was spoilt with :-)

When I was little, on my birthday and Christmas day I used to love lining up my presents and clapping with delight looking at them all together. Well, today I got such gorgeous gifts, that's exactly what I felt like doing, so here they are :-)

Now I know I recently harped on about building up my collection of vintage Le Creuset but how could I resist the beautiful new coastal blue collection? I got a round casserole and oval French oven, and no, we didn't pay Australian prices for these. The Uk department store John Lewis have started shipping to Australia with a 15 pound flat delivery fee, so these ended up costing us about 40% what they would have at full retail in an Australian department store. They arrived 4 weeks ago and have been hiding under the bed ever since waiting for my boys to "surprise" me with them this morning :-)

I love this beautiful Jamie Oliver bowl and server set from my big sis, it's nice and large, perfect for a salad when we have friends over for a bbq.

How gorgeous is this vintage style mixing bowl by Tala? Very gorgeous indeed!!! Thanks Mum and Dad :-)

And just in case you think ALL my pressies were blue, look what my clever mind-reading little sister sent me!

I have been dying to get this book since it was released!

The day's not over yet, there will be cake when my hubbie gets home (and surprises according to my little man) and then my lovely friend next door is going to babysit so my hubbie and I can go out together for dinner! Our usual meals out are in kiddie-friendly restaurants with play areas where we wolf down our dinner while our kids run around like crazy, so I'm looking forward to a nice relaxed grown-up evening out :-)

Thumbs up!

I know it's cheesy but...

When I saw the new Coke bottles with names on them I couldn't resist :-)