Christmas Cheer

There are a couple of days before December is here, but I've already started my Christmas wrapping. I had to write this post as evidence. With presents wrapped and snow on the ground, I can't not wait for Christmas! Plus, this year I'm actually going to be home on Christmas day. That hasn't happened for the past two years. Although one of those I did fly home the day after Christmas (Boxing Day in the UK), it still wasn't the same.

There are only three weekends until Tom and I get on the big plane that will take us directly to Seattle. I am ecstatic that we have direct flights, and on BA, it makes such a difference. Next weekend I don't have plans, but shopping in Brighton on the weekends is horrific as the crowds are simply unbearable. After that it is my office christmas party, and the following weekend Tom and I are visiting Tom and Siobhan in London, then that Tuesday we fly. Which means... I will be home very soon. But I have so much to take care of beforehand. I'm trying to get everything Christmas done early so I can relax and enjoy the season. So grown up and responsible of me I think.

Do you think your gift is in this stack? Humm, I won't tell. But I do probably know something you don't know.



Love

Feast for Friends

I am proud to say my Thanksgiving feast was splendid!


The trick I must say was in the organisation. About a week before the big day I planned my menu and printed all of the recipes. A few days before I read through my recipes, determined the order in which each dish needed to be prepared and made my shopping list. On the morning of Thanksgiving, recipes in order and timings written down, I was ready to cook.

First on the to do list, Apple Pie:



Next the nibbles, cranberry sauce and peeling the potatoes:



After this half of the preparations were complete and stored away for the evening I had a couple of hours to shower and get cleaned up and arrange the tables for later.

Then it was on to preparing the mail meal. I decided to tackle the bird first, and let me say when I first started I nearly turned vegetarian. My turkey was 13.5lbs! A raw naked bird of that size is not a pleasant sight. But I manned up and soon realised roasting a turkey is actually a fairly simple task.


Once he was in the oven I got my Grami's green beans on the go followed by the parmesan mashed potatoes, honey and nutmeg carrots and brussel sprouts with bacon.





Everything was ready just in time for me to escape the kitchen for an hour of peace at pilates. As soon as I returned guests were arriving. It was Thanksgiving time. The main dishes went back in the oven to warm as the turkey came out to rest. During this time my guests enjoyed the nibbles (especially the prunes wrapped in bacon) and opened some wine. We didn't wait around too long before everything was ready and it was time to eat, eat, eat. Luckily people managed to save enough room for dessert and my apple pie went down a treat!





I must say I am very proud of myself for my successful Thanksgiving feast. After a calm day in the kitchen, all of the dishes were served warm as planned and I received many compliments throughout the enjoyable night. I may not have been with my family, but I still enjoyed a delicious Thanksgiving with friends. And I brought a bit of the US to the UK.

Love

My Thanksgiving Meal

I am excited for tomorrow when I will attempt my first big Thanksgiving roast. As I am not home to celebrate with my wonderful family I will be sharing the holiday with eight good friends. If you remember back to January my New Years Resolution was to become a kitchen goddess able to host dinner parties, and hopefully tomorrow with be successful completion of my resolution.

What I have planned...

Nibbles on arrival-
deviled eggs
olives
prunes wrapped in bacon

The main meal-
Roast turkey (of course!)
Stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Homemade cranberry sauce
My Grami's green beans with bacon
Carrots with nutmeg and honey
Rolls

Dessert-
Apple pie
Ice cream

I am waking early to start preparations and will spend the day in the kitchen cooking my delicious feast. I don't think we will starve, unless it all goes wrong of course. Wish me luck!

Love

wintertime, goodbye sunshine

Yesterday as I sat freezing in my office all wrapped up in my scarf I was not happy. I hate being cold, seriously there is nothing pleasant about it. Unless you are at a ski resort where it doesn't matter because you are bundled up and warm anyway as you joyfully fly down the slopes. How wonderful it would it be to live somewhere where you never get cold? I think it would be ideal. Day dreaming of warm places such as California, Australia and Arizona (where I will be visiting for a week in January) I was lost in thoughts of shorts and bikinis. Then I got onto Twitter to check the latest tweets and discovered it was snowing in Seattle! It's not even Thanksgiving yet and there is snow in Seattle, shocking weather. I remember growing up and being slightly disappointed as my family drove over the mountains to Seattle at Christmas. We had to leave our white Christmas behind in exchange for grey dismal rain. This year Seattle will experience a White Thanksgiving, how lucky! My thoughts of warm summer places have vanished and instead my fingers are crossed that snow continues so I can have my white Seattle Christmas. Perhaps the fact that the heating is on in my office today has also helped vanish those thoughts.

Love

i heart pilates

Tonight is my third session of my pilates classes, and I love them! It excites me knowing that when I leave the office tonight I will be on my way to a relaxing but difficult exercise. I can't wait.

Over the past couple of years doctors and physio's highly recommended I start pilates to ease my back pain. My regular readers, you will remember my hospital visit for this last Spring I'm sure. It was not fun, well except for the ice cream afterwards. Finally, I have made the decision to wait no longer and signed up to strengthen my core and give my back a helping hand. I'm hoping an eight pack will also result.

Literally one minute from my flat is a studio, The Acupuncture Clinic. They also have treatment rooms where they do all sorts of hippy stuff. I love it. My class is every Thursday evening for six weeks. There are about ten ladies in the class and I am the youngest, but I don't really mind. It's perfect, I get home in time for a quick change then skip across the road to my class. When it finishes there is no fuss getting home. I think the location is half of the reason I enjoy it so much; it's so easy to get to on these dark cold winter nights. I also always feel so much better when the class finishes, strengthened but stretched at the same time.

I used to be obsessed with yoga because of how good it made me feel. Unfortunately when I moved gyms I got out of that practice. I still do love it and hopefully someday soon I will be doing both yoga and pilates. (For now I have to limit the classes to pay for)

If you aren't doing it already check out pilates in your area, you wont regret it!

A Royal Engagement

If you've paid any attention to the news the past couple of days I'm sure you know that Prince William and Kate Middleton are engaged. You know what that means... there will soon be a Royal wedding! Now I'm not one of those girls obsessed with William and Harry, but I do find this news exciting. I was told this morning that as an American I probably find it a lot more interesteing than the average British citizen. Honestly, I think it perhaps because I'm a bit envious. It not just that Kate now has a gorgeous rock on her left hand (Princess Diana's ring), but she is going to be a real life princess, It's every girls dream!

Love

Congratulations Tom!

On Thursday Tom officially signed his new contract with American Express. He is now a permanent employee, one of only three out of about 20 to achieve this! Rather than being on a two year contract he is now on a permanent one. Working in his same team, he will still complete his masters with the grad scheme, but he wont have to search for a new job once that is through. He got a bit of a raise as well, always useful!

To celebrate we went for a meal at The Chimney House. This pub used to be our local, and had a 2 for 1 offer on mains if you booked through Top Table.

Before I start going on about how amazing my meal was, I think you will enjoy hearing this story a bit more. Not long after we were seated I gave Tom a little present. Nothing special, just a little token gift to let him know I am proud of him. As he opened it, some of the tissue paper got in the candle on the table and caught fire! I started to get scared, thinking "we have to get this fire out." Not know what to do I picked it up crying "Tom, fire, help, what do I do?" By this time the entire sheet was in flames. Panicking I threw it in the water jug. Only I didn't get all of it in and a bit burnt off and fell flaming to the table. $*!%! I then in my frenzied state poured my water glass on top of the flames and all over the table. It was a shambles!! I was sooooo embarrassed and the table next to us were all laughing as well. Luckily the bar lady was very nice and helped us clean up, and the boys in the kitchen said it wasn't the first time something like this happened. I'm just glad we didn't burn the entire place down. Tom just sat there shaking his head at me saying if I would have just left it it would have burnt itself out. Must have missed that in fire skills 101 when I was in Campfire.

From there the only way was up for the evening. Neither of us were overly impressed with our starters, but the mains made up for it. I had an incredible meal, the "Pan-seared sea bass, creamy mash, organic spinach, broccoli, mussel & rosemary cream sauce." It was to die for, I savoured every bite! Tom had the "Seared sirloin steak, caramelised onion & sussex blue butter, tomato, roquette, hand-cut chips." His meal was yummy, but mine was definitely better. I was nice and shared. We also enjoyed a bottle of sparkling wine, which we have recently discovered this area of England is very good at.

I think Tom felt special and enjoyed the evening dedicated to him.

Love

Absolutely Amazing Advert

T-mobile recently released an amazing flash mob advert. It's their most impressive one to date! That is my opinion, but I'm sure many others agree. When I first saw this advert I found myself smiling and laughing, it made me happy. Halfway through I was having so much fun watching it, I shouted to Tom who was in the kitchen that he must come and see as I quickly rewound the TV making sure he didn't miss a thing.

Watch for yourself. I promise the next few minuets will be pure enjoyment.



Love

Most successful date night ever!

I'm a bit late boasting about this, but a couple of weeks ago I took Tom on the most successful date night ever!


Wanting some quality one on one time I booked him in for a night with just me. I arranged for us to attend a charity wine tasteing event at Pelham House in Lewes. Lewes is a village just outside of Brighton, and Pelham House is a lovely old hotel and restaraunt that I'd heard extremely positive reviews of. The event cost only £10 per person and gave us a night of tasteing delicious local wines and cheeses.

My organisation for the night was impecable! After purchasing our event tickets, I then purchased train tickets a week in advance to get a slight discount. With maps printed, return times written down and sandwiches made for supper I could barely contain my excitement. I rushed home after work as it was a Friday for a quick change. I was greeted by a very handsome and smartly dressed Tom just as I had requested.

Once on the train Tom kept trying to guess what we were doing. It threw him off when I handed him his sandwich. I think he was a bit dissappointed thinking he was getting taken out for a meal. Once in Lewes it was a short walk to the Hotel. Tom realised this is the same restaurant they take the VP's at Amex for lunches and was impressed.

The event was lovely! I was slightly worried everyone else there would be considerably older, but luckily most people were near our age. East Sussex, the county in England in which Brighton is located, makes a number of incredible sparkling wines which we sampled throughout the night. There was a varitey of cheese to compliment each wine. It was divine.


But the best part.... the raffle! The event supported Rockinghorse, a local charity that supports termanially ill children. Neither Tom or I had cash on us, but seeing as there were only 25 people there and a number of wines to be given away we knew we had good odds. We ran out to a cashpoint and rushed back to get our raffel tickets. As the raffel began I was a bit anxious, I really wanted to win! And, luckily I did! I won one of the bottles of champagne. It just so happened that this was Tom's favourite as well so he was pleased as was I. Then they came to the grand prize, a three course meal for two at Pelham House. Guess what.... Tom WON!! We won the grand prize! Now we have until April to go back and enjoy a delicious meal, another date night.


Tom and I had a wonderful night, so much fun and winning made it that much better. I did good!

Love

Waterloo Company Charity Ball

Tom and I were honoured to attend the Waterloo Company Charity Ball at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy this past weekend. For those of you not familiar with Sandhurst it is not quite as prestigious as Westpoint, but it is more traditional (that is what the men attending Sandhurst say). The ball was one to remember, and most likely one of the most sophisticated events I will ever attend.

Mark invited four couples as guests. I was familiar with all except for one of the couples, and one of the girlfriends. Everyone was lovely and it was great knowing a number of the people there. One of the guys Tom used to live with in Brighton is also currently attending Sandhurst and it was good to see him again. When we arrived Mark took our group on a tour of the grounds. It is grand! The lawns, lakes and impressive builidings were beautiful with Autumn colours all around.


We were then shown to our rooms to change into our evening attire, black tie of course. I purchased a pretty light pink dress from H&M for the event and paired it with black tights, black heels (ankle boot stype that laced up with ribbons) and the Tiffany's necklace my parents gave me. I felt very pretty. Tom looked very handsome in his tux. Off to the ball we went.


We were provided with champagne on arrival and given a little time to mingle before taking our seats for the meal. Sitting at the table just next to us was a Prince from the Middle East who is worth £200m. He is attending Sandhurst at the moment. Class and sophistication eminated everywhere. We enjoyed a delicious three course meal followed by an auction.


Two of the most interesting items of the night were a pizza and a lie in. The pizza went for £400! The members of the company are soon going up to Scotland for an intensive week of training, and the person who won this pizza can have it delivered at any time they want during that week. Mark won the lie in for four for £350. A lie in, just means sleeping in late. In December Sandhurst holds its Commissioning Ball which is three times the size of the ball we attended and goes until early hours in the morning. The men at Sandhurst are required to get up at 6.30 the morning after the ball to start cleaning. Mark's prize allows him to not start cleaning up until 10.30 and he is served breakfast in bed that morning. Probably the best prize of the night.


Emma didn't quite get how an auction works and on the first prize, a holiday, after a bid of £150 her hand shot up as she shouted "300." Luckily she was outbid as she though it was a game and didn't realise they meant real money. It made us laugh.

Champagne flowed throughout the night and there was pleanty of dancing on the dance floor. I enjoyed myself emmensly and felt honoured to be a guest.

Love