Happy New Year to you too

Well here we are in 2014 and here I sit tapping away on my red laptop! That was a surprise Christmas gift, that sentence could have so easily have read "here I am waiting to use my new door handles" or "here I am waiting to use my new microwave" or even " here I am waiting to jump from  plane" - all gifts I've received in the past!

But a laptop it is and I'm over the moon. I can blog from anywhere in the house, not just my tiny, chilly, paper strewn office tucked out of the way. It also makes it slightly more comfortable to type from the squishy sofa, not least because my rear end is.at present one almighty bruise!! When we exchanged gifts with my sister in law I was the lucky recipient of perfume,  the builder however received a selection of Beano comics and some football programmes from the 1970's . Yes a little bit random but he  is very hard to buy for and they were spread all over the floor and read from cover to cover for the rest of the afternoon! Therein lies the problem; spread all over the floor, shiny magazines..... I leapt up to answer the phone (leapt  may be an exaggeration given the amount of food I've stuffed in) and proceeded to skid across the floor and bump down on the ground and leg of the sofa. I'd like to say gracefully landed but sadly in was very definitely an earth shaking moment!
And now most of my rear end is lovely shade of dark purple, as was readily pointed out more than once I'm lucky not to break a hip given my age!!! Yes I did hit them!
(Luckily for you I have no photo!)

Who knew they could be so dangerous?!

How did you spend your New Years Eve? Or as the native Norfolk-ians say "Old Years Night"

Many moons ago we used to host a party with much celebrating and wine and chatting and wine and nibbles and wine......., however since we became parents the difficulties of babysitters, taxis and overriding tiredness seemed to have put paid to anything other than nodding off on the sofa and shuffling off to bed at 5 past midnight! But as the children are older we accepted a party invitation this year and off we trotted dressed in sparkles (not The Builder) to see in 2014 with friends. It was a lovely evening despite the 45 minute drive to get there, we played some silly games and watched the fireworks both in London (On the TV) and in their village.

Building the tallest tower using only spaghetti and jelly babies!

More difficult for the children as they ate most of the jelly babies!

It reminded me we must be more social in future!

We left Number 1 son at home with 3 mates and some beer, there appears to be more empty bottles than the amount of full ones we left for them???

They did manage to remain the polite young men their parents had taught them to be though, they made me smile as they staggered to the door the following day; 6' tall 17/18 year old boys; very unsteady and with bloodshot eyes, all saying "thank you for having me" and "I've had a lovely time, thank you Mrs Cricket". Ahh bless them!

Between Christmas and New Year we got together with some old friends for a family evening, we always used to spend an evening with them sans kids where the booze flowed and the conversation always became risqué - however that was a few years ago and  this time we all had our children with us and we shared some games and some memories. Despite feeling very middle aged it was a lovely evening, I do love my friends. Charades with teenagers was funny in a different way, who knew a shrug of the shoulders and a curled lip could signify so much?

I don't make resolutions as a rule expect from the usual, I will lose a stone in weight and start taking regular exercise, but this year I feel I need to go back to basics in the kitchen. I always thought I was a fairly competent cook, I've enjoyed cooking for friends over the years and as you may except have prepared many a cricket tea but I seem to have lost it just lately! I need to pull myself into line and stop over or undercooking everything I touch - there's nothing complicated about it I just need to pay a little more attention to what I'm doing and stop being distracted (although I can see a little red laptop-shaped distraction looming large!) This Christmas I managed to over cook the turkey, over cook the pudding (Nigella's steamed chocolate pud) despite a hand written note in the cookery book from last Christmas reminding me not to overcook it! I've overcooked a joint of beef and under cooked a joint of pork!

It really is laziness, I need to weigh and time everything and go back to basics - I vaguely remember telling myself this last year though so it my be all forgotten before January is done.

I have loved looking around blogland and catching up on past posts, partly because I have more time to do so right now. I know time will be short again soon, cricket practice started again this evening and everyone will be back to school and work on Monday or Tuesday (I really must look up which day they start school/college!) - it's going to be hard to get up and at 'em!

So Happy New Year to everyone, I'm overwhelmed by the fact that I actually have "followers" but it has been so nice to get to know you all.

I hope 2014 brings you the best of everything.

xx