September...

This is going to be a dot point type post...

. Currently looking for an apartment to buy (to live in). McBrad and I saw one yesterday which we both love and is just a little bit closer to his place than my current place. And yes Tom, it means moving over to the "other side" and leaving the beautiful leafy North Shore. So I'll be putting an offer in tomorrow! Wish me luck!

. Watching Idol at the moment - two guys to watch. Scottie the Hottie and Toby the Teacher! I'm in lust with both of them!!! Two completely different guys, but both sooooo yummy! (oh, and they can both sing...like I care!)

. I'm totally into salads now! I think it's the whole spring thing that's got me back into them, as well as an attempt to start eating a bit more wisely. I'm working my arse off with my Personal Trainer each week and so to then go home and chow down on KFC just doesn't make sense. Hence, the salads. In fact, I'm just about to sit down to an EPIC salad for dinner (with a nice piece of rump steak - I do like my rump) in front of the TV, watching the two HOTTIES sing! ;-)

. Spent a lovely Father's Day with McBrad and Noodle today! Noodle, clever girl that she is, bought him some stripey socks (he loves wearing stripey socks, and she loves chewing them up) and a bottle of YSL EDT - something like Nuit de Homme...or something. Anyway, he loved both of his gifts. Had breakfast in the sun with them and a couple of friends - just a really great way to spend a Sunday morning.

Christmas...

Christmas is upon us and I have been very neglectful of my poor blog. In my defence, it's been BUSY!

Kylie was last Tuesday and it was a fantastic concert! She did an awesome version of Slow, and the audience went off for Better The Devil You Know and I Should Be So Lucky! But you know what, the best aspect of the whole thing for me was the fact that I got to see it with my gorgeous McBrad. He actually was studying hard for an exam the following day, and in fact, was going over his notes while I drove to the concert. He was a bit stressed about going, but still came along because he knew it meant a lot to me...and it did! Just a sweetheart!

We had our work Christmas party on Friday night...it was themed Bling. I went a little OTT (bet you're suprised by that) and hope to post a pic of my outfit soon. It was lots of fun, and despite my earnest endeavours to avoid drinking too much, I did! I hadn't planned on spending the night at McBrad's because he's not keen on me turning up at some ungodly hour, pissed as a newt. But, bless his heart, after the 26th sms to him, he relented. I left the part at 12:30am so it wasn't that late, but could I find a bloody taxi? NO! So I ended up walking back to his place (Surry Hills) which actually was quite good - gave me a chance to sober up a bit. Of course, I was still fully kitted up in my bling and so got quite a few comments on the way home.

Saturday, we hosted our first "Our Party" which was pretty exciting for me. It was a mix of his and my friends so it made for an interesting bunch - I think there was about 30 of so in total. Fellow blogger Mike made an appearance, as did my lovely friends Evan (though, McDreamy was unable to come along sadly), Dan and Jacqui. A couple of ghosts of Christmases past were also there - namely my first boyfriend Dane and PC - just to keep it interesting. And from what one hears, some of the guests got on better than expected! :-) It was a great night and McBrad and I both thoroughly enjoyed it and I think everyone else did too!

This week, it's been all about last minute shopping - wee giftettes (as McBrad likes to call them) to purchase and wrap and I have to tell you, I'M OVER SHOPPING! Bring on Christmas I say!

We're here for Christmas day and so I'm cooking my first ever Turkey - it's an orphan's Christmas dinner. Thankfully, Tom, our resident culinary king has come to the rescue with some cooking instructions and stuffing recipes! so cross your fingers that it turns out ok.

Boxing Day, my brother Mark and his boyfriend Sim, fly in from London for 3 weeks. So we're all heading down to his beach house on the south coast so I am hoping for some decent sunny hot weather! It will be lovely just to relax and chill out, eat, drink, chat, read and go to the beach. I can't wait! I've got a half day tomorrow so I finish at lunchtime. McBrad is collecting me and we'll be doing all the grocery shopping for Xmas dinner and for down at the beach house so that will be one last chore to get out of the way! But then, 4 days of bliss!!!

McBrad also asked me today if I would like to go to Perth in January to meet his brother! His immediate family all live in Scotland however his niece and her husband moved to Perth a few years ago, so McBrad's brother (her father) is out for a visit. So looks like we'll be going to Perth for a long weekend. I'm just a bit chuffed that he's wanting to take me along to meet his brother - it's like a bit of formal acknowledgement to his family of me being his partner.

Well, I suspect that this may be my last post before Christmas so I just want to say that I hope you all have a great Christmas! This is my first one with my gorgeous man and I feel so very lucky to be experiencing it with him. I hope you all have your loved ones around you for Christmas too! Big hugs to you all.

Monty! xxx

Salad days...

Well, the weather has been sensational over the past few days. The weekend was spectacular, with gorgeous blue skies, light breezes and around 30 degrees Celcius. And it's at this time of year that I start getting serious cravings for salad! I have always loved salads...a love engendered as a child growing up in hot North Queensland where salad tasted much better than hot vegetables. And so, over the past week, I've been dosing up big time. Caesar salad is always a great choice, particularly with chicken. But my favourite is actually just a mix of green leaf, lots of corn, carrot, eshallots, tasty cheese (or occasionally feta), capsicum and boiled egg, with just a nice drizzle of home made dressing (my mum's recipe). I can eat a plate piled high with this kind of salad. And then some! Yummmmmmo!

Which is also quite good, going into summer, as I figure it's not so fattening. You may not think that this is such a problem for me, given my well documented battle to put on weight. Well, the battle is over I reckon, as I'm now developing a little spare tyre around my middle. It's a new thing for me, and the exercise regime that I'm following is pretty much just a weights only thing, no cardio. And so while I'm still building muscle mass, with my arms and legs and chest developing nicely, my gut has made its debut appearance! Eeek! So last week, now that the weather is warming up and the days are lengthening, I started walking home after gym. It's actually quite a pleasant time to walk home...there's still light in the sky, but the lights of the city are beginning to twinkle on the harbour. It's balmy and so I don't get too hot, even though I'm powering my way home. So hopefully, that will start making a difference to my little gut! I think I shall also have a chat to Muzbot as he seems to have been highly successful in developing a very nice flat tummy indeed!

Anyway, that's about it. This weekend, McBrad and I will celebrate 6 months together! How cool is that! Still amazes me that IT has actually happened - that which I'd been hoping for and dating what seems like hundreds of guys for - and things are settling down really well. I still find it amazing that after an ever changing diet of men for 18 months, I'm thoroughly enjoying my McBrad-only diet! I still think he's the sexiest man alive and can't keep my hands off him and just snogging him is enough to make me "shwing". He's just sooooo HOT!!! Anyway, I'm getting all hot and bothered here and it's probably not the right forum! Just believe me when I say, this is one very satisfied (smuggly so) Monty! But better still, he makes me happy, and I think I make him so as well (well, I do my best anyway). Saturday, he's working and I'm going to get up early (5:30am in fact) and go to the markets and buy up buckets of Oriental Lillies. He loves their fragrance and I'm going to put them all over his house so that when he comes home, it'll be rich with their hot heavy scent! But that's just the start of festivities. More about that to come.

Enjoy your week everyone! :-)

Veging...

Well, it's Sunday afternoon and I'm here at McBrad's place. We had a dinner party last night with a few friends - nothing new there. But one of them is a vegetarian and so this was something new for me...having to cook WITHOUT meat!!! Now for a Nth Queensland bred carnivore, it's just not an option to have a meat free diet. So it was going to be a challenge to make an entire dinner without any animals being killed and cooked. But, thankfully, McBrad used to be a vege and so still had quite a few vege cookbooks. So, a desperate scramble through their pages resulted in an Orange and Carrot Soup for starter (which McBrad cooked), a Pumpkin, Spinach and Walnut Pie with steamed brocolli and Cauliflower Cheese for mains (which I cooked). We bought a Mango and Cocunut torte for dessert. I've gotta say, despite deeply missing my meat, it was a rather pleasant dinner. All the guests seemed well sated at the end, 5 bottles of wine were consumed (this may have helped) between the 5 of us, and no-one was violently ill. So a successful evening from all accounts.

McBrad had to work today so he left me in bed at 6am (which is terrible - it's that time of morning when you really feel like snuggling with the very hot man next to you) and so I had a bit of a lie in, then got up, fed Noodle the leftovers (we weren't sure if she'd be up for a vege breakfast but she thoroughly cleaned her bowl so obviously she's not fussy), took her for a walk, did all the washing up and then grabbed some lunch and read the paper. So it's been a fairly busy day really. And thankfully, it's been sunny and quite mild today - a nice change from the downpours of the past 36 hours. Tonight, McBrad's taking me out for dinner - not sure where yet. It's been another lovely weekend really. I'm eating a slice of the Mango and Coconut torte as I type this and I've gotta say, it's better the next day! Yummmo!

I've also discovered Scrabble on Facebook, thanks to Martin at TGLATEOTD and so stayed up until 1:30am Saturday morning playing. I LOVE Scrabble! So I'm excited about that!

Otherwise, it's all good here in my life. McBrad will be home in about 30 mins time and that's something to be excited about! Hope everyone else has had good weekends!

Dinner Party...the next day

What a night I had! The dinner party was excellent; I really had a great time. The food - well, the veal was a little, ummm, well cooked shall we say. But the entree and dessert worked perfectly. We managed to consume 6 bottles of wine between the 6 of us, which is impressive considering that three of the party were driving and so the burden of alcohol consumption fell mainly on the remaining three of us.

But I think the best part of the night was simply the enjoyment of friendship! Four of the guests - Evan, McDreamy, DG and Jacqui - have played a significant part in my life in 2007, being there for me, supporting me, laughing with me, providing shoulders to cry on (figuratively and literally), and so it was very special for me to have them over. One of the guests was a new friend (and fellow blogger) Mike and it was great to see that everyone got on very well; there were plenty of laughs throughout the night.

I was exhausted by the end, but also energized and exhilarated. I love spending time with friends, and when you can do it in relaxed surroundings, it's just fantastic. I think last night was a great way to say goodbye to 2007 with those guys, as we're all going our separate ways for Christmas and won't all be together again before next year.

Today was the clean up and was there lots of that!!! But it was very worthwhile!

Dinner Party...

Well, it's 3pm Saturday and I've been up since 6am and I'm just a touch weary! I got up so early (which is so unlike me) as I had to go to the flower markets out at Flemington. Unfortunately, it seems that most of Sydney had the same idea...traffic was appalling - had to queue for about 15 mins on the highway just to get in the gate! Anyway, I bought up big and have done up two arrangements. One is for the table, the other is on my hall stand. I'm hoping that they'll last until Christmas, in which case, I'll take 'em down to the beach house.

I then went grocery shopping. Now I normally don't do groceries until the afternoon (my mornings are usually devoted to sleeping in and then getting some breakfast and reading the paper) and so I didn't know whether it would be busy or not. Of course, it's the weekend before Christmas so it was crazy! But I battled through the crowds and into Woolies! And then I realized why I don't go in the mornings...there's all these flipping old people doing their shopping! And they are soooo slow!!! I'm sorry to all the old people out there, but they have all the time in the world DURING THE WEEK to go and yet, leave it until I'm needing to rush around on a Saturday! Grrrr...

Anyway, I've come home, made the dessert, made the main, and prepared the entree. Now I'm half-way through cleaning my apartment. It's just so hot and sticky today that I needed a bit of a rest...hence this post.

At Campbell's request...the menu.

Entree - Lightly steamed asparagas spears, wrapped in smoked salmon, with shaved parmesan and a sweet balsamic dressing
Main - Veal Scallopine with a fresh garden salad and baby potatoes
Dessert - Brandied Apricot Trifle

I've got champers to start with the hors douvres, a nice WA Chardonnay Verdelho with entree, and the bottle I'm fanging to try out - 2002 Grant Burge "Holy Trinity" Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre - will accompany the mains. I've also got my last bottle of Lamont's Navera which I will serve with dessert. And of course, I suspect that my guests will probably bring some more wine and so I have a feeling that this will end up being a bit of a lush evening! Wahoooo!

Well, my rest time is over...back to the cleaning! Hope everyone is having a great weekend! :-)