Finally the New Years 2011 Post…

This year we were blessed to be able to hand our kids over to Seth’s parents and have a night to ourselves on New Years.  With this whole night off the options were endless!  Go to parties, to friends, to hotels – basically do whatever the heck we wanted to do.  So what was it that we wanted to do? Well I wanted to go party and live it up like a proper 26 year old. Lately I must admit I’ve been feeling like an old fart. However, I knew it was just being overly ambitious. The absence of clubbing and ‘fun’ has turned me into an awkward grumpy geyser. The musics too loud, people are in my personal bubble and I need to get up in a couple of hours to console a screaming child/water the garden/fix something that’s been broken.

After thinking about it, it was painfully clear that we clearly have become old people – you know we are now in our late-twenties and all…  So partying with weird people getting drunk around us and then being forced to dance was definitely out of the question, at least from my point of view.  And we just didn’t feel like being super social.  The best solution for that is a dinner party for our bestest friendies, a nice low key event that we could all just chill at.

So thankfully Zoe & Corne and Lizanne & Chris were free and were able to join us in celebrating the New Year.  I am so glad that Seth can cook, because now we can have things like these  Cindy is like a chop, becasue she can cook, she is just too scared. Voet-chack you! (That is a deliberate misspelling of the word voetsek – I think it makes it slightly more endearing…  No?  Oh well!)

The stage was set it – which took us all afternoon, and I must say that I am pretty chuffed with the way it all turned out…  I am not going to post pictures of the outside yet, mostly because I didn’t take any there during the night, and I don’t want to expose it’s new beauty before I expose you to the previous disgrace! Fantastic that all my hard work was not recorded. I put up a wall light, rope lights in the trees, laid the table with a centre candle box feature thing filled the grout between the paving with stones and put lattice screens up. Thanks love! (sarcasm).

Then it was time to get the starters sorted out, And the mains (Beef fillet, with vegetable stack and sweet potato), and last but not least was the dessert.  The starter that we made was pear/avo, rocket and parmasan wrapped in prosciutto. (The rest of the starter was made by Woolworths) . The main was a basamic glaze fillet, served with Chilli and mango balsamic reduction and the other stuff Cindy mentioned. Seth made his own vanilla ice-cream and used this recipe.  I made a chocolate fondant with this recipe.  I think they both turned out ok, although if you don’t like dark choc then I think the chocolate fondant might have been a bit much. The ice cream has no milk, so you don’t need an ice cream maker because it won’t crystallize, meaning you don’t have to stir it like every hour. It was very rich, but I rather liked it. For cocktails we made mojito’s and a  berry delicious thing that was made with freshly blended berries. I’m a mans man, so I stayed away from the pink stuff. 

Time to toast into the New Year with some of our closest and dearest friends!  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! All we could find for the countdown was a jam alley party thing. Its was marvelous.

Thank you to everyone for coming and for spending the evening with us, it was a real pleasure to have you all at our house sharing this time together.  This year is going to be a great one for all of us…  Filled with more children!!  Just joking…  But seriously…

Happy New Years to all you peeps out there!  Hope it’s a fabo one for you all too!!!

xoxo Hug, hug, Kiss, Big hug, Little kiss, Little hug.