Chinese New Year - it's been a long time since I saw a Chinese New Year celebration but having had that meal on friday night I felt quite in the mood to go and watch. Hubby and the twins cycled into the city and AJ and I took the bus. We saw 2 dragons and about 6 lions dancing. It was noisy, crowded but fun. It was very odd though seeing a man leaning out of a chinese restaurant on the first floor holding out a fishing rod with chinese leaves and a red card hanging off the end. Eventually a lion took it and then tore the leaves into little shreds and threw it into the crowds. Unfortunately, I got muddled with the buses on the way home and ended up with a rather long walk up a hill to get home so ended up in bed for the rest of the afternoon. Bring back siestas!!

Pancake Day - firstly this required a good spell of housework before the guests arrived. Hubby did a brill job of cleaning and hoovering so think he is better now just because he's got his chest pain clinic appointment tomorrow!!
I did hotdogs for the children (with help of course) and chilli and baked potatoes for the adults. We decided it was best to do the food for the children first and then we could have our dinner and panckaes peacefully(!) afterwards. There were 7 children and they ahd 3 pancakes each superbly cooked by my friends husband. He wasn't that impressed by my mixture so for the adult pancakes we did it the Delia Smith way and added melted butter to the mixture and I sieved the flour. This made the mixture extra scrummy and so a fair number of pancakes were consumed by the adults and a couple of children came back for more. He must have cooked something in the region of 40 pancakes and all looked and tasted wonderful. If you ever need a pancake maker you'll have to email me and I'll pass them on to see if he will do a special deal for you!!

Goodbye Jeremy Clarkson - in recent weeks I've gone from Poodle, to microphone head to Jeremy Clarkson (minus the bald patch) in the hairstyle looks. Today, I finally had had enough of getting odd looks and getting upset by my horrible reflection. I burst into tears at a hairdressers who thought I was upset because I'd had a bad perm!!! Anyway, she promised me she could do something with my hair if I returned later. 2 hours later I went back and she has indeed transformed me with the aid of good scissorwork and straighteners and plenty of gel and hairspray and I look more like the old me but just a darker hair version. I'm not really sure what this will look like in the morning especially if I go out in the forecasted rain ( I can see why my mum and gran always used to go out in the rain with those plastic rain hats so that their hairstyle didn't go fluffy) or whether I can wield the straighteners with the same finesse she managed but today I feel and look more like me, just with black hair rather than brown. My real concern is that as she has cut so much off the sides and back and left the top longer if I don't manage to straighten my hair I will resemble Jeremy even more but without the bald spot of course!!! Any tips on using straighteners will be greatly recieved and let's hope that the big guy himself never strays into my blog but I would like to say as a family we do like Top Gear!!

Gwen Stefani has been found!!! - not sure if I mentioned this before but I lost her in my house - the new CD that is!! I ordered it at the beginning of december for my niece's christmas present and then couldn't find it. I hoped I would find it for her birthday in January but alas she was still awol. For some very odd reason, hubby found it last week on top of the tumble dryer which is under a unit along with the book from the hospice social worker which I'd also lost. So if anybody is interested in having this CD please let me know!!!