Love is a mixture of desire and misunderstanding

I don't particularly like Valentine's Day and try my best to ignore it.  This year we were going to get dirty Chinese takeaway and call it a night.

But to my surprise, I received this lovely card in the mail at work :) I was very excited indeed for dirty Chinese!

But to my even bigger surprise, as I was leaving work, who should I see but R?  Who travelled all the way up to London to surprise me!

We went to the pub, and then out for dim sum, and it was the loveliest Valentine's Day I've ever had!

And it only took me 3 weeks to blog about it, oopsies!

2 years!

This was R and me two years ago today, on our beautiful wedding day.

I am so thankful I found R in this big big world.  What are the chances people from Northern Ireland and California could meet in beautiful Edinburgh, at the right place at the right time?  I thank my lucky stars everyday :)  Here's to two down, and many more to come.

Rainbow pancakes

I don't take Valentine's Day very seriously.  In fact, most of my life has been filled with singlehood, so that might have something to do with it.  But I've always thought, 'Hey, if you love someone, why do you need a special day to show affection?'  And for the most part, I still agree with that.  Our first Valentine's Day, R and I got takeaway Chinese (2-4-1 special, ka-ching!) and had cheap Cava.  We've stepped it up a bit recently, though, and have somehow got in the habit of going to Planet India (my fave restaurant in Brighton - veggie Indian).  But in the morning, I decided I wanted to do something special.  Now, R was very impressed and they were yummy, but they didn't quite turn out how I wanted.  In fact, I'm debating whether to show the original inspiration for them.  I'll post mine first and see if I've made up my mind by then...

First, I made the batter.  Then I separated it into 6 bowls.

This is my favourite - it looks like an egg!

The colours were so vibrant, it looked fantastic!  Then I cooked each colour individually and made a stack.  But I forgot, of course, that when you cook pancakes, the outsides brown.  So I was a bit dissappointed with the final ... presentation.  But they were a surprise and R loved them (and they were delicious, of course)!

Okay, I've decided to show the original ones because boy oh boy were they amazing.  And probably (definitely?) photoshopped, so that makes me feel better.

I found them on Oh Dee Doh, one of Apartment Therapy's babies.

So lovely and thick and bright and everything mine weren't but I'm still pretty darn impressed!  I will definitely make them again sometime :)

post christmas recap

It's been a wonderful Christmas season! Warning: Long post ahead (with lots of photies)!

We had our office Christmas do on Thursday 17th December, which was tons of fun. Lunch at Harry's then off to the pub for the whole evening. Unfortunately, I drank far more than was necessary and lost my camera. Gutted!!! Not only am I bummed to lose the camera (which my dad gave me) but I've lost all my December photos. But in the evening it started snowing and by the time we were heading home it was a proper blizzard! Those that weren't hungover the next morning were greeted to this:


Glorious!

Unfortunately, it only snowed on the Thursday so the snow quickly turned to ice, dangerous icy roads of death! It was insane, Friday, Saturday and Sunday the sidewalks were actual ice rinks. My wellies did nothing to grip the ice! We ventured into town slowly and carefully, for sure. I saw Leashie on Saturday 19th, and we exchanged Christmas pressies! She made me the most amazing pair of mittens and a lovely lovely hat, plus a book on crochet motifs! Spoiled, I am :)

Then R and I headed off to his parents back in Northern Ireland in the wee hours of the morn on Monday. We booked a nice sensible 8.30am flight and gave ourselves 2 hours. Omg, the line for Easy Jet (which probably had at least 20 flights leaving before ours!) actually snaked past all the other check-ins for all the other airlines. Luckily it was moving quickly, but boy oh boy, I will never not check-in online again! We had a lovely week back with his folks, and his brother and his preggo wife (yay for soon to be neice/nephew!). On Wednesday the 23rd, we all took the train down to Dublin and visited the Guinness Brewery:


Christmas Day was great, too. It's always strange spending the holidays away from your own family because somehow, it never feels right doing new traditions. But I love my in-laws, and they always make me feel right at home. We were back in LA for Christmas last year, so it was great for R to see his folks this year. And next year, there will be a new MCK in the family, so I can't wait for baby's first Christmas! But this year J&J absolutely spoiled us for food. Most delicious Christmas meal ever:


MCK Family Christmas tree:


Compared to our cute little tree back in Brighton (I swear it's not really that crooked...I think):


My favourite pressie by far is the one R got me. It's the Pegasus Necklace (with matching earrings!) from Tatty Devine:



I also treated myself to a new camera, the new Nikon S220 (nothing too flash, but it's shiny and blue!):


Coming home wasn't too painful, only an hour delayed (considering the travel chaos on the British Isles with the snow, we were very lucky indeed!). It's been great being home and relaxing just the two of us. We've been sleeping in every morning until about 10, and just lounging about the house. Bliss! My new project (after scouring over all of R's dad's albums) is to start organizing and printing off all of our pictures. We're going to start with 2009 and work backwards from there. I can't wait! I love looking at the whole MCK family from the last 30-40 years, and I want to make sure we have that for our family :)

Lastly, I finally had a chance to see the movie Cinema Paradiso last night at the Duke of York's. It was okay, but looooong. I don't know if I'd watch it again. A bit too schmaltzy for me. But oh my god, the actor who played Alfredo was an absolute spitting image of my Dad (he may disagree, ha!)

tee hee!

Now I'm looking forward to New Year's Eve tomorrow - we're heading out to Southend on Sea for a little mini gathering. Should be great fun! x

R's Birthday

Man oh man have I been crap on the blogging front. I keep having ideas in my head about what I want to write about, and then keep telling myself 'Set some time aside to write, K!' But it never seems to happen.

Anyway, R's birthday was 5th September, the big 3-3! We had a nice little Saturday, heading off for lunch at Woodie's Diner for some good ole' fashioned American food and shakes (not really, they really just don't quite do it right here!). Then we headed into town, and I got stuff to make for dinner for him. I cooked the most delish cheese enchilads and the most AMAZING brownie cake I have ever tasted in all my 25 years on this Earth. Devine.




For birthday pressies this year, we've decided to be a bit more frugal and not spend more than £25. I went slightly overbudget, but well worth it, methinks!

Tiger slippers! How cute!
super stoked

I'm pretty proud of this! I made the whole thing in secret (and it took FOREVER) but it fits him so well! And it's super warm and soft and looks fab. I can't wait for it to get colder so he can start wearing it to work/uni. He'll be the most bad ass PhD student ever :)

The following weekend, we did a bowling birthday bonanza at Bloomsbury Lanes, an(other) American themed place, that has bowling lanes, karaoke and diner. We bowled for an hour, and then ate/drank ourselves silly. A good night out, even if the food wasn't great. Lots of photos, none of them good, so I won't bother posting. Low point of the evening? Aggressively grabbing the bacon beer (yes, bacon beer) from J, calling him a pussy for not drinking it, and downing it in one go. Yes, Uncle K made an appearance, and it was not pretty. At least I managed to avoid the tequila, unlike R.

After waking up feeling slightly worse for wear on Sunday, it turns out R's brother O got us tickets to see Everton (R's absolute favourite football team) play Fulham, whose grounds happen to be about 1/2 mile from theirs. Yippee! Even though Everton lost (boo), it was so great for R to finally get to see them play, after being a loyal supporter for so long.




Next is my birthday, on Wednesday. Shady Ninja will be here to share in the festivities, yay! I booked for Wed-Fri from work, so I have a 2-day work week, woot woot! Can't beat that.

PS - we're already looking into booking flights back to Ireland for Christmas. Can you believe it??? It's like the holidays are just around the corner (although, it's still too early to play Christmas music according to SOME people, bah humbug)