Dancing Queen

Recommended music for this post: Corrigan Brothers - There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama;

What a fabulous week it has been... good company, good food, good fun and a dollop of history. I'll start with the bad news to get it out of the way first... I broke my computer yesterday... not really sure what I did but it Windows doesnt like to start any more... so you'll have to wait for the photo I promised in my last post, and there will be no photos for this one either. Now on to the good stuff.

Good Company

We had Dee's brother and sister-in-law over for the weekend. It was the first visit in three years and we had a great time... some of the activities will be mentioned in the chapter on good fun. On Friday night we hosted our biggest ever dinner party - with Erinne and Paul, and Nic and Matt boosting our number to eight. I built a whole new little dining table to add to the existing one. In the absence of my ability to transfer photos from the camera to computer, here is a catalogue picture of the fabulous furniture;

The advantage of the catalogue picture is you get the price on there too - just an added bit of interest for you all. Anyway the dinner was a great success and the only reason it fits in the 'good company' section and not 'good food' is that I dont want to rub my Masterchef success in the face of some of my readers who I know have been facing cooking difficulties in recent times.

Good Food
For those of you who have the opportunity to taste the French fare of Cafe Rouge (http://www.caferouge.co.uk/) I can thoroughly recommend the Poulet Breton - strips of chicken breast, leeks & mushrooms sauteed with fresh herbs in a cream & white wine sauce served with herb mash. It was divine! That was Saturday night's dinner.

Good Fun
Saturday afternoon was spent in the rafters of the MEN Arena watching Strictly Come Dancing Live. What a fantastic show! We had Tom Chambers (the reigning champion), Rachel Stevens, Jill Halfpenny, Julian Clary, Kenny Logan and Gethin Jones, as well of course as the professional dancers. Some of the dances were absolutely jaw dropping and the banter with the judges was very funny. All four judges are out on the tour this year - what a treat.

Yes, you guessed it... I did not take this photo myself... I had to borrow it from someone elses experience... but it helps to set the scene! Thank you very much to Dee for a lovely Christmas present.

The Dollop of History was of course Barack Obama's inauguration. Rushing home early from work was worth it. Good luck to President Obama as he tries to live up to our collective expectations.

Thats all for today folks.

Website of the week; www.ikea.co.uk - you can look up an item, check if its in stock at your local store, and it will tell you the aisle to go to in the downstairs bit so you dont need to walk around the whole store! How handy!