We've been spending quite a few Sundays in the pub lately. We spent a Sunday afternoon in the William IV for Andrew's birthday. A couple of weeks later we headed to The Flask for a Sunday Roast catchup with Juzzy. Last weekend, we celebrated Natalie's birthday in the Mall Tavern.

Sitting in a pub (by an open fire preferably), with good company and a belly full of roast. I think it really is the perfect way to spend a Winter's afternoon.

Before

After

Happy Birthday Natalie!

It's 30th birthday time! Last weekend we celebrated Natalie's 30th Birthday in style at LVPO in SoHo. In style is definitely right. LVPO is a very trendy bar in SoHo, we had a private room lined with lounges and with its very own bar, Natalie had a cocktail, the Natalka, designed for and served exclusively to the party guests and top it all off the Balloon man came to visit.

Ok, so maybe a Balloon man isn't the essence of style but he certainly was the most entertaining part of the evening. We were very impressed with the creations he was able to produce by twisting different coloured balloons together. I was gifted with a tiara and a sceptre (Princess Jess) and Andrew got a jet powered backpack and ray gun (Andrew had asked for a pony, so he pronounced a jet-powered pony). Most impressive was the Octopus hat that Steve received. The balloon man even had special eye balloons to use as two googly eyes for the creature.

I keep saying that 30 is the new 20, but maybe I should be saying 30 is the new 10.

More photos on Facebook.

Happy Birthday Nat! Next year let's have pony rides and a jumping castle!

More getting into the spirit of things from Nat and Jess. Although, this time I was just tagging along for the ride. Nat had decided to make sushi for Caitlin's Japanese birthday picnic. She invited me over to join in the fun.

Natalie is quite an expert at making sushi (she did a course!) and I was really impressed with how the sushi turned out. The sushi looked just like a bought one, especially with the fake plastic grass we added to the platter.

Even the sushi I made didn't turn out too badly. It was easy, with Nat's very sticky rice and helpful tips. I think it was the nigiri dance which made all the difference! (You'll have to ask Nat for a nigiri dance demonstration next time you see her.)

When we get into the spirit of things, we REALLY get into the spirit of things. Natalie and I had discussed baking goodies for our weekend away (a conversation inspired by the YoYos I baked for the Easter weekend). We decided to make gingerbread men using a batch of frozen dough in Natalie's fridge. This developed into an idea to create Pirate gingerbread men to mark our weekend in Penzance.

So the other night, Natalie and I made Pirate gingerbread men. We used a normal gingerbread man cookie cutter to cut the men out of the dough. Before they went into the oven Natalie amputated a leg and fashioned a peg leg out of the excess dough and I stuck on one currant eye. After they were baked we iced the men adding eye patches, gold earrings, pirate vests and striped pantaloons.

Pirate gingerbread men. "Much more better" than plain old boring gingerbread men.

Natalie was back in Sydney last week. While she was here, we had dinner at the Prague Restaurant in Potts Point. Natalie had a yearning for some Svíčková (beef stew) and houskový knedlíkem (bread dumplings). Na zdraví Natalie! (photos)

Way back in the old FormTrap days, Armen once remarked that he must "get back to his elephants". We all stared at him blankly..."elephants?". Armen was paraphrasing a proverb which obviously does not have an English equivalent. He meant, "I want to get back to the problems in my code." While searching for Czech phrases on the internet, I came across an interesting webpage which lists some Czech translations of well-known proverbs. The literal translations of the proverbs are slightly different to the English versions.

English Saying	Czech Saying	Translation
To have a frog in one's throat	Mít knedlík v krku	To have a dumpling in one's throat
To give someone the World	Dát/snést někomu modré z nebe	To give/bring someone the blue from the sky
It's raining cats and dogs	Lije jako z konve	It's raining as if from a watering can
To keep one's fingers crossed (for someone)	Držet (někomu) palce	To hold one's thumbs (for someone)
To beat about the bush	Chodit kolem horké kase	To walk around hot porridge