Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone... I hope you've all had a lovely time over Christmas and the start of the New Year.

I'm officially back now, and my mum (or "Ma" in Afrikaans) is also back in sunny South Africa. She arrived here in the UK on the 26th and flew back a couple of days ago on the 2nd. We had such a lovely 7 days relaxing, shopping and keeping busy in the kitchen. Ma helped me make marshmallows which I hand out to the neighbours, and we made a delicious pie from the leftover turkey and gammon after Christmas. It was lovely to have Ma help in the kitchen and I thought I'd share some photos from our 'holiday'. I don't yet have all the photos, but as soon as I do I will put up some more.

We collected Ma at Heathrow early (very early) morning on Boxing Day. We decided to indulge fully in the festive spirit and dressed up in our Santa Suits. A really good idea we thought, until we arrived at the Heathrow arrivals terminal and realised that there were plenty of other people there dressed normally and already over Christmas. One lady came up to us to tell us that her son said "I didn't know Santa had a wife!"... bless him! At least Ma thought it was funny an grabbed her camera to take this picture of two slightly embarrassed and tired Santas.

We took her straight home, this is the first time Ma saw the house and met Banjo! She loved both! (Even if she looks a bit serious in the photo)

We then sat down for a movie while Mr Laundrybasketcase got busy in the kitchen making us a very good Christmas lunch. He does the best roast potatoes!

And that was just the start of our holiday! I'll post some more photos of the foodie stuff we did in another post.

So, have you all kept up your home keeping routine over the Christmas period? I'm glad to say that mostly I did, the only thing I totally and completely neglected was the ironing. So today, I had to suffer the consequences, and spent about 5 hours ironing away. At least I got to watch some TV as I went along.

Have you got any New Years resolutions? I've decided to keep mine simple this year, I only have three:

1. Wear more dresses (I'm sick of jeans and trousers everyday - it also means I get to go shopping).
2. Do more yoga.
3. Read more Afrikaans books.

The third resolution I decided upon is an important one. Although I was pretty much bilingual from about 6 years old, living away from my home country has meant that I don't speak much of my mother tongue, Afrikaans, anymore. Although I still speak Afrikaans to my family on the phone, and I have an Afrikaans magazine subscription, I'm not often exposed to it anymore and as a result I often get a bit tongue tied when I switch over into Afrikaans. It's such a privilege to be bilingual, and I never want to lose the confidence to read and speak the language I was brought up in.

Have you got any New Years resolutions?

Ironing is not on my New Years resolution list because it's just something I need to do.
But I'll be doing a post soon about Ironing - how to do it faster, more efficient and what the best ways are to get through a load quickly. I certainly need to learn about this myself!

Have a great 2009, and I hope to catch up on every one's blogs this week.
x