My Journey…

I have my wishlist! I went shopping yesterday and saw a few things I like. This year’s list have things from Tiffany, Gucci, La Mer, Victoria’s Secret and a few books (of course one of which is a cookbook).

I know what I am getting for Adam. I will get his gift today. I can only tell you after Christmas what it is as I do not want it to get back to him.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to plan Christmas dinner! We will be spending Christmas this year with Beatriz and Richard over at their place. Some other friends who are not going home will be there with us too.

Beatriz and I will be doing the cooking and the guys… well… the guys will be drinking. We will have a turkey for sure so either we get one ready from the deli or I roast one.

I will be making roast potatoes, stuffing and gravy since that’s on Adam’s must-have list. Richard is Norwegian so Beatriz will make his traditional meal which is roast pork ribs glaced with Norwegian fruit preserves.

There will be salad and some other sides (which I believe will include bacon and ham) which we need to plan later today. As for dessert it could be pecan pie since we are in Texas or maybe my favourite cream brulee.

The girls will get the food covered and the guys will get the drinks. Richard loves whiskey so we will be taking a bottle of single malt over, I bought ginger ale yesterday, so that’s done. We just need champange, beer and wine which the guys still have time to get.

What else are we missing? I have the santa hats, Beatriz has got the Christmas tree and decorations up, Richard has the songs covered… what else?

I think I should think of pre-dinner munch… olives, pistachios, cheese and dips with crackers and some fruit. I guess that’s all. I will start making a list soon just so we have enough food. Somehow I have a feeling we will have too much to eat and drink, we’ll see.

Last year around this time I gave Adam my Christmas wishlist. In there are a list of things that I want with their price tag. Last year’s list had stuff from Gucci, Tiffany and some kitchen stuff I want like an ice cream maker and some other items which I don’t remember now.

Price range of stuff I wanted was $60 to $700. Adam had been making good use of that list throughout the year so having a list of things you want is very useful. You might want to start one and send it to your bf/husband if you have not done so.

Adam asked for my wishlist last night and believe it or not, I don’t have one. I was browsing my usual sites last night but somehow I couldn’t find something I want. It’s so unlike me. I wonder if I was tired or just bored of shopping since I have done alot over the last 2 weeks.

I’ll start on my wishlist today, together with a list of things I want to achieve today.

My friend Beatriz was going on a holiday to California for 10 days and asked me to petsit for her. I agreed to take her 2 Bettas (fighting fish) in for 2 weeks but they have ended up staying here for a month now and they are still here.

It’s pretty easy taking care of them. When they first arrived their home was abit too small. They only swam up and down their glass vase. The whole day I saw how depressed they were in that small home so I moved one into a big glass vase I have. Unfortunately for the other one, I didn’t have anything big enough except for a salad bowl… so yeah, I transferred him into a salad bowl.  Hey, I rather he be in a salad bowl until I get him a new home than to die of depression in that small house.

Once I moved them into their new home they were so happy! They were just swimming around enjoying the extra space they have now. Great!

The following day it was time to change their water. The weather that day was pretty cold (about 4C) and I was fussing around not knowing what to do since I was worried the freezing water might kill them. Adam came to the rescue and came down with a few rule:-

1) mix hot and cold water together, test the temperature of the water with your elbow. If it’s comfortably warm for you, it should be good for them

2) put in a drop of conditioning liquid into the water and stir well.

3) wait 30 minutes for the conditioning liquid to blend in with the water (only an engineer can come out with this one!)

So that was what I have been doing on alternate days since then. I bought the little one in the salad bowl a new home the following day. After checking out 5 shops with Adam, we both agreed to get him a really nice triffle bowl as his new home. This is Red in his new home.

The other one is Blue because he has more blue colour on him. Please don’t blame me for the non-creativity with names, I didn’t name them.

Believe it or not I talk to them everyday. Red is on the dining table and Blue is on the mantle piece. Every evening when we have dinner, we both look at Red and chat with him. Yeah, we are abit silly. I am sure we will miss them when they go back to their owner’s home, which should be soon. I think they should be back for Christmas.

Last week while doing Christmas shopping for the kids, I was also shopping for myself. That was only because Schlumberger had a Christmas party on Saturday at Westin. I wanted a new dress. Since I didn’t find anything for myself while shopping for the kids’ Christmas gifts, I spent another day out with a friend shopping and while she bought 5 dresses, I bought none. Somehow I don’t fancy what I see and I don’t need another black dress.

This is the woman who bought 5 dresses.

Anyway the Christmas party was alright. They have a photographer on-site for couples who wants a photo taken. After the party they will develop the shots and send the photo to the employees. I am now waiting for ours to arrive.

They didn’t have an open bar, for liability reasons. In the US, if someone attends such functions, gets drunk and get into trouble, they can sue the organiser. So we were given 3 tickets each to get drinks at the bar and over dinner they provide free-flow wine. That should work out ok since the party has to end at midnight but somehow we ended up with 15 drink tickets.. hehe. That was alot of drinking if you include the wine we had with dinner.

They served a buffet dinner. I dislike buffets at such events because there’s always a long line to get food. My strategy that night was to have dessert first and main meal later to avoid the long lines and it worked out perfectly well for me! I was never in line for anything.

That’s us at the Christmas party. Now you know why I need to lose 5kg!

That’s the first Christmas party we went to this year. There will be another one this Saturday by the pool with some friends. Just an excuse to meet up and have some drinks before some of them travel home to celebrate Christmas with their families.

Houston is nicely decorated and wherever you go, you hear Christmas jingles. It feels really festive here and I love it.

I have been very busy last week. There’s wedding preperation and also Christmas shopping. This year we are doing things a little differently, only the kids (Adam’s niece and nephew) get Christmas gifts and everyone else gets a personalised calendar.

Adam is not a great shopper and has bad sense of timing so I ended up doing the shopping for him this year. If I wait for him to make time for shopping, we will end up spending the whole weekend shopping for gifts, Adam ends up with a sour face because he can’t decide what to get and we will send the gifts via courier and pay double the amount we had to just to make sure the gifts get to their destination by Christmas.

I spent 2 days shopping for the kids (and myself). I went to 2 stores and bought the things I think the kids will like. Adam will then pick from my purchases what to give them and once the selection has been made, I return the rest of the items I bought but don’t need anymore. I love the return policy here, it makes gift shopping so much easier!

Last week I also have some pretty weird dreams about the wedding. You can read about it here. It’s strange. I spoke to a few people about this but they didn’t have this problem when they were planning their wedding! Oh well… I just need to chill I think.