Strictly Lindy Hop

I was at the International Darts Championship last night (I know! More of that later) so I missed the first appearance of Lindy Hop on 'Strictly Come Dancing' : (
Happily, youtube came to the rescue : )
Shame about Chris's ridiculous facial expressions but hey, it's nice to see some Lindy Hop on the telly.

Winter Wonderland

I had my parents down from Yorkshire to visit last weekend. Here's some of what we got up to:


On Saturday we went to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. This snowman has a snow ball pool in his stomach. Sadly only for the under 10s : (


We watched the ice skaters & the scary fairground rides & browsed the market stalls. Then it was home to...


...dumplings!


It seemed like the perfect evening for a warming winter stew.


On Sunday we had a lovely veggie lunch at Manna followed by a walk on Primrose Hill. Dad is sporting his paramilitary look. He doesn't normally look this scary, honestly ; )

Retro Make-Up Heaven

I'm not sure anyone else out there shares my make-up fetish but here goes...
Had a little trip to What Katie Did on one of their discount christmas shopping evenings & discovered that they now keep Besame cosmetics. I'm in love! It's the sort of old-fashioned make-up that demands to be displayed on a dressing table and makes me remember playing with my Nana's hand mirror & powder puff when I was a little girl. I guess I never grew out of wanting to play dress-up. The design is beautiful, especially the compacts, and the products are really good too. My favourite is the lipstick. It comes in a tiny, bullet-shaped case. It's got great pigment, is long-lasting but creamy & smells ever so slightly of vanilla. Really, I should work for them, I love it so much.

Knitter's Envy

A couple of weekends ago we decided to do a trip around the Scandinavian Christmas fairs in London. Last year we picked up some great goodies at the Finnish church & this year we thought we'd try the Norwegian & Swedish ones too.

Sadly the Finnish fair was so busy we couldn't get in but we got to discover the wonder that is glogg at the Swedish church & also to hear Anne sing in their fabulous choir (no photos of this I'm afraid as I didn't want to put her off with my snapping).

The Norwegian fair was also lots of fun. We especially liked the huge stall of handknitted items. Paul & I decided to get each other some early Christmas presents there. Here's what we got:


Some beautiful fingerless gloves for Paul.


A hat for me.


I'm so in love with these slippers!


Loved these tube socks, especially the spiral rib design.


It makes me feel rather ashamed that I've been knitting these same ribbed socks since the summer. I'm now too ashamed to show my face at the college knitting group as it seems so sad to turn up with the same old sock each week. There's a new year's resolution for me: I promise to be a become a better knitter in 2010.

Hawaiian Souvenirs

Hawaii is great for kitschy sounvenirs. Here are a few that we brought back:


Some Tiki shot glasses,


A hibiscus quilted cushion,


and our favourite, gracing our christmas tree this year will be Santa playing the ukulele while sitting on a turtle.

Nearly Time to Go Home

We splashed out on a top knotch Japanese meal with some of our wedding gift contributions.


Togged up in my new Hawaiian frock.


Magnum PB in our hire car.

Makena

This is the view from our lanai at the Maui Prince hotel.


Sunset on Makena beach.


Turtle rock. We got up early to snorkel with the turtles here & boy were they friendly.


Paul (wearing another aloha shirt) enjoying some pineapple wine in our room.

Watching the Surfers

Lei in the Supermarket

There are whole chiller cabinets full of them. : )

The Road to Hana

The road to Hana is a day long trip that takes you around the most beautiful part of Maui's coastline.


There are beautiful waterfalls and swimming holes at every corner (That's Paul in the water).


A little tentative at first but I do get in too, honestly.


Paul paddling on Black Beach sporting one of the three aloha shirts he picked up on the trip.


A mongoose.

More Maui

Visiting the volcano.


Some lava from the last erruption.


Beautiful, beautiful spider.


It's a tough life being a cat in Maui.

Into the Mountains

Before we left Kana'apali we made some more lei, this time with leaves from the ti plant.


We left the beach for the mountains of Haiku.


Our bed & breakfast was surrounded by almost jungle-like vegetaion & the owner had decorated it with some lovely Hawaiian trinkets.




There was a beautiful, traditional Hawaiian quilt on the bed & many strange noises outside.

Flowers, Birds & Breadfruit

These birds wandered around the grounds of the hotel making the most amazing noise.


This breadfruit fell from a tree & very narrowly missed Paul's sleeping head.


This little fellow had a very sweet song which he treated us to every morning from our balcony.


Every few seconds one of these frangipani blossoms fell from a tree creating the most amazing smell & making free hair decorations. Yey!


Couldn't resist adapting the hibiscus for this purpose too.

Weaving & Playing the Uke

Here's Paul learning how to weave a bookmark.

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Our finished articles.


Along with surfing, aloha shirts & great cocktails, Hawai'i has given the world the ukulele. We got to have a beginners' lesson & learnt about 10 chords. By the end of the hour we could strum away to 'Hey Jude'. Great fun!


Our ukulele teacher also turned out to be a master weaver. Here's one of his bowls.


He taught us how to make an angel fish decoration for our cocktails from palm fronds.

Hawai'ian Honeymoon

We had such a great time in Maui. Here's a taste of what we got up to:


The first of the three places we stayed in was Kana'apali. Our hotel was very keen on promoting native Hawai'ian culture so we got stuck straight in with some lei making classes.


Next, a bit of exploring. We found beautiful plants & flowers growing everywhere. Even on the beaches.


A spot of Hula dancing after lunch.


We found out that there was a colony of green sea turtles living right by the black rock on the beach. Even a nervous snorkeller like me couldn't resist this & swimming with the turtles turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. They were about four feet long and swam up to within two feet of us. Amazing!


Beautiful sunsets every night. Just gorgeous!