Friday Treats + Secret Santa Gift

Hello, Happy Friday! I don't know about you, but I am sooo glad it's Friday. We've still got a busy weekend planned - buying and decorating the Christmas tree (yey!), visiting Liam's Nan in hospital, and 2 childrens' birthday parties to go to - but at least Liam will be home to help with all that!

Tonight is Liam's work Christmas party, which obviously in my mind meant that I needed to buy myself some treats for my evening alone!

A trashy magazine and some iced coffee (ridiculously expensive for what it is, I never normally buy this, but Tesco is a lot easier to navigate with a pushchair than Costa (with steps) is and I had a sudden iced coffee craving!):

Pizza for an easy dinner:

And the thing I'm most excited about... Booja-Booja products!

I've been wanting to try Booja-Booja "ice cream" for ages, but the price always puts me off. But in my "I deserve a treat" mindset today, I didn't even stop to look at the price label!! [blush] Our local health food shop doesn't normal sell Booja-Booja chocolates unfortunately (even though it always sells the ice cream...?!!) but it did sell them last Christmas and I was very excited to see them again today...I actually let out a little squeal in the shop! They're selling the big boxes of champagne truffles, and the little boxes of hazelnut, ginger and these rum sozzled raisin truffles, so I chose these ones to try. I'm looking forward to Liam going out tonight now so that I can indulge in peace!! ;-D

Whilst I was in town (a trip which was meant to be for printing out wedding photos for Liam's Nan, but clearly ended up with spending money in other shops as well!!) I couldn't resist buying a couple more Christmas decorations - I told you I was obsessed! At least these ones were cheap and child-friendly!

They look cute on the mantelpiece in our sitting room. I'm so excited to buy a (real, for the first time since leaving home!) Christmas tree tomorrow morning and bring all our other decorations down from the loft! :)

Whilst I'm talking about treats, I thought this post would be the perfect time to show you what I received in the Secret Santa that Laura organised. My Secret Santa was the lovely Tegan from Tegan Running, and she sent me a fab gift - very "me"! :)

Starbucks + Coffee = Happy Lucy! :-D I completely failed at getting any decent photos once I opened the box, but the set consisted of a huge chunky Starbucks mugs (I love chunky mugs that you can really wrap your hands around!), a pack of ground coffee, a tube of cocoa powder mix and a metal stencil to decorate your coffee.

The ground coffee is perfect for my coffee machine, so I immediately tried it out...

and discovered that I now really need to buy a little milk frother...

...it's ok to use whipped cream for decorative purposes in the meantime, right?! ;)

It would seem that I need to work on my artistic skills (!), but I had fun trying to make my coffee look pretty, and it tasted great! :) Thank you so much Tegan, it is such a thoughtful gift - I love it! :)

What are your plans for tonight? Anyone going out? Or having a nice night in? My plans will consist of eating lots of delicious food (see above!), and spending hours sorting through photos on my laptop! A couple of months ago, Liam and I bought a Groupon for a photo album...which we were going to use for our wedding album. The expiry date for the voucher is today and, for various reasons, we still haven't got round to making it! I refuse to sit in on my own making up our wedding album by myself - that would just be too sad - but I will happily use the voucher to make up an album of lots of family photos :) I went through finding my favourite photos last night, and, from 2006 (when Izzy was born) - now, I've got about 140 photos that I love! I think the album only takes 100 photos so I have some selecting and lots of uploading to do tonight! I'm sure once the album is made the children will love it - Toby is always fascinated by photos of people he knows, and Izzy loves hearing the stories behind all the photos!