A new year and a birthday party to boot

I can't believe it's already mid-January. Happy new year everybody! Yes, again I'm 3 weeks late and this isn't my first post for the new year but I finally feel I'm catching up with everything, including blogland. I'm super excited about 2009 - this year I'll be helping my lovely sister with her Beckybean shop which should be great fun! I've made two market totes in the last week for my mum and aunty and am keen to whip one up for myself, before we really need to start stocking the shop.

As some of my readers may have read on Bec's blog, her birthday was last weekend, so we had a little family party. Bec decided on an 'Asian' food theme for the day, which I was very happy with. As with all of our get togethers the food was sensational and in abundance. Dishes included san choi bao, steamed dim sims, fresh snapper spring rolls (certainly a massive highlight for me!), cupcakes and I 'volunteered' Kym to make his spicy beef and rare beef salad he picked up from his time at Green Papaya a few years ago.

Unfortunately I didn't think to get the camera out fast enough and missed my chance to snap some of the dishes - as you can see by the above pic, the rare beef salad was a hit as there wasn't much left! The spicy beef proved to be a bit 'spicy' for most, but we all persisted as the flavour was just so damn good. One of the perks of being married to a chef is we get treated to some superb dishes every now and then :D

But I really cannot go on enough about just how tasty everything was though. The clean flavours of everything meant it was possible to eat quite a lot (yay!) and not feel disgusting afterwards (even bigger yay!). Matt even made Bec a yummy chocolate birthday cake - the first time he's done this since they've been together some 10 plus years! Matt's food is always great but desserts are not normally his 'thing'. Nor does he want them to be... What an act of love! I'm sure Bec going on each year that he has never made one for her had nothing to do with it at all :P


As you can see by the pics, the cupcakes certainly got Lee's and Kate's approval. And what birthday party would be complete without a bounce on the trampoline???

This last pic is one of my favourites from the day - it's of Bec holding one of her new presents from my aunty - how gorgeous is this pink tea cup?

Hmm...writing this post about food has got my tummy rumbling - off to the fridge for some chocolate I think :D