a winner, home-made love and a seeyalater

i'm up early blogging. you could say i'm up early coz i'm excited about going to hong kong today (which i am), but the truth is i've been waking early lately. which is bugger, coz it's not like i'm being woken up by kids! i just wake early. sometimes i go back to sleep, sometimes i don't. today is one of those days.

man, how insightful was that? there's 30 seconds of your life you're never gonna get back! onto more interesting things. the draw for the basket is still an hour away, but no-one left any comments overnight, so it's fair to say we are almost done.

had a wonderful family dinner with my parents and our close friends and their children last night. we ate at our favourite chinese restaurant and we left lots of clean plates! i'm looking forward to eating lots of chinese food in the next week, altho in china it's just called 'food' (NAME THAT SHOW).

here are some pics from last night:

my sister sent this from the UK. looks pretty fun huh? i've never seen one before!

my mum is a very practical lady. she gave me HONG KONG DOLLARS for my birthday! people say we look a lot alike, and that's cool. i get my organisational skills and sweet tooth from her. that's cool too.

what to eat.....

my 2 eldest babies

me and the hubs. he's almost smiling in this one. it's rare for him not to look like he's about to be shot in a photo (and i mean by a real gun, not a flash gun). he's 50 next year. i tell him he needs to stay sharp or i'm gonna trade him in for two 25-year-olds hehe. of course i won't, coz then i wouldn't be able to throw him a big bash (and we all know i love a good party).

miss 10 miss 11 made this for me from old jeans and 3/4 pants and hand-stitched the whole thing. how cute is that? click on it to make the pic bigger - so worth it.

how proud is she of herself carrying that cake? so cute

the 3 girls in the left of the photo are mine, the other two are my younger girls' besties. home-made (from scratch!) devil's food cake, covered with a thick layer of chocolate icing, topped with cadbury's chocolate flake (which is why we are all blowing so delicately). we didn't want to blow the topping clear across the table! the girls made the entire cake by themselves. the only help they had was with lining the tin.

AND NOW TO ANNOUNCE THE WINNER OF MY EASTER-BIRTHDAY-BLOGGER GIVEAWAY!!!!!

THE WINNER IS..............

drumroll please.........

TRES CHIC BOUTIQUE!!!

congrats! i look forward to receiving your address and posting off your goodies on my return. i've made some great new blogger friends - this was a lot of fun! thanks everyone :)