Weight off my shoulders...

Wow, feels like its been forever since I did a proper post here. Life has been keeping me super busy of late and if the truth be told I have been rather stressed. Just had a lot going on at the same time but i'm doing ok now and there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

So what have I been up to you ask?:

Learning to drive: I had my last theori lesson last week and I have my test on the 3rd Feb. So the rest of this week will be spent cramming for the test. I'm feeling ok about it, just need to make sure I brush up on those 'grey' areas that I'm not 100% sure about. I also had a 3 hour 'sliding' lesson. This is when you drive on a wet track and practise how to get out of tail slides and other scary situations. It was actually a lot of fun, I felt like a stunt driver for the day! :)

This was where we were stunt driving, you can see the wet section up on the right.

This was my car for the day, poor thing was really pushed hard that day.

Learning Danish: I had a speaking test a few days ago, it was stressing me out big time. I have a lot of anxity when it comes to tests and class room situations, it come from being a Dyslexic kid. I was always worried about looking stupid and getting stuff wrong, so even to this day I get all worked up when a test is approching. But the good news is I PASSED! :)

This has nothing to do with speaking Danish.... but I prefer this kind of Danish.

Work: Had a big dead-line at work this week so there was a lot of stress getting ready for that. I had a big model review to get ready for, thats when I build my new set 'brick by brick' with a team of other designers so we can insure it is up to LEGO quality..... and I have to do this all from MEMORY. Thats ok if your building a set with 100+ bricks, my latest set has over 1500 elements. :/ It went well in the end so it now feels like a load has been lifted off my shoulders.

Just a very small fraction of my home work.

LEGO Christmas gifts Pt.2

This was actually made for my buddy Sam who was a secret Santa for somebody who is a fan of the 'I.T. Crowed'. Its a British comedy show about some I.T. geeks, very funny so look it up on Youtube. This is Moss who is a super geek, the intro is all pix-elated like an old 8bit game so it works well in LEGO.

He only asked if I could help him get some bricks so he could build it at home, but being the LEGO professional that I am I could not help building it to make sure it all looked ok. As a thank you Sam sent me a cool PS3 game I had been wanting...Sweet!

Moss in all is bricky goodness.

All alone....

Mrs Groves is in Berlin for the 'Bread & Butter' fashion fair so i'm all on my own tonight. The plan is to tidy round then spend the night playing Fallout: New Vegas on the PS3..... lets hope I dont forget to go to bed!

Come home sooooooon!

LEGO Christmas gifts Pt.1

These are two little LEGO Christmas gifts I made for Judd & Marija Ripley over at the Sailors Grave Tattoo Studio. I kind of played up their hobbies and made them a little more fun.

Marija the Zombie slayer & Judd the Shark surfer.

Marija is very much into Horse riding and likes Horror, I turned her into a Zombie slayer chopping up the undead to save the human race.

I even made a little compartment where you can put some sweets.

Judd loves his Surfing & Fishing so I mixed the two up into a new and crazy hobby.

Cooking up a storm...

Been rather busy over the past week with work, driving lessons, danish lessons and dental appointments..... but that didn't stop me from cooking good food.

White Mushroom risotto with roasted duck breast and a drizzle of Fig balsamic glaze.

Take some Garlic, chopped Pumpkin, Apple and Ginger. Fry in some butter add a little cream, vegetable stock and then blitz in a blender to make.....

...a tasty Pumpking, Apple & Ginger soup with fried Scallops and Black Pepper.

With the left over soup as a base I whipped up ANOTHER Risotto! The first one was so good with the duck we wanted to try it again.... great for these cold wet nights.

New from ME & LEGO

7978 Angler Attack

7976 Ocean Speeder

Steam boat...

I tottaly forgot to post pics of the 'steam boat' we had at my in-laws place on Boxing day. Basically you have a big pot of hot soup and you add dumplings, cold cuts, veg and fish balls. It's super tasty and a fun way to eat, I stuffed my face.

That was only a faction of the food we ate.

Very 'proper' family photo, just look how excited my father in-law is on the far left.

This is the other half of the family photo.... spot the odd one out!

SOCKS!!!!

Fee has been in a sock knitting frenzy for the past few weeks and now I have a super cool new pair of socks.... Look how cool they are.










How good are they?! I'm looking forward to the next pair..... and the underwear I ordered. :P

Thanks for the cold Santa...

Sorry for the lack of blogging of late, I have been a broken man for the past week and unable to blog properly. Heres the short version:

Got to London and stayed with my Dad for two days, he has Cats which I am ellergic too so by the time Fee's parents came to pick us up on Xmas day my chest and breathing was rather weak. I figured that would improve once we got to their place but sadly my in-laws don't like to use the heating in their own home. So by the time we left on the 27th I had a bad chest cold.

On returning home there was no time to rest as my super wife had arragned for us to go to a super cool summer house to have a super cool birthday/new years party in. :D

Some of the gang (just one really) whipping up a storm in the kitchen.

The vultures are circling!

Super cheeeeeeeeeesy lasagna.

Lucky we had a super long table to fit everybody on.

After stuffing our faces with cheese and salad people split up to either chill out, play games or simply eat lots of cold & flu medicine (that was me). Fee was heading up the 'game table' and she ended up being on the winning team, which is a good thing because she is a bad loser!

The little one has the highest I.Q.

Fee was looking a little sternly at poor Matthew, maybe he was not 'getting it' quickly enough.... god help him!

The next morning Fee had to pop out early to do the Booze run too Germany..... turns out she was picking up some of my family who had flown in from the UK! :D

Pop Groves.... he likes the size of the Beer cans in Denmark.

It is just a little bit bigger than the normal cans.

That night we played 'Mafia' with the gang.... never played it before but it was rather fun.

So the next morning Fee said she had to 'go to the supermarket' but I had figured out she was actually going to pick up my big Brother from the airport.... how cool is my wife?

Pop and big brother Spencer discussing the size of beer cans in Denmark.

Little sister, Sisters boy friend and big Brother.... with a big can.

The Summer house had become a party house for new years eve.

My epic ET cake that the was made for me!

Its a long story, but I was a big ET fan as a kid and I once had an ET cake that did not look like ET. So they figured now would be the time to correct that.

Quick and painless, I didn't want him to suffer.

He was tasty and tender, but we could not bring ourselves to eat his face. :/

Once it hit 12 we cracked open a special bottle of fizz that

was given to us on our wedding day.

Darth-Sven

He was in charge of the fireworks that would ring in the new year.

The very, very, very pretty Mrs Groves.

Thank you soooooo much for a great birthday! :)