Porto wedding...

Me and the Mrs went to Porto recently to see some other friends become a Mr&Mrs. The weather was great, Porto is super nice, food was tasty and we had a great time! Weddings are fun. :)

I called him Caveman Jesus!

We got to ride the trams is Porto, super cool fun.

the line is not very long but fun none the less.

Day of the wedding and the Groom was looking a little tense! haha

My lady on the other hand was looking amazing. :)

The kids table....

The bride dancing with her Dad.

All together now...Awwwww!

I made a bit of an effort for the day.

I even made a LEGO tie clip for the occasion.

-Posted while on the move (thats why the image quality sucks!)

Updating you all....

Been mega super duper busy with work this end, got two projects on the go and a big presentation next week so I've been spread a little thin. However, here's a round up of what's been going on of late....

The Mrs has been craving fruit lately, so smoothies have been on the menu a lot.

Been doing some rather different shopping on the weekends, defiantly new for both of us.

We had another scan recently, crazy how much detail you can see on these scans. He/She is really starting to look like a real person.

Been doing some Designer Videos for LEGO.... here is a sneak peek from behind the scenes!

Been growing a beard, mainly because I have no time for a real shave.

The hand tattoo has also healed up rather well.

Cupcakes & Friends...

Last weekend was a nice and rather productive one for the Groves household. On Friday night we drove down to Billund to catch up with our friends Lizzy & Sven. We will actually be spending Xmas with them so it's a good job we actually like them. Then on Saturday we got ALL of our xmas shopping done which is great, so now we can just chill out until Xmas.

 Lizzy showing off her very round baby bump, no2 is due in January so it's not long now.

Fee, Sven and Mr Mustache waiting for the very yummy main dish to arrive.

We picked up some Chocolate and VERY tasty cupcakes for desert. We made sure there was one for Amelie their little girl, but we wanted proof that it was not eaten by Sven.....

... so there is the proof, now THATS how you eat a cupcake!

In other news I was in the Local Vejle magazine, I figured it was only going to be half a page.... turned out to be a 4 page spread!

 We also received our bumper box of "We do not plan to do anything over Xmas" DVD's.

Cant wait for a nice Xmas break.

The lesser spotted Nik....

When I go on work trips with the LEGO gang I tend to act as photographer along with a few others. However unlike most people I get myself into odd places to get shots and I don't normally end up in other peoples photos....... so the joke is that I have become like big foot (was Nik even there? is that him in the background?) so now people try and take photos of me just to prove I was there.... some have more success than others.

There's me, in the far far far far right taking pictures. I'm in shot but you could never PROVE it was me in a court of law.

 On a bollard, hood up, snapping away..... they haven't even noticed me, it's like i'm a Ninja or something!

They almost got me in this one, managed to turn my back before they captured my soul with their picture box.

This is totally on of those fake photoshop jobs, the shadows are all wrong and that's not even my face.

A week in Germany Pt3

So it would not be a LEGO designer trip without a great party to top off a great visit to Berlin. We hired a cool venue in Berlin called 'Play' for the night, it had Xbox and wii's all over the place for us big kids and a free bar..... so it was a rather good night that resulted in some sore heads in the morning.

 I was on White Russian's until they ran out of Kahlua because everybody was coping me...... as they often do!

Adam is not a party fan, so he sat in the corner and drew for most of the night.

The free bar was starting to show in some peoples faces early on in the night.

It's not uncommon for a megaphone to make an appearance at a LEGO party.

Adrain had drank a little too much by this point.

Simon & and Adam's nice moment photo bombed by Marcos

The wii's proved to be a big hit.

 Again.... Adam is not a fan of party's.

Eric however IS THE PARTY!

 Who's that handsome guy?

A week in Germany...Pt1

Last Monday I was in the city of Hamburg on some tests for LEGO. Even tho we were there for work we managed to sneak out of the test center for a bit and have a little look around the city.

 Some creepy dolls we spotted in a toy shop.

Please don't come and eat my heart in the night!

 You think I would be fed up with looking at this stuff.

This is what I get to call 'market research' :)

Fred, Andy and Matthew.... I think we may have been lost at this point.

A rather pretty building in the town center.

I actually don't know what building this is so I'm throwing this one out to any Germans reading this.

A rather cool 3D map we found.

We went to a nice restaurant while there (cant remember the name) but they had these stupidly big menus printed on sheets of metal. Nobody could see each other while ordering.

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.

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.