TOY STORY 3!!

-----Super Cool News Alert!-----

As some of you may know I was one of the designers who worked on the LEGO Toy Story line. It was a great line to work on and as a thank you from Disney/Pixar myself and the rest of the LEGO Toy Story gang are......wait for it.....going to London to see the PREMIER OF TOY STORY 3!!! :D

There they are, 5 of the hottest tickets in town...how much would you pay for one of those on eBay?

I came home a little early to get travel arrangements sorted (being the native Londoner I was put in charge) and packing. Normally I just throw a load of stuff in a case and only wear 20% of it, so this time I figured out my outfits before hand.

Traveling and bumming round London on Saturday outfit. Simple, comfy and practical... combined with a large(ish) travel bag that good for any cool bits I may pick up.

This is my 'hitting the town' outfit, kind of smart but with a cool twist. We are going to a cool restaurant Sat night, so this should work out well.

Outfit for the premier. Smart trousers, nice fitted shirt, Pink tie and trainers. Being a kids film I wanted to keep the look a little 'fun'...plus it starts at 1:30pm so it's not exactly going to be a Black tie evening.

Traveling home outfit, again its comfy, cool and light-wight.

I wont take my laptop as its only for one night but i'll e sure to post up some cool pics once I get back. Stay cool!

Welcome to the book club..pt1

While doing all the painting and clean over the past couple of weeks, we finally got round to sorting out reading area and bookcases. We have a ton of books but when we sorted through them I realised there were looks of book I had not read yet, forgot we had or meant to recommend.

So what better way to help remind me of what we have (and help you pick a good holiday read) than to post it here. So expect a few more of these on slow news days... :)

Marilyn Manson's auto-biography The long hard road out of Hell was a good read, everything you would expect and then some. Talks about his childhood and explains a lot about why he is who he is. Devil May Care was so-so, its a Bond novel but written by Sebastian Faulks in the style of Ian Fleming. I like the Bond books but this missed the mark a little, the originals are better. Addict was also a good read, true story of this guy who get sucked in to a cray life of drugs and crime in 60's london, they keep talking about making it into a film but it never seems to happen. The rest belong to the wife and I have not read them, but 'Ugly' & 'A Piece of cake" are those painful lives style books she loves so much....so if your into that those are for you.

Devil in Amber, The Vesuvius Club and Black Butterfly are three great books by Mark Gatiss. He's a British comedian/writer (The Leauge of Gentlemen, Dr Who) with a dark side that come out in the books, Fee and me both liked these books. Think James Bond but written by Oscar Wilde.... highly recommend! Two copies of The Outsider which is a classic book and one of Fee's favorites, guess thats why we have two. Got the screen play of Taxi Driver in there (you talking to me?) and no book collection would be complete without The Da Vinci Code. I must remember to read the Bowie biography someday...

TWO days of living it up on the beaches of Denmark....

So on Friday Fee was on her way back from Berlin and I decided to stay home and surprise her. It was such a nice day that we decided to go to the local Beach (about 40min away) and enjoy the sunny Friday. Even Lissy and Amelie came along....Sven had just got a new PS3 so we did not see him.

The Beach is right by the bridge, it's rather impressive and we don't normally see it from this side.

It's crazy to think that this is walking distance from town, so nice.

The ladies soaking up the sun.

Fee was desperate to get some sun on her legs.

Amelie loves the sand (playing in it and eating it) so she needs a little swim now and again to clean off and cool down.

Lizzy spotted me 'papping' her from a distance.

Amelie does a great 'shifty look' when she wants too.

"I'm going to put my cookie here AND it better be here when I get back...alright?!"

The ladies chatting and feeding Amelie.....she even had a little costume change.

After lunch they went for a little walk....I hid in the shade being the vampire that I am.

Amelie got fed up of walking, because 1min later....

"Walking for chumps...now carry me woman!"

"Hey dude, you got any milk?"

So we had a nice day and all had a slow walk back into where we meet up with Sven (who was very excited about his new Playstation) and made plans to meet up Sunday and pop to a really nice beach a little further away. However it turns out the weather will not be so nice on sunday so we all decided to made some food pack up the cars and drive off into the sun! :)

This was our little patch of land with lots of shade for me to hide in.

Not a bad view for Denmark ha?

Amelie with Daddy Sven having a swim.

Sven decided to swim back to Germany.

For some reason if you dig a hole in the sand Amelie likes to sit in it. So Sven dug her a nice big hole to play in.... turned out to be a great baby prison.

Strangely she REALLY seemed to like it.

We even had a little grill on the beach and stuffed our faces with burgers, sausages, yummy home made noodle salad and home backed bread. Still, that didn't mean we were too full for ice cream! :)

We followed Sven to a cool little pancake house and finished off our day with a tasty ice cream cover pancake....nice.

Hugs!

Pics from the computer of Mrs Groves....

We are off to see the Germany vs Spain game tonight over at Sven and Lissy's.....and they are German so lets hope they win. So until then I'm sitting on Fee's laptop having a look at her photos, she's rather niffty with a camera herself....enjoy!

Amelie liked cat hat....so much so she burped up milk on it.

She also likes Water Melon.

I don't remember taking this?

Mmmmmm wife.

Fee's home made won-ton soup...yummy!

Dim-sum in London.

Some Sushi I made a while ago.

Fee designed that packet of Ga-jol...cool ha!

A yummy stir fry Fee whipped up.

Mr Ashton and his google eyes.

Oooooo this was a posh cheese burger I made.

Me on the dunes on Denmark.

...And we are back!

Hello!!!!

I bet you figured I was never coming back? well don't fret, normal blogging should resume from now on.

So what have I been up too you ask? Well we have been painting, cleaning, painting, filling holes and doing more painting and throwing away loads of junk..... plus some painting.

We took a week off to freshen the place up and do those things we had been planning to do for a looooong time. We had a good plan of action and got started fist thing Saturday morning.

This has been our lives for the past 10 days.

The first stage was to get the whole place cleaned up and cleared so we could actually paint, that took a half day in itself but it needed to be done and gave us lots of room to do the job.

It was kind of odd to see the place this empty, has not looked this way since we moved in.

It was also a good excuse to clean pictures, dust around and vacuum in all those dust hard to reach places that never see light.

One thing we had planned was to get our window seat put in, Christine's 'Far' kindly offered to make it for us and he brought it round last Thursday. We only gave him some simple drawings plus measurements and he did the rest, the result looked great!

This was the window area we wanted seating for, it gets lots of sun light and until now it was just wasted space.

Here's the man himself, hard at work. The fit was a little tight so we had to borrow a saw, lucky for us

Carl had just the tool for the job so Fee jumped into the car and picked it up....Tak Carl!

We were VERY impressed when he first turned up with it, we had no idea how it was going to turn out but he had done an ace job.

"She's in!"

It took some time but we got there in the end.

How cool is that!

It needs some sanding in places to get the draws opening smoothly and a few coats of paint but we love it already. Fee's been like a Cat and sitting in the sun beams when she can.

Once we had painted and the seat was in, it was time to clean and put stuff back. That really wiped us out, having to go though everything, throw stuff away, take stuff to the dump and the basement then clean was hard. However we soldiered on and we are really pleased with what we have done.

We added a nice spot of colour to this wall to help it feel a little more cosy and help the picture 'pop' a little more.

This was the only other wall to get some colour, its lighter than the other wall and works really well with the new door colour.

We got rid of a lot of stuff in the study area, it feels so much brighter and less cluttered now.

Finally the libery feel like an aera we want to use. It was never very useable before but now it feel very inviting. FYI we cut the legs on that table to get it to the right hight, it was just a normal table before that.

Now i even have a music corner...pretty cool!

After a long week of non-stop work we opened a nice bottle to celebrate and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.

Well done Fee & Nik!