Entertaining

I love having friends over for dinner and I really enjoyed all the preparation today. Keith made his delicious tomato soup first thing while I made two loaves of bread to go with it - a wholemeal and a white loaf. I then set the table (it was a tight squeeze with all the glasses and plates!) and cleaned the conservatory before shutting it up.

I cleaned the rest of the downstairs and then Sophie and I headed to Jones's as she needed ink and paper for the printer as she had loads of photos to print off for her forthcoming photography exam. The plan was to go home and spend the afternoon printing them all off, but she had a few problems so she may have to finish them off at school or use Timpson's as we've done before. To be honest I wasn't a lot of help to her as I was busy preparing the vegetables, chopping fruit for the Pavlova and making the meringue, but I'm sure we'll get it all sorted next week.

We'd promised to take the children to get a KFC meal and luckily I had a quick look at the recipe for my main course - chicken and chorizo tray bake...the only problem was that I'd forgotten to buy any chorizo! Luckily Tesco's is right next door to KFC so we dashed into the deli counter, bought the spicy sausage and then headed off to feed the hungry wee ones!

Back at home I had a lovely bath and then asked Sophie to work her magic with my hair and make-up before going downstairs and finishing off the preparations for dinner. I only had one more hitch...the large casserole dish would only fit in the very bottom of the oven so I had to put it on a lot earlier than I'd anticipated otherwise we'd have been waiting a very long time for the main event!

We had a really lovely evening with Sarah and Liam and Sue and Paul and I think the food went down very well. Nothing disastrous happened and we went through quite a few bottles of wine (including the magnum of Redwood Creek that we brought home from Florida) and the lovely Longhorn Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from California. Keith's tomato soup was a big hit and everyone liked my chicken dish which was fine after it had been in the oven for an hour and a half!

Sophie was tremendously helpful and made sure all the washing up was done for me which was great. I would have had much more work if it wasn't for her! We finished with my fruity Pavlova followed by cheese and biscuits and Port and then I took orders for coffee and hot chocolate while my friends relaxed on the sofas.

It was 1.30am by the time they left which was great as I hoped they all felt relaxed and comfortable. I stayed up for another half an hour to wash up and then it was off to bed, and thankfully I didn't feel too tipsy!