Happy New Year!!!

Image above: With the clock showing after 02:00 it was time for everyone to call it a day and make their way back home. (L-R) Rosalind, Dan, Alice, Sylvia, Andrew, Winnie, and Kay

With the last NYE do that I hosted being back in 2005 and since I had yet to throw a  house warming party, I figured that it would be fun to combine the two to celebrate the arrival of 2009. You can check out photos of the night here.

Everyone brought food along to share. M&S party food (from Winnie),  sushi and cakes (from Dan and Ros), Japanese potato salad (from Kay and Andrew), Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (from Sylvia and Sissi), and some really nice non-alcoholic mulled wine (from Alice and Michael).

It was great seeing everyone eating and drinking lots. Friends catching up with others they hadn’t seen for ages and others making new friends along the way. And Kay deserves a special mention getting all the girls excited about her false nails!!! Us boys … well, we just played Wii instead. LOL

After all the food (and there’s still tons left!) we booted up the Wii and had fun playing Mario Kart, Wii Play, and Wii Boxing. Also tried teaching some of them how to play the Fluxx card game which was hilarious as, at first, everyone was completely confused and then slowly kinda got it as the game progressed.

And before we knew it, it was almost midnight so we all got together in front of the TV and watched Big Ben signal the start of the new year before celebrating with champagne. And yes, I did sip some though that was probably a mistake as I ended up spending New Year’s Day nursing a massive hangover!!!

After that, back to some old-fashioned board games. Namely, Articulate where the the objective to move your team’s piece around the board by describing words to your team without actually saying the word or a derivative of the word. Sounds easy? Well, when you only have 30 seconds to do as many as you can it gets really hilarious as your brain completely seizes up and your favourite word becomes: erm … erm … erm …

And with that, it was suddenly 02:00 in the morning and time for everyone to go home. Sylvia kindly stayed on to helpe me clear up and Nestor, her boyfriend, came down after he finished work to join us. So we stayed up a bit more drinking copious amounts of tea and playing Fluxx before exhaustion got the better of us at 06:00 and they headed back home and I headed to bed.

So thanks to everyone who came … it really made for fantastic evening and great way to start the year!

[View the photo set]