It went to lunch looking like this.  The mint leaves in with the berries were inspired, if I do say so myself.  Nothing like a bit of green to add to the festive theme.  Not to mention how refreshing a burst of mint can be in the midst of the sweetness of the fruit and the rich sweetness of the cheesecake.

My tweaked crust was a success.  With a little less butter and the brown sugar, the cheesecake was easier to cut for serving.  The brown sugar added a slightly caramel flavour to proceedings and did help bind the biscuit crumbs together.

I’ve been asked to link the original recipe somewhere and here it is.

Aside from the cheesecake win, Saturday was just one of those beautiful days that encapsulated everything I love about this time of the year.  The winding down, the chilling out, the celebrating, the giving, the sharing and the bringing together.

We had our work Christmas lunch at a colleague’s beautiful house in the inner west.  It was one of those houses whose walls have lived through some amazing times in our history.  From the stained glass windows of the atrium to the herringbone tiles and the stately wooden staircases, it’s the kind of house that lets your imagination run wild with thoughts of how things were a century ago, fifty years ago, twenty years ago…

Toddler SSG had a ball.  There was a tree house to be explored, guinea pigs to look for, a pool to paddle in and a languid looking snake resting in his glassed box.  Not to mention new friends young and old and a seemingly bottomless cup of ice cubes to keep him hydrated through the afternoon.

We also caught up with some good friends from our mothers group for the first of the third birthdays.  We say it every year but the boys are growing up so quickly and there are times when they shoot us looks that are so adult we don’t know whether to laugh or panic mildly about what lies ahead for us as mothers.

And the Christmas decoration game is strong at The Junction.

I feel that you know more about my pet peeves than you want to know but do you have time for one more?  Today’s issue is opened cardboard boxes of bandaids.  I hate them.  The boxes always fall apart before you’ve needed all the bandaids or else all the bandaids fall out of the box when you least want them too (ie when you’ve just cut your finger).  So I created a solution with this snap lock box.  It’s just the right size for the licensed mini strips that Toddler SSG is obsessed with right now but it’s also big enough to house the fabric bandaids that are the only kind that stick to my skin.  That’s my home and life organisation done for the day right there.

I’m going to hold the SSG household accountable to reasonably healthy eating as we count down to the day my parents fly in and all pretence of keeping up two fruit and five veg goes out the window for Christmas Eve dinner and beyond.

Carrot stick chips have been reasonably well received here.  The super thin julienned pieces of carrot only, I might add.  Anything bigger tends to still taste strongly of carrot, according to Toddler SSG.

I always have room in my day for broccoli and salmon.  And left over cheesecake afterwards.