Over the last couple of weeks Ange and I finally opened up the house to our family and friends. While it's been fun, the sheer amount of work that goes into each visit means that they won't be a regular occurrence. For the sake of brevity I'll just focus on the two biggest ones.

Ange's family would be the first to bear witness to our hospitality. The amount of effort that went into this puts to shame anything I've been part of in the past. Food preparation for this lunch began a full two days before we were to eat. It's not really that surprising when you think about the amount of food we were making, an antipasto platter, first course, second course and dessert for six people. The first course was a lasagne so big that the meat sauce, the first thing we made, bubbled over the edge of a wok that dwarfed the stove.
Our secondi was chicken thighs stuffed with bocconcini and wrapped in bacon and cooked in the oven. Dessert was chocolate mousse tarts. If you ask Ange she'll tell you she wasn't happy with how they turned out, but I thought they were fine.

My side of the family (minus the younger sister and her guy) made the hour long pilgramage from the home town yesterday. Much like with Ange's family, preparations were made well in advance. The menu was a mash up of the typical aussie barbeque, bookended with italian-style entree and desserts. We started off with arancini balls. Small risotto balls with a heart of mozzarella, deep fried until golden brown. They were fantastic. Of course I completely forgot to take a photograph of them.

Main course was typical aussie fare. Sausages, lamb chops, steak, chicken skewers (both terriyaki and lemon style) and of course Ange's mum's hamburgers. We cooked half the meat we bought, and only half that was eaten. None of it was wasted though, as the folks were more than happy to accept doggy bags. Which I'm very grateful for.

I'm home sick today, so I spent most of it in front of the computer pushing out the new design . As you can see I've implemented most of it, but there's still a few more (not as critical) things that need to be done:

• Both the Pages and Blogroll headings need to be fiddled with so the images actually appear. I'm using Fahrner Image Replacement to load all but the header and search, but the PHP (that loads the Pages and Blogroll sections) doesn't agree with FIR for some reason.
• The right-hand menu, or sidebar, needs some padding added to the left hand side so the items aren't pushing against the margin.
• The sidebar on the main page needs to reach to the bottom of the page to link up with the footer. It's working fine in the Pages section, but that's because they're so short.
• Little things like blockquoted text and dot points need to be reworked to fit in with the design.
• Same with the comments section under each entry.
• Finally, the header and search button images need to be positioned properly.

On top of all that I'll be rewriting both the About and Things To Do Before I Die sections.