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We used to be crap at Christmas cards, but for the last few years we’ve been pretty good. In 07 we even asked Mum and Dad Young for addresses of rellies who we haven’t been in touch with for ages so that we could send them cards too.

Turns out that one of the addresses was either wrong or old, as today we got one of our cards back.

Not sure why it takes more than four months for a wrongly-addressed Christmas card to make its way back from the UK to Geelong, but this one did. The Royal Mail mark says they processed it on Jan 5, 2008.

So we’re sorry, Jon and Bethany. Either Mum and Dad had a wrong or old address, or I copied it down wrong. But we’ll keep it safe and give it to you when you come out here later this year!

Ages ago, July 3, 2007 in fact, I wrote about how Kate had alerted me to the HP sauce debacle.

You may recall that on that night I was greatly moved and drove down to the shop to stockpile bottles (I bought 10). Tonight that stockpile ran out and I was forced to use Dutch HP instead on my fish and chips. Crisis time.

I can report that it looks different (you can see the difference in the photo), and I think it tastes slightly different too - I tasted them one after the other a couple of times and the original HP is definitely tangier. To be honest, though, I don’t think you’d be able to tell the difference if someone switched your bottles and you weren’t aware that you were eating the Dutch stuff instead of the British stuff.

So that’s that. I haven’t heard about the Dutch doing anything of note since they finished fourth in the 1998 World Cup, so at least a few of them have something to do now.

Just back from a weekend in Melbourne celebrating the wedding of our friends Jeremy and Gita. On Saturday we enjoyed the lovely simple ceremony and low-key party with around 50 guests at The Commune in East Melbourne, today we had morning coffee with John, Bec and baby Isaac, and then drove to Ikea in Richmond for the afternoon. (And it really was for the entire afternoon. But it was OK. We bought some stuff.)

Jed and Gita have been engaged for around three years, so there were plenty of jokes in the speeches around it being about time they finally tied the knot. Sadly it was also a farewell party - they’re off to Indonesia next week to live there for a couple of years. We’ll miss them, but we hope to get over there for a visit sometime next year.

We’ve always thought he lived elsewhere and only came to our house of an evening, but we were wrong. Take a look at the cheeky bugger in our palm tree.

He hasn’t messed up the balcony for a few weeks, probably thanks to my tree pruning, the nails and removing the green mesh. He hasn’t really got anywhere to sit up there now. Fingers crossed he stays away.

This weekend marked the official completion of the balcony. Peter, Christine and Jayne have put a huge amount of effort in over the last five months and they are justifiably very proud of the result. They’ve lifted, painted, nailed, sawed, measured, balanced, hammered, oiled and puttied their way to a sensational 2.5m wide x 18m long merbau-deck balcony with a retro late 80s balustrade that will still be solid in 2030. (And me? I was chief designer so can take some credit for the final outcome but not as much as the real workers.)

It’s hard to believe that I first ripped up the boards in August 2006 and we’ve only just finished it now, but there you go.

Here are a few more photos … the entire set from start to finish is on our Picasa page.

Me removing the filthy green mesh - (a) to annoy the possum and (b) so we could paint the beams to tidy things up a bit

Halfway through painting the beams. We’re completely removing the red from the house and going with a single colour. It looks much calmer one colour, strangely enough

I fixed up the garden lights around the bricked area this weekend

Looking out from the kitchen window. It’ll be sensational when we have some pots, plants and furniture out there

Peter cut two angles on each end of each slat for the steps - one at 45 and again at 25 to match the pitch of the steps. He mucked it up a few times, he reckons!

Already it looks like it’s been there forever - It blends in with the house perfectly. We were close to installing a stainless steel wire / timber posts balustrade but I’m very pleased we decided to be faithful to the house’s 80s heritage and go retro.

Last night we celebrated with a superb homecooked beef and mushroom pot pie and Peter even cracked one of his good bottles of wine to mark the occasion - a 1992 Penfolds bin 407 Cab Sav.

So that’s it. Project finished. Hooray.