We had to go shopping for groceries yesterday. Not content to have an ordinary shopping trip (who ever is?), I set the house a challange! The rules were pretty simple - everyone had to buy something for at least £2.00, but no more than £2.50. And, it had to be something mysterious - no influencing other people's choices!

So, here's what we came up with:

But the question is - who bought what? In fact - it's a competition! The first person who correctly names, (a) which person bought which item, and (b) who went over-budget (> £2.50), who went under-budget (< £2.00), and who spent exactly the £2.50 (two of us), will win a prize!

To help out, here's a description of what the items were, clockwise from the top-left:

• Millionaire caramel slice, and cinnamon and chocolate men
• Raspberry jelly crystals, and a giant jar of salted peanuts
• Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge brownie mix, and a four pack of caramel wafer biscuits
• Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream, and a Mars Duo bar

Submit your entries by leaving a comment!

What a fantastic year 2008 was! Keeping up with the tradition started by Bender, here's a look back on the year that was.

Life

Life seems to get busier by the day. Here's the big ticket items from 2008:

• We farewelled our good friends Ben and Michelle as they travelled their way back home to Australia in February.
• Stacey and Wes got engaged! And then moved to Aberdeen, harsh!
• Lisa popped over from New York for a few days in April, and kept us laughing the whole time she was here.
• In August, we moved out of our Chiswick flat, and joined up with Julian and Shelley to become Team Barbeque Chicken of Putney.
• My brother popped the question to his beautiful girlfriend Susan, and now they too are engaged!
• Jason and Louise visited again! Their friend Craig came along as well, and we took a day trip out to Windsor Castle.
• I joined the 30 club, and we celebrated with a day at the pub.

Travel

We can never get enough travel! Looks like we did a pretty good job of spreading things out over the year though, with a few local trips and lots of international ones too:

• In January, I took a three day boys weekend to Malta with Ben and John.
• We had a few days in New York at the start of our Easter vacation. It was good to be back on the old stomping ground!
• We recovered from New York in Florida: our home away from home.
• Costa Rica with the Cookes! We saw the volcano in Arenal, went zip lining in Monte Verde, and learned to surf in Playa Grande.
• We went to Amsterdam in April to celebrate Aubain and Ingrid's wedding.
• Kristy and I enjoyed a long weekend in Paris in May.
• In June, we had a weekend in the Cotswolds, and a day trip to Brighton with Julian and Shelley.
• Matt drove us to Seven Sisters in July. Our intention was to go camping, but we ended up coming back home instead.
• We flew up to Scotland to surprise Stacey for her birthday, and we climbed Ben Nevis while we were there.
• We spent three hot summer days in Rome.
• Todd and Shannon, Julian and Shelley, and the two of us spent a glorious week sailing around Croatia.
• I joined the lads from work for Oktoberfest (in Munich, Germany), which I really want to go to again this year!
• Kristy and I had two lovely days in Bath before my 30th Birthday
• We spent a weekend in Wales with a group of Todd and Shannon's friends, as a surprise for Todd's 30th birthday.
• Christmas was in Eschborn, Germany, with the entire clan of Zeebs.

Music

Lots of concerts in 2008!

• Kicking the year off right with two concerts in one week in February! Linkin Park and Paramore played at O2 and Brixton, respectively.
• I saw Coheed and Cambria play at Brixton touring off the No World for Tomorrow album.
• Jimmy Eat World also played at Brixton in February.
• KT Tunstall hit up the Hammersmith Apollo in April.
• Nick and I saw The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus play up at Angel in May.
• We saw The Goo Goo Dolls, Powderfinger, Ben Harper, and The Counting Crows at the O2 wireless festival.
• I saw Coheed and Cambria play their Neverender tour in the first week of December - four glorious times in one glorious week!

Miscellaneous

• We hosted two raging parties at our Chiswick house; one for New Year's, and one for Australia Day.
• Kristy got to drive a bendy bus
• We volunteered to be test dummies for Terminal 5 (which seemingly didn't help them all that much!)
• I got to play soccer at the Chelsea football stadium, and decided that soccer really isn't my thing
• I participated in my first ever outdoor running event

Yep, it really was a fantastic year. Here's to an even better 2009!

This year it seemed as though the Christmas celebrations just didn't want to end - but let's be honest, isn't that a good thing? We flew out of London on Tuesday (23rd) afternoon to crash Nick's family Christmas in Eschborn, Germany. It was the first time we'd spent Christmas with a family (admittedly not ours!) since 2003!

The Zeebs showed us an amazing German Christmas, ensuring that every morsel of space in our stomachs was full at all times! We ate quite a variety of meats - goose, duck, turkey, wild boar, pork, and a countless variety of sausages. Nick's family (espeically his Mom, Renate) are amazing cooks, so it was impossible for me to stop eating until I thought I'd explode. Stupidly, I didn't take any photos of the delicious food, so you're stuck with your imaginations I'm afraid.

One of the highlights for me was driving on the Autobahn. We were "upgraded" to a Mercedes Benz A-Class - but it was an automatic! How boring! Foot flat on the floor, the car hit a top speed of about 172 km/h and had absolutely nothing left to give; it felt like it was more comfortable cruising at around 160 km/h. To it's credit, the car was solid as a rock, even at top speed - no wheel vibration, and very responsive controls. And that's still pretty fast - when you then slow down to 100 km/h, it feels like you're barely moving!

Nick's Dad, Peter, took great pleasure in taking us for a tour around a few of the towns. Our first tour was in Frankfurt on Christmas day, and it was freaky to see how empty the place was when nothing was open. Frankfurt is the financial capital of Germany and this is fairly representative of the institutions that you see around the joint. Still, the city is not without its culture, and the old opera house - the Alte Oper looks particularly stunning at night.

We also had a tour of Calw (pronounced "Calf"), the town in which Peter grew up, and in which his mother still lives. The style of housing (all across Germany) is so unique, and as Kristy put it so well, so Disney. It's hard to believe that the houses were purposely built in this style, and not done just to impress the tourists.

As you can see, we had beautiful clear weather for the most part, however this meant that it was absolutely freezing cold each day. I literally mean freezing here - temperatures were consistently hovering around 0 degrees.

Still, a little bit of frozen water wasn't going to stop us getting out and about, and Eva in particular insisted we keep up with the German tradition of walking. Kristy and I thought she was crazy - who'd want to be walking around when the temperatures are well below zero? - but to her credit, we met lots of other people on our walks, just being outside and enjoying the beautiful day. And it really helped with the digestion!

Overall it was an absolutely wonderful Christmas, and we're extremely thankful to the Zeebs who went to great lengths to ensure we were comfortable and felt welcomed. Maybe one day we can repay the favour by showing them Christmas, Australian style!

Loads more photos in the Christmas in Germany photo album.

We declared Sunday the 21st to be Christmas in Putney, since Kristy and I were flying out to Germany only a few days later. The first order of the day - after banana pancakes, of course - was opening our secret santa presents!

Santa did amazingly well at picking something awesome for us all; he didn't do quite so well at keeping his identity secret - except from Julian, that is. Secret Santa presents were followed by more presents, and soon I was holding two new PS3 games just begging to be played!

Christmas isn't Christmas without oodles of food, so we all took our places in the kitchen (well, mine was on the couch, finishing Dead Space - one of the best games I've ever played). Kristy felt it was important for us to be a little bit traditional, and to this effect she had ordered a Christmas ham for us all to share in.

It turned out to be a little smaller than we had expected, but it still tasted good, and with the quantity of other food that we had, we weren't left wanting. Our afternoon sped by quickly with a movie, a game of Carcassonne, more eating, and all round general relaxing. It was such a lovely pre-Christmas Christmas!

In fact, it was such a convincing Christmas celebration, that I found it rather strange to turn up to work on Monday to find that everyone else hadn't celebrated the day before! It was such an odd feeling!

A few more photos online in the Putney Christmas 2008 gallery.

I came home a few weeks ago to find a box sitting in the lounge room. Since I get all my packages delivered to work, I ignored it for a few days, until finally on the weekend I looked at the label wondering why on earth someone had left an unopened package in the lounge room. Turns out it was addressed to me!

Well, colour me befuddled! I had no idea what mysterious contents the box held, so I stood and pondered for a moment or two. Naturally, curiosity quickly got the better of me, so into the box I plopped, and pulled out not one but two packages - Carcassonne, and its expansion pack!

Turns out it was a rather thoughtful gift from Natalie and her bandy of Cookes, who said that they thought it "may be fun to play with our flatmates". Fun it is! It's such a simple, yet well thought out game - easy to learn, but difficult to win. And, it's made by the same guy that made Settlers, so there was a good chance I'd be loving it.

The game essentially involves placing random tiles down to build up a map, and using your little men to create farmers, thieves, knights, and monks - each of which is worth a different number of points. There's an element of luck involved due to the drawing of the tiles, but the real trick is to know when to play your little men, as you have a limited number to use, and you don't get them back until their segment is complete.

Like I said, it's simple, and it's great! I'd recommend this game to anyone. We've already played it a number of times, but we haven't tried the expansion pack yet. I'm sure we will very soon though!

Thank you so much Cookes!