Okay, so it’s not really a surprise, since I knew what was in the package – but it was still painful having to wait for so long.

So, on the 28th of December 2009, I got an email from Jim to let me know that he got confirmation that my gift had been shipped that very day. A week later I hurried off to the post-office (yeah, optimistically) but only found the usual mail. Okay, I said to myself, South African postal services aren’t always the snappiest when it comes to international deliveries.

A week later, still nothing – dejected, I tried to forget about it for another few days. Last Friday, I went back to check again, and still nothing! I couldn’t go through on Monday and got a chance to go this evening – and there it was – finally!

Okay, enough with the rambling, what was inside?

TADA! Finally I’m also the owner of our very own Settlers of Catan board-game! And below, are two pictures of the contents and a fully laid-out board-game. Dina and I had a quick game after supper, and I won (by a hair’s breadth mind you)!

So, a special thank you goes out to Jim Plane and Guido Teuber of Catan LLC and of course Klaus Teuber, without whom we would not have the game!

And remember if you want to know more about the game you can read my first experience or if you’d like to find out how to play online you can read my review.

How cool is this little gadget? Now you too can print your very own toast. Just a pity it’s only a design concept – I’d so get one if it was a real product!

It’s a concept by Othmar Muehlebach, and it won second place at a design contest in Switzerland last month. [via Crave]

When I think back of the time that my brother and I were kids and what outdoor things we had to play with things like an old Fig tree and the garage roof come to mind. Well, that’s all we, as kids, had to climb up and down and on.

Well we’ve been thinking of what we can do with our 110sqm back garden for a while now, in fact *blush* 5 years now. Finally we decided what better than to get something for the kids to use outside. Kids today tend to be indoors most of the time, either watching TV, movies or playing video games. 

So what’s the early Christmas gift already? Okay, okay – it’s an outdoor gym for the kids. Needless to say, I’m jealous

Here’s a picture of one part of our back-garden as it was before (namely, yesterday afternoon when I got home from work):

And this is what it looks like this afternoon, what a transformation (I didn’t quite realise how big it would be based on the small drawing in the catalogue):

The entire system consists of the following:

• Slide
• Ladder
• Cargo Net
• 2 x Swings
• A swinging tyre
• Monkey bars
• Climbing rope
• Covered deck to play on