The Early Christmas Present | REVIEW of Nescafe Dolce Gusto Majesto

If you follow me on Instagram then you probably have seen that T gave me my Christmas present a little earlier than normal. Well, I shouldn't say normal. Last year my gift was Arlo and we went and picked him up two months before Christmas.

But all that is beside the point.

On Saturday a rather large box arrived at home. We've been getting a lot of packages lately so between T and I we have just been checking to see who they are addressed to and leaving them in one of two spots - T's room where he keeps all his work stuff or the bench in the kitchen. This particular box was shoved into T's room as it was addressed to him, I messaged him to let him know a very big package had arrived for him and I didn't think anything else off it.

Until T got home and he carried said large package and dumped it in front of me as I finished a quest in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

I was confused for a moment. I looked up at him and he just pointed at it and said: "It's your Christmas present."

"I can open it now?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"If you don't open it now then it's just going to sit around for another month"

Cue the excitement that I get something new and a surprise at that. T went and got his pocket knife and I opened the box before I decided that it was a good idea to poke myself with said pocket knife. A giggle and a teasing remark later and I had my Christmas present sitting on the bed.

It was a coffee machine.

I don't drink coffee. Not too big of a fan of the taste - too bitter. But I have been saying for nearly 6 months that I wanted to get one because a lot of them come with Hot Chocolate pods.

T did what he always did in that situation and filed away all those remarks until a few weeks ago when he ordered the machine you see in the pictures. He didn't do this half-assed either. He did his research. He knew exactly what I wanted to use it for and searched until he found one that did exactly what I wanted it to do AND on top of that ordered the pods!

I love a thoughtful and practical gift. T bought me a new Washing Machine a couple of years ago for Christmas because the one I had was beyond fixing and I loved it. This present, however, he went above and beyond with. It's probably one of my favourite presents he's ever given me - other than Arlo!

I'm now writing this post a week after I got the Nescafe Dolce Gusto Majesto and I'm really happy with it. The machine itself comes with the funny circular machine plus the capsule bin you can see to the left in the picture above. The capsule bin serves two purposes. The first is as a place to hold the capsules that you are regularly using. The second is as the rinsing bucket as the lid and the red inside come out. Underneath the bin is a special rinsing tool that stays hidden in there until you need to use it.

The machine connects to WIFI, which you need to connect to. Every so often you get updates, sometimes it's just software but after I connected it to the WIFI and did an update, we got a whole bunch of new capsule options that weren't there when I first turned the machine on. The screen is a touch screen and while sometimes it can be a little slow to reach, overall it's really easy to use.

If you don't know how to do anything or which order to put the capsules in the instructions appear on the screen and walk you through it, so it's really easy. If you would like a bigger cup of coffee or hot chocolate, you can also do your own custom cup. I've done this a couple of times because I like a BIG cup of hot chocolate and it's just as easy as if you pressed the already programmed buttons. If all else fails, you can turn to the instruction manual which has really easy to follow step by step instructions.

At the time of writing this, there were 15 different kinds of capsules that you could choose from. T decided on the Hot Chocolate, Chai Latte and Nesquik ones for us for everyday use. The hot chocolate and Nesquik are two of the ones that I would definitely suggest you don't custom cup because they lose their flavour. The Chai Latte is nice, but I've been so used to Chai Lattes that have a lot of spice flavour that this one is slightly bland for my tastes.

The great thing about the capsules is that there are a lot of flavours and because we have family members that are coffee drinkers we can easily get our hands on capsules to keep in the house for the times that they are around.

Overall I really like this machine and it was an amazing present. Its really easy to use and there are a lot of options available, even to those who aren't coffee drinkers. The best and funniest thing about it is that the colours match our kitchen!

If you want to find out more or look for a machine to better matches your own house, check out the Nescafe Dolce Gusto website

Until next time,

(aka - Sophie)

Christmas Decorating Story Time

I've known since I first got together with T that he didn't like Christmas.

What I mean by that is that he has never liked the decorating side of Christmas. He enjoys getting together with family and all of that, he just doesn't like the decorating side of things. I, on the other hand, enjoy decorating a Christmas tree, so we're totally a match made in heaven.

Even though T doesn't like decorating, he handles the fact that I do by teasing me and this year was no different, only decorating this year didn't get off to a great start.

On Friday I asked T if he could get the stuff down so I could decorate while he was working. He totally forgot to do it so I had to get up on the ladder and I have no concept of balance. I'm at the point now that no one is surprised when I hurt myself.

After getting everything down I brought it in and discovered that the very pretty fairy lights I bought last year were a tangled mess. And I do mean a mess. See these were those ones that weren't covered in plastic. Those pretty, dainty ones, where the wire was out and they were tiny and look delicate and they have to be wrapped up properly otherwise they become a tangled mess, and when T packed everything away he didn't wrap them up properly.

I was annoyed, really annoyed by that. T is what I jokingly call borderline OCD. He likes things a particular way, so him not packing the lights away properly annoyed me.

After fighting with them for an hour and telling T our new rule is that he isn't allowed to touch the Christmas Tree to pack it away, even if that means he has to wait until February for it to disappear, I went out to buy new pretty light and had to settle for stars. All of the lights I wanted were gone.

Frustrated I went to run a couple of errands and came back a lot calmer - which was good because T had arrived back home. The Christmas Tree then went up and life continued on.

Only in my decorating, I forgot to factor in two other household members - well, actually one household member. Arlo didn't want a bar of the Christmas Tree and we had to coax him past it for 24 hours in order to go outside because the room where the Christmas Tree is is also the way out to our backyard.

Daphne, on the other hand, took to the tree very well. A little too well. By the end of the day she had secretly squirreled away two ornaments and destroyed them. This then lead to a late night, small argument between T and I in which I got frustrated with him because instead of barricading the tree he decided that the only way to stop Daphne from getting the ornaments was to hide the tree in my office. I love him but he didn't need to hide the tree.

The next day I brought it back out, created my barricade and there have been no more ornament deaths in 24 hours. So things did not go as planned but I did get the tree up and T is thankfully dealing with my use of our dining chairs.

Until next time,

(aka - Sophie)

My Mother Just Jinxed Me

Today is the 1st of December and traditionally that means that you're supposed to put your Christmas tree up. I was always told it was for good luck but I'm not one hundred percent sure if that is the truth or if that is something that was told in my family.

And while I do have every intention of putting my tree today, I'm saving that post for Tuesday as I have a bit of a story to go with it.

Today I wanted to talk about something else that's not as Christmasy.

And that is my Mum just freaking jinxed me on Thursday night.

A lot of my friends have been doing the those Facebook tests where they "analyse" your profile and tell you what is coming in 2019. I do them just for a bit of fun and a laugh. So I did mine and my results were the following:

This was a bit funny for me. You see, T is an identical twin. He also has brothers who are fraternal twins and in his generation, in his family, there are 10 sets of twins - all of them are girls, with the exception of T and his brothers. Because of this, it's kind of been a bit of a joke that at some point a set of twins are going to show up because karma isn't that kind to have all those twins in just one generation. With one of my SIL's done with her boys, another quite happy with their Brady bunch family, one just having baby #2 and the fourth due with #2 in March, we've kind of joked that it's going to be me and T who have twins.

It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it would be just our luck.

So I posted the test, with the caption you see above and left it at that. Then my brother's ex-girlfriend (who we are still friends with) commented.

Katie and I have always got on really well and with her being a teacher and me a Nanny, we bond over stuff like this. So we had this funny little banter going on and then my mother commented.

Here's the thing; when it comes to my Mum having dreams about this stuff I will believe her. Her dreams are scarily accurate.

When she was pregnant with my brother she dreamt that she had a beautiful baby boy but he didn't have a face - it was just blank. So Mum took that everything was going to be ok, just there was going to be something up with his head. My brother ended up being a breach that didn't flip and during the c-section, they had to really yank him out because his head was stuck up near Mum's ribs. On top of that, he was a nearly 11-pound baby so he already had a giant head.

When my grandmother has been sick, Mum has always had dreams about her father coming to her and explaining what is going on with Nana and that she is going to be ok - and they come true.

I've watched as my Mum has these dreams growing up, then seen them come true. So my Mum dreaming about this turned this fun little post into something completely different.

Here's the thing, I can totally understand how many of you may not believe this. T is a major skeptic when it comes to this kind of thing, so I can totally understand the skeptic point of view. But I'm also a believer and I've seen this stuff happen so this has me kind of freaked out.

Not bad freaked out just - if this happens HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH IT!

So now my mother has jinxed me and I know that karma is rubbing her hands together gleefully just waiting for the most inopportune time to make this happen.

I know it's kinda silly, but I did want to document this so if this does come true I can point to this post as the reason why my mother tempted fate and jinxed me.

Until next time

(aka - Sophie)

The Gift Giving Dilemma

I'm an introvert.

If I sound like I'm a go-getter on here, I'm sorry that I have misled you. I'm far from it. My perfect day is spent at home, with T and our dogs with limited contact with the outside world. If I have to go out, I prefer it to be the first thing to get it over and done with. It's why T loving to go shopping for groceries at 5pm on a Sunday is slightly annoying to my introverted self. T is also introverted. Our lack of wanting to be around people is what ties us together.

Christmas is a whole different story, however.

Christmas is my favourite time of the year. As a child, we would spend it at one of my grandparents and on Christmas Eve my Aunt would take me, my brothers and cousin on a Christmas light tour. We'd then go back to my Nana's, eat and watch Carol's by Candlelight (which is the closest thing to Church you will ever see me at on Christmas Eve). The next day would be filled with gifts, food and family. All the things that I like!

It's the pre-Christmas stuff that always gets me. The present buying mainly.

Daphne and Arlo with their Christmas present's last year. 

You would think that after twenty-eight years on this earth I would know just how this whole gift-giving thing goes down.

And I'm here to tell you that I do not.

Each year, since I moved out of my parent's house, I have always strived to ensure that I was not going to be out shopping for presents the weekend before Christmas. I've only succeeded once and that was because I needed to get it out of the way before T arrived to stay with me so he didn't find his present. I like to shop. I hate shopping at Christmas. Too many people.

We're now a month out and I can tell you that I've done a quarter of the shopping that I need to get done. Arlo and Daphne are done. Last year we were still building up their toy's so they got mainly toys and a few treats. This year it's mainly treats with a new toy each - I give Daphne 10 minutes before she destroys hers.

Out of four nephews, three are done. Out of four nieces, none are done (although I have ideas for two of them). The adults we're buying for are easy. We just need to get to the newsagents and get our hands on some lottery packs and add the compulsory 10% of earnings note inside *wink wink*.

On top of all of them I've got eight - yes eight - nanny kids that I usually give something to. This year I'm thinking Ninjabread men. I just need to find the cutters to make them.

Even with all that planning, the one who is giving me the biggest trouble is T.

T is like me in many ways as if there is something we want, we will just go and buy it or save for it. There is no need to wait until our birthdays or Christmas in order to get it. It makes buying stuff for him a lot harder. He on the other hand apparently already knows what he is going to get me and he knows that by telling me this he is leading me to stew on it and try to remember if I hinted at anything recently.

I know it's totally first world problems but god damn it I wish I knew what to get him.

Until next time

(aka - Sophie)