We were fortunate to be invited into a group of friends in our first week in Sydney. Mostly Irish as these were John’s Uni pals from Cork – namely Dave, Rowan and Allan.

Our first encounter was as part of the Come Dine With Me Night – a group dinner in a random restaurant every month – as you can’t really cook for 20 people in a hot Sydney kitchen. The chosen restaurant was in the bohemian quarter that is Newtown – all bars, restaurants, tattoos and the lesbian capital of Sydney!

4 Years previously, Karen attended a course in London and became friends with a Cork boy called Liam. Lo and behold, the very same Liam and his wife Emily are part of this Sydney Gang so that first dinner was more than just one reunion.

From the first introduction we have been welcomed to many gatherings and celebrations including Megan’s 30th birthday party in ‘Hello Sailor’- you guess it a nautical themed party. John was super keen to make his costume and spent the week leading up to the party visiting various dollar king shops – a posh man’s poundland! Karen on the other hand made good use of her famous H&M purchases in Melbourne. We were happy with the results. A fun night was had by all.

Continuing the fancy dress theme Lisha had invited us to the only place to celebrate Halloween – The Argyle. With Karen working it was left to House Husband John to make the costumes…A Sunday trip back to Newtown for a disappointing food fair resulted in a raid of ‘Vinnies’- second hand shop for the core items for the costumes.

This would be a challenge. The ‘vision’ that Karen had was to go dressed as ‘Death by Chocolate’ – but thanks to Vinnies we found Karen an old black Graduation Gown that would be the key to her costume. To complete the transformation we bought some face paints and a Toblerone bar – which we ate!

John had been given a Fez by his old team in London for his travels! So he used this to conjure up a magician’s outfit along with a pack of playing cards and a waistcoat. All that was left was for the makeup…

John had grown a goatee that would be used to form his sinister facial hair for the night and borrowed some of Karen’s eyeliner ( Well if it works for Tim Minchin!)

Karen’s facepaint took us both 4 hours to produce and not one fight was had – when you spend everyday together as we have had you choose your battles wisely!

As you can see below the results were worth the effort. At the party itself Karen got all the attention!

To round off our first few weeks in Sydney Karen finally managed to get a Girl’s Night Out while John stayed at home and caught up on TV. Hot Dubz Time Machine was the name and ‘dancing all night long’ was the game as a superstar DJ took the girls through the history of music from the roaring Fifties all the way up to 2014.

We were lucky to find a great supporting cast for our time in Sydney!