It's Hot!

It's been very hot here today. Our Indoor/Outdoor thermometer said that it reached 51 degrees Celcius outside in the sun today. Fortunately it only got to 25 inside. Thank goodness for air conditioning and double glazing!

The perfect food for such hot weather is BBQ, so I whipped up some Persian Lamb Kebabs from Saraban  by Greg and Lucy Malouf and a chickpea salad. YUM!

Excursions over Christmas

Over Christmas we went on a number of family outings. It's taken me a long time to finally upload the photos from the camera, but here they are at last. 

First up is a family trip to the zoo with Paul's parents and his middle brother.

The new (since we were last there) Wild Sea exhibit was pretty awesome and we got there in time to see the seals getting fed and the keeper introduce all the seals to us.

This Monkey had a baby. Can you see it?

I'm not very keen on the butterfly house because all of these insects keep flying at my face. But I did brave it and came out with a couple of pretty photos.

This orangutan was hiding from the crowds. At first I didn't want to take her photo because she was looking so shy, but then I got an awesome position and she was so gorgeous.

 

 

The next outing was down the Mornington Peninsula. This is at Arthur's Seat Lookout and Flinders' Cairn lookout.

Afterwards we met up with friends at Red Hill Brewery and then tasted some wines at Red Hill Winery and 10 Minutes by Tractor.

Our final excursion over this time was with Candice and Jono to visit my boss' cherry farm at Wandin (anyone else thinking A Country Practice?). Len gave us a tour of the farm in his 4WD and it is awesome. We ate cherries fresh from the tree and then, as they were a little understaffed that day, we helped sort some cherries.

We ventured on to Elmswood Winery for an antipasto platter for lunch and some more wine tasting.

That brought us to the end of our holidays. We have been busy with other things since then - some of which I've already posted about and some of which I will post about shortly.

Landscaping is complete

We had the garden landscaped at the beginning of the week, so now our courtyard and front gardens are complete. It's so nice to have them done. I just wish it would stop raining so we could go outside and enjoy them!!

Here are some pictures of the finished product.

The bbq is now in front of the kitchen window. At some stage we might turn that into a servery, but we'll see.

In a little alcove in the wall, we have a feature bit of corrugated iron that we'll train jasmine up.

Our planter box contains herbs and a lemon and lime tree that will be espaliated to cover the fence.

Our wall boxes contain succulents.

Our front garden contains a tree and some little grassy things, but not big ugly grassy things.

And finally, the seeds that I planted on Sunday have already sprouted!! It's been pouring with rain in Melbourne so I had to bring them in and put them in the bathroom. I think the afternoon sun and damp conditions have really worked for them.

I'm so excited to have a garden at last - especially a kitchen garden of sorts.

A resolution of sorts

I know I said I don't do resolutions, but... if I was going to have a resolution it would be this:

I'm going to try my best to tone down my competitive nature this year and I'm going to try not to keep arguing my point. I know that I'm right and that should be enough. I don't have to change the opinions of everyone and fight to the death until they agree with me. I know it goes against everything in my nature and my genetics, but I think I would be a happier person if I got rid of these two awful habits of mine.

That is all.

Our first step to becoming self-sufficient

Okay, I'll admit, we're a very long way from being self-sufficient and will probably never get there, but we have decided to attempt to grow some veggies.

We bought some pots that fit on our tiny, previously-useless balcony along with some seedlings and seeds and today we planted them out. So far we have leeks, silverbeet, winter-harvest broccoli and brussel sprouts. 

The landscaper starts on our back and front yards tomorrow. I can't wait for that to be finished!

I've started putting up my photos of my project 365. So now you can look here to see my daily photos.

Let's Recap

It's been a pretty busy year and I've been slack with blogging, so here's the cliff's notes version for people who didn't play along with me the whole year.

The beginning:

Early in 2010 our second rental in Melbourne went up for sale, so we started the crazy roller coaster ride of selling a house that didn't belong to us. It was a crap time and had me in a rage on the phone to the agent a number of times. Some furniture went missing, and some pieces were damaged, but my sanity was the largest casualty. 

Even the weather was against us in the beginning. A hail storm hit Melbourne, breaking one of our windows and causing thousands of dollars of damage to Stephen's car (that we are borrowing from him). Thank god for insurance!

Not all was bad, though. We had trips away that made for good times.

I went to a conference in Lorne with the work girls in February.

Paul and I went to Coffin Bay with Mum and Dad in March and spent two weeks relaxing, drinking, eating and fishing. 

We returned to Melbourne with a new addition to the family, Morgan. She's a funny little thing. So different to Myf: timid but loving, sweet-natured but destructive, cute-as-a-button but cheeky. She irritates Myf at times, but has been great company for her. She has however been detrimental to Myf's waistline. Myf keeps sneaking into Morgan's bowl for a taste of her puppy food and is now on a diet!!

 

I had a career change at the beginning of the year and started working as an office administrator within a research division rather than in the lab itself. I've enjoyed the challenge of learning new skills and love my new job. I know that I won't want to do this forever, but I'm confident this will give me the skills required to move my career in whichever direction I decide to go in.

The middle:

The Richmond rental sold so rather than go homeless Paul and I bought our very own piece of Melbourne. We now live in the inner north and although it'll take longer to get to the 'G for footy matches, we're loving the area. And having our own place again is pretty awesome.

Since taking possession of the house, we've been doing it up slowly, but surely - paint, double glazing, decking and air conditioning so far. If you want more detail, check out the posts with the label house.

Paul and I flew back to SA in August to celebrate Mum and Dad's 40th wedding anniversary and a variety of other family milestones. It was great to catch up with friends, relatives and a number of family friends we hadn't seen for a very long time.

My favouritest sister ever, Megs, flew overseas to live in London not long after that. I miss her :( but I know she won't be gone forever, so it's all good.

We made good use of our borrowed car during the year and made many day trips with old friends and new. Most of them involved wine or beer tasting, either at the Yarra Valley or Mornington Peninsula.

I continued with my MTC membership, so saw plenty of live theatre, as well as Mary Poppins and West Side Story in August. On the other side of the cultural coin, we went to plenty of sporting events this year too - cricket (test and T20), AFL, rugby league and tennis.

The end:

Towards the end of the year, I dulled the pain of turning 30, by doing so in France. We had an awesome holiday and can't wait to go back again. For those of you who didn't follow along, check out the posts with the tag France because we did far to much to summarise here.

We met up with Megs while staying at my Aunt and Uncle's house and celebrated my birthday together in style.

 

To ease the shock of returning to reality, and to remind the dogs how much we love them, despite not taking them to France with us, we took them for their very own holiday to Apollo Bay where they spent many hours frolicking on the beach.

Towards the end of the year we had family visitors from both sides.

We celebrated Christmas and New Year in a relaxed fashion and are hoping that we have a quieter 2011.

I don't really have many resolutions or goals for the new year. I've just joined a Project 365 website, so I'll try and take a photo a day to upload to that site. I know I'm usually pretty bad at it, but we'll see how we go this year. This is my link, but don't bother going yet because I haven't started!!

Apart from that, I want another holiday to Coffin Bay and I'd also like to do some things towards career development either through courses or by trying to expand my role a little.

I'd like to wish all of my readers a happy and healthy 2011. Thank you for reading my ramblings.