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.

Christmas Celebrations

Christmas is now over. It feels like we've been celebrating it for a month now... probably because we have been. It started with my work Christmas party, that I've already posted about. Then my parents came for a visit and we had our own Christmas celebration together as we wouldn't be spending the actual day together. Then we had other work celebrations and hosted an afternoon of Christmas drinks at our house. Paul's family are now here and we celebrated Christmas day together yesterday with loads of food.

Here are some photos of the various celebrations (and the food associated with them).

My family:

My decorations:

Christmas drinks: I made shortbread, rumballs and croissants.

Paul's family:

Christmas Lunch: Honey baked ham, smoked turkey, BBQ'ed prawns, calamari, fresh oysters, salmon with lime and dill mayonnaise, garden salad and asian-style crispy noodle salad and a steak for David who doesn't eat seafood.

We were pretty full after lunch and had plenty of leftovers which we will no doubt be eating for the rest of the week. We had to hold off on dessert until much later when we had a pudding and a cherry trifle using cherries from my boss' cherry farm and a Gourmet Traveller recipe. It was very tasty and the photos don't do it justice!

So now we're in relaxation mode. We're watching the cricket, but only one of us is enjoying it at the moment. I've got lots of good books to read, if the cricket doesn't improve.

Aussie Christmas Shortbread

I'm entering the Kitchen Corners December Cookoff. Not because I think I'll win or even want to win, but because I love the blog, Damaris seems like such a sweet person and I think it sounds like fun. I thought I'd give a bit of an Australian twist to a standard shortbread recipe. The recipe I used comes of the side of a McKenzie's rice flour box.

I'll be giving these cookies to the people who are coming around for Christmas drinks tomorrow.

Aussie Christmas Shortbread

225g plain flour
115g rice flour
115g caster sugar
1 pinch salt
225g butter (softened)
1.5 tsp wattle seed
1.5 tsp lemon myrtle

Sift dry ingredients and rub in butter. Knead until smooth. Add wattle seed to half the dough and lemon myrtle to the other half of the dough. Roll out and cut into shapes with Christmas cookie cutters. Cook at 150C for approx 45 min. Sprinkle with caster sugar and cool on a wire rack (although they taste really good straight out of the oven).

Lemon myrtle gives a real zesty lemon sherbet kind of flavour and wattle seed gives a subtle coffee flavour. You could add substitutes if you like or you could see if you can get hold of the bush herbs.

PS do you think that the shape cutter I used is a star or a snowflake? I guess a snowflake isn't very Australian - perhaps I should have thought that through a bit better!

Christmas Has Hit

I organised my work Christmas lunch a couple of weeks ago. I found a great room above a pub for the location and added a Christmas feel with some truffles and rumballs wrapped in red tulle and tied with a red bow. We wrote names on gold crackers for the place names. I think it turned out looking pretty good.

On Friday, Myf and Morgan's Christmas presents arrived from their cousin, Tuppy. Morgan immediately took hers under the dining table to eat, and with good reason!

It's hard not to get into the Christmas spirit with all of this going on, so we thought we'd have a bit of Christmas fun with the dogs...

We did have some difficulties trying to get a family photo though!!

We were much more successful without the Christmas paraphernalia.

The Transformation of the Courtyard

When we bought the house, the back garden (courtyard) was full of lillypilly trees. I guess they were planted as a screen to soften the back wall and shield the space from the neighbours. However, years of neglect meant that the trees were overgrown and thus blocked out all sunlight. Here's a picture of the garden before we moved in.

The trees outside the kitchen window were the first things to go. I like natural light while I'm cooking!!

The rest of the trees followed soon afterwards.

The next step in the revival of the courtyard was the building of the deck. Up until now, Paul and I had managed almost on our own (with the help of family and friends). But we decided that a professional was required for the deck.

The post holes are in...

Now the frame's up...

The deck is underway...

All finished! With Myf's seal of approval.

We'll plant herbs in the planter box and succulents in the boxes on the wall. We're having a landscaper come through soon to add the finishing touches.

Graffiti Wisdom

I hate graffiti tagging. It looks awful and I don't understand the mentality. I love the graffiti art that brightens up an otherwise dull wall. I also like the quirky sayings that you find in some of the most unlikely places. Here are two of my favourites.

"There is no emoticon for existential despair"

"Love isn't just for Valentine's Day"

Crazy Melbourne Weather!!

It's sunny now, but about an hour ago we had a severe thunderstorm and flash flooding warning. It poured with rain for about an hour and now it's fine again. Rain, sun, lots of rain, sun. That's the day so far.

The weather would be funny if we weren't having our decking built at the moment. Our poor carpenter has to try and fit in around the crazy rain. He's offered to come back on Saturday if he can't finish because of the weather. So nice!

I think I should leave work now before the it decides to rain again!!