Tuesday Thought of the Day

Not Dodgeois At All

Remember the gorgeous pearl necklace I blogged about here??

Well, the gorgeous Miss Pip worked her internet-trawling magic and found an almost identical replicate AND purchased it for me.

The package arrived earlier this week and already I am thinking of all the outfits I can wear it with. Oh, the possibilities!

Thank you Miss Pip for finding this truely amazing necklace. I am in L-O-V-E !

xx

It's called a Break UP, Not a Break DOWN

Must keep this in mind for future reference..

Happy weekend to all.

xx

Balloon Beauty

Oh eM Gee..

Love Love Love Love Love Love LOVE !

I want to recreate this photoshoot. It is just gorgeous.

Entire photoshoot here

AND - The dress is available here

*swoon*

xx

L'Homme Parfait

I have already posted about my Bali holiday here.

But admittedly it was more 'Eat' than 'Eat Pray Love'... So I thought I would share some photos that had me convinced that I'd found the perfect man.

In a supermarket.

He has lived in Bali for 8 years and worked at Carrefour (the supermarket) for four. He is french. And he makes the most amazing pastries. [Thought I had a photo of him, but it must be on mum's camera.. Watch this space]

So anyway, tucked in the corner of this massive store where you can shop for groceries or a BBQ and blow-up pool, we found a bakery section in which you could easily get lost and never be seen again.

There was sweet and there was savoury. But as you can imagine, I was drawn to the desserts like a moth to a flame.

Rows and rows of amazing cakes and tarts and eclairs and mousse.

It was pastry heaven.

I was very restrained and chose just one lucky dessert to come home with me.

Berry Cheesecake with Chocolate Biscuit Base

Except, we didn't make it much further than the exit...

Now that I have you all drooling - Here are a few other pics I snapped of my food adventure in Bali.

Spring rolls

Grilled Prawns with Garlic Butter

Chicken Satays
By the way - Look how these were presented, on a little stand with coal in the bottom, so they stayed warm.

Atlantic Salmon

Tiramisu
The man in the restaurant gave this to us on the house. We were trying to speak to him in Indonesian/Balinese and may have said something hugely inappropriate...

And of course we had a few of these too... Cheers!

xx

'L'Homme Parfait' means 'The Perfect Man' (or so I'm told..)

At My Best..




Found here

 

xx

A Touch of Pink

Even though I'm not seriously looking yet, I have been keeping an eye on the Real Estate Market and found house hunting to be super depressing.

Don't get me started on the price of property right now. Everyone keeps telling me it's a buyers market, but it seems that the market is priced for DINKS (Double Income No Kids) not SIWD (Single Income With Dog!) Allow me to explain - I love my puppy more than anything in the world, but I am quickly discovering that any place with a yard is going to cost me far more than a place without.

Anyway, I've found that the best way to beat my Real Estate Blues is to spend my time imagining how I will decorate my new abode when I eventually find one.

Today I have found the cure to my Blues to be all shades of pink.

Found here

Let's see those stools a little closer...

Found here

Found here

Source unknown - sorry!

From here

Imagine the cupcakes that would come out of this kitchen

From here

And a quick search over at Apartment Therapy never disappoints

The possibilities are endless. And while in reality I could probably never commit to pink as an accent colour, dreaming of all things pink happens to be a great way to cheer me up!

xx

Celebration Pavlova

My gorgeous cousin Katie and her twin Bryce turned 18 on Friday, so in celebration we are having a family gathering at my aunty's house today.

I was nominated to make the dessert...



Pavlova topped with whipped cream, raspberries and shaved chocolate

Tradition dictates that 2 pavs are taken to the party - 1 for eating and 1 for my nan to take home with her...

Usually mum is the Pavlova Chef (and I the Cupcake Queen), but for some reason the rules were changed for this occasion.

For those of you playing at home, here's the recipe -

4 egg whites

1 cup caster sugar

3/4 teaspoons white vinegar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form

Add sugar gradually

Then beat in vinegar and vanilla

EASY

Pop it into the oven at around 120 degrees for 90 minutes.

Because I knew I needed to make 2 pavs, I simply doubled the recipe and threw the ingredients into my trusty Breville Scraper Mixer Pro to do the hard work for me.

Love love love this shiny machine

(Have you seen the MasterChef challenge where they make contestants beat eggs manually with an old-fashioned whisk until the 'stiff peaks' are formed and they can hold the bowl upside down over their heads?! Madness)

As previously mentioned here, our family will also be celebrating another big birthday tomorrow - My sister's 30th. Even though she's in another state, we will celebrate for her until she comes back to party in June. (And I'm sure pavlova will be on the menu again).

Wishing both my favourite girls the BEST birthday weekend ever.

xx

Eat & Love

**Pre-Warning** This is possibly the longest post EVER

I ate.  And I loved.

Bali, that is.

I think this photo is going to be the background of my phone for the next few weeks months. It's the view from my room at our hotel - The Jayakarta in Legian.

As soon as the plane landed back in Australia, I felt like crying. I love the escapism of travelling so instead of getting depressed about reality, allow me to over-share with photos from my week in Bali.

First some background for you..

My week in Bali involved me hijacking my mum's 2 week holiday that she had planned several months ago.

Full disclosure - I have never had any desire to go to Bali whatsoever. Honestly, I prefer extreme cold to extreme heat. But following recent events, several people suggested I should go on a holiday and get some well deserved rest, so I went to Bali with the intent to lie by the pool and read a stack of books.

Silly me.

You cannot go to another country and stay confined to the hotel. OK... Yyou probably can, but you shouldn't.

So during my 6 days in Bali, I squeezed in 3 day trips to other areas of the island, 2 shopping days and yes, 1 day by the pool. (Sidenote - I was so exhausted on the final day I fell asleep by the pool and have come home with ridiculous sun burn on my belly).

This was the view from my pool lounge.. Pure bliss.

I managed to come home with just under 400 photos - taken both with my iphone and dodgy canon 'point and shoot' digital camera.

Here's the edited version of my holiday album - - -

The hotel grounds were beautiful. Just out of sight in this photo is one of the pools and beyond that - the beach.

Heaven.

In the mornings, we had breakfast at one of the hotel's restaurants overlooking the beach.

On the Tuesday, we took a field trip to Tanjung Benoa and went out in a glass bottom boat.

The beach where this took place was very commercialised with tourists able to participate in parasailing, jet skiing, fly fishing or windsurfing.

The view back to the beach from the boat was amazing. How the drivers of different vessels don't collide remains a mystery to me. Balinese drivers (on land and water) are maniacs!

The Captain of our glass-bottom boat was a friendly man who noticed that staring at the bottom of a rocking boat was making me green, so he let me steer instead.

After the boating adventure, we made our way to Sanur for lunch and decided that next time we holiday in Bali (mum is convinced we will go back in October!) we will stay in Sanur rather than Legian, as it's quieter and the beach is calmer (Legian is a surf beach).

 I don't think I would complain if I had to return here...

Just like paradise.

On the advice of our trusty driver Froggy, we took a day trip to Seribatu Village.

The villagers here grow coffee, chocolate, cloves, vanilla, jackfruit, snake skinned fruit, durian, and pineapple, among other items.

Stopping along the way to admire the rice fields.

Froggy was a great guide - showing us the pod in which cocoa for chocolate is found.

There were samples of all of the produce - including roasting coffee beans.

We were invited to sit and enjoy the view.

Which was breathtaking.

And we were given free samples - which included lemon tea, ginseng tea, coffee and hot chocolate.

(10 points if you can guess what I bought back in my suitcase?!)

That leads me to the shopping...

In Bali, even though everything is cheap, it is still very easy to spend a lot of money...

The Balinese like to sell things in multiples and sometimes in a shopping frenzy it is easy to convince yourself that you do need 5 watches or 4 pairs of sunnies!

I didn't take many photos of the shopping, but we did spend some time at the markets in Ubud. It was multi-story and very easy to get lost!

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant with another breathtaking view.

Seriously, this country is amazing.

And later that night, I turned into a true tourist and got a henna tattoo on my foot.

Later in the week, I succumbed and had my nails done too...

For $3 AU how could I say no ??

OK... So eat Pray Love was a boxoffice hit. I must confess that I never finished the book. It's on my list of things to do because I think I will associate better with the story now than when I first started reading it.

I did enjoy the movie though.

So while in Bali, what better way to spend the day than to seek out Ketut ?  The medicine man who tells Liz she will have 2 marriages - 1 short and 1 long.

The man who predicts that she will lose all of her money right before she leaves her marriage and loses everything in her divorce.

Our driver Froggy tells us he knows where we can find Ketut, so we set off to Ubud in search of our own prophesies.

By this time, we have started to learn some Balinese language and have discovered that within a family the firstborn is "Wokalayan" (or Yan, for short), second is "Made," third is "Nyoman" or Komang (Man or Mang for short), and fourth is "Ketut" (often shortened to Tut).

Froggy himself advised that his name is Made, but he was given the nickname 'Froggy' by an Australian friend because Made was too common.

With this in mind, I am skeptical that we are even being taken to the correct place...

But eventually, we arrive.

And it's just like in the movie (I think they must have filmed there).

The property is beautiful.

Ketut has become so popular that we had to take a number and wait for him. Luckily we arrived first thing in the morning so there were only 2 others before us.

We sat nervously waiting for our turn.

And then we were invited to meet him.

Ketut looked at my face and my ears and then took my hand and read my palm. He was difficult to understand, but during the reading he told me he had a son who was a Doctor and that if he didn't already have a wife, I could have married him and lived in Bali. I wondered if he told that to all young single women.

In hindsight, I left feeling a little disappointed with my encounter with this great man. I wanted him to tell me something amazing.

I would have liked him to tell me I would travel. Or change careers. Or do something extraordinary.

Something no one else could know or predict, but everything he said was very non-descript and could have applied to anyone.

He did tell me I would be married again. Apparently, I have 2 marriage lines on my hand.

Only time will tell.

Now for some photos snapped with one Miss Pip in mind 

(If you've read this far, you're almost at the end I promise!) 

'Pips' - Pampurring in Paradise

This was a billboard I saw everywhere we went. And every time I saw it, I thought about how we should print it out and stick it up at work.

(I think it's advertising a brand of cigarette...)

ClasMILD - Talk Less. Do More.

It's like a No Talking post-it note.

And finally...

A man who makes cheeseburgers in the middle of the super market. At 5,500 rupiah each, that works out to about .60 cents AU.

Truely amazing.

So now I am home. Back to reality.

And the cold Adelaide weather.

Luckily there's someone waiting to keep me warm.

xx