I’ve been threatening to do this for months now, and here it is! Finally! I hope you enjoy a tour of our home.
Category: Melbourne
My week of footy
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! What a great few days I’ve just had! As previously mentioned, my friend Ah-dele booked herself in to come down to Melbs for the State of Origin and the Broncos vs Melbourne Storm (“I hate those Melbourne players”) game.
Here we are geared up for the State of Origin: GO MAROONS!!!
The atmosphere was really great and there were over 50,000 people there which is only a couple thousand off a full-house for footy games! It was SO much fun. 
We even ran into a few people we know who happened to come down from Qld for the game! It was quite a close game, though the score (28-18) doesn’t really reflect that. The last 10 minutes were particularly exciting, and even though I never thought we were going to lose (not really, anyway), I realised that I’m out of “footy match watching” practice. My heart was racing!! Subsequently, I lost my voice again, but was TOTALLY worth it!
So then Friday night came around, and we were very excited to be heading out to Melbourne Olympic Park for the match. It’s a very old-school stadium and only seats just over 10,000, as well as standing room for a few thousand more. I reckon there were about 14,000 people there and probably less than a thousand Broncos supporters. It occurred to me that I’d never been to a game where my team’s supporters were so vastly outnumbered, but there we were, Broncos scarves (thanks TM!) and beanies and gloves and lots of enthusiasm:
Unfortunately, we got completely annihilated. 48-4 was the final score and we were gutted. It was never going to go well, 2 days after the Origin, and missing Hodges and Lockyer, but we couldn’t prepare ourselves for such an onslaught. We were NOT happy Jan!!! But credit where credit is due. Melbourne had almost as many players in origin as we did, and they had a blinder of a match. They just couldn’t put a foot wrong. Luckily, Melbourne is my 2nd fave team, so I don’t hate them too much for humiliating us!!
We left the game and headed to the Turf bar to drown our sorrows in cheap champagne and cheesy 80s and 90s music. A great end to the night!!
Pi
Hubs: “Honey, I need you to make me a pie for my tutorial tomorrow morning.”
Wifey: “Okaaaaaaaaaaaay. And why would that be.”
Hubs: (shuffling around in some uni notes, holds up tutorial paper) “Cos tomorrow’s tutorial is number 3.14!”
Far be it for Wifey to get in the way of a good nerd joke.
So I spent the day considering my options, and decided on this Pumpkin Pie recipe (from my fave food-blog!). Why? Cos I’ve never made a pumpkin pie before and it sounded FUN! I cheated and bought pre-made short-crust pastry, but made everything else from scratch. It was LOTS of fun, and the finished product? Pi-tastic!
Oh yes. There’s a Pi symbol on top!
Clearly, I’m in the running for Wifey of the year.
I sent it off with Hubs to his tutorial and it went down a treat! A Canadian girl said it made her day! Hubs saved me a piece that I shared around at the office and it really was SO yummy. I have enough ingredients to make another one, which I’m already excited about!
I wonder what my next cooking adventure will be…
Missing my footy
I love my footy. What can I say? I’m a Queenslander and I started following the Broncos when I was about 12 years old and have loved them ever since. In fact, I love watching most sports; I’ve even been known to watch a round of golf or a game of lawn bowls on the telly. (But I must say that I draw the line at motor sports.) Back to the footy.
Living in an AFL-obsessed state, it’s not often that I get to watch rugby league, so when I found out that Game 1 of the 2009 State of Origin was being played in Melbourne, I jumped at the opportunity to go. The fact that the Queensland team is made up of mostly Broncos players, only confirmed the decision. My good friend Adele who’s also a mad-keen Broncos supporter is coming down to watch the game AND we found out that the Broncos are playing Melbourne 2 days later IN MELBOURNE!! So I’ve been starved of my addiction for months, and this week I’ll be going to 2 games within 3 days!!!!! PLEASURE OVERLOAD!!!!!!!!
GO QUEENSLAND!!!!! AND BRONCOS!!!!!!
Ready… Steady… BAKE!
As I mentioned the other day, the Newman College Senior Common Room held a bake-off on Sunday, and it was an event that lived up to expectation. In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of big talk about who’s going to bake what, and who’s going to win. The scene was set with 21 entries (more than anticipated!) of foods such as spinach triangles, truffles, muffins, cakes, scones, a Tim Tam stack, and jelly. Oh yes. The steaks were high!
In preparation for this prestigious event, I spent most of Saturday in the kitchen, baking and making my creations. I had decided on a Pink theme and started looking into recipes and found this one on a blog that I read (the cake balls, towards the end of the post). I was excited and got to work fairly early in the morning (10am!). I really should have take progress-photos, but mine turned out pretty much the same as the ones on the blog, and her photos are MUCH better than anything I could have taken.
So pink cake balls down, coconut ice and choc-dipped strawberries to go! Here’s the final product, titled “Pretty in Pink”.
And from another angle:
It seems my entry impressed the judges, as I took out first place in the sweets section! The prize? A wooden spoon of course!
Now I know this looks like a typical dessert-time at Nanny’s, but it’s actually all the other fabulous entries:
Ingredients for my creations: $25
Bribes for the judges: $50 (ha ha)
Seeing Hubs look at all the fantastic bakery creations and getting the most excited about blue and green “Griffin” jelly: Priceless.
There are some things money really can’t buy.
Kokoblack-tastic!
Mum came down for a visit last weekend and we had a de-lightful time! We left Hubs at home to study (aka do all the things he’s not “allowed” to do when Wifey is home like read recreationally and watch scary movies!) and took a road trip out to Stratford to visit some rellies. We had a lovely evening with them and a couple of their friends drinking wine, eating a roast and drinking more wine! We then filled up on a BIG Breakfast (they know how to do a proper Big Brekky in the country!) Sunday morning and headed back to Melbourne town, passing through the “Sale Gale”! Fun!
We then treated Mum to a service at Newman College Chapel where the choir were in fine form, as per usual. Monday we went off to the movies and saw Milk which was a really great movie – 4 stars out of 5 for sure. Before that, however, we visited Kokoblack, the inspiration for the title of this post. Definitely 4.5 stars out of 5! It was a real treat!
Hubs opted for the Chocolate ice cream Martini:
And Mum and I had the Belgian Spoil for Two with 2 hot chocolates and a taste of a whole lotta yummy stuff!!
I was impressed by the presentation and the service, and quite impressed with the prices as well. I mean, it wasn’t super-cheap, but it was different and delicious, and considering you can pay (and I have paid) $5.50 for a fancy hot-chocolate in chocolaterias, I thought $22 for 2 awesome hot chocolates, and small servings of chocolate cake, 2 belgian chocolates, shortbread, chocolate ice cream and chocolate mousse was okay by me.
What’s that? You’d like me to take you to Kokoblack next time you’re in town? Oh, okay then!
Cold cold freezing freezing cold cold brrrrrrrrr!
Q: What did Wifey do this morning when it was about 4 degrees outside and still dark, but snuggly and warm in bed with Hubs? I mean, what would YOU do?
Did she ignore her alarm that went off at 6:40am, roll over and go back to sleep? No she didn’t!! Instead, Wifey got out of the nice sunggly warm bed and played hockey! Oh yes, you read correctly. Goodness knows why (apparently when you’re part of a team, you have to turn up to the games. If only I’d known THAT when I signed up!!)
I must admit it took a few minutes of grumbling before I actually hauled my arse out of bed, but I got there in the end! And had lots of fun winning 10-0 against another college. The biggest and best surprise though, was that Hubs got out of bed and came down to watch! He even made me a cup of tea for afterwards!
A few of the girls from my team sighed and exclaimed how lovely that was and how much he must love me. To which Hubs replied:
“I really like hockey.”
What a sweetie 🙂
Playing host in Melbs
Friends of ours visited a few weeks ago from the Netherlands (we’ve had quite a few visitors this year so far – it’s been great!!) and we played host to them for the weekend. Dan took some super shots of old Melbourne Town and I’ve added them below.
An old-style tram cruising down Chapel St
Eureka Tower – one of my new favourite tourist attractions!
Dan and Jenny posing at the bottom
A view of Flinders St Station from the Eureka Skydeck
And from ground-level (if you go to the Flinders St Station link on Wikipedia, there’s a photo and you can see the Eureka Tower in the background!)
Hubs and I are finding more and more favourite spots to show off down here, and we still have a few things on our “to do” list to cross off within the next 12 months. Although, there are plans to go to America in July currently in the pipeline, so a Beer, a Whine and the Spirit might be going on the road! Watch this space…
Happy Easter!!
I can’t describe to you what the weather is like in Melbourne today. But I’ll try.
It’s a mixture of this:
And this:
Oh and this!
And definitely some of this:
Translation: it’s ALL GOOD!
Hubs and I are off to Sorrento to hang with the fam over Easter and I simply CANNOT WAIT!! Especially if this weather keeps up. I hope you all have a great Easter and a safe and fun holiday, whatever you’re doing!
A visitor from the North
A Beer (and some passion pop… and $3.50 cowboys…)
My friend A-dele came to visit a couple of weeks ago now and, as usual, we had a ball together! I ordered some typical Melbourne weather for her visit, and it delivered: Warm and sunny Friday; rainy and windy Saturday; freezing cold Sunday! Regardless, we had heaps of fun!
We danced at the Turf Bar:
Walk like an Egyptiannnnnn….
It’s fun to stay at the Yyyyyyy M C A!
Billie Jean is NOT my lover (ow!)
“Dancing’s for sissies” (says Hubs & L)
Yeah right!!! (do you like the new shirt I bought for Hubs!?)
We discovered what is now my new favourite coffee shop, Bebida on Smith st, we did LOTS of window shopping, we visited Abbotsford Convent, we ate yummy cupcakes (check out that awesome cupcake-to-frosting ratio!!!)
And we walked and walked and walked! Saturday we covered around 8km and Sunday we did about 5km. We also stumbled upon the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival down at Fed Square, but it was very crowded so we just had a quick look before heading back home for a cup of tea and a rest. Looking forward to some more visitors booked in over the next few months!