Life – Page 8 – A True Love of Mine

Cranky Fins Holidae Inn – Palm Beach

For me, this summer has been the Summer of Seafood. I think it actually started last summer when I got quite ill on a road trip and, against all logical thought, all I craved was fat juicy prawns. I dreamed of cracking their thin shell and peeling out the soft white flesh, dipping it in a tangy sauce and gobbling them up. All year, I have been thinking about summer and prawns. Somehow I made it all the way through Christmas and new year without indulging. My family has never done a seafood christmas (a tradition i’m keen to adopt in the future though!) so it wasn’t until the first few weeks of January that I was able to start thinking about when I would be able to get my hands on these little suckers.

I had already planned to go up to Palm Beach for a swim sometime and serendipitously hubs saw a photo on facebook that showed a huge bucket of prawns at a restaurant at Palm Beach. The website and facebook page were sufficiently fun and quirky to warrant a lunch trip to Cranky Fins Holidae Inn. I always plan to go to the beach in the morning as the afternoon summer sun in Australia is so damn strong that I always get burnt no matter how much sunscreen I put on. There is also the added bonus that the beaches always seem less crowded before lunch so its easy to park and there are fewer people in the water which makes frolicking so much more fun! Hubs and I arrived around 11 which gave us enough time for a relaxing swim and a little bit of sunbaking before lunch. Crankys opens at noon so after our swim and sun we sauntered over around and snagged a booth inside.

Friday Favourites: Back to School Edition

I always feel ambivalent about the last few days of holidays. On the one hand, i’m dreading going back to work and all the last minute prep that I should have done earlier but didn’t. On the other, I know i’ll be reinvigorated by the students that I teach and seeing my creative and passionate colleagues again. But, there is one thing about the beginning of the new school year that always cheers me up (and I know, it is a little bit lame). I love organising my back to school kit. Being all prepared with my shiny new pens and notebooks makes me feel more capable of tackling the year ahead. So my Friday Favourites today focuses on a few things i’ve bought in the sales to prepare me to go back to school/work next week. Also, everything I bought I snapped up during the sales so i’m feeling pretty thrifty! In the aftermath of The Wedding, thrifty is the name of the game.

A few little stationary items from Kikki K

The sales at Kikki K are always pretty good and now that they’re expanded into home wares it’s taken all my strength to stick with just stationary. Of course, I bought all the pink note books as well as the cute little phone case which is super smooth and pretty. Hubs bought me the little leather pencil case for my birthday last year and, while I wont use it for work I will definitely use it for uni as I don’t want to lug my huge work pencil case full of stamps and whiteboard markers all the way to uni and back a few nights a week.

Chiosco by Ormeggio and The Dessert of 2015

This is a nutella bombolone.
Look at that ooze, that soft, yielding donut.
If you don’t want to go and get one of these babies right now, there is legitimately something wrong with you.

I know that this is an ambitious blog title, especially considering it is on January. Still, I stand by my call. At this little kiosk by the sea I had what i’m calling the dessert of 2015. I love a fancy dessert as much as the next girl but i’m a little bit over the finicky, frippery and mountain of elements that comes with many desserts at the moment. Sometimes less is more and being able to serve up an unquestionably delicious, simple dessert is the best skill in the universe. That’s what happened when hubs and I went to Chiosco by Ormeggio early in the new year.

We had been to Ormeggio for hubs’ birthday the month before and spied the casual dining kiosk across the jetty. We absolutely loved the dinner at Ormeggio (the dishes and cocktails were so damn tasty I didn’t even have the presence of mind to take photos to share with you) especially for celebrating a special occasion and so we thought that the casual nature of Chiosco would be perfect for a normal date night dinner. Damn straight it was.

fritto misto ($16) and daily fish crudo ($18)

Friday Favourites: The Wedding

As part of my new found commitment to blogging in 2015, I thought I would try to do a regular weekly post that called me out if I reverted to my slack ways and missed it. So today i’m bringing you the inaugural ‘Friday Favourites’ post where I have a chat about something i’m loving each week. This first one is a little bit exciting and close to my heart so I hope you enjoy it! P.S. all the photos on this post were taken by the wonderful Len from I Love Wednesdays. If you need a photographer, she is definitely the one to go with!

I remember meeting up with a friend after going on one of my first dates with my (now) hubs and saying to them “i’m going to marry that man”. I remember my friend looked incredulous and replied “now???” Well, maybe almost ten years later. I knew very early on in our relationship that this was the man that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. He was unlike any other man in my life. He was gentle and thoughtful, fun to talk with and our conversations were often characterised by long discussions about the merits of different methods of bacon preparation. We often spoke long into the night about our dream house with a full time bacon chef and enough garages to house all the vintage cars he wanted to own. Fast forward nine years and, while there was not a ten car garage or bacon chef in sight, all was well with the world when he proposed at sunrise on a quiet little beach that had a special significance to us both.