a week in my shoes

i have been a lazy lady yes i know... well please accept my apologies and hopefully this stream of pictures will placate your hunger for more subarashii...

Friday night a few of my friends and I went out to a Japanese Restaurant in the city called Yu-u. Trav looked it up and said it was reputably hard to find and that it had good reviews. We were wondering around for ages going "it must be along here somewhere!" whjen i saw 2 Japanese businessmen emerge from the door in fits of laughter. Felt like i was back in Tokyo :( *sigh* Here is Josh after we finally found the door:

and Trav wondering where Maki got to...

it was actually very delicious! some of the best Gyoza i've had! It was underground and quite dimly lit so the photos i took of the food didn't turn out so good- eep! they had a rule that you had to spend minimum of $30 each, which was not hard! I got Gyoza, Yaki onigiri, I tried an Ebi dumpling (prawn), had some teriyaki fish, japanese potato salad, mmm... can't remember what else. But it was really nice and the service was amazing.

After that we went walking around looking for a nice bar. While we were walking along Swanston Street (i think) i saw this stairway to the Chinese Cinemas. How awesome!!

We ended up going to Penny Blue bar in Driver Lane off Little Bourke Street. It was a fantastical land of a caged DJ, extremely oversised satin armchairs, $8 tap beers, chandeliers and $16 Sangria. It was lovely and beautiful but we were drinking well above our means, and i didn't particularly want to mingle with any of the other clientelle. It was Maki's shout for a round of beers and he only had $15 which we all laughed at. Anyway here is a photo of Josh looking rather shmug.

and here is some hilarious vandalism SLASH graffiti that was outside...

OK so after a late late night, Saturday i went to my friend's Kitchen Tea. It was my first one, and i din't know what to expect. I imagined food, drinks, and lots of presents. And that is exactly what it was.... with the addition of a chocolate fountain... drooool :

Sunday was beautiful weather and i took a break from cleaning out our spare rooms in order to attend a BBQ luncheon at Trav's house, and i sunbaked by the poolside. I still have the sunburn to prove it. and it looks so attractive too. i have two tone legs AND boobs. greeeat.

Sunday night i put on heaps of Aloe Vera gel and headed out with Josh to see THE DECEMBERISTS play for their first time ever in Melbourne . They had done a couple of Sydney shows before our show, but still this is their first ever Australian Tour and i was very exciiitted! Luckily they thought it would be nice to play their back catalogue for those fans who like all of their albums! They opened with a song called "The Tain" which was released as an EP in 2004, it goes for 18.5 mins and is in a word: epic. So after that, a whole bunch of other amazing songs, some witty banter with the crowd, Colin's penchant for dividing the crowd in two and getting us to sing melodies, and TWO encores.... i was spent. It was one of the best gigs evvaaaaa!

I saw this funny graffiti in the car park before the gig. So witty and artistic...

After a big sleep in and some more cleaning, my mum came over with her new puppy. She hadn't been named at that point so were trying to think of cute names - i thought "jessie" might work, but i haven't heard what mum decided. Look at her, so cute! she just wanted to play with Chester...

and as you can see, Chester was not impressed by her enthusiasm...

Maki brought around some of his stuff on Monday night and this is when the big move in began.

Tuesday was Australia Day, and in tru un-australian fashion Josh wanted to buy some black bean noodles for lunch on our way to the Australia Day BBQ. While he was in there i went for a wander to the asian grocery and saw some funny cans...

OK Australia Day! I was sunburnt still and trying to keep in the shade. Here are a few shots..

Aussie burgers were cooked up. Also, Maki didnt realise how powerful the sauce bottle was, and angled it wirng just as he squeezed. As you can see his Vegie burger got none of the intended sauce...

This is the archway into the fruit and veg area. I went nuts picking nectarines and passionfruit and i also got some yellow cherry tomatoes, parsley, rhubarb and thyme. YUM!

Trainspotting:

What would Australia be without flies.... my thinking is: better.

A different kind of banana tree..

So then Tuesday meant also more shifting in, and preparation. Hayden moved in on Wednesday, and our pantry is absolutely chock-a-block. we have had to create a second pantry to fit all of the new stuff!! sounds like fun to me though :) I didn't take many pick of the shift as i was busy and didnt want anyone posing with a heavy box... that could turn disasterous!

To welcome our new housemates, we had a welcome dinner on Wednesday night which involved salad, roast vegies, and a lentil cottage pie! It was delicious!!

Here is Hayden with his new friend Chester. I think Chester knows on some primal level that Hayden is a vegan, so doesn't register him as a threat. This is the two of them reading a Smiths record jacket - aptly named "meat is murder" :)

happy days! So tonight i have a joint bday party for two girlfurendos, and also josh/haydens band have a gig that i will slip away to watch, then tomorrow is the hens night, and then sunday i have an 80th bday lunch and my brothers 24th bday dinner. no rest for the wicked, huh? I have found some amazing vegan recipes lately that i want to try and make but iiii hhaavvveee very little time :( poo poo. next week for SHIZZZZZ. peace out y'all

aloe aloe!

is it just a play on words, or am i refering to the TWO aloe vera plants that our new housemate hayden owns and is bringing soon!?!?!?!?!?!?! It is exciting.

I forgot my camera cable so pictures of my crazy 5 day weekend are still to come, BUT i can tell you this... we are suddenly naming everything in the house. Our toilet is now called Keith. Hayden has this, dare i say, obsession with naming inane objects. I like it though.

And I liked my 5 days off. Think Japanese underground restaurants, flashy bars, a kitchen tea in the sun, dinner on the couch watching ponyo <3, drinks at a friend's, bbq lunch and pool times at trav's on sunday, massive sunburn, seeing the decemberists sunday night and jizzing all over the place from how amazing it was, cleaning out the house, 1 new housemate: maki, australia day shenanigans, fruit picking in the sunshine, triple J countdown - congratulations mumford and sons, late dinner and a beer on tues, helping hayden move in yesterday, having a vegan welcome feast outside watching the sun set. siiigh. now im back at work.

stay tuned

vegie patch, dinner date & dresses

Hi hi hi, hope you are all having a fantastic week so far! The other day I saw a picture of our accidental vegie patch from ages ago on my blog. I pretty much LOL'd at the tiny pumpkin plant i was getting so excited about. Here is the sprawling pumpkin patch now:

i dont know what it means when the pumpkin plant is flowering... i assume only good things. Below is my lemonade tree that Josh bought me about 4 years ago for Valentines Day. It never really took off, until I added some of the super soil i got from my mum's place to the pot. Look at all that new growth, i am very excited about the possibility of lemons and pumpkins!!

Ok so the other night my younger cousin, who i affectionately call "minge", invited Josh and I over for some vego lasagnaaaaaa! How could you say no to that! When i went over there, the first thing i saw was this:

His name is Creepy Mr. Hats. He is so good at camoflage that i didn't see him right in front of my eyes :O We attempted to feed the fish just a tiny bit but yeah..... woops:

I then saw this old family portrait of them which made me lolllll hard:

especially this one:

After a while we could smell something burning and thought it was the lasagna so we covered it with foil. After a while the smell got worse. and worse. then we realised that my cousin had put the garlic bread on the base of the oven, not on a rack an the whole thing was blackening...

eew. then i got distracted by the cool oven mits:

soon enough the lasagna was ready - mmmmmmmmmmm. Then we settled in to watch wolf creek. in hindsight...probably not the best thing to eat while eating...

on another note i have been reading a lot of Agent Lover's blog and she took pictures of herself trying on cool dresses and i was inspired to get my act together and buy some dresses for the upcoming hen's night and wedding of my 2 lovely friends, and copy her idea. omg hens night in 8 days!!!! and wedding in 22 days! ay ay ay!

so on my lunch break yesterday i went to dangerfield and only took 2 pics out of all the dreses i tried on, and in the end i bought those two:

i am planning on wearing this li'l number to the wedding, and i think i will get a pro fake tan (for the FIRST TIME EVER!!!) and bleach my hair so i am bombshell blonde, not this slight pink. not even joking. i will be unrecognisably california style or something! i am usually pale and dark haired and dressed in black. Bob dylan says it best: for the times they are a changin'... maybe my obsession with Nip/Tuck is subconciously making me transform into Kimber. Next step: become a porn star. Anyway when i showed Josh the dress he said "You're wearing RED to a wedding?!?!" like he knew what he was talking about. I thought the rule was just "dont wear white".........? i dont really know about weddings, but i thought red is fine, so i told him he has no idea what's going on. Whatever, anyway the next dress:

This is going to be for the Hen's night next week. We are going Salsa dancing and cocktail drinking :D I think i will need to tan for this too, i have been avoiding the sun this summer. and now look at the predicament i find myself in :O gosh! this wedding is going to be AWESOME! It all kicks off with the kitchen tea tomorrow - how exciting!

And you know what's even more exciting....? I am staring at a 5 day weekend as of tomorrow... HOORAY! So a countdown on all the big moments:

Kitchen Tea: 1 day

Seeing the Decemberists: 2 days *jizz jizz*

Australia Day celebrations: 4 days

Housemate # 1 moving in: 5 days

Back to work: 6 days

Hen's Night: 8 days

Older Bro's Bday: 9 days

Wedding: 22 days

Valentines Day possible indian bollywood dinner: 23 days

I'm gonna stop there. There are many more things in between but i cant remember which days they are, but i am exciitteeddddd hehe. oh and my cousin is coming from Adelaide to visit soon too :D eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

family follies

I was reminded of a great story yesterday, and i thought it was just too good not to share with the world :) let me set the scene...

So the year was 2000, and I was at the ripe young age of 13. Over the Christmas school holidays my dad, a fencing contractor by trade, enlisted the help of myself and my brothers to assist him on a job. This fence was along a main road and was the boundary to a large housing estate. So we were working away, lining up pailings etc. and my dad said we could have a go with his nail gun. He showed us that you need to push it hard against a surface for a nail to be released, and we thought that was the most awesome thing since Tazos, or when Oreos made their way to us via a friend going to USA. Anyway, Dad seemed to like the way that it had transformed us from squabbling to overjoyed in mere seconds, and decided to show us another trick. He chocked a bit of wood or something in near the nozzle so that the nail gun "thought" it was pressed against something at all times, thus allowing you to fire it like a gun.

He started shooting it at the dirt and we were all backing away laughing. He then started shooting it near my little brothers feet (he was 10 at the time) going "dance, dance!" maniacally. You think I am joking.. but my dad really does that shit. My little bro Daniel was squealing in a mixture of fear and excitement, then started to run away from us. He was running over a slight hill, and my dad kept shooting the ground a few meters behind him. As Daniel was slowly going up-hill dad had raised the nail gun more and more after him. When he started on the decline, he turned around to look at us and my dad shot again but had the gun raised too high. All we saw was him laughing and waving - then he clutched his eye and fell to the ground screaming.

I don't think i have ever been so close to actually shitting myself. We ran up to him expecting the worst, and finally we pried his hand away from his face, and saw that the nail was not sticking out of his eyeball as feared... it was nowhere to be seen. all he had was a little nick under his eye and a bit of blood. We all breathed a sigh of relief but i don't think I have ever seen my dad so worried. He swore Daniel not to tell my mum what happened or else she would probably leave him or something.

Now, Daniel is definately not the most subtle of people... i think somehow he wanted my mum to find out. When we got home she asked what happened to his eye and he explained "i um, tripped on a rock.... and fell onto another rock...." which she miraculously believed. Obviously he would have to try harder to let mum "find out", so he started drawing pictures of the incident and leaving them around the house. Here is a fairly accurate one that i remember...

(In hindsight, i probably shouldn't have done a backwards "e" as he was 10 at the time, which i calculated after creating this masterpeice in Paint.)

Anyway, Mum still didn't realise what was going on, and Dad was thinking it was just a matter of time before Daniel wrecked the whole arrangement. So around the table at Christmas Lunch my dad told my mum he had to confess something, and told her the whole story. What an awkward finish to a lovely day THAT was :s

So yeah, Daniel is the accident-prone one in the family. I don't think he has done any damage lately but he used to hurt himself in horrific ways all the time. There was the time he stepped on a piece of roof guttering that was up the side of our house, and it sliced deep in between his big and second toe. There was a trail of blood to the back door and everyone was freaking the fuck out. Then there was the time he cut his calf on a bit of sharp wood and his skin kind of folded back from the cut exposing the fat layer. It was like on star wars when Han Solo cuts open the Tauntaun's stomach and all that shit spills out. He was asking me to get mum and i was yelling "no! I'm having too much fun atop the spinning clothes line" that was until i saw WHY he wanted me to get mum and i nearly vommed. Anyway, enough of that. It is lunch-time and i don't want to lose my appetite :P

one weekend in january

Hi everyone! Well even though it is Tuesday, I would still like to share with you some of the things i got up to this weekend.

Friday night i went to a local night spot called POW! with some friends. I am not drinking booze at the moment, possibly until Jan 30th at which time i have a Hens Night, so i was on the cola and raspberry train. I dont usually drink soft drink so i was feeling pretty drunk and hypo as a result! It was a really fun night doing some people watching, and it was nice to be able to leave when i was ready and drive myself home to bed. Note to self: sobriety is your friend.


The next morning i had a massive sugar hangover from the soft drinks which was really bizarre, haven't felt that kind of low since i was a little tacker. I got up at around 7.45am and went to the local gym. I must point out that I am not a member, but my friend works there and i possibly snuck in for a few hours for free :) This could become a regular thing maybe, we'll see. I am undergoing an unofficial change of life right now. I am going from NO excercise to SOME excercise. This is huge, people. I am trying not to alter my diet too much at this point. We eat vego dinners everynight and i usually take leftovers for lunch. I feel that i eat quite healthy and have a pretty good vitamin intake, but i have a desk job so i am not what you might call 'fit', and i reeeeeeally don't want to end up with Kankles or one of those huuuuge office chair bums!!!! EEEEP!


Anyway after i recovered from the gym and cleaned the house a bit, and had a nap, i went to my friend's house for a vego mexican dinner party!!! It was amazing! We played Flash UNO which is an intense electronic version of UNO, and you have a time limit to make your move otherwise you have to pick up more cards haha, so many lols to be had. also we played a few games of jenga. Tensions were running very high by the end of the night hehe...

mexican is def not the cleanest meal hey? Oh the photo below is our "freestyle Jenga" game where we messed it up at the start to see how long it could hold on with a crazy structure. It lasted surprisingly for a while!

Sunday morning I woke up at around 11am and felt like a cup of tea from my sushi cup.... you know - the one that i accidentally smashed :( The next best thing was to use Josh's face cup that we got from Tokyo. I'm not sure what it is meant to be, but I have a feeling that MAYBE it is Japanese politicians of some sort. They have funny faces, but it is not as awesome as my sushi cup. Josh would, of course, beg to differ.

My perfect sunday morning easy breakfast outside:

Mmmmm, grilled cheese and tomato on toast. My ultimate comfort breakfast. Ah yes, My table... my "Fuck" table. I'm pretty sure i have explained it before but my mum found this cool old blue table somewhere and said i could have it for when i moved out. I was trying to sand it back and i don't know... maybe going for the shabby chic look. I was getting quite exasperated by the lack of progress i was making so i sanded a rude word into the top and walked away from it for good. So now that i want to use it as my dining table in my new house I have to fix that up he he :)

Oh yeah, then Sunday afternoon we were to play some mini-golf. I put on the whole summery get-up - as it IS technically summer. I thought better of it and changed into warmer clothes after looking at the grey sky. Here are my sexy golf legs...

Oh yeah i have to share with you an amazing tip!! I recently changed all my bed linen to white. white white white! and no matter how messed up the bed is, it still looks nice and clean and inviting and magazine worthy. try it! anyway i am getting off track! So we drove all the way to Ballarat to sample their GOLDRUSH mini-golf course. It probably took us just under 1 hour. Considering we have a mini-golf course in our suburb.... i'd say it is worth calling it a JOURNEY.

The thing about Ballarat is that it is fucking cold. I don't know why. But those of us in jumpers were pleasantly chuffed at our wardrobe selction. Even though i had on long socks, jeans, and a jumper.... i was still fucking cold. The light rain didnt help either. I felt sorry for Stevens who was wearing summer clothes. Easy mistake to make though as... it is summer.

There were so many little kids running around the course, or wandering off causing the parents to have mini freak-outs. Some of them walked on our green casually, others covered the hole with an object thinking it would be funny. wtf. I don't know how many times i heard one of the crew mumble "wheres the supervision...". Plus there was this boy around 8yrs old who had the worlds most annoying voice ahhaa....man we are an angry bunch.

This wall was a small wind-break for Stevens, and i guess Boucher thought he would give a little warm cuddle to heat things up.

"Ballarat: Where Summer Comes to life"... hmmm yeah. I think the grey sky says it all.

Haha all the guys wanted photos in the Mad Dog frame, they were trying to do the best face...

Hahaa, this is Josh not looking his best... haha fuuuck.

Boucher being all 'squinty'

That one was actually Maki hitting his head - perfect timing.

hahaha i think Stevens won

Well that's that people. Hope you enjoyed my weekend vicariously through my blog. Tonight i have to do a clean out of the 2 spare bedrooms for the arrival of my new housemates. It will be a cleansing feeling i'm sure :) kind of like a colonic but without all the poop.