Australia Day Break

With Australia Day falling on a Tuesday this year, Alsie and I took Monday off to stretch the weekend a little longer. We filled the Saturday and Sunday preparing and hosting our first decently sized party at the newly spruced up house, inviting a bunch of Flight Centre mates with partners and children over. I was a little worried as we've never had that many people over (over fifteen) but I think we came through it fairly unscathed. No breakages or food poisonings at any rate, though we continue to discover how unprepared our house is for little children. I also overestimated how much food we'd need so people were taking back quite a bit of food that they brought over, which was somewhat embarrassing. Hopefully all things that will come with practise. All in all a great night with good food, super company and a cacophony of discordant singing.

After reading about a sale at Domayne on oz-bargain (absolutely in love with that site by the way), we tromped down to the Valley on Monday to see if anything would catch our fancy. I'd normally say that the stuff in there is a little too rich for our blood but who could resist a sale? After a little deliberation we've placed an order for a chic two seater with a pair of matching chat chairs that rock, figuratively and literally. It's now on order and we should hopefully be getting them in a couple of weeks.

While in the valley I finally got a chance to take Alison to Poppy Cake to try some of their famous cupcakes. The shop itself was pretty kitsch and with the sweltering weather we've had recently I treated myself to an ice-cream soda. Great cup cakes, though they're so rich that you can only really have one.



On Australia Day we decided to take things slow, staying home to occupy ourselves in the kitchen and the garden. A recent attempt at making our own pizza dough has inspired Alsie to try her hand at making bread rolls. They were absolutely beautiful as a side at lunch, complimenting the blackened cajun salmon, enoki mushrooms and green beans we plated up. For dinner we unpacked and barbecued some vacuum sealed steaks we picked up at the butcher down the road, served with some grilled corn and baked potatoes with sour cream. No damper this year but I think we managed to have ourselves some decent tukka.



Between gorging ourselves and lazing on the couch watching episodes of House, we kept ourselves busy getting back into the odd jobs that needed our attention around the home. The utility room is going to be carpeted this Saturday, so Alison dove in to painting the concrete steps. We just chose a plain white and it's going to need a few more coats, but I think it's looking cleaner already.



The vegie patch has remained neglected by us, but we took a small step towards having a working garden by setting up some trestles for a passionfruit vine on the back fence. Alison has always wanted one of these and I'm certainly looking forward to some passionfruit cakes... or ice-cream... mmm. I got a chance to use my drill once again to drill the pilot holes (look at me, I sound all handy and stuff), though this required a pretty long extension cord to get power to the back of the house. The final result doesn't look too shabby though. Let's hope the plant gets enough sun to grow and bear fruit.



I was also busy in the front garden getting more root barriers into the ground, hoping to stave off the expanding turf from growing where it shouldn't. It's a lot easier to put these things in before laying the turf rather than doing it retrospectively, so this took forever. Even then we ran out of root barrier so the jobs still not over. *sigh*

Back to work again tomorrow but it's not so bad being a short week. I'm also keenly looking forward to the 27th/28th with the Apple keynote. It seems as though the Apple Tablet is all but ready to be unveiled, with the keynote starting at 4am on the 28th, Brisbane time. I'm so excited about this that I think I'll wake up to watch the keynote live on the Twit TV feed. Could be a huge let down, but I think this could be the start to a whole new chapter in personal computing... I'm such an Apple-whore...