A sign of a good day ahead.

When your boss leaves this in your top drawer before you even get to work, surely the day has to go well. Great surprise, Steve!
xo

Scrumptious Salad

Dinner tonight was this delicious vermicelli noodle salad. It's so quick, easy and healthy and tastes delicious.

For the salad I used:

• 100g vermicelli noodles
• 2 carrots, grated
• 1 Lebanese cucumber, grated
• 1/2 red capsicum, diced
• 1 tin of four bean mix, drained
• a sprinkle of sesame seeds

And for the dressing:

• 1tb soy sauce
• 1tb lime juice
• 1tb sweet chilli sauce
• 1/2tb sesame oil

Soak the noodle for five mins in boiling water, then drain them and cut them into small pieces with kitchen scissors. Add the noodles to the rest of the salad ingredients and toss.

For the dressing just combine all the sauces in a small jar or tupperware container and shake to fuse the flavours.

Top with a few extra sesame seeds and you're done!

Best of all this salad is totally vegan. And totally delicious!

(You could add some left over cooked chicken if you so desire as well)

xo

Spectacular Specs

Yesterday my new glasses came in the mail. They are undoubtably the coolest specs I have ever worn.

Best of all they only cost $20!!! Clearly Contacts was having a promotion and were giving away free specs including prescription lenses -- all I paid for was the postage! I know it sounds too good to be true, but I would never joke about a bargain.

While wearing my new glasses I finished off an assignment for university yesterday. The task was to write a 1500 word memoir about some event in my life. While I found it slightly challenging to adequately describe something important in my life using so few words, but I think it turned out fairly well in the end. I called the piece 'Home' and was inspired by Dorothy saying 'There's no place like home' in the timeless Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I might share an extract with you all another day.

xo

A white and pink wedding.

I have been having a very busy last few days, including attending a beautiful wedding last weekend. It was the first wedding I have been to for years, and even though I didn't actually know the couple personally, being my friend's date was still so much fun. I even had my name on the bonbonniere. Of course the bride looked beautiful and everyone was so lovely.

Who doesn't love a good wedding?

xo

PS I also had a good time getting ready, which included curling my hair with hot rollers and pulling silly faces in the mirror while I was waiting for them to set.

And attending a wedding at a posh hotel also required a shopping trip. I bought this beautiful Charlie Brown dress, which I was told looked pretty smashing on the night. Although I did have a slightly insane moment when I was getting ready for the wedding and couldn't actually find the dress, but all was not lost, the dress was hiding in my wardrobe.

All you need is love.

This ceramic love heart was a Christmas present from my favourite old housemate and dear friend, Suz.

You can't really see in this picture but it is white glazed and has little spots indented into the front. She wrote 'all you need is love' on the back of it. I figured what better place to hang it than where I sleep and dream, so that's how it ended up on my bed head. Plus it's really pretty.

xo

Delicious Vegan Curry

I made this delicious chickpea curry on Sunday night and have been eating it ever since. Best of all, without even meaning to, I made it totally vegan. It was also super easy to make.

I used:

• 1 finely diced onion
• garam masala
• cumin
• turmeric
• paprika
• 2 cups vege stock
• 1 sweet potato, cubed
• 1 tin chickpeas, rinsed
• 1/2 cup red lentils, rinsed
• spinach, to add just before serving

I basically combined all the ingredients and simmered it slowly for the flavours to go through the dish. I kept adding more spices, and realised after it was lacking in cardamon later, but the curry was still sweet and delicious and so healthy. I like my curry mild, so I didn't add any chilli, but if you want extra kick a finely sliced red chilli would do the trick.

And to make the golden Indian style rice, just add turmeric to the basmati while it is cooking and it comes out yellow and perfect!

xo

Spectacular sample pot results

Before:

After:

When we moved into our house the previous tenants gifted some stuff to us including this outdoor table and matching chairs that were stashed away under the house. The chairs are so horrendously uncomfortably to sit on that I didn't bother doing anything to them. But the table, while a bit smaller than I would have liked, had potential, and you know, it was free!

So I bought a sample pot of British Paints Grey Canvas colour and as you can see the results are pretty much perfect. The whole project, including giving the table a quick sand and hose off before painting only took about 3 hours to complete. And all I purchased was a sample pot of paint. I think it was $7 well spent.

xo

Weekends at the Prince Street Palace

This weekend I discovered the best thing about having two male housemates: BARBECUES.

One of the boys was given an old bbq that had rust all over the plate and was once home to several cockroaches. But he diligently cleaned it off and seasoned it to perfection and last night we gave it a work out. He made sausages and kangaroo and cooked soy vegetarian sausages for me, even though they 'looked like poo'. Topped off with grilled eggplant, onion, Asian noodle salad, a bottle of red wine and vinyls cranking, it was a pretty perfect night in.

Then the three of us had a bbq breakfast together this morning. The boys did everything, even the dishes afterwards. (Gasp!) And it was delicious.

xo

Vego Delish!

Delicious vegetarian entrees from my favourite Asian restaurant Sings in the form of vegetarian curry puffs and vegetarian spring rolls. Totally amazing and so cheap.

That and the booze ban is broken.

So far, a great first day of April.

xo