Malteaser Birthday Cake

Here is a birthday cake I made some time in the not tooooo distant past... its a basic chocolate sponge, with chocolate icing and Malteasers! Quite tasty it was too.

Big Weekend!! - how to buy and sell some houses!

Its been a while between updates, and I have photos on my camera of several meals that I havent gotten around to uploading yet. ooops! However, things are about to get a little busy very soon! We had a HUGE Saturday -

10am - looked at a house. we LOVED it.
11am - looked at another house - didnt like it
12pm - signed up to put our house on the market
1pm - Lunch at foodcourt :-)
1.05pm - Real Estate agent calls to say he has a couple to bring through house at 3pm
1.10 pm - quickly grabbed the shopping we needed
1.30pm - home to tidy up house and pull special rose out of garden and into pot
1.45 pm - Hands bleeding thanks to rose bush extraction.  Real Estate calls again - another agent will bring people through at 2.30, and 2 other agents will come to have a look at 2
2-3.30pm - people coming and going.
3.30 - take puppy for walk to get out of house
4.00pm - Real estate calls - have an offer and will bring contract round (yay!!)
5.00pm - we accept offer. contract signed with 28 day settlement (panic!!).
5.15 - off to look at first house again
5.30 - make offer on house
5.45 - off to a 40th birthday party!!
8pm - Call from agent - our offer is accepted!

Crazy Crazy day!!

Melbourne!!! Day 4 - home time

Our last day in Melbourne was a bit of a rush, since we were being picked up to go to the airport at 11am!

So we started the day with a delicious breakfast at Edelweiss Cafe



Janet had bacon and eggs, with lovely thick toast


and I had the Vegetarian Breakfast - which had mushrooms, hash brown, baked beans, tomato and toast!

Then we went for a walk around town - We stopped to take some photos of all of the grafitti in Union Lane -






And then we headed back to the hotel to wait for the shuttle bus.  and headed for the airport.  We had to wait in a long line to check in, and then we had to wait for a long time at the gate - we used up some time by removing some of the 27 layers of clothes we had been wearing so that our carry on luggage was correct weight :-) Since we knew there would be no food to buy on the plane (except pringles) we grabbed some lunch from the airport.

this vegie pizza was the only vegetarian thing I could find. Even the sandwiches all contained meat.


and Janet had a chicken sandwich.


and then it was up up and away, back home!!

Melbourne!!! Day 3 - Great Ocean Road Tour

breakfast was a couple of croissants from "Pie Face" which we had purchased the night before.  I tried to heat them up by snuggling them close to the boiling kettle in our hotel room. fail. Still, yummy enough croissants! We were being picked up by Wild Life Tours Australia for a one day tour of the Great Ocean Road!


first stop was the famous Bells Beach






I saw my first ever "wild" Koala. In that we saw Koalas that were in trees, not in zoos!





We had lunch (included in the tour) at Apollo Bay. Hanet had the Roast Chicken, Chips and I ate her salad :-)




I had a Vegie Burger.


We had about half an hour after lunch to have a wander around. We found ourselves at this ice cream shop :-)






It was delicious icecream! Janet had honeycomb, I had Dulce de Leche Gelato. mmmmmmmmm



We ate our ice cream whilst walking out to see the view of Apollo Bay.Then it was back onto our little bus.




next stop was Maits Rest Rainforest Walk


Then on to the twelve apostles.....


......Loch Ard Gorge


........London Bridge. All amazing sights to see (and a million more of my photos can be found here!!




on the way back to the city, we stopped at the Noodle Canteen at Colac for dinner

lemongrass & chilli vegie noodles



sweet chilli chicken noodles

Melbourne!!! Day 2 - busy busy!!

We started our day with a bit of breakfast from McDonalds.

mmmmm pancakes!


Janet had a bacon & egg roll


Then we caught a tram to the Melbourne Zoo. We were a bit early, so we had to wander around aimessly for a while waiting for it to open!  The zoo was the place I really wanted to go to while we were in Melbourne. And I took about a million photos, so will share just a few here...


Meer Cat


Gorilla! - We stood and wached the gorillas for ages - they were enjoying a feed of spinach!


We also got to see the baby elephant!!

And of course, my favourite - Giraffes! Janet told me that they didn't have giraffes at this zoo, so I was very excited to see that they actually did!!





Lion


Brown Bear

After the zoo, we hopped back on the tram, and jumped off at the Queen Victoria Markets for a quick look around.

we managed to squeeze in time for some lunch

yes, we ate churros for lunch. We shared a bag of 7. for $6. delicious! Although I did get rather covered in icing sugar!


We then headed for Federation Square, because we had tickets for a very important event.



This is the whole reason we were in Melbourne!!

The Abba World exhibition was really good! They had heaps of the actual costumes, instuments and other ABBA memorabillia, as well as interactive sections where you got to sing with ABBA, dance in a video clip etc etc. We had a great time!







Of course, all that ABBA-ing makes you hungry, so we went over the road to "Lord of the Fries" for some dinner!!



how exciting! a vegetarian burger place!!! I want one in Brisbane!! please!!!

JAnet had the French-Canadian Fries, or Poutine, which was fries with cheese and gravy


I went for an original burger, which was fantastic! loved it!! the burger patty was delicious, the sauces, the pickle, everything was just as a burger should be!

And after all that healthy eating (just as well we also did A LOT of walking) it was back to our hotel for some sleep!