Friday's feast!

This recipe is quickly becoming a favourite in our home. With a dollop of home made guacamole on top - this salmon dish is tasty to the max!

Ingredients (serves 6)

Salmon
1 tbs each dried thyme and oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbs ground coriander
1 tbs ground dried garlic
2 tbs pimenton (sweet smoked paprika)
6 x 120g skinless salmon fillets
2 tbs olive oil
Guacamole and lime wedges, to serve

Corn salsa
2 tbs olive oil
Cooked kernels from 2 fresh corn cobs
1 red capsicum, roasted, peeled, diced
1 small red chilli, seeded, finely chopped
3 spring onions, thinly sliced
1 1/2 tbs lime juice
1/4 cup chopped coriander leaves

Method
For salsa, heat 2 tsp oil in a non-stick pan over high heat. When hot, pan-fry corn until just golden. Mix with remaining oil and ingredients, then season.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Mix herbs and spices with 1 tbs ground white pepper and 2 tbs salt. Brush salmon with 1 tbs oil and coat in spice mixture. Heat remaining oil in an ovenproof frypan over medium heat. Cook fish for 2 minutes. Turn and cook for 1 minute. Transfer to oven for 3-5 minutes until cooked. Serve with salsa, guacamole and lime.

Enjoy!

lushing over lilac marshmellows

Australia Day was a lot of fun for us: barbeque at LB's family home in Mornington. It's always great to get down there and catch up with everyone - good food and good discussion will always win me over :)

Thought I'd share a pic of my outfit for the day! This gorgeous (Marshmall Me!) cardi and (Cunning as a snake) skirt are my latest 'investments'. I love Alannah Hill's beautiful pieces - and when the neon sale! sign is flashing I can never resist!

I absolutely love pink and purple - the epitome of femininity! (and no, I didn't leave my hair in pigtail plaits - straight haired gal's just gotta try harder for the kinks!)

This combination got me thinking of a few interiors I've been drooling over of late! Not to mention - Pantone's colour of the year is honeysuckle - too perfect!

  

images via here|here|here|here|here|here

green thumb!

image curtesy of here

So the love obsession with Jame Oliver continues.

There's just something so wholesome about the guy. Seeing the way he talks about his wife and children seriously warms my heart. And his passion for food is really addictive. Watching him hack away at food and create the most amazing dishes has kept me and LB busy this week. It's become our weeknight ritual, watch an episode of Jamie while we cook/eat our (not-as-appealing-as-jamie's) dinner.

The "Jamie at home" series is on our box at the moment (and the catchy jingle stuck in my head all day!) and it's made me realise what our dishes are missing: fresh herbs.

Fast-forward to DIY weekend activities and guess what LB and I have planned for tomorrow? Making our own herb garden! We don't have a courtyard at our apartment, so instead a herb box on our balcony will make do. I'm rather excited about this: hello Bunnings! Yes, even a girl can get mighty excited about a trip to Bunnings!!

Really looking forward to creating my own dishes with fresh home grown herbs and spices!

Happy weekend y'all!

Read.

Read this post. Today. Be moved.

I was.

a promise to myself

"I will take my lazy butt to the gym tonight"

I'm sorry, I know this is a lame post - but I really really really need some motivation and if I put it out there on this blog then I'm going to have to stick to it! The gym is 300m from my doorstep and I haven't been there once this month. My jelly belly is screaming out for a decent workout and as a wise friend reminded me today: "to be blunt you are the only person who can make it happen".

Today I will make it happen.

Smiling.

Good news found its way to us this week.

♥ There's a party going on inside me, the smile will never fade. ♥

Image via we♥it

I've got a bit of a thing...

...for Michael Kors.

I never knew this 'thing' of mine existed until I was strolling through the streets of Amsterdam (ohhh, to be back in Europe!) and stumbled upon a Michael Kors watch that I instantly fell for. Nothing fancy, just a simple, classic, everyday watch. I've never been a watch wearer - but after my little Amsterdam purchase I'm now lost without it!

It is also the watch which made me realise that I really suit gold better than silver. But that can be saved for another post altogether - gold is hot on me, but always falls second best to its silver sister in the fashion stakes!

My pretty MK watch - purchased in Amsterdam when visiting my uni friend Hanneke!

But back to Mr Kors, and now I can't stop i-spying his designs everywhere! Check out some of my objects of desire below! All the gold accents/buckles - I'm in accessory heaven! 

  

How ridiculously cute are these iphone holders?! I want one bad! Jen over at MadeByGirl has one in python print - jealous! But my favourite is definitely the patent black!

And just for fun - here are some happy snaps from my time in the Netherlands!

Hanneke and Me!

 Utrecht - Hannek's home town (with more bicycles than people!)

My very own Mr Oliver

It has been a tough second week back at work - ridiculously busy! Lucky LB has a whole month off work, jealous!! Last night he asked whether he could cook me dinner tonight since he would have the whole day off to prepare something. 'Fo sho!' I hollered back - my desire to cook having dwindled away with this week's busy work schedule...

I came home tonight thinking I'd be greeted with a curry of some description (LB's favourite - which I rarely cook due to their incompatibility with the WW way of life!) But low and behold he was in the kitchen rocking out a Jamie Oliver meal and dessert!

Ok, so the TV show boasts "30 minute meals" and I'm sure the skilled cook could meet Jamie's pace...but the novice cook in LB took a little longer to complete his dishes - bless his cotton socks! I was so proud of his efforts - all this for me! What a sweetheart.

So what was this tasty treat of a surprise? Piri Piri chicken, rocket salad, dressed potatoes and quick Portuguese tarts! With a yummy glass of Wolf Blass Verae (a great summer red - chilled!) and we have ourselves a romantic home date! And yep - those flowers were surprise flowers from last weekend, lots of surprises in this house of late!

{lucky we have those extra 49 pro points, WW ladies - I think I used them all up tonight!}



Curtailing the sun!

{Green walls. Blah, blah blah!}

Now that we've got that out of our systems, let's move on to my latest project, replacing the curtains in our living room.

As we're renters, we thought we were stuck with the vertical blinds that let the sun flood on in during the summer and the blistering chill during winter. Not to mention that half of the blinds were missing and those that were there were filthy dirty.

After months of 'umming and ahhhing' over whether we could get away with ripping them down, we finally decided over the Christmas break to go for it. I spent a good hour in Spotlight looking at all the different curtains on display. With our mint green walls (insert another blah!) and chocolate brown couch it was tough to pick a colour. We knew we wanted curtains heavy enough to block out the sun, but I was also worried that too thick/heavy would be too overpowering for our small space.

In the end I chose a taupe pair of pencil pleated curtains. Once home, my trusty Handyman LB helped in pulling down the old curtains and rail and helping set up the new brackets and pulling the pleats into place.

We had absolutely no idea how to use the curtain hooks and no amount of Googling or Wiki-how-to could solve our woes, but alas - they're up. I'm sure my Mama Bear would have done a better job - but they sure beat their predecessors! What do you think?

Before

After

After

Now shhhh, don't tell the real estate agent - at least until we do!

bangs and balayage - can they co-exist?

Hair, hair, hair. I'm always contemplating a new 'do!

At the moment I'm rocking out the fringe and long dark brown locks (bordering on black in the below pic, but quite lighter and longer now). I'm happy with this look - yet now that we're in the peak of summer it's looking rather 'winter' (I always associate a fringe with winter...strange?)

Me and my buddy Sarah in Pag Island, Croatia

Loving all the ladies with their two-tone balayage look. My question is - can I pull off this look with a fringe and straight hair? I curl it often when I go out - but day to day it's naturally straight. Would it look strange? I wouldn't go too light at the bottom, more of a caramel brown, similar to Rachel Bilson (hotty!)

Rachel Bilson

Lily Aldridge

Stunning Drew

Cameron Diaz

Thoughts?

paper, prettttties!

I think I've found a new hobby to try! I've always loved pretty papers and stationary, and over the last week I've been toying with the idea of trying my hand at card making! So I thought I'd do a little blog researching and came across a number of really cool sites.

In particular, Melbourne graphic designer Amy Moss' absolutely beautiful blog Eat drink chic really took my fancy! Amy's quirky yet feminine style really is something special - and her surprise wedding (yep - what a surprise!) oozed style!

Amy kindly offers her readers many DIY paper projects to try at home - like this gorgeous card that she illustrated below.

From Amy's blog listings I've now stumbled upon a whole new world of inspiration! I'm really excited about trying some new crafts this year and paper crafts are creeping up that list pretty quickly!!

(Card by All in an inch)

Be sure to check out these GREAT blogs:

All in an inch
Mint
Imprintables
How about orange
Creature comforts
Love. Obsess. Inspire.

Resolving to...

I always ponder a few resolutions to carry into each New Year. In the past, they have almost always revolved around weight loss. But not this year. I don't need to resolve to lose weight, I've been slowly chipping away at that goal for the last year with my trusty WW membership. I feel confident in achieving my goal at my own pace without making a resolution to do so.

Today I came across a fun website to help get the creative resolution juices flowing. Out of the quirky (eat a whole tomato at once like I would an apple), sweet (make cookies from scratch), typical (win the lottery) and random (stay away from gas station slushies) - I thought the following best summed up my desires.

I have a terrible habit of letting my mind live in the future. I'm a 'what if' kind of girl - it goes hand in hand with my worrying. If I could only start enjoying the present, and all the fun and happiness that it involves, then maybe I will be able to help curb the worrying about what may or may not lie ahead.

Along with living in the present, I have set a few other goals for 2011.

• Financial stability: after Europe the bank balance took a bit of a blow! During my break I checked out a few websites to help set myself a budget and get things back on track.
• Think positively: if I had one word to sum up my outlook for 2011 it would be positivity (again, I guess it fits in well with the worrying!). Chin up love, there's a lot of good around you!

And that just about sums it up - here's to 2011, and all slushies and cookie mix that your lottery money can buy!