Let’s drive away

2nd February, 2012 on Photography, Travel No Comments

The Boy and I had some friends over for breakfast last weekend (apparently they read this blog – hello Adam and Vik!), who suggested that we think about getting a car and driving around Europe rather than the trains and budget airline tickets that people usually do. Apparently you can save a bit of money and have the flexibility of your own transportation, which sounds good to me! We’ve done a few driving holidays now – a short one along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, and longer ones around the north and south island of New Zealand. Driving definitely has its issues (we got a speeding ticket in the North Island, and got our campervan stuck up a hill and broke the back windscreen in the South), but with luck and common sense it’s pretty enjoyable.

From some quick research it also sounds like it makes it much easier to see smaller towns, opens up the opportunity for camping, and means you can take scenic routes and stop when you want to take photos – much better than attempting a blurry photo out of a train window! I found this (slightly old, but from what I can tell still relevant) forum post about the logistics of driving and camping around Europe if anyone else is considering doing the same.

Ever done a driving holiday?

Tagged: camping, car lease Europe, driving holiday, Europe, Great Ocean Road, New Zealand, Twelve Apostles

The Bearable Lightness of Packing

5th January, 2012 on Art & Design, Fashion, Travel 1 Comment

If you haven’t seen it yet, this short video from fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg is definitely worth a watch. Even if you’re not really sure who she is (I’ll be honest, I didn’t) and don’t really care about fashion, the beautiful and quirky animation is something pretty special.

Since I’m working on my own capsule wardrobe at the moment, I’m loving the quote “If you can figure out your suitcase, you can figure out your life”, and the idea of always being ready for adventure.

Then again… out of 45 items, 24 are pairs of shoes?! Really? Shoes take up so much space – I’m not sure I’d go travelling with more than 4 pairs if I could help it. Then again, I’m sure she doesn’t have to carry her suitcases of shoes around herself. I don’t think I will ever understand the logic of a fashion designer.

Tagged: animation, capsule wardrobe, video

2011 in Photos

29th December, 2011 on Food, Gatherings, Home, Life, Photography, Travel 1 Comment

I feel like I should be saying that this year just zipped right by and I can’t believe we’re at the end of it already, but actually it felt like time passed exactly the way it should do. There were parts, like our wedding day, which felt like they went by in a flash. Less exciting but more relaxing times seemed to roll by at an easy pace, slow enough to look around and appreciate. I’ve had some ups and downs this year just like any year, but overall 2011 has been pretty good to me.

New Zealand

Most of the 'choice' crew in Auckland

Driving around the south island

Franz Josef Glacier

2011 began for us with a trip around New Zealand, the excuse being the wedding of some close friends in Auckland. New Zealand is such an amazing country, with so many different and contrasting environments – we experienced warm balmy days in Rotorua, windy and cosmopolitan Wellington, pouring rain in Milford Sound, icy landscapes on Franz Josef Glacier and beautifully green wineries in the Marlborough region. There was hiking, kayaking, wine-tasting, eating, zorbing and a whole lot of driving. I think I’ve actually now seen more of New Zealand than I have of Australia, so maybe an Aussie campervan road trip will be in our future!

Entertaining

Our housewarming Thai themed dinner

Steamboat!

Christmas dinner

One of the biggest changes for 2011 was moving back to Perth, after two years in Canberra. I’m really missing my Canberra friends, especially as it’s a long way to visit, but in a lot of ways it’s great to be back. One benefit is the (slightly) larger apartment we managed to get, which we’ve now managed to squeeze 11 people into for a sit-down dinner. I love entertaining and cooking for people, so we’ve now had quite a few gatherings at our place with friends and family. Most of these are either quite simple meals (like pizza, BBQ or steamboat) or potluck style dinners, but I’m slowly getting the hang of sorting out the timing so I’m not completely frazzled when people arrive. Food is becoming an ever more important part of my life, so I’m enjoying sharing that with others!

Read more in the Gatherings category

Dining

Birthday dinner at Restaurant Amusé

Speaking of food, I’ve been trying to cook at home as much as possible and then splurge every so often on something really special. One of these occasions was The Boy’s birthday dinner degustation at Restaurant Amusé, which is definitely one of the most intriguing and delicious meals I’ve had all year. Each course was impeccably presented, introduced by very professional waitstaff or the cook themselves, and involved some unlikely and wonderful ingredients. I think it’s really set the bar for degustations for me, and I’m hoping to try out a few more places next year!

Read more over on JeffHa.com – Restaurant Amusé

Cooking, backing, jamming

Strawberry jam

Red KitchenAid!

Still on the subject of food (hey, I said it was an important part of my life!), I’ve been doing a lot more cooking this year since The Boy now comes home from work too late to do much prep work. I still have a lot of hits and misses, but we’ve come a long way from eating pasta with jar sauce every few days. This year I’ve started cooking low carb, tried to include at least one vegetarian meal a week and started experimenting with more alternative proteins, like kangaroo (don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, roo is awesome!). I’ve also experimented with making jams, chocolate truffles, choux and shortbread pastry, and too many cakes, cookies and muffins to think about without drooling. The recent acquisition of a KitchenAid mixer (a wedding gift from my wonderful friends) is definitely helping. I wouldn’t call myself a good cook just yet, but I’m certainly improving.

Healthy living

This year has been a good one in terms of health and fitness – I’ve been doing fitness classes, jogging and eating a more controlled diet. I’ve actually managed to lose 5kg this year, which might not sound like much but I’m determined to do this properly and in a maintainable way, even if it takes me years to get to my goal weight.

Possibly my proudest achievement however, was completing the City to Surf 12km run! A year ago I would have said I would never do it – actually, even right up until the run I was pretty certain I would keel over along the way, or at least walk most of it. But I actually managed to get what I consider a decent time, and felt pretty good afterwards. I’m hoping actually train for the next one and beat my time in 2012.

Read more in City to Surf

Working life

Chilling outside Monk Studio

I’ve made a few changes to the way that do my freelance work this year, and one of the major ones was to work from a shared office instead of from home. Monk Studio houses Monk Media, Cut and Paste and a few other creatives who drop in and out here and there. Having a workplace that isn’t home and having other people to chat to has made a huge difference in my productivity; having other creative people to bounce ideas off or just watch funny YouTube videos with makes work a lot more fun. It’s also nice to have some people to have Friday drinks with sometimes! I still have to take photos of the office to post up here, look forward to that in the new year.

More info on my work life in the Freelance Friday posts

Reading

My Kindle, and hacked together sleeve

I’ve gotten back into reading in a huge way this year, and sometimes I’m finding myself so hooked on a book that I just devour it in a day or so. Looking back through my Goodreads account, I’ve ready about 39 books this year and will likely finish the 40th before we tick over to 2012. Almost all of these are fiction, with a few memoirs/biographies thrown in. I’ve gotten into sci-fi and food/travel memoirs lately, two genres I hadn’t really touched before. I do most of my reading on my Kindle these days which is very convenient, although there are of course some books which simply have to be read on paper.

I’ll be incorporating more book reviews in 2012, but for now you can see what I’m reading over on my Goodreads account.

Cosplay Photography

Cathy and Lisa cosplaying from Birth by Sleep

Jill cosplaying Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender

I didn’t end up doing much in the way of cosplay photography this year, but I was involved in a couple of shoots with some amazing cosplayers. Yes, the girl in the photo above really did shave her head for the shoot. I’m slowly becoming more confident in directing and shooting people, although it does help a lot to have cosplayers who really know what they’re doing and what they want captured. I’m going to be a bit more proactive with organising and being involved in cosplay shoots next year; it’s just so much fun!

Getting Hitched

Invitation suite

First dance (photo by Peter Bui)

The event that took up most of my brain for most of this year was our wedding! There are so many little decisions that need to be made organising a wedding, especially if you’re trying to do it on a budget and with as many DIY elements as possible like we were. The result wasn’t exactly something that you see in a bridal magazine, but for us it was just perfect. I can’t imagine The Boy not being a massive part of my life – I’m pretty sure we’ll be grossing out our grandkids by smooching at family parties way in the future. We have a lot of adventures ahead of us, so I’m glad that we can do them together – now as husband and wife.

I’ve written heaps about the process of organising my wedding and some recaps over on my wedding blog, Getting Hitched.

Honeymooning

Nam Hai Resort, Da Nang

Grilling at Hanoi night markets

View from Surprising Cave, Ha Long Bay

The day after the wedding we jetted off on our honeymoon to Vietnam. Breathtaking landscapes, fabulously cheap food and beer, and fascinating culture. I managed to get sick right at the start of the trip and stayed varying degrees of ill for the rest of it, but overall it was still pretty damn awesome. I can’t pick a highlight between staying an uber luxury resort near Da Nang, cycling around Hoi An, eating grilled street food in Hanoi or kayaking around Ha Long Bay.

Looking back, this year has been really good to us. I’m all ready for the next one!

Tagged: photos, recap

Adventures in Ha Long Bay

9th November, 2011 on Photography, Travel 1 Comment

Ha Long Bay is about a 4 hour drive from Hanoi, and has the most beautiful and amazing rock formations coming up from the water. We did a 3 day, 2 night tour with two nights aboard a Chinese style junk, which is the standard way to tour the place. Our junk was laughably bad in parts (like the ‘honeymoon special’ rose petals floating in the bathroom sink, which we then had to clean out, or the bizarrely sweet and not particularly Vietnamese pumpkin soup), but the place is so lovely and scenic that as long as your ship doesn’t sink it’s hard to not have a good time.

We spent a lot of time kayaking and cruising around the bay, which is massive – even with a huge number of junks in the bay, once you move away from the main mooring areas it feels like you’re the only ones out there. It’s a bit sad to see the effect that the tourism boom is having on the place though – there’s a lot of chip packets and cans floating in the water, and when I asked the guide at one point if he thought the water was clean enough to swim in (the suggested activity at the time) he shook his head. I really hope the growing popularity of Ha Long Bay doesn’t destroy its beauty.

Tagged: Ha Long Bay, honeymoon, Vietnam

Adventures in Hanoi

on Photography, Travel 1 Comment

Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, ended up being a bit of a transit city for us – we flew in to Hanoi from Perth, then flew to Hoi An the next day. We had a bit over a day between Hoi An and Ha Long Bay, and then another evening before flying back to Perth. The result was that we didn’t really do anything more adventurous than look for the best place to eat, although with the traffic getting anywhere is an adventure in itself.

Aside from a bit of rain on the first day, we had perfect weather in Hanoi – temperature maybe in the mid 20′s, and not particularly humid. If you don’t the possibility of getting a bit wet, I’d definitely recommend this time of year to travel to North Vietnam!

A few tips:

Go see the water puppets. Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand what’s going on, it’s worth watching!
All the travel agents are clustered in Old Town, near the water puppet theatre. They offer more competitive rates for tours than hotels – I wish we managed to find them before booking our Ha Long Bay tour through our hotel.
Hoan Kiem Lake is really pretty, especially at night, but the restaurants around there are really expensive (for Vietnam). Go to a place with lots of locals for dinner, then just get drinks somewhere with a nice view.
We stumbled across a great place on Ma Mai Street which gives you a plate of beef and veggies to cook yourselves at your table on a grill over kerosene. One of the best meals of the trip!

Tagged: Hanoi, honeymoon, Vietnam