Bohemian Beautiful

Master Max turns Two

2012-12-04T06:08:05Z

I started following Cherie at Raising Master Max way back at the start of 2012, only a few months after she had started blogging and her honesty and love for her little boy Max captured me wholeheartedly right from the very start. I have followed and loved every word she has written since, and she soon became one of my favourite bloggers. I knew that Cherie lived somewhere in Melbourne like me, but I observed from afar as all of us do who read blogs, and gently placed her and her family up high, far away in the “People-I-dream-of-meeting-but-probably-never-will” basket.

One day I saw Cherie struggling with a technical problem on her blog that I knew how to fix, and one email eventually led to another, but I was totally blown away when Cherie invited me to a dinner with a few other lovely bloggers a few Tuesdays ago, and even more blown away when Cherie asked me if I would be interesting in coming to Master Max’s second birthday party and taking some photos!

Cherie, you and your family are beautiful, and the love you have for Max seriously just shines so brightly! Also, I think you have one of the most beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen, especially when you are laughing!

It was such a pleasure to meet you all in person, so very surreal, and I am very humbled to have had the opportunity to capture some memories and a part of your’s, Dave’s and Max’s story.

This photography thing? I love it, more and more every single day.

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The Great Ocean Road {road trip}

2013-01-12T04:49:32Z

The Great Ocean Road is one part of Victoria that I have been wanting to explore ever since we moved here over a year ago, but somehow it’s never happened until a week and a half ago. Gemma had the weekend off work and we had no plans, so we decided to just do it, and it was the most exhaustingly perfect road trip ever. Gemma’s new boy-friend came along with us, and it was so beautiful watching the bro-mance between Dan and Will develop <3.

| Geelong |

I, sadly, fell prey to all the sad rumours Mlebournians seem to have that Geelong is not a nice place to visit, and how wrong they are! Such snobbery! We stopped for lunch along the waterfront, and I was enamored of all the wooden people scattered along the waterfront.

The male counterpart of our expedition were overcome with boy-ish delight when they discovered the sculptures, running and jumping and climbing all over them.

| Bells Beach|

This is somewhere that Dan has wanted to go ever since we moved down here, the one proper surfing beach in Victoria, and he was in surf heaven. Even I have to admit the swell was perfect, and I forsee a few more trips here in the summer which is totally fine by me {I missed the beach too much last summer!}

| Great Ocean Road |

We made a pit stop at this beautiful big road sign which marks the true start of the Great Ocean Road, and of course our two resident monkies had to climb all over it, before being side tracked by the stumps near by which we spent a good half hour playing on.

| Gibson Steps |

Two hours and a long nap later, we made it to our first stop, the Gibson Steps. I wasn’t sure what it would be like and if we would be able to get down on to the beach but we got lucky. We had the most amazing warm weather, and it was also low tide so there was plenty of beach space . {Gibson Steps are just around the headland from the 12 Apostles}.

The stark contrast between the orange-y yellow of the cliffs and the bright blue sky was mesmerising. I felt like it was a backdrop out of a science fiction movie, the cliffs are just so huge and beautiful, but they go on forever!

| Sunset Date Night – 12 Apostles |

Even though the 12 Apostles were only just around the corner it was really late in the afternoon by the time we left the Gibson Steps, so we went and checked into the hotel and had some dinner, and decided we would head back to the 12 Apostles for sunset. This was mostly because I could tell from the position of the sun that it was going to set over the water, and I have been dying to see a sunset over the water ever since we moved here, and I finally got my wish and it was magical!

| Day Two | Bay of Islands and Bay of Martyrs |

When we checked into our hotel the day before we were given a tourist map, and after having a quick look we soon realised that Day Two was going to be epic, because there was much more to see than we realised.

We kicked off by heading to the next town (Petersborough) to find breakfast…however this was a collection of houses with no cafes etc, so that idea went bust pretty quickly. We decided to persevere with our touristing sans breakfast until we went back through Port Campbell, and headed up to the Bay of Islands and the Bay of Martyrs.

Port Campbell – the view from our hotel

Bay of Martyrs

Bay of Islands

| Day Two | The Grotto |

The Grotto was really cool, Gemma, Dan and Will all jumped the fence and went exploring, but I didn’t as I was in a dress and thongs and knew if I tried I would fall flat on my face and probably break my camera.

| London Bridge |

| The Arch |

| Thunder Cave |

Thunder Cave was awesome. It was about 1pm by this stage, and stinking hot and we were tired, hungry and sunburned, so we chose the Thunder Cave over Loch Ard Gorge (because it sounded cooler). We did so much walking, and it was a bit of a hike to get to all these places from the car park but so worth it. As we were walking along we just heard the rushing sound of water, and when we got to Thunder Cave it was so much louder! Thunder Cave is very aptly named, the sound of the water and waves rushing into the cave was loud from up top, and I can only imagine how deafening it would have been closer to the source.

| Otway National Forest | Tree Top Walk |

We eventually made it back to the Otway National Forest, and the Tree Top walk had been on our to do list. It’s about a 2km walk up and down hills (it was hard), but totally awesome. They also have a zipline but it was too expensive and too late in the day, but it was pretty fun listening to all the laughing and excited yelling from the people doing it.

This dinosaur creeped me out, I was walking through the forest and caught it from the corner of my eye….creepy.

After we had finished the walk, we decided to head down to Cape Otway to look at the lighthouse, but by the time we got there it was all shut and we couldn’t get to it, so as we turned around to leave I asked Dan to pull over so I could grab some food. As I was sitting there eating I looked up, and it was like seeing for the first time…there were koalas everywhere. ALl the trees Dan had presumed to be bizarrely dead, were not in fact dead, just stripped of their leaves by all the koalas. We got out to walk around and have a look at them all when we saw this little thing just chilling on the side of the road! He was not fazed by our presence at all, and Dan even got within arm’s length of him while he was taking a photo.

I love his little tongue!

| Cape Patton – Sunset Date Night |

We stopped at Cape Patton lookout twice, once on the way there and on the way back. Sunset was approaching, and I realised we were coming up on the lookout so I proposed another sunset date night from there. I’m so glad that we stayed, it was completely magical and the perfect way to end our weekend.

If you are coming to Melbourne, take a day at least to go down the Great Ocean Road, it is beautiful!!

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Life’s Little Wisdom #56

2012-09-13T06:34:26Z

I am really finding some awesome quote posters on Pinterest lately and I am trying really hard not to bombard this space with them all at once {it’s hard!}

Let’s not try to figure everything else out at once.

Fabulous words to live by!!

I’m dreadfully guilty of thinking about a million different things at once, and for trying to get them all solved as soon as possible and this is something I need to remind myself of about a million times a day.

I can’t wait for the sunshine to last a little longer so we can set up our hammock again. I’m looking forward to coming home from work and just swinging in the summer breeze, maybe with a glass of wine. That is the best way for me to just chill and relax. That and at the beach!

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miscellaneous + recovery time {holiday part four}

2012-09-09T12:35:36Z

Some snaps from our drive to the snow

On the last day of our time at the snow we got to meet some of the local wildlife! I took a gazillion photos, but I narrowed it down to some of the best

We went to the Shrine of Remembrance on Friday, and spent an hour or so wandering through, remembering and respecting the sacrifice made by our ancestors for our freedom.

We saw the moon.

Then I found these photos and my heart smiled.

he’s such a sweetie!

Aren’t they just the cutest?!

she is so beautiful!

my handsome man <3

duck face!

That pretty much summarizes our holiday, it was not very restful and I’m very tired, but it was lovely and fun and full of laughter, happiness and a whole lotta love, which is exactly what a holiday should be in my opinion.

That wraps up my holiday snapshots, and all I have left to say is Happy Friday to you all! Hope you have a lovely weekend

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chocolate hazelnut cookies {the secret bakers club}

2012-09-09T11:55:26Z

I love baking, but my hips don’t, so I made a compromise with them and instead of eating everything I bake myself I send them off to work with Dan. This started some kind of cute little rivalry with one of Dan’s colleagues who gets his girlfriend to bake things and so he can bring them into work too, but then it kind of evolved into this little swapsies deal with each other. They call it the secret bakers club (??).

Sadly, Dan’s colleague is leaving work so Dan asked me to bake something for him the other day to take into work for one last secret bakers club swap.

Ingredients

225g softened butter
140g caster sugar
1 egg yolk lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
225g plain flour
55g coca powder
pinch of salt
55g plain chocolate chips
4tbsp nutella/chocolate and hazzelnut spread

Directions

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius and line 2 trays with baking paper.
Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon then beat in the egg yolk and vanilla extract.
Sift together the flour, cocoa and a pinch of sale into the mixture and add the chocolate chips. Stir until thoroughly combined.
Scoop out tablespoons of the mixture and shape into balls with your hands then put them on the prepared baking sheets spaced well apart, use the dampended handle of a wooden spoon to make a hollow in the centre of each cookie.
Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes. Leave to cool on the baking sheets for 5-10 minutes then using a palette knife carefully transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool completely. When they are cold fill the hollows with the nutella!
I added some white chocolate dribbles just to make them even more decadent.

They are pretty good, but 55 grams of chocolate is too much. Next time I would use much less cocoa, they were too chocolate-y and a little bit dry. Still, pretty damn good

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