The 2010 Perth Royal Show

It's my favourite time of year again, when the Royal Show comes to Perth! Yesterday I spent a whole day at the show. My parents and Mina hung around until just after lunch, and then we met up with some friends and stayed until the fireworks at night. Matt and I arrived at 10am and stayed until 8.30pm and I still didn't get to do everything I wanted!

I pretty much had to force my parents and Mina to come, and I was sure they'd have a good time. They complained the whole time they were there, but each of them had one thing that they really enjoyed so hopefully that made it worthwhile! Having said that I don't think I'll manage to convince them to come again next year...

First up we went to the Food and Cooking pavilion to see some cake displays. Despite Mina's insistence that everything she baked was a million times better, I found it amazing what some people manage to make out of icing. It's both inspiring and very very humbling.

Next we went to see Jack and Molly the Wonder Dog at the Entertainment pavilion. We somehow found seats next to a very excitable lady who managed to singlehandedly be louder than all of the kids combined, and was violently bouncing around in her chair the whole time. This was much to Mina's horror who scored the seat right next to her, and poor Mina spent the whole time giving me worried looks and clutching her purse tightly. However the show was really cute with the highlight being when Molly shut herself in a little suitcase, exasperated at Jack's impossible requests for her to jump through a 3m high hoola hoop.

The Dog and Poultry pavilions were next which is where I think my parents and Mina had the most fun. The dogs were awesome as always, and my dad looked like a little kid giggling at all the dogs being prepped for show with their clips and bows and all. The Poultry and Pigeon pavilion went down a treat as I knew it would, being chicken owners ourselves. Mina had heaps of fun, and her favourite birds were the pigeons with the tails that looked like umbrellas.

After this Mina and my parents got a bit showed-out and decided to give up. I'm actually surprised they lasted that long, but was a bit disappointed they didn't get to see more things. We then met up with some friends and had some sushi lunch (I brought some sushi to try even out all the sugar with some healthy stuff) and hit the pavilions again.

At 3pm was the highlight of my show day; an event called "Dancing Ducks". We'd seen this before a couple of years ago and I couldn't wait to see it again. I can't properly describe the show, but it certainly did not involve any ducks dancing. To sum it all up, a crazy old farm guy has made a duck fashion parade with ducks wearing different dresses (including a bride and groom duck), and he's decided to toss in a strange pig race, a weird sing along, and an even stranger game of pig musical chairs (that also has a dog for some reason). There's also a bit where a strange ghost thing inexplicably pops out of the runway and he gets all the kids to yell at it. Anyway... it is strange. The strangest bit was during the pig musical chairs thing where he lost control of the broom he was using to push the pigs away with and fell head over heels as a pig trampled him to get the food from his bucket... so, so strange.

Next we saw Clive Lotah and his Sway Pole, which was an acrobatic show where Clive, a 75 year old in a red spandex suit climbs a 9m pole and does a bunch of crazy tricks at the top. He (literally) seemed on top of the world and I couldn't clap loudly enough especially since Clive was sitting in a wheel chair before and after his amazing performance.

We filled in our time until the fireworks with more patting of cute animals, buying of candies, and a couple of rides. I went on the Gravitron (a spaceship like ride where you stand up and get stuck to the walls as it spins around really fast, definitely my favourite ride of all time) with Kristy, and the Mega Drop (a 45m, 5.5g force fall) with Andrew. To top off a perfect day we went out for a relaxing dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. I love the Royal Show so much!

The Incident Celebrations

Last Saturday we had a few people over to celebrate Matt's final week of (salaried) work and all the success of his awesome game, The Incident. To mark the occasion, we decided to make some The Incident themed cupcakes, and I tried my hand at a rainbow cake that I iced with The Incident icon.

Balloon Cupcakes
We had a great idea about making cupcakes themed with all the "balloons" you can get in the game. There's health, health boost, shield, up/down and curse balloons which we captured with coloured icing and ready rolled for the icon. Matt is really good at ready rolled icing! The curse balloon with the skull was my favourite, and he did an awesome job with it!

Psychedelic Icon Cake
I'm pretty sure this is the best thing I've ever baked in my life, and I probably should just stop now at the height of my baking potential. I was inspired by a layered rainbow cake that someone brought in for their birthday at work, but decided to go for the full mixed rainbow cake after googling some amazing pictures of other people's creations.

I decided to stick with 6 colours and repeat the sequence twice (yes, to make a double rainbow). I bought a square cake tin for the occasion (since the app icons are square) and filled it with a double batch of vanilla sponge cake mix. To the lighter colours (red, orange and yellow) I added some strawberry essence, but it turned out really subtle so you couldn't taste the difference between the colours of the rainbow.

It may surprise you that there's no manual mixing involved to create the rainbow pattern (it surprised me!). The effect is achieved by scooping concentric circles of coloured mixture on top of one and other. The mixture will spread out under the weight of each new colour application, and the result is the perfect amount of psycadelicness!

I documented each spoonful of mixture I added (I'll skip every second addition here for brevity). Because I wanted to go through the spectrum twice, I used about half the amount of each colour each time.

When the cake came out of the oven the surface was a lovely brown, but there were little cracks where you could see the magic shining through! It was huge tease that I couldn't find out what was inside! I couldn't wait, so I managed to convince myself that I needed to cut the top off the cake so that it could be properly iced as a perfect icon prism. It was... SO EXCITING to see this:

Next I mixed up 6 shades of purple and a bright yellow in vanilla butter icing. I iced the cake as best as I could, and used cashous for the stars. I think that the colours came out really nice, and I managed to get the sky a really nice deep purple. I used cocoa powder as well food colouring for that part.

I decided to use ready rolled icing to capture Frank in all of his pixely detail, and managed to do a pretty good job with the colours! I didn't think I could get the colour dark enough for his hair, pants or shoes, but it came out quite accurate.

Cutting the Cake
When we brought out the cake I was SO excited to find out what was inside. I had no idea what to expect even given the sneak preview of cutting the top off. Matt did the honours, and it was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.

I love you, rainbow The Incident icon cake. You are the best thing I've ever made.

Cuddly Animal Farm

Today I had an awesome time at the Swan Valley with my friends from uni. As a (late) birthday present, they decided to take me out for breakfast at the Margaret River Chocolate Company, followed by a visit to the Cuddly Animal Farm and finishing off with lunch and drinks at Oakover winery.

OK so the whole day was great, but Oh My God the Cuddly Animal Farm is the best place ever! Despite the fact that we were obviously not the target audience (and apparently I'm too big to ride the pony... yes I asked) we all had a really great time! I patted so many things!

My animal highlights are cuddling the baby bunny with the white nose (I want it), seeing a turkey (I had no idea they actually said 'gobble gobble' and their face looks like chewing gum), feeding a piglet (but he went a bit crazy and I got milk everywhere), and hanging out with my duck buddies (I was the duck whisperer today, all the ducks and me go way back).

Cupcake Month

Well it seems like August has been a month of cupcakes! It was my birthday earlier this month and I decided to have a crack (well two cracks) at Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' cupcakeified. Then Amy and I decided to do 'Cupcake day for the RSPCA' to help raise funds for all animals great and small :)

Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' in Cupcakes

As a tradition, I always make cupcakes (instead of having an actual cake) for Matt and I on our birthdays. I try to keep it cute and geeky (e.g. last year I made Mario Mushroom cupcakes for Matt's birthday), and this year I came across an amazing idea that immediately stole my heart.

It turns out that Van Gogh has been translated in to all types of sweets (I found a great summary of a bunch of different attempts) but since we have a print of Starry Night hanging in our lounge room I thought I'd give that one a shot.

I did a practice run before my birthday and took them into work as an early birthday cake. Everyone loved them! Only one person guessed what the painting was without any hints, but that certainly made my day :)

For my actual birthday I asked for Amy's help and managed to do a much better job with help from her infinite cupcake knowledge! It took us about 3 hours to ice the whole lot (I baked the cupcakes the previous day just to rush things along) but it was great fun! So much better with two people.

Cupcake day for the RSPCA

After how much fun we had making the Van Gogh cupcakes, Amy suggested that we put our baking to a good purpose and take part in Cupcake day for the RSPCA. The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is a really great cause, so we were happy to do whatever we could to help, and thought it would be great fun having a go at some animal themed cupcakes!

Amy signed us up and the RSPCA set up a fundraising page for our team, and set our fundraising goal as $500AU. I personally thought that was very ambitious, and didn't think we'd get anywhere near that amount. Turns out we're currently the 6th top fundraising team in WA (we actually got up to #3) and we've raised $729.35AU! Go team!

We each baked a huge amount of cupcakes and got together for a marathon icing session. We had some really big ideas to start, but because we had so many cupcakes to ice we thought we'd keep it simple so that it wouldn't take us all night.

We had paw prints (big and small), gummy bears, sharks, and (everyone's favourite) kitties. People at both of our work places were really generous, and my books actually overbalanced! I guess who can resist cupcakes or helping animals in need.

Europe Trip 2010!

Last night we got back from a 5 week trip to Europe, and I'm feeling so good after a night's sleep in my own bed! It was the family vacation that Matt's dad wanted us to have to meet his relatives in Italy, and we also had a chance to do some detouring while we were there.

Paris

Paris was lovely as always! After almost missing the plane to Europe (Matt's mum has a talent for being late for everything) we arrived at our Paris apartment in the central 7eme district. Matt and I had been before but this time we had a solid 5 days to look around. We managed to see:

• The Eiffel tower - First time we went to the top, the view was amazing at night! Worth the 3h wait for sure
• The Louvre - We took it a bit slower and saw heaps more this time
• Musee D'Orsay - Van Gogh's galore, our favourite artist
• Musee Rodin - The most fun museum, we spent a lot of time eating icecream in the gardens
• Musee L'Orangerie - The Monet rooms were breathtaking
• Versailles - The hall of mirrors was beautiful, but the gardens were the highlight
• Notre Damme - I guess church can be fun!

Geneva

Geneva is a wonderful city that felt like home, probably because we stayed with Yvonne (my cousin) and Stefan! It was so great to finally visit Yvonne and see where she's been living for the past 3 years :) We were happy to just hang out with Yvy and Stef, but managed to see the Jet of Geneva, Saleve Mountain, Saint-Pierre's Cathedral, and even ate some horse (it's a common cut of meat there, ick).

Rome

Matt and I spent one night in Rome in the Oxford Hotel before heading off to Calabria. It was a nice break, and prepared us for the loooong stay with family to come!

Calabria

This was the purpose and heart of the trip, which is where we met a whole lot of family from Matt's dad's side. We stayed with Matt's Nonna's brother in Girifalco, but spent a lot of time visiting Caraffa di Catanzaro.

It was really nice to meet so many people that looked like Matt! Unfortunately almost no one spoke english, but this was an opportunity for everyone to learn a bit of Italian, and we all did pretty well. By the end of it we were understanding almost everything and managing to put some words together ourselves.

As well as meeting family, we did some things around Calabria. My highlights are:

• Eating a mountain strawberry (a fragolina)
• Seeing "Comi alley", where all the Comi family houses were and where Matt's dad grew up
• Feeding a reindeer
• Tropea beach

We had a nice time, but got a bit bored, and got a lot fatter. They eat like maniacs there! I packed on 4kg so I have my work set out for me for the next couple of months :(

Bucharest

At this point in the trip, I took a detour and went to Romania while Matt and the rest of his family went to Northern Italy. I stayed in a beautiful pre-communist era house with my dad's friend Mitica and his family, and spent some time in the city where my dad grew up.

Mitica used to be a tour bus driver, and his son Catalin is studying tourism at uni, so I had a pretty good set of guides! We did a lot of sight seeing around Bucharest (the obligatory stuff including the Village Museum and Casa Poporului), and they took me to the most wonderful places where I really got to see the beauty of Romania:

• Brasov - "Probably the best place in the world" as is written on umbrellas all around the city, and they're "probably" right! It was a stunning city which was right near Bran Castle, the (fake) Dracula's castle where Vlad Tepes apparently spent some time (but probably not).
• Sinaia - The place where Peles castle is. Peles was the most beautiful rich place I've ever seen. It was extremely well preserved, and the riches were mind boggling. I also had a taste of mountain raspberries!
• Snagov - The island on Snagov Serpentine lake is where Vlad Tepes's remains are said to be. We had to row there on a crappy little row boat we hired from a gypsy, and I strengthened my arm muscles by rowing all the way back.
• Comana - Where I met my grandparents (from my dad's side) for the first time in my life! It was such an amazing experience. Our family in Perth is so small, and it was very strange to meet other people that looked like me. For the record, I look exactly like my grandma :) I also met my dad's brother Cristi, who laughs exactly like Tati.

Bucharest was an amazing place, and all the bad stuff I'd heard about it was really wrong (even the stray dogs were so cute!). Family stuff aside, it's really a place I'd love to go back and spend some more time.

Cluj

The largest city in Transylvania, and where my Mina grew up. Here I met some more family on my mum's side including Mina's brother Silvi (he's hilarious and a little bit insane) and my cousin Vlad (I have a cousin that's not Yvonne or Simona!). Until Matt arrived in Cluj, I spent some time with Mina and Licia (my mum's cousin) and took it easy for a little while. Cluj is lovely, but it's small so I spent a lot of time at the apartment and at the Mall.

When Matt arrived, we took a trip to Turda to see a beautiful salt mine. It was extraordinary, and not just because I'm obsessed with salt. I don't know what you think of when you hear the word salt mine, but I was certainly surprised! It was a beautiful 13 story cavern carved out of salt, with walls made of swirling grey patterns, and a salt lake with row boats at the bottom. Isn't salt wonderful?

We took another day trip to Lita; a quaint small town where everyone knows their neighbours, and is the place where Mina grew up. We had a barbeque at Mina's cousin's house, complete with plenty of visinata and tuica, the national moonshine of Romania.

As well as meeting with family, my highlight of Cluj was going to an underground "club", Janis. The club was a converted wine cellar filled with candle lit tables and red spot lights. The music was pretty awful, but the place was amazing, and my god do Transylvanians know how to drink! We gave up at around 2am and left blind drunk, but Vlad and his friends went on until about 5am. Needless to mention none of us could stomach any visinata the next day at lunch!

Back at Home

So now we're back at home (after 35h of travel!), and I'm back at work on Monday, but I'm actually looking forward to it! Being away for 5 weeks really makes you appreciate being at home, especially your own bed :)

I've feel like I've got a lot more stuff in perspective now, and I really appreciate how my family (and Matt's family) came to be where they are now. It was very strange to see the places where my family grew up, and meet the family that is still there now. I've always been proud of being an Australian with Romanian blood, and it's so great to know where that blood came from!

Phoenix

Last night was hands down the best concert I've ever been to; Phoenix played in Perth at the Belvoir Amphitheater on their Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix tour. I've never seen anything like it before! I guess I knew that they're meant to be stunning live, but I certainly didn't expect this!

The Belvoir venue is kind of like a big semi-circle crater with wide steps (where people can sit) leading down to the stage. There's also a wide open area directly in front of the stage where people can dance. When we arrived the crowd seemed pretty tame and most people were sitting down on the steps, but we decided to stand at the front for Miami Horror (the support act) anyway just in case it got crowded. Well that's an understatement! Toward the end of Miami Horror's set everyone started pushing like crazy into the dance area. We were actually in the 2nd row from the front, and being vertically challenged as I am, I was getting really pushed around and could barely breathe most of the time!

When Phoenix finally came on stage (about 40min after Miami Horror's set) the crowd went ballistic. They started with Lisztomania which created a huge mosh pit - yes a mosh pit for Phoenix! Well the mosh pit didn't let up at all throughout the set which was absolutely amazing, with my highlights (from the main set) being Love Like a Sunset and Too Young. After finishing Funky Square Dance they said goodbye to the crowd and left to huge cheers for encore. After a couple of minutes of leaving us hanging and teasing us by taking their instruments off the stage, they came back and did acoustic slow versions of Everything is Everything and (OMG) a cover of Air's Playground Love which was INCREDIBLE. They then brought back all the gear and played If I Ever Feel Better and 1901, which (along with Too Young) is my favourite Phoenix track ever.

They're such amazing performers. Thomas is such a show man, climbing on the set scaffolding and on various occasions coming up to the barricades and performing while the crowd (yes including me) touched and grabbed him. It was hilarious watching security try and keep a handle on him, they certainly had their work cut out for them last night!

In conclusion, if you ever get a chance to see Phoenix, my god please take it! It's a night I'll never forget, best performance ever! (Oh and also because I touched Thomas and managed to get Deck's guitar pick)

Rottnest Island Trip

What an awesome island! I'd been to Rottnest once before, but I was a lot younger and it was only for a day trip so we didn't get to explore too much. This year I went for 3 days for a short relaxing trip with Matt's family. We stayed at the Rottnest Central Bungalows, and spent our time relaxing and trying to see as much of the island as possible.

We took it easy the first day, and decided to spend it on the beach and finish it off with some jetty fishing. I'd actually never been fishing before so I was a bit worried about how I'd take the whole fish-murder thing. While everyone was still settling in, I had already baited and lowered my line. About 30 seconds later I had two herrings fighting for my hook! I managed to catch one of them and pull it in, and after about a minute of it slipping out of my hands like a bar of soap we had our first catch in the bucket. How exciting! It did surprise me a bit how difficult it was to get the fish in the bucket after it had been caught. I guess I just sort of expected it to give up once it was caught, but it really struggled to live which did upset me a little bit :( I'm glad that I saw it through though, and we ended up eating it the next day which made me feel very self sufficient!

That night we caught 4 edible fish, and a lot more aquarium fish. I caught a weird frilly black thing with lots of spines, and Elissa caught a pretty yellow and black stripy fish. Apparently I had a very exciting first fishing experience, because usually you don't catch that many fish, especially not so many varieties!

The next day we hired some bikes and decided to ride around to Mary Cove to do some snorkeling. A tip to anyone deciding to hire bikes - get the mountain bikes! It's only about $7 more expensive, but it just did not occur to us that it would make such a difference. Everyone got single speed bikes except for James, and he was the only one who didn't struggle up the multitude of hills.

It was an awesome ride with heaps of beautiful views. It took a while to get to Mary Cove since the wind was against us and the aforementioned one speed bikes whipped our asses on the hills, but it was certainly worth the effort. It was the first time I'd even been snorkeling, and it was amazing! The conditions were apparently quite bad because of the waves, so I can imagine what it would be like on a good day.

On the way back we stopped at a couple of the lakes. From the map I think we stopped at Serpentine, Pearse, and Hershel lakes, which each had gorgeous crystal formations of salt, and really strange red to blue gradients in the water. I'm not sure what causes the strange gradient but it was really eerie and beautiful.

We took it easy on the last day and played some putt putt at the Family Fun Park. It was another first for me, and I managed to come 3rd! I usually suck at all ball sports in general so 3/5 is not bad at all.

Despite the sunburn and bruised bum from the bikes, I had an awesome time. I'll definitely be going back even if it's just to spend the day on one of Rottnest's secluded beaches!

Painting the House

Over the Christmas/new year's break Matt and I painting the main rooms of the house. We'd done the bedrooms a couple of years back, and decided to tackle the rest of the rooms this year. All we have left is the bathrooms, then the doors and door frames, and our whole house will have had a nice new coat of paint!

We were a bit adventurous and used Dulux "Puddle" for the main colour in the front room. It's a bit dark (in fact we used it as the feature colour in the bedrooms) but the room is really big and we thought it would contrast nicely with the annoying pink of the carpet. We did a dark feature colour (Dulux "Baton") for the entry wall, and eventually we plan on plastering the feature brick behind the TV and painting that the feature colour too.

We actually decided to split the front room into two smaller rooms using an Expedit shelving unit from IKEA. Instead of being one long awkward room, it's now a cozy TV room and a small reading room, which desperately needs a long chaise chair :)

The kitchen and dining we did in Dulux "Crewelwork Half" which is nice and light, and we tried to separate the little lounge from the rest of the house by painting the whole room Dulux "Puddle". We were a bit worried at first because this involved changing colours on a convex corner, but we used painters tape which was absolutely amazing and meant the line was perfect!

We also painted the walk in robe, which has been really nagging me. The previous owner had obviously changed storage a few times, and so there were about a million drill holes in the wall and ceiling, whole sections of missing paint, and giant chips in the plaster. It's SO much better now and it's a real pleasure to walk in the walk in robe!

The best thing about all of the work we did is that we don't have giant drill holes all over the house. The previous owner was not shy about drilling, and she had a like of heavy curtains, tapestries, photos, calenders, etc. Even the bathrooms and toilets have drill holes everywhere!

Triple J Hottest 100 of 2009

My votes:

• Phoenix - 1901 (My obvious #1, the rest are in alphabetical order)
  
• Animal Collective - Brother Sport
• Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
• Basement Jaxx - Raindrops
• Bat For Lashes - Daniel
• Big Pink, The - Dominos
• Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
• Peter Bjorn & John - Lay It Down
• Phoenix - Lisztomania
• Royksopp - You Don't Have A Clue (Ft. Anneli Drekker)

Would have loved to fit in:

• Bon Iver - Blood Bank
  
• Kid Cudi - Pursuit Of Happiness
• Little Birdy - Brother
• Mumford & Sons - Little Lion Man
• Muse - Undisclosed Desires
• National, The - So Far Around The Bend
• Royksopp - Happy Up Here
  
• Royksopp - Vision One (Ft. Anneli Drekker)
• Yeasayer - Ambling Alp