So Many Snaps: Things I've Done Lately

I went back to Bay Vista a couple more times.

Here are some waffles with strawberries and white chocolate sauce:

This banana split looked nice but the banana was bruised :(

Here's a sign at the takeaway shop nearby:

Weird, huh?

I had a chicken, bacon, leek and potato pie for lunch at a cafe at uni.  It was pretty good and ony $7.50!

The other thing is James's smoked salmon wrap, sounds nice but actually disappointing.  I won this round.

I went out for dinner with my Dad and BetDawg to ShangriLa Chinese in Cazbah.  If you've been reading for a long time you'll remember that I love retro Chinese food.

San(g?) Choy Bow was amazing.

I had fried ice cream for the first time - pretty nice!

Mongolian lamb and lemon chicken with the sauce on the side <3

I got a new coat!  I looked for ages for a black one to wear with dresses and I finally found this one at SES for $30.  It's surprisingly warm but it doesn't have pockets which is kind of annoying.

I went to my cousin's birthday party.  It was a dress up theme, but we came in our regular clothes and he provided things for everyone to dress up.  I thought I was rather fetching in a plastic blonde wig and red sequinned cocktail dress.

Here is some yummy food I ate at book club.

Thanks Amy for hosting such a great night and helping me finish that champagne!

We read The Hunger Games, which as you may know I read a few weeks ago, but I will discuss that after exams.

I don't want to keep buying stuff so I made a DIY body lotion.  I had this Clinique perfumed one that smells nice but way too strong, so I mixed it with this pretty much fragrance free Garnier stuff (which is very moisturising, I recommend it) and put it in this empty Natio tub (which contained some lovely lotion, I recommend that too). 

Et voila, luxury body lotion without spending any extra money!

I read a gossip mag at work.  Here's Phil Collins's daughter Lily:

I think she's quite pretty.

And this one's for Gemma:

Every year James gets some prizes at the Law Faculty awards night and I always go with him.  I wore my red dress and he matched me!

It is usually a good night; last year's sucked so they made it extra good this year to compensate.  Waiters walked around with trays of champagne and cocktails and there was heaps of lovely food, including fresh prawns and cannoli.  And I finally got to meet our Dean of Law, of whom I am an enourmous fan.

I had this pizza from Big Al's at Miranda.  It was SO GOOD.  It's tandoori chicken.

I ordered a delivery from them a couple of days later and I picked the same pizza.  What I received looked like a BBQ chicken.  It had a slightly Indian taste though, so possibly it's the same pizza but they forgot the, garnishes i.e. tandoori sauce and nuts and corriander.  Which makes it not really the same pizza at all. 

And they said the wait would be 45 minutes to 1 hr and it took about 1 hr 25. 

Disappointing.

In the Summer I buy my dresses at op shops, but in the Winter I need Merino wool and I always get it from Glassons.  It's cheaper online, as their prices are the same in NZ and AUD and the site is NZ.  They had $10 off too!

I got this dark teal jumper, and the same one in black as my own black one is a bit tatty now.

But the best thing was this dress:

It has proper 3/4 (not elbow) sleeves, a not-too-low scoop neck and a short-but-not-tunic-like skirt.  There's enough dress to keep you warm and it's super comfy.  I've always dreamed of owning a Merino dress like this.  You can't really see but it has a funky zipper on the side of the skirt - kind of weird but whatever, I'm warm!

It cost about $80 for the three.  The jumpers are $40 each in the shop at Westfield so quite a good deal.  The website has some other similar sale on at the moment so hop to it!

I saw an ABBA tribute act with my Mum, Nana and Aunty.  I'm just cool like that.

It wasn't Bjorn Again.  They're called Abbasback.  They were a bit amateurish; in parts a little dull but in other parts really fun.  Overall it was a good time, especially in the second half when they changed into cooler outfits and did all the best songs.

James and I remain committed to matching, but he's not committed to keeping his mirror clean so you'll just have to take my word for it that his navy coat matched my navy Glassons knit and navy corduroy (the very fine kind, what is this called?) CKM blazer, purchased in Coffs Harbour circa 2006.

And apparently that's all the photos I had!

I'm a bit preoccupied at the mo but I'll be back in a bit with advice on workwear for weirdly shaped people, a story about my famous stalker and probably a lot more pictures of things I've eaten.  (Today's highlight: a Value Pack of Aldi brand M&Ms.)  In the meantime good luck everybody with your exams and assessments and such.

In Which I Eat Food From The Crest, Bay Vista, The Meridian, Guzman y Gomez And My Own Kitchen, and read STYD June

I wore this outfit to a "Cover Your Face" themed party on the weekend (thanks Liz for having us).  It was heaps of fun and as you can see I'm bringing down the CPW of the Reject Shop mask I wore to Teen Spirit.  Sorry about the dodgy snap.

If you wondered, it's a Temt dress ($15, but I had a $10 credit note so only $5 really), fleece lined tights from the supermarket, Court Couture "Pearly" boots from DSW ($69 but it was buy one get one half price so I also got the boots I wore in Canberra), Glassons Merino cardi ($60 but on sale for $48, still outrageous), necklaces from Big W ($3?) and a Barbie watch my Dad brought back from Europe one time.

The Crest is doing a 2 for 1 meal deal for members.  Their burgers are pretty good and only $10 anyway, so it's a cheap lunch for me and James.

Plus you can draw on the tablecloths!

James and I had dinner at The Meridian pub in Hurstville the other night.  We bumped into my friend Jason (aka Asian Jason, because this is The Shire and being Asian is still a thing around here), who told us to get the Beef Pho, so we did.

It was pretty tasty and only $7!  SEVEN DOLLARS!  All the food there is comparably cheap so I will definitely be back.  But I probably won't order these disappointing shredded pork rice paper rolls again:

On Mother's Day I made smoked salmon on Turkish for lunch.

For dinner I made this:

It's chicken topped with a creamy mushroom sauce from Julie Goodwin's book.  The orange roast vegetables (carrot, sweet potato and pumpkin) have a sour cream and horseradish sauce and walnuts on top.  The recipe for this is in a magazine somewhere in my house, but I couldn't be bothered looking for it so I just made it up.

The Bet-Dawg and I gave Mum the new Jodi Picoult book, a turtle keyring and a red mini teapot with a strainer in it.

Here's some Mother's Day/Grammar Nerd trivia for you:  Mother's Day has the apostrophe before the S because it's meant to be a special day for your own mother, but Fathers' Day has the apostrophe after the S, because it's just a day for fathers in general.  Mother's Day is a proper holiday invented by some lady who thought everyone should celebrate their mothers.  Father's Day is just what happened when Hallmark realised how much money they made off Mother's Day. 

Isn't learning fun?

My Shop Til You Drop arrived a couple of weeks ago.  They had this promising feature on hosiery:

I wasn't that impressed though, they didn't mention nearly enough kinds of insanely warm tights.  Perhaps Expect Cowgirls should feature tights one day.

I'm really not into this trend of metallic shoes that look as though they are made of cheap plastic and sold in the children's toys section of Kmart next to the tiaras.

Here are some mozzarella-stuffed giant meatballs Mum made.  The recipe is from Justine Schofield.  As you can see, we love our ex MasterChef contestants in this house.

Something else we love is SWEETS.  James and I finally went to Bay Vista in Brighton-le-Sands.  It was SO GOOD.  Oh em gee guys, you have to try it. 

This is an ice cream sundae of some kind:

I had Belgian Waffles with melted chocolate from the chocolate fountain.  This is weird but I don't think I had ever eaten Belgian Waffles before.  I can't imagine why not, because they are AMAZING.  And this was only about $9, pretty reasonable.

We had lunch a while ago from Guzman y Gomez.  On the left is James's burrito, on the right is my mini burrito.  As you can see, they are almost the same size, even though mine was a fair bit cheaper. 

I'll be honest: we didn't love them.  I think we will try Mad Mex next.

Here's a cupcake I made Amy for her birthday:

Naturally I had some too.

Does anyone think I should change the name to Expect Heiffers?

Get Loose

On Friday the finals of the competition were held. Since nobody from UOW made it to the finals, we didn't have to do anything!

James and I slept late, lazed around, then went back to The London for lunch and bumped in to the rest of out contingent there! This time my burger was something with tzatziki, it was so nice.

We watched the grand final debate, grabbed a quick bite at Maccas then got changed into our Circus finery for the final night party!

I was a ringmaster. Thanks Emily for loaning me the awesome jacket!*

Most of the UOW people dressed up, some as circus folk and Ryan, inexplicably, as a bee. With a naked bum.

Naturally the party was at Mooseheads. We were told the bar tab would be huge. We only got two drinks per person but I didn't mind buying my own because amazingly everything was $3.50!

I guess at Mooseheads it's still 1997 because they had a blue light disco. Personally I love stuff like that; I think it made my G&T look a bit cool.

I chatted to lots of people from different universities too.  It was nice to hang out with them in a normal social setting instead of just chatting between debates.  It was a really fun party, the perfect way to end our Canberra adventure.

Thanks ANU Easters organisers! And thanks UOW contingent for all being such good fun!