June 2023

currently in June

Currently-June 2023

7 Comments / Discovering NSW Australia, Family Life

Hey there friends and happy Wednesday! I am excited to be joining Jennifer from Overflowing with Thankfulness for the June edition of Currently. This is a great link-up where we get to reflect on some things that have been going on in our world. I always enjoy the prompts and this month we are going to be chatting about what we are currently loving, doing, trying, seeing and reading. LOVING I have been loving our warm winter days! A few weeks ago the cold temps hit and I was all like “Oh no here we go”. Then all of a sudden we started getting some really unusually warm days. According to this article from TimeOut, it looks like we might be in for a warm winter. Apparently, the nights will be very chilly but the days will be dry and warm. This makes me very happy! DOING I seem to have been doing a lot of eating! Whether it’s been going out for dinner or staying at home. I just seem to have been eating a lot. Sam bought a fancy high-tech smart scale with Bluetooth and a bunch of other features. He is right into fitness and going to the gym etc. Well, I made the mistake of going on it out of curiosity and the silly ‘smart’ scale tells me that I am 3 kilos heavier than my good old-fashioned scale with the dial thingy. Not weighing myself on that ever again! TRYING This probably sounds crazy but I have been trying to learn how to do the running man dance step. Hahaha, my version looks more like the clunking elephant dance step than the running man. But it’s something that I have always wanted to know how to do. I follow a YouTuber called Starface_k2 and she breaks all these fun dance steps down really slowly. But not quite slow enough for this old girl. I’m trying hard though! SEEING I saw some beautiful views of Sydney when I went out with my lovely friend a couple of weekends ago. We caught the ferry from Circular Quay to the zoo. We went to see the Wild Lights at Taronga Zoo, which were absolutely beautiful. And we made sure to take full advantage of the day by going to the zoo earlier to see some animals before the Wild Lights came on at around 5.30 pm. But sadly we hardly saw any animals at all!  They all seemed to be hiding away during the late afternoon except for these friendly alpacas. A sleepy Koala And kangaroos, yep if we want to see kangaroos we have to go to the zoo as they don’t roam around freely in the city or surrounding suburbs. There were also some big animals like this guy! READING Other than fun blogs, I haven’t been reading any books at the moment. I used to be a big reader and always seemed to have my nose in a book. When I was a kid it would take me over an hour to get to school. So I would read on the train and then I would keep on reading as I crossed a big park all the way to school. Then as an adult, I was always reading on my lunch break or at home. But now I don’t really have a lot of time and I tend to use my lunch breaks and the little spare time that I do have to work on my blog and read other blogs. And that brings us to the end of what I’m currently loving, doing, trying, seeing and reading in June. Thank you so much for stopping by today and I hope that you guys have a wonderful Wednesday!

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A Fun Weekend!

6 Comments / Hello Monday

Hello friends and Hello Monday! It’s time to welcome a brand new week and after such a fun and super busy weekend, I’m ready for it (sort of 😜). Friday night I felt pretty tired after such a busy week at work. But luckily I didn’t have to worry about making dinner because hello leftovers! And so I got onto doing some food prep to get things rolling for our Saturday night Cousin Connect dinner. I always look forward to our fun monthly get-togethers. And this time It was my turn to host! Here is the menu for the night While I was making the sauce for the chicken lasagna and beef lasagna. I was watching/listening to Masterchef on my Ipad for extra cooking inspiration. I love using Mutti passata because I think the tomato has the right balance of sweetness and acidity compared to other brands. Haha, I’ve really been influenced by how they talk on Masterchef. They are always commenting on the right balance of flavours! This Speedy Spaghetti spice from Gewürzhaus is amazing because it makes bolognese sauce taste so good. Now I use it all the time whenever I make spaghetti bolognese or beef lasagna. I seasoned the chicken lasagna with some sage and thyme just to give it a unique flavour that set it apart from the beef version. Then I let everything cool and popped the sauces in the fridge ready to make the lasagnas on Saturday. Relaxing with Friday Night Sweet  Treats Afterwards, it felt so good to finally sit down to watch 9-1-1 with a cup of tea, some cookies and hazelnut chocolate. Aaah so relaxing and a delicious Friday night treat! Saturday Dinner Prep On Saturday around midday, I assembled the lasagnas using my incredibly easy lasagna recipe where I don’t have to bother with making a bechamel sauce. Instead, I just mix ricotta cheese and cream and it turns out amazing. I roasted the chicken. Made the potato wedges. And a big salad. I set the table and everything was ready when everyone arrived at around 5.30 pm. We ate so much! Then we played a super animated, loud and very fun board game. Time for dessert! There were so many sweet treats. We had the apple crumble with ice cream that I had on the menu and my aunty also brought some fabulous-looking doughnuts. We’ve added another cool tradition to our family dinners: birthday cakes! My cousin brought a small birthday cake, which we’ve decided to do whenever someone in our family has a birthday during the month. And guess what? In June, we’re celebrating two birthdays! It was a fantastic night with lots of yummy food, fun games and a whole lot of belly laughs. Sunday Sunday I visited my aunt and uncle who I hadn’t seen since February. My aunty made a delicious lunch and I stayed and chatted with them for ages. She gave me some huge avocados from her tree to take home. I’m really looking forward to enjoying them when they are ripe enough to eat! It was such a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon. When I got home I had to take care of this mountain of folding. Haha, after such a fun weekend it was back to the reality of chores that I hadn’t had a chance to get onto. In the midst of getting everything ready for our awesome family dinner, I managed to keep up with the washing and hey, I figured I’d tackle the folding whenever I got the chance. It didn’t take too long as there were a lot of sheets and towels so I was done in no time. Sunday Night Steve had Sunday night off from work. He hasn’t been home on a Sunday night in two years! So it was really nice to hang out on the couch eating snacks and watching TV. But after a couple of episodes of Blue Bloods, I kept doing my old snooze and wake-up routine. So I’ll have to go back and rewatch the episode properly. I went to bed and I’m pretty sure that my head must have touched the pillow and that was it. I was out, so tired after a really fun and super busy weekend. I hope you guys had a great weekend! Thanks so much for stopping by to have a read and I hope to see you back here on Wednesday. Linking up with Holly and Sarah Sharing on          

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favourite highlights

Favourite Highlights

8 Comments / Friday Favourites

Hi there friends! I hope that you have all had a great week. It’s so good to be back again for Friday Favourites and share some favourite highlights from the week. 1 I kicked off the week on a high note, all motivated and enthusiastic about prepping my lunches for work. Here’s my colourful healthy salad for Monday. Then I gradually lost my drive and by Friday I was just throwing leftovers into a container. As you can see here it’s all a bit of this and that. Not very pretty but I guess it’s a great way to get rid of leftovers! 2 Leeks! I just love leeks!! They are so delicious in everything, especially chicken and leek pies. I made the pie filling on Tuesday and then popped it in the freezer. So next time I need a quick meal I can just thaw out the chicken and leek filling. Then use some frozen shortcrust pastry to make a pie. I always feel like I’m winning when I have at least one backup meal! 3 These individual apple pies were one of my favourite highlights from the week. We don’t have dessert regularly so this was a real treat for a Tuesday night. I was really glad that I had some in the freezer to satisfy my sweet craving. 4 Steve and I went out to our favourite Italian restaurant on Wednesday night and I had the most delicious spaghetti seafood marinara. Honestly, if I could have picked up my bowl and licked it after I finished the last bite, I would have. It was that amazing! Steve ordered the spaghetti seafood marinara with white sauce and he enjoyed his meal too (but I think mine was better 😋) For dessert, we had a yummy Ferrero calzone to share. We also had complimentary limoncello which was a really nice surprise. 5 Then Thursday was our mid-term staff dinner. A small group of us went to a local pub for a nice meal and lots of laughs. Not all the staff could make it and there were only about seven of us in total. A few of us got there earlier just by chance and so we ordered a pre-dinner cocktail. And this was my dinner, crispy barramundi with chips and salad. I have to tell you about a funny moment I had when I arrived at the pub. It was my second time there, ages after my first visit. I went to open the glass doors to what I thought was the entrance and the darn doors wouldn’t budge. So there I was pushing, pulling and rattling them, making a huge commotion. I suddenly realised that the people seated in the pub had turned around to look, I was so embarrassed! Luckily one of my co-workers was already inside and had witnessed the whole scene. So she came out and rescued me by guiding me to the automatic doors conveniently located just around the corner. We both burst out laughing and she kindly reassured me, that at the very least I hadn’t walked right into the doors nose first. 6 On the list of favourite highlights for the week is this new top that I bought last week from Witchery. I wore it on Thursday night and I really like the subtle gold shimmer in the fabric and gold buttons (not sure you can see it in the photo). I am surprised that I love this top so much because I don’t usually go for anything gold. 7 And to top off the end of a pretty good week with lots of favourite highlights. The weather has been unusually warm for winter. After complaining about the cold on Wednesday, the last couple of days have been so warm and it looks like next week the temps are going to be pretty good. Yay! And that’s a wrap for this week’s Friday favourites! I hope that you guys have the best weekend. Hooray for Friday! Linking up with Andrea and Erika

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