Running the race

Everyone has a goal, right? Well here's a little snippet of mine.

Marco Polo

I am working as a voice over artist for the Marco Polo Project - an initiative to assist in language exchange between Oz and the West. It's worthy, wordy, and beneficial to our many friends who seek to learn a language, or gain valuable insight into people's literary contributions from other countries as users are encouraged to translate featured articles.
Interested in finding out more about this not for profit project?
www.marcopoloproject.org

We had our first production meeting and lesson 101 in Mandarin. Upon arriving I was presented with this; a very fitting 'door of opportunity' ..and what a door!

Turn off the lights

Sunday lunch was delicious, although not a big lunch we shared lots of little Vietnamese hawker style dishes, my fav was the porkbelly sliders - wholly molly they were incredible but agreed, not very hawker like.
So lets recap, Saturday nights dinner was really impressive, Sunday breaky with just us was as lovely as ever, Sunday lunch with porkbelly was delish and Michael's nonnas homemade pasta for dinner - win win win.

There was one other bonus, the Vietnamese restaurant had great lights - I love design!!

Lots of words

Today's coffee and paper has the pleasure of being joined by a script. How great is that? Plenty to read and pour myself over. This script is for a shoot on Tuesday. It's a good morning and I haven't even gotten to the design guide yet!

Pretty please!

Dinner tonight was just a little bit on the fabulous side. The tuna was just delicious.

Christmas love

Our pretty Christmas tree went up on the first of December! Decorated with red bowes, three different styles of Christmas flowers and red and gold balls.
When we returned home from dinner this evening we just sat and admired our pretty tree, it was a lovely moment.
One more thing, dinner was AMAZING!

Sanity

My favorite read in the whole wide world. Volume 1 & 2.
Yes, they are cook books and yes I read them just as you read novels.

Peek a boo

Sneaky peeky

A quick snap of a small part of our new kitchen which is currently under development.

I am in total love, I just sit in it, stare and admire. Our kitchen really reflects on our personalities, who we are and how we feel about life. We have covered every aspect together and made our decisions with ease.
Michael has really impressed me with his design skills, I'm a dreamer and have a glamorous, whimsical and flamboyant side (I'm also stubborn, surprise, surprise). Michael has been able to share my vision and turn my ideas into something that is practical and useable without loosing site of my initial vision. He really has done a magnificent job. I must admit, my ideas haven't always been the most practical!

I love to cook, emphasis on bake, and my kitchen has been designed and built around me.
In this picture my sink and tap are just sitting in place, we are about two weeks off installation of these and a sample piece of our granite is just to the side, although final product will be twice the thickness and unpolished. I want everything to be natural. Cupboards are mostly installed and handles are on.

Obsessed with my obsession. Kitchen design.

Retail therapy of the fresh kind

One of the things that I love most about the area I live in is that it's only a very short walk to my local shopping strip.
I've mentioned previously that I go to my local bakery cafe in the mornings, my morning coffee spot is located on the same strip.

This morning I walked around my local golf course and stopped by to do some shopping for me and my Yiayia, of course I stopped for a coffee along the way. My green grocer is family owned and it's full of fresh produce, juices and has a great selection of continental deli items. I must admit, for my deli items I go to the amazing deli a few doors down. It's nothing short of a luxury and again the Italian family that own it are beautiful people.

I'm not a fan of shopping centers and prefer to street shop.

Here's to a lovely morning.

Under the Christmas tree

Have to stop and have a coffee by the Christmas trees.
Reminds me of my last trip to Hong Kong, we travelled at Christmas time and our hotel was decorated with the most elaborate of Christmas decorations. Even the air was scented with a signature Christmas scent. Each night before bed we would sit by the most beautiful Christmas tree and drink hot chocolate. Straight out of a movie I tell you.

A door of inspiration

I'm always occupying my time with design, I loose track of entire days sometimes.

I have found this door, a home in Melbourne, a family of four. To me, this door looks like home and happiness.

Inspiration for the day, thank-you very much.

Petite France

On the border of Switzerland and Germany is Colmar. To me, Colmar looks to be magical and romantic. I've researched for a thousand hours and have decided that I will go here. Another place to add to our European vacation.

Hello Wang!

Vera Wang's upcoming bridal collection can finally be viewed in its entirety at Crown Towers in Melbourne.
About time Wang!

Pretty Christmas

No margaritas today

While some serious magic is happening inside my almost kitchen, I am sitting outside inspecting my beautiful lemon tree. First thing that is going to happen in my new kitchen, after the champagne, is the mumma of all lemon cakes.
I already have the recipe stashed and I even have my eye on a few lemons that might be just about perfect by cake o'clock.

Our time

Sunday morning means one thing, Breaky out with just us.
Time to catch up on the weeks news, read Lifestyle, search for design and do one of the things we are really really good at - be together.

Got ink?

Someone's got some new ink! Fresh from the ink shop and another million hours to go. He said it hurt, a lot!

Afternoon delight

Best way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Chill out beachside, fav reads, best coffee. I had some delish berry and white chocolate cake to!

Mentor maybe?

Looky what I found in the Saturday paper - best breaky and coffee reading - and yes, breaky was out.

Catriona Rowntree is an Aussie TV presenter and I happen to think she is fabulous.
As a presenter myself I take much pleasure in watching Catriona, I can't help but study her every move and always find myself thinking 'whatta lady, so smart, so honest, I want to be just like her, but me'.

If I could buddy up and mentor with anyone I'd choose her.
Ahh inspiration, love it.

Under the vines

Krasi in the Greek language means wine. Growing up my grandparents always had a grape vine growing and it was about this time of year that the vines would start to adorn big, luscious, green leaves and purple grapes.
We'd do two things with the grapes; make krasi by hand and eat them. I remember each bunch of grapes weighing around 2kg each! That's a lot of wine!
Last year, or possibly the year before, my Yiayia (grandmother) decided it was time to cut down the grape vine.

I remember how much of a simple pleasure sitting under the grape vines on a hot summer afternoon was, these vines are part of almost all of my childhood memories.
I remember my grandfather playing his guitar and singing to Greek music under the vines, I also recall racing snails under the shade of the vines when I was 3 years old, my grandfather and I built a small wooden seat under those vines and my Yiayia would serve us lunch under the shade. I could go on and on.

Over the past few months I've had my eye on one corner of the pre existing grape vine and guess what - it's flourished, the leaves are beautiful, bright and luscious AND I think we might have some grapes soon!

I'm relying on this one little corner to provide me with what might be my last opportunity to drink krasi made from my own vine.

After the fact

I have a morning ritual that marks the beginning of my day and has done so for at least the past five years.
Morning coffee, out.
Paper a must.
Same table as always.
I can't cope with not sitting at MY table!

The cafe I go to is also a great little Italian bakery and is only a short walk from my parents home and luckily
only around the corner from my very own new home. Its really nothing spectacular
but they know my name and order and leave me in peace to read my paper! I always feel so far away when I'm sitting here drinking coffee and scoffing almond macaroons.

And yes, I've decided to post after the fact. Cheeky, I know.

Two of my four favorite things

Here are two out of four of my favorite things.

1. My beautiful Staffordshire is just as much of a foodie as his mumma. He's my happiness.

2. Michael - simply put is my greatest love.

This is us doing what we do best - sunday morning breakfast, out.

A tiny cup of coffee & alotta inspiration

We can't always be as driven and motivated as what we'd like to be but having friends who are always helps..so does big trees..coffee..good food..amazing kitchens.

Update-Explanation-Lies-HELLO!

There must be some sort of technical issue, I mean seriously, why hasn't the one available episode of my new series hit one million views on YouTube yet? [hashtag] whatajoke.

Just joking! Although, I'm not joking about how well I think the one available episode of Welcome to Korean Food is doing. With only a puny amount of press and no names to herd masses of attention our Korean cooking series is doing pretty well on it's own two feet (in my head I picture feet, so what) with a current count of 4,547 YouTube views and that number is increasing daily.

Now, we have been really slow in releasing episodes, would you believe me if I told you that episode two had no tracking number and got lost in the post?

Uh, I lie, we actually have episode two almost ready for release along with friendly little competition prizes to sweeten the deal and it shouldn't be too long before all that jazz.

Furthermore, we have another fab episode in pre-production that is being supported by a huge-global-brand [hashtag] omg. We will be filming this mega episode in September and will strive to get our butts into gear and deliver via express post, registered of course.

Things are happening, YouTube is responding and one of these days this little baby will be cruising television screens.

In case you haven't noticed, I don't do twitter.

TTFN.

Airwaves

Yesterday I achieved a little milestone - my first radio interview!

Jason and Kayne from 'The Asian Pop Experiment'  on Joy FM were so lovely, however, despite their efforts to calm my nerves I just couldn't shake them!
I think that you can hear the nerves in my voice at the beginning of the interview but luckily toward the end I get more comfortable.

All in all radio interviews aren't really that bad, I think now that I've done one I will be a lot more confident and prepared for the next - should there be any!

Welcome to Korean Food

The time has finally arrived where I can announce that the very first episode of Welcome to Korean Food is available for your viewing pleasure.

Here's the lo' down, Welcome to Korean Food is a series that explores Korean culture through the universal language of food! So, that means cool facts and information about the Korean culture paired with delicious recipes (which we teach you how to make, of course)! Only problem is.. I get to eat at the end of each episode and you don't.. that is until you get into your own kitchen and cook the recipes you've seen on the show!

"Welcome to Korean Food", friends, I hope you enjoy!

Beach Babe

I recently did a small shoot at Black Rock in Melbourne and for those who know me well - or have read previous blog posts - you'd know that I don't really like photographic shoots!

Mackintosh Casting in Melbourne posted a Facebook status announcing that they were casting beach girls for a BIG M commercial and that's what led me to do the photo shoot. You see, after reading the casting brief and examining my headshot I decided that my headshot didn't portray me as the brief requested. I knew deep down that I could be the beach gal they were looking for but feared they wouldn't see or know that because my headshot didn't scream it ... so off I went to Black Rock with my pal Jasmine Mosedale (photographer) and we rocked 'beach'.

Did I get an audition - no - but it was certainly worth doing the shoot because I got one photograph that I actually really like. You never know, there's always the possibility that the ladies at Mackintosh sat up and thought "oh wow, how proactive" .. but then again, maybe not.

Just for the record, I am proactive and I love it!

Tummy Rumbles

I've been working on a brand new project and although I can't say tooo much about it at this stage I can safely blurt the following information; first season, content will introduce you to something new, episodes will leave your tummy rumbling... and that I am of course hosting the show with a handsome chap named Aiden. I am also producing - lucky for me I like hats because I'm wearing two.

Stay tuned for a teaser including footage from the first episode. Once that has been released I will be more than happy to brag away and fill you in on all the goss.