Christmas in July!

The good thing about living in Sydney is that we can celebrate Christmas twice every year. There's a thing called "Christmas in July" in Australia because our winter season falls from June to August.  The phrase "Christmas in July" is used by establishments in ads and it is quite true. It is during this time that we are all bundled up in thick coats, scarves, gloves and beanies. It is during this time that some areas in Australia experience the falling of snow. We got the whole winter thing going in a different time of the year so it's a good excuse to celebrate Christmas in July. A part of winter may seem gloomy but the thought of celebrating Christmas in the middle of year brings joy and warmth. 


I used to organize Christmas in July parties with friends but this year, the Husband and I were busy with other social events, I actually forgot about it. I only remembered two weeks ago during grocery shopping when a piece of ham caught my eye. I decided there and then to have our own little Christmas in July at home by cooking something festive and sinful for dinner.


Since I always cook ham during New Year's, and have also baked one when my Mum was here in April, I decided to make a Roast Pork Belly with a siding of chips and carrots.


You know what I love about Christmas in July? We get to celebrate it without having the fuss of gift giving.  It's Christmas with just the celebration of joy, togetherness, gratitude and of course, good food.

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Why Coffee & Tea Are Amazing For You

This is a cute and very useful infographic for all you lovers of coffee and tea.

Get health and fitness articles at Greatist.com

Sunshiny Weekend: Fun Times, Good Food with Great Friends

The past weekend blessed us with great weather and sunshine, company of friends, delicious food and fun moments filled with laughter.  

We started our weekend on Friday afternoon where we (finally) conquered North Strathfield, a suburb located in the Inner West of Sydney Metro.  It was a plan we've had for awhile. As some of you may know, the Husband and I live a partly-Korean lifestyle already, hence, we visit places where there's a Koreatown so we can buy Korean products and ingredients, eat at Korean restaurants and cafes, etc.  North Strathfield has a few Korean restaurants so we invited our friends to have dinner there on Friday. 

While we waited for the others, the Husband and I had coffee at Cheeky Chocolate, a fancy dessert cafe which offer pastries and cakes made by Adriano Zumbo. We shared a Salted Chocolate Mud Cake and two pieces of Salted Caramel Macarons.  Will share more about our Cheeky Chocolate experience in a separate post.

Dinner with friends was at the Bakehouse Garden Korean BBQ Restaurant. The food was delicious! The marinated meats were all juicy and flavourful. We loved their soups too.

We went back to the Cheeky Chocolate for dessert.  This time, the Husband and I only had tea while our friends had coffee and hot chocolate. We decided to try two pastries: some berry tart and a dome made of chocolate and hazelnut (I forgot the name).

Below is my Husband's best capture that night.  Jackie, Teena and I love to eat and cook. They also love to bake and while I'm not into baking much (I can bake but I'd rather buy cake), I've always been a happy recipient of their works of art, forever grateful that I get to sample their yummy concoctions straight from the oven. This photo says it all. It's like we're Masterchef judges because we were seriously tasting the cakes we ordered. You can even see Jack pointing her finger at the spoon she's about to put into her mouth because we're figuring out what's in the cake we were about to taste.

The following day, we were blessed with more sunshiny weather as we met with friends for lunch at Coco Cubano (Parramatta). We had a blast, especially the ladies--it actually felt like a ladies' day out for us wives and mommies. Lunch at Coco Cubano was a great start as we had mouthwatering food and the most refreshing Sangria.  The Husbands and kids were left to their own devices so we can enjoy "Magic Mike" in the cinema. It's really a ladies' movie.  It's funny, sexy and entertaining. I've never been to a strip club ever in my life so with this movie, I felt like I had a little experience of that.

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Meeting Annie. She's a friend of one of my high school friends who just came back from her Manila vacation. My high school friend sent me a care package (thanks Majo!) thru Annie. The nice thing about it was that we got to meet new friends here.  We're grateful for Annie and her family for bringing us Majo's gifts and even more grateful that Annie was generous enough to get to know us and invite us for dinner on Saturday.  

Sunday was just spent at home doing the usual weekend chores and resting up so we can face another busy week ahead.

So how was your weekend?

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Discovered Inspirations: Inner Peace

Inner peace can be one of the most elusive things but it is achievable. My journey to finding inner peace is not without struggle. It took me years--a lot of introspection, positivity, forgiving, acceptance, contentment, help from a life guru and support from loved ones--just to achieve peace that emanates from within.  The world is not perfect it will always throw in a few challenges here and there (to make life exciting) and I'm still capable of getting hurt (because I'm human and humans get tired sometimes) but with peace in my heart and spirit, I find it easier to get thru any adversity and say, "This too shall pass".  

Inner peace is one of the greatest gifts to loving yourself. :)

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Wishing you a productive week ahead!

Style Musings: Oversized Knitted Jumper

I'm glad that knitted jumpers made a comeback this year.  For the past few years, it wasn't as prevalent as it is now.  It's about time for fashion stores to make more of these as it's getting colder each year.  Some days it's not enough to wear just not-so-thick knitted shirts as the ones that give more warmth are these oversized and thick knitted jumpers. On days when it's cool but sunny, one can get away with just the jumper over two to three shirts underneath instead of a winter coat. They make one look bulky, shapeless even, but who cares? What's important is that one's warm during cold days. 

Yesterday, we caught the sunset at North Strathfield where we had dinner and coffee with friends. With just a camisole and thermal underneath my oversized knitted jumper, I stayed warm enough until we went home.

Pink Oversized Knitted Jumper: D.P Shop

Striped Skirt: Big W

Tights: Voodoo

Ankle Boots: Shoe Shed

Satchel: Valley Girl

Accessories: DKNY watch, The Bead Shop, Diva

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Discovering A New Place For Coffee

I cannot emphasize this enough: It's always wonderful to find a place that serves good coffee and good food by just following one's senses. While the Husband and I have it in our bones to plan for when we go out or travel, we always leave room for discovering unexpected things.  If you've been following this blog and have read a few of my travel experiences, you would know that we have a knack for research and planning before our travels but we also have this habit of abandoning plans and walk thru a path of uncertainty (we don't mind getting lost). This is also how we live a married life: a balance of planned directions and goals but having enough room to question, explore and discover.  

On the Saturday we had lunch with relatives, we woke up late, hence, no time to have a proper breakfast at home.  We dropped by the shops and made a quick errand.  We had less than 30 minutes but we needed a faux breakfast and coffee. We noticed a quiet and almost hidden cafe as we're about to leave the mall and quickly decided, "Let's coffee here!"  

We each had a cup of coffee, Cappuccino for me and a Latte for the Husband and just shared four slices of Fruit Toast. The brand of coffee they used was Caffe Molinari.  Two birds with one stone: we discovered a new place to have a meal and try out a different brand of coffee.

My coffee was well-made, warm and creamy, placed in cute cup painted with a graphic of blue jeans.  I loved the harmony of bitterness and sweetness that it brought to my tongue.  When the cup's finished, it didn't leave any bitter aftertaste. Just smooth and easy, the way it should be on a relaxing Saturday.


Ginny's Cafe and Restaurant
Shop 3062
Westpoint Shopping Centre
Blacktown NSW
Phone: 8678 8434

The Wonderful Things That Make Up A Weekend

Weekends always seem to be short especially when we're having fun. This precious break from work life  is a time when we always squeeze in everything we want to do and spend quality time with loved ones. I always face my Mondays with a more inspired heart knowing that the weekend that passed was well-spent.

Coffee Date with Mari at Charlie Lovett where we got to catch up and enjoy a good cup of coffee (for me) and chocolate (for her).  After which we had a walk along George Street from Cental to Townhall.

Hang out at our favourite bookstore, Kinokuniya.  This is where I sometimes meet up with the Husband after work.  I find it very productive to wait for each other at a bookstore because we get to read books.  One of the areas I frequent is the Branding/Marketing & Sales area.  While the Husband would always drop by the Manga section.  Below is a Manga entitled, GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) which we're currently watching the TV series of.

Friday night = date night!  In celebration of our 66th month, the Husband bought me Red Velvet Cupcakes (my current food obsession).  We sat ourselves at Chatime and bought some Pork Floss Buns too for an eat-anything-you-want afternoon tea.

Ended the night by watching "The Amazing Spiderman" (He was indeed amazing! Loved this Spiderman film). While everyone lined up for the new Batman movie, we enjoyed the Spiderman movie with a not-so-full cinema.  We're always late when it came to movies because we wait two to three weeks for the crowd to subside.  And since the theatre wasn't full, we scored a loveseat! 

Finding a most coveted item on sale.  This happened on Friday night too while window shopping at the mall. I've always wanted to own this DVD but always found it priced at AUD$25.99, but when I looked on Friday, it was on the specials list, on sale at AUD$9.99.  

Finding a place that serves good coffee and good food by just following our senses. We were on our way to lunch with relatives when we decided to have coffee first and found this unassuming, almost hidden cafe and restaurant in our suburb's mall. Saw the coffee brand they use and it wasn't familiar. We got interested and decided to try it. The coffee was well-made and tasted great as we partnered it with fruit toast.  I commended the staff before we left.  The Husband agreed that we will come back soon. I will share more about this cafe in a later post.

Lunch with relatives.  Our rendezvous with family is always celebrated with a lot of catching up and sumptuous, abundant food.  Right after lunch, a cup peppermint tea gave me some time to sit, be grateful and  soothe the fullness of my tummy.

Celebrating Christmas in July. It's winter time in Sydney and I've made it a tradition at home to celebrate Christmas in July with delicious (and sometimes sinful) food.  This year, I roasted a rolled pork belly.  It was my first time to roast pork and I'm glad it turned out okay.  

Winter Hibernation. I felt that the past weekend was coldest so far.  It could just be me though as I'm getting tired of winter by now.  After the excitement from all our weekend meet-ups with loved ones and our Christmas in July brouhaha, I bundled myself up in the warmest sweat clothes I own, wore my home boots and did nothing but sleep for the rest of weekend. The whole day of Sunday was spent in bed too.  It's as if this cold is consuming so much of me.  Thank God for the Husband who did all of the housework, he gave me a whole day break.

 How was your weekend?

The Dark Knight Rises Exhibition & Promo To Get Free Tickets

If you happen to pass by The Galeries (500 George Street, Sydney), a mini-Batman Exhibition is currently on-going to promote the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.  The film will be shown in theatres starting tomorrow.

For those who would like to avail free tickets, visit The Galeries and shop a minimum of AUD$70.00 and you will have a chance at getting double passes to the movie.  Details, terms and conditions can be found here. Promo runs from 10:00am of 16 July to 6:00pm 31 July, or when all stocks of the gift has been depleted (whichever comes first).

The exhibition showcases not more than 10 photos when I dropped by The Galeries.  Here are some photos  for your viewing pleasure.