Some of our favourite photos

Some of our favourite shots! Thanks to Dreaming Tree for his amazing photography.

Running bride!

Did you say husband and wife? Farrah laughs out loud.

BSF is back!

Last year I became involved in one of the most rewarding bible studies. It's called Bible Study Fellowship, it's a world-wide organisation that has been around for a while.

It has been such a spiritual uplift for me to be able to focus on the word of God. The journey has been great and of course it will continue.

BSF is structured and organised and that's what I like about it, it's also non denominational.
The main points are layed out and I suppose we are given the chance to explore further.


There are both young men and women and normally the singles are separatd from the married couples but now they are merged. Pretty exciting! because I've made lovely friends in the singles group and I didn't want to part ways with them going to the married group.

Every year is a different study, it's actually a cycle of 8 years. So if you've been going to BSF for 8 years then you've most likely finished all their studies. Last year we did the life of moses which was amazing and this year we are doing the Gospel of John, which I find the most facinating of all gospels I'm really looking forward to it.

We get given notes and of course questions that we must answer then once a week you have a discussion group to go over questions and a lecture to tie it all up. Once a month we have 'fellowship' which is like a social event, we catch up and talk about what we've been learning, the challenges and other things.

I love the friendships I've made, the girls in my group are fabulous and my previous team leaders have been amazing. I was so close to quitting during our wedding planning because I was so stressed but I didn't because the support I received from BSF was tremendous and I'm ever so grateful.

Easiest meal ever - Chicken creamy pasta + avacado

Sometimes when I go to restaurants/take away shops and I order a creamy pasta I always get full when I have just one bite. They pack the creamy pasta with butter, and it tastes so oily that it just makes me feel sick.

So this is our version of lite-creamy pasta that doesn't make you feel sick and it doesn't fill you up like you've eaten a giant cow. Since neither of us are expert cooks and are quite beginners, we decided to cook this the other night because it's incredibly simple.

Now this is one of those recipes where I don't really use measurements as such, I just estimate! so with the recipe below I'm trying my best to figure out how much I actually use.

For 2 people & possibly some left overs:

1 piece of chicken thigh or fillet (generous sizes otherwise make it 2 pieces)

Half an avacado

Half an Onion

1 Clove of Garlic

Pura lite - thick cream (full tub 300ml)

1 table spoon of thinly chopped parsely

White/Black pepper & Salt to season

Olive oil

Penne Pasta

Heat a medium sized saucepan over medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and cook the onion, stirring, for 1-2 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until it starts to smell amazing.

In the mean time, prepare the penne pasta and add to boiling water in a large saucepan.

Add the chicken stirring occasionally to the onion. I like to put the cover of the saucepan now so that the chicken cooks through really well.

When the natural juices of the chicken dry up, add the parcely and let it cook for a few seconds then add the avacado and cream. Stir and season and let it simmer for a while, but not long enough to melt the avacado! Also the sauce isn't supposed to be too thick.

Add the penne pasta to the sauce and you've just made a simple & YUM dish if you love chicken and avacado...mmm best combo ever!

low key V-day

Sunday morning I saw Wayne sneak out of bed, run to the garage where he was hiding these gorgeous flowers, come back and say SURPRISE FARRAH. Sorry, not the clearest photo!

Aww I was mushed and to top it off he cooked me a hearty brekky (my favourite). We didn't have anything planned during the day because we already had lunch at the Stones the day before so we actually hung out with my dad. He came over for lunch and we went and took him to see our house, he was excited for us.


Later in the evening we went to see the movie Invictus in Gold class and we had a fabulous time. We've never been to Gold class, so it was an interesting experience. The seats are so comfy, you can lie down and order hot food or any drink you want.

Wayne's excited face.

Ah, chillaaaax.

Waynie & Rahrah

Lunch @ the Stones

We had a packed full weekend!

It started of with a lovely lunch at the Stones of the Yarra Valley. Sounds familiar? well it's the place where we got married. It's a beautiful winery accompanied by a stone chapel. They serve lunches on the weekend and we had to give it a try! it was a bit of an early celebration of Valentines day.

Their Chef brings Middle Eastern flavours to the table with a bit of a Modern Australian twist.

The food was nice but we expected more, we didn't take that many pictures but here are a few of the meals.

The platter for the entre was probably the best:

Stones Antipasti Platter - Pomegranate dressed oysters, pickled local vegetables, chicken terrine, rocket and macadamia pesto, Grovedale volos olives

Mains:

I had the Seared flat iron steak with a red onion marmalade and skordalia. It was lovely, the iron steak has a strong flavour, so if you've never had it before be careful! I'm not a fan of strong meaty flavours. Luckily the skordalia and onion marmalade were a great compliment.

Wayne had Lamb noisette with organic zucchini flowers, pine nuts and currants. He thought it was a bit dull but still enjoyed the lamb, it was tender and melted in the mouth.

We later visited friends of ours who live near by who are off to Singapore next week, so it was good to say hi. When we got home we felt so sick from all the food we ate, we were so full! but then all of a sudden an hour later we managed to fit dinner in...we seriously need to focus on not eating too much.

We then gate crashed a movie night at friends place, we watched the traitor. Interesting movie about terrorists and bombs, showing 2 sides of islams the good and the bad. Basically, there's good people and there's bad people.

Next blog is part 2 of the weekend & it's Valentines day :)

Fiiine I'll get an iPhone

OK so I thought I really needed an upgrade, but it was hard to let go of my Nokia. I've been using Nokia since grade 6, different phones of course but it's going to be weird using another brand.

So far the iPhone has been fun to use, I had to invest in one because apps are so handy and most companies are tailoring their apps to iPhone. Poor Wayne is stuck with Samsung Omnia which he recently bought just before our honeymoon but all the exciting gadgets attached to it aren't working so it was kinda pointless for him to buy it in the first place.

Now that I have an iPhone. everything I buy has to be apple-related. I was a bit disappointed when I tried to make one of my songs into a ringtone and it came up with an alert along the lines of 'You must have purchased this song from iTunes in order to make it a ringtone'...what's up with that?

hello iPhone, hello digital world. Suddenly I don't feel so behind anymore...

House update!

Lounge room

Guest Room 1

Garage - perfect fit for our Micra lol

Lounge area looking in from the outside - big open space

Guest Room 2

Entrance to lounge Area

So excited to show you guys the update on our house. We're over the moon and so happy, we feel so blessed that this will be our first home.

Now that the frames are up, we can't describe how cool it was to be able to see the rooms planned out and have an idea of how the house will look like. Wayne's design of the house is using the land to its fullest potential. At one stage we were standing where our dining room table will be and realised that we have a gorgeous view of the town!

We now need to start thinking about kitchens and bathrooms and shop around for some ideas. Any recs would be handy!

Wayne & Farrah

Queen Victoria Market - at night!

Queen Vic Market is great, lots of food, lots of little shops but the best part is that during the summer it opens at nights every Wednesday.

I remember a while ago one of my friends from high school took me there with her family, and yesterday I had a free night because Wayne was hanging out with the boys. So I decided to go again with my gorgeous friend Kate.

To wrap it up, there's PLENTY of international food from greek to african to spanish to middle eastern to asian to indian...it's the most amazing thing ever. I wish I could stay there all night to try all the food. There's also local artists and designers that showcase their work, musicians, and a whole lot of good atmosphere. I couldn't believe the amount of people were there, even though there was a huge talk up of a big storm coming but nothing happened so I'm glad we went.

So many people, so much food.

Greek food! yum

Shopping time!

Cute scrabble piece turned into a pin.

So many retro tshirts. Bought one for Wayne (see below)

Cutest shop, they sell tutu's and ballerina dresses

A few clips for the hair (of course polka dots) and 2 rings, the owl and the babushka doll pattern.

Cutest headband ever!

Tshirt for Wayne - Star Wars =P

African band I think, they were great.

Farrah xo

Bran Nue Dae

Image: Roadshow Films.

We went and saw Bran Nue Dae, the new Australian movie. We weren't sure what to expect, we really didn't like the movie 'Australia' and was hoping it wasn't going to be a repeat.

Nevertheless, we like to support aussie films and we went to see it anyway hoping for the best.

Bran Nue Dae got us both hooked from the first scene. We had no idea there was going to be singing and dancing but we loved it. Plus it's always great to see a bit of Australia's indigenous culture. It was fabulous! it's a feel-good movie with lots of cheesy aussie jokes, highly recommend you see it.

Love it!

We love our collage frame. Thanks to Joyce and Andrew for the frame. We mixed it up a bit and put some pro photos and silly ones as well.

Still haven't received our full wedding album yet, Farrah is dying slowly on the inside, she wants them so bad.

Couldn't help but give you another sneak peak from the slideshow we have... we took a picture of a picture it's the best we could do.

Working Class Man

So I've finally started my job! Last week they flew me up to Brisbane HQ with other grads from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane for induction. It was great to get to know the other grads and learn more about the company.

This job is a real blessing, the place is so great to work for so the people are great I realy couldn't ask for a better place to start my career.

While I was in Brisbane I missed Farrah alot it was really the first time that we have been apart since we got married. I don't think I would like travel all the time as I would miss her too much, infact one of the many reasons I went away from music as a career is the amount of travelling involved and the hours you have to work.

Looking forward to tell you guys more about my work adventures.

Wayne

Thank you

I spent most of Saturday writing the Thank You cards to all our wedding guests. It was lots of fun writing little personal notes to everyone. It certainly makes it a lot more special when it's personalised.

We are so very blessed by the generous gifts we have been given from friends and family. It's amazing how much support we have. We hope we can be the same for each and every one of them.

And since we are on the subject of being grateful. This week I have received some bad news all around, from people who are seriously ill and some who won't live for long which has made me realise something. I've been in a really complaining mood in the last 2 weeks, my headache and teeth may have had something to do with it but not an excuse. My issues are no where near as what some of these people are going through, but it's so easy to be carried away and instead be grateful for what I have.

So Thank You God for the following:

- Food

- Clothes & plenty of shoes :P

- Home

- Clean water

- Work

- My family & friends

- Health

- Best husband in the world

- A working car

- My skills

- My experiences in life

- Travels

- The ability to have an education

- Speaking 2 languages + semi 3rd

- My phone which I probably rely on way too much

- Conveniently living right near the station and the shopping centre (possibly a bad thing)

- Microwave Popcorn - it's genious

- Television (only sometimes)

- Internet - because it's partially how I met Wayne & of course it's how I keep in touch with all of you BUT please control my online shopping habits.

- Ice cream (we didn't have a lot of it in Iraq so now I appreciate it more than ever)

- Being safe

- Simply that I am alive & that I can have the opportunity to be here.

and the list goes on....thank you & thank you & thank you

xo

Farrah

Can't wait for our photos...argh

Our professional photos have finally arrived, well semi-arrived. We have the slideshow but we're still waiting on the CD with all the pics. Our poor photographer took about 1400 photos and has been colour correcting them, and no doubt photoshopping all those flies. They were taken by the wonderful John from Dreaming Tree. So talented and 100% passionate about what he does.

He's already been hired out by some of our friends who are getting married soon.



Brides, please check out his incredible work here



I promise I'll put the professional pics up as soon as we get them.

Dumplings

Filling up my time while Wayne is away has continued on. Kate stayed over last night and we had a lovely catch up. Kate and I have known eachother for a couple of years, we met at church when she was visiting for the first time and I was the first to chat with her. Now she's a regular attender and a Youth leader which is awesome and an amazing blessing. So nice to see her grow and to see her spiritual journey flourish.

To summarise- we spent the night talking, watching John Travolta, making smoothies and more talking...and talking :) I love talking :P AND I learnt much about Lily, Kate's kitten, isn't she adorable???? Aw look at those innocent eyes.

Here's our smoothie in the making process:

Today I wanted to take Kate to have some dumplings at Shanghai Village which is usually the place I go to for work lunches. We had fried vegetarian dumplings and steamed beef dumplings and some noodles, so yummy! I hope I made Kate addicted to them.

So much fun hanging out with kate the last 2 days =)

Tonight Wayne comes back and tomorrow we are picking up our professional wedding photos!!! so excited.

x

Farrah

Girly times

It's the perfect opportunity to spend quality time with the girls since Wayne isn't around. Lovely Dana came over last night for a nice chillaxing dinner. We watched Sydney White movie, a romantic-comedy based on the Snow White cartoon. It's cute, possibly suited for 14 year olds not 20-somethings but whatever :P
Anyway, for some reason the movie has obviously inspired us to take a photo of dana biting me as a vampire? I think by that stage the sugar from the pepsi started to kick in.

Then of course it was time for So you think you can dance? More crying than ever. Every story is a tradegy. But that didn't stop Dana and I from dancing around the room pretending to know the choreography of matt.

I love girly nights. Tonight it's with kate, bring it on!

xx
Farrah

Miss you!

Wayne is off to brissy for his work induction and since spending so much time together in the last 50 days it's crazy how much I've grown used to having him around.
Before we were married I spent a lot of time alone doing stuff and I've already forgotten how to do that! Slowly I'll get back into reading and photoshopping but for now I'm in a lot of pain from what seems to be an infected wisdom tooth but I'll find out what the deal is tomorrow at the dentist. As a kid I remember getting excited learning about 'Wisdom' teeth, oh just the idea of being wiser and older but now I've decided that they suck.

Hurry up and come back Wayne.

xx
Farrah