Our married life together

Joel and Sarah's Engagement!

The lovely couple

It was a delight to be apart of Joel and Sarah's engagement. It was held at Joel's parents home, which is actually not too far from where we are building. They have such a lovely home, it has that family vibe, adorned with many photos of the kids growing up and little centre pieces.

The Mums and Auntys were stuck in the kitchen preparing all sorts of goodies, home-made sausage rolls, potato gems, spinach dip bread bowl, punch, cupcakes and so much more.

We were gathered together in the lounge room, some standing and some sitting on the floor while Sarah's brother acting as the MC lead the speeches. Both the fathers of Sarah and Joel made speeches that would make you want to cry, expressing the many qualities of Joel and Sarah and how proud they were, mushy much?

To lighten the mood, we filled out a questionaire about Sarah to get to know her a little better, and we had quite a few laughs hearing some of the answers. I pretended I didn't know who Wayne was when he was shouting some shocking answers.................boys will be boys.

The lovely couple will be getting married in July. We're so happy for them!

Gaz is leaving us!

We were visited by Gaz on Thursday and we experimented on him with more pizza-making. We all made our own pizza's, Wayne and Gaz made their version of a supreme and I made a chicken tandoori topping with mint sauce...best ever!
Gaz told us that he's off to some new adventures, he's off to work as a chef in Phillip Island then there's an opportunity for him to be an intern at a Canadian church in September.
We wish him all the best!!!

There's something amazing about having our friends over, it's so much fun. We love the food, the company, the awesome chats. Such a blessing.

Recent Obsession

Which is why we probably both have gained unnecessary weight!!!! But it's amazing. Anyway if you ever come over, will have a supply of these....but probably not for long.

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.