Breakfast: Baffi & Mo

We ventured out to Baffi & Mo at Redfern a few months ago, and it is only now that I am uploading the photos. I found about this place when i was reading the timeout review about Sydney's best places for breakfast. I am determined to try all off them, not great my for waist line...but i figure breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

So i got a regular mocha to start things off, only to discover that had a gianormous size which I obviously had to get. it was v. yummy. i forgot to find out what beans they used....but easily top 5 coffees i've had in Sydney. oh, maybe top 10. 

 

Whilst waiting for the food, we had a myriad of newspapers and magazines to occupy ourselves with although I opted to take funny pictures of Simon and our surroundings. 

If only Simon had a moustache in this photo, would have been perfect. 

Then the food came, oh boy it was good. I went for the Eggs Baffi with roasted mushrooms, feta, spinach and hollandais. Those mushrooms were so divine!! Simon had the one pan eggs, with bacon, chorizo, tomato, mushrooms and rocket.

 
 All in all, I think one of the best breakfast places I've been to in Sydney. Excellent food, good service and reasonable prices I thought. It's quite small and was busy when we went so be prepared to get in early or wait for a table.... below shot was taken in the 5 minutes the space next to us wasn't taken.

Anyways, the plug: 
Baffi & Mo
Address: 94 Redfern Street, Redfern NSW 2016 
Phone: 8065 3294‎

happy eating.

week 4: i heart faces photography - texture challenge

Happy Australia Day!

Anyways, this weeks challenge at i heart faces is to incorporate textures into photos. I've been doing a bit of playing around with textures, i think my favourite is putting an antique/rustic feel on photos. This photo is of my lovely friend where she was bridesmaid for my other lovely friend. She has such an infectious smile and genuinely is happy all the time, always nice to hang around for a pick me up. I actually touched up the photo a bit using Photoshop Elements and then I placed two textures on top, the first a thick paper one and then a rustic/antiquey one.

I've been totally slack with my blogging, i have a whole bunch of photos to look through, i think around 2000. where to find the time? obviously not at 12:37am. 

Anyways, hope your week is going well. Please have a look at the other lovely entrants at i heart faces. 

bye

mw

Tempe driving range

Interesting back drop for a driving range, watching the planes come in and surrounded by freight containers. Drone of the planes drown out the yells of the golfers frustration.

Queensland Summer Holiday: Port Douglas

Hi Ya'll,

I'm starting backwards. What I mean by that is that I'm going to tell you all about my relaxing summer holiday in Northern Queensland in reverse chronological order. We were in Northern Queensland for 6 glorious sun drenched days, well 5 glorious sun drenched days and 1 semi wet day. Some overall stats, coz i love stats:

• Hours to get to Port Douglas from Sydney: 9 hours (3 connecting flights!!)
• Km's Driven throughout the trip: 1,000
• Beaches visited: 3
• Waterfalls viewed and posed under: 2
• Mossie Bites Received: >15
• Hideous Tan Lines: a squillion
• Average Time we left the house each morning: Midday

Anyways, so this is my post about Port Douglas itself. Port Douglas is a lovely township with a vibrant cafe & restaurant population, dotted with resorts/hotels and golf courses; v. geared towards tourists. Port Douglas main attractions include

• 4 mile beach (which at this time of year is popular because it is one of the few beaches with netting that protect swimmers from box jellyfish which are prevelant during the wet season)
• The Look Out - beautiful view of 4 mile beach. Lots of tourists taking lovely pictures, some tourists pretending to take pictures. ha ha.

• Meridian Marina - 'gateway' to Great Barrier Reef, where  you catch the boats to go out to the reef

• Fishing off the jetty - we didn't catch anything though...i did see a fish in the water! that was a shame. I think we should have used live bait. It was great to see the boats come in and out though!

•   We stayed at the lovely Sea Temple at Port Douglas which is right on 4 mile beach. It was such a lovely place. For a few nights we stayed in the penthouse which had its own bbq and jacuzzi area on the roof. Splurging is good.

They have such a beautiful pool!! I don't jump very high do I ?

The view from our balcony

Eating out at the restaurants and cafes. We ate a few nice places including On the Inlet where you can see fish swimming about right underneath you. They have a huge Groper called George that comes around daily to get a feed. Unfortunately i did not take any pics of the meal we had there due to the rain. We also dined at Salsa a modern australian restaurant that has a nice selection of seafood and meats. When we went we had for entree different styles of salmon, mains, i had the barramundi and simon had the jambalya. I thought their decor was quite interesting, they had plates lining their roof. 

 
• I don't remember where we had brekkie that one morning, but we had difficulty finding breakfast places on the Sunday morning. but we did find one place where they served my mocha with an 'm', lucky for me my initials are the same upside down!

 
So that was Port Douglas, will post on Daintree, Great Barrier Reef and Atherton Tablelands later. 

Happy Hump Day!



mw

week 3: i heart faces photography - we are family

I've decided to join up for fun this group of photographers called i heart faces photography  that have different themes every week and you need to photograph that particular theme which is quite fun! This weeks theme is 'we are family' and there are quite a few gems by other photographers - quite cute and funny.

Anyways, my submission is the one that i took of my parents on NYE where i got them to make faces which is v. rare of them so this is quite a unique capture. I'm enjoying the low light lens and new tripod I got for Christmas.

check out i ♥ faces photography to check out the other photographers!

Secure much?

This is the fanciest butcher i've been to- victor churchill in woollharc. They had all these security cameras on a jar of quince. Must be good quince...

Try getting this red mark out of the carpet

Interesting carpet huh? Interesting decor in general - check out the post modern art work in the corner. we surmised that it is about fishing or space or something....not sure.

Where else but Queensland...

Just got back from Port Douglas about an hour north of Cairns and it was beautiful. Weather was great, activities were great and it was such a fun and relaxing time. 

Here's one of my favourite shots of the trip - will upload more once i get around to getting through all 1000 photos and my laundry...

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010!

It's been a hectic couple of days gone past, I've finally had some time to go through the photos I took of NYE. Let's start with a teaser, Sydney sure does know how to do a firework display... the new decade definately came in with a blue bang.

But i digress, let's recap from the NYE day. My sister offered to host NYE dinner at her house where we were treated to sashami, oysters, lobsters, salads and we managed to polish off a bottle of Brown Brothers Rose Zibibbo Champagne (yum) and 3 different types of sauvignon blanc wines. Picture of food below

Good photo of mum & dad enjoying the food

We managed to see some of the fireworks from my sisters balcony, but I didn't get any great shots - so heres smoke instead. Top photo is taken by Simon and is what you can usually see, bottom photo is the 9pm fireworks in action.

Then we decided to take some silly photos to kill time before the midnight photos using my new tripod and lens. Here are some of the funnier ones of everyone on the night, starting with mum & dad. Had to get them to pull some faces...

It was easier getting funnier poses out of Malinda & Lan. Check out his guns! Malinda was obviously not ready for the first photo so was a bit taken a back by the forward movement.

Simon and me were a bit more creative, not sure which one I like more, the vogue or the glasses...

Needed to get to Cahill Expressway by 11:50 to attend the midnight session. Thanks to Phil for giving us the tickets to the session. Thanks to the RTA for balloting the session so it wasn't so packed. We were in a posing mood, so this was us waiting for the bus. The black and white photo was taken whilst we were on the bus. Not sure why he was walking around with an empty case on his head - strange.

We started the walk from Hyde Park towards Cahill Expressway, we stopped off to pose at the giant chessboard. Atmosphere on the street was quite festive, with the road closures, people were just wandering aimlessly and generally having a good time.

It was a bit strange walking on the Cahill Expressway, since I've driven on it so many times - v. cool though. Took the opportunity to take some shots I would never be able to get -

When we got there, after a bit of a port-a-loo debacle (ahem) the crowd had definately formed. It was pretty packed by 11:45pm and we just muscled our way to the quasi front. Some people had definitely gotten into the spirity of the 'blue' theme. We waiting patiently for the countdown to begin, our view was pretty spectacular.

Unfortunately, the photos I took of the fireworks weren't great - mostly smoke. Next time I know to bring a tripod and leave the flash at home...but here are a few that are ok. The first set is supposed to be blurry ...really.

 

We had a really good view of the other participating city skyscrapers that had fireworks launched off their rooftops. The AMP building looked especially good with the blue I thought.

We didn't take many people photos during the 12 minute firework display, but here are 2:

The finale was quite spectacular, although I got mostly smoke - I thought the colours were really nice.

Aftermath of the fireworks below - people cleared out within 20 minutes. We hung around to take a few photos. Smoke cleared up within 10 minutes which was pretty quick.

Finally managed to get to the front when the spectators had vacated the prime spots so we took some happy snaps

We departed and we were swept in with the masses battling the public transport system to get home...

We took a scenic route and posed for a few pictures before arriving at our bus stop. Heres the view from the top of Bridge St

We moseyed on to Martin Place where it was quite packed, people were ready to flood the bars. We took the opportunity to pose on Pitt St - the road says 'US' .. ha ha.

This photo is to show you the wrist band we had to wear to get into the Cahill Expressway area and the top photo is of a bentley...i think.

We then walked to King St where I wanted to take a picture in the middle of the road. Apparantly I wouldn't hold still, and then came the traffic, and then I got scared because I heard the fire trucks - hence the 'running'

Anyways, we got home by 2am ish so it wasn't too bad. All in all, a memorable NYE for 2009. Here's hoping that the new decade proves to be better than the last. Hoping that your twenty ten is filled with happy and memorable adventures.

Bye!

mw