Love Kitchen By Mike

84 Dunning Ave, Rosebery.Open Mon-Sat 7am-6pm; Sun 8am-5pm 

So I'm never one for super fancy restaurants. There's always a bit of pomposity to those places that make me feel a bit uncomfortable but I do love really good, fresh food. 'Kitchen By Mike' is owned by the ex chef from 'Rockpool'. Situated in an industrial suburb known for outlet stores, parking is plentiful. It's pretty much a wide open warehouse space with a cafeteria on one side, a funky furniture/homeware store on the other.

Thanks Mike!

Blink and you'd miss it.

The food is served buffet style and the portions are perfect for a small person like me. The menu changes daily and everything is really fresh and delicious. I also love the glass bottles that the freshly squeezed juices come in! I'm putting this place on the high rotation list.

Roast pork, roast pumpkin and
corn with chilli salt.

Ice Coffee

The furniture is lovely to look at but are obvious investment pieces (in other words, expensive). 

What a massive space!

Wool cacti - how ironic.

$1500 bike, so pretty.

Gigantic wooden wombat.

Inspiration for my future house.

Painted wooden boxes.

That's alotta herb!

You might have heard it through the grapevine that had I decided to give gardening another shot. A few weeks after the initial pain of carrying a big 15kg bag of soil 1km home from Bunnings on my shoulder in the heat of the day, oh wait...that was my boyfriend. Well I have to say that his blood, sweat and tears were worth it. Look at these babies grow! 

From zero...

To hero!

All they needed was a bit of sunshine and the fresh water I could collect from my shower when I'm waiting for it to warm up. Captain planet would be proud.

Lychee Mint Frappe

The aforementioned herb garden is going splendidly. I'm watching my mint plant grow with the loving eyes of a mother. Albeit a cannibalistic one. Maybe it's more like the witch fattening up Hansel and Gretel. 

My favourite thing to do with mint is to whizz it with some ice and canned lychees for a fresh summer drink. 

Here's the ridiculously simple recipe:

Makes 1 large drink.

1. Place 6 lychees with 125ml of the syrup from the can in a blender.

2. Add 15 large mint leaves. 
3. Add 1 tablespoon of lime juice (optional).
4. Add 10 ice cubes.
5. Blend until smooth and pour in chilled glasses.
6. You could add vodka for a fun night out too. 

Coloured Bow Dress

I was walking around Cabramatta last week and this bright, fun print caught my eye. At $2 per metre I couldn't resist buying two metres not yet knowing what to do with it. 

For the whole week I had it draped on my mannequin staring at it, waiting for inspiration to hit me. What do you want to be? A skirt, a dress, a top. Bows, pleats, cut-outs? I found this dress on modcloth I thought would be pretty, especially if I used a contrast material for the bow. And hence a project was born. 

Since the last dress I made which had a very annoying invisible zip which I still struggle with, this one has an elastic waistband. The material is a bit sheer so lining was a must. I used the turquoise fabric just to break up the pattern a bit and the asymmetrical hemline I threw in just for some extra flow.

Top Three Tips:
1. Stretch out the elastic when sewing an inelastic fabric to it so you get that nice stretch at the waist.
2. Make sure you use a very long piece of fabric for a bow (mine was 3 metres). The knot takes up a lot of fabric.
3. Fold material in half and cut out your shapes from the midline. This will ensure complete symmetry.

This dress makes me want to go on a romantic row boat ride a la 'The Notebook'. Preferably with Ryan Gosling. 

Love My Lunch Box

OK so it's actually my sister's lunch box I nicked from her after she moved to the UK but I was the one that gave it to her for Christmas.

It's a Black+Blum Box Appetit Lunch Box. Sounds pretty awesome already. Its got a lot of design in one small package. A lid that turns into a sauce container once flipped over and little watertight sauce containers, perfect for my sashimi salads! 

Just looking at my salad in this new setting has given me a whole new enthusiasm for lunch. Did I pay $32 for a lunch box, yes I did. And it is pretty freakin' awesome.

You too can pick up some lunch time cred from Peter's of Kensington or Hart+Heim.

Have A Heart!

It's a bit late for Valentine's day, but when I saw this Topshop dress, it perked my sewing curiosity and I wondered if my self taught skills would stretch far enough to include cut outs in dresses. 

Well there's no time like the present to give it a go! As usual I started out with the familiar and got the skirt organised. Most of my time was spent on the top. I made a heart template out of paper just to make sure I got the dimensions right and based the dress dimensions on one of my old dresses.

I had to sew in some padding as this dress clearly isn't compatible with a bra. The front has four layers of fabric to cover the padding. Other tricky bits were the zip and the front armpit area. I had to put some darts in as the front armpit drooped a bit. 


It's my first attempt at a lined dress and without a pattern too. It took me a weekend to complete it. Now to find somewhere romantic to wear it.

Friday Feature Feline - Maru

The Japanese have all the cute cats, it's just unfair. But here is another one - Maru. The borderline obese, box loving boy who is a youtube phenomenon for this clip:

There are so many good things in the clip. It's a LOL each time I watch it. And that would have been at least 50 times.

Something old, something new

My mum is a hobby hoarder. She's not bad enough to qualify for the aptly named show 'Hoarders' but she does like to keep things for a minimum of 20 years before she even considers throwing it out. 

The other day she gave me this playsuit she had bought a decade ago which is an unfinished factory second. It was a simple matter of putting in some buttonholes/buttons and a nice collar. Bob's your uncle - new playsuit.

From this...

...to this!

I also added a triple collar (I stole the idea from an old Dahlia playsuit I liked). I made a paper template of the three pieces in the collar just to make sure all the pieces fit well together. It's also kind of cool because its actually got shorts with an overlying skirt. Perfect for bike riding, to protect one's modesty. Thanks mum!

Handy Hints for Herb Growing

Sometime last year I thought, wow, wouldn't it be great to have fresh herbs readily available? It'd be so much cheaper and fresher than going out an buying it from the supermarket and all it takes is a bit of watering each day. I started off with a bit of rosemary and this is the end result:

A sad sight, I know.

Well, this year it's going to be different. I expanded the garden a bit to try to get myself motivated and vow to water it everyday as opposed to whenever I remember.

I got some herb specific soil from Bunnings for $10 and mint, rosemary, basil plants of relatively reasonable size so they'd more established and hopefully less fragile. Doing a bit of research helps and here are some useful tips I found:

 Put herbs somewhere sunny with about 6 hours of sunlight (but not too hot).

Easiest herbs to grow in pots are mint, rosemary, sage and basil.

Space out plants like rosemary and mint as they will expand a bit. Plus basil likes extra room for better circulation.

Mint and chives go best in a self watering container whereas basil and rosemary prefer to dry out between watering.

Soil is only good for 6 months so if you have an old bag lying around probably best to throw it out.

Don't over fertilise but adding some seaweed concentrate after initial transfer will help to reduce shock. I'm also going to try using the seaweed concentrate every 2-4 weeks as a pick me up.

Get some natural pesticide spray, even on the balcony I'm getting caterpillars and bugs eating up my lovely basil leaves so a once weekly spray will hopefully get onto that.

Chives and mint - with plenty
of room to grow.

Nothing like some morning
 gardening to start the day.

Rosemary and basil living
in perfect harmony.

I'm really looking forward to watching my little herbs thrive and reaping the bounty of my labour with lovely basil filled spaghetti sauces and lychee and mint shakes. My mouth is watering already.