Stalk my Weekend: Lorne Great Ocean Road

Great Ocean Road is one of those places that every fresh off the plane person visits. I don't know what makes a bunch of crazy Singaporeans fellow FoP (Fresh off Planes) believe that we are totes gungho and can drive up and down this road. I still remember the excitement when I saw the waves on the beach. Like ZOMG it's real waves. When Lastminute was publicising Great Ocean road sales, I had a look and finally booked something. My holiday booking is like my online shopping. I browse a lot, I add to cart and then close the window. But not this time! The boys have never been to Great Ocean Road and Mick said he doesn't even remember seeing the 12 Apostles. I cannot believe it, it's the #1 FoP destination!! So off we went, enduring hours of Are we there yet? It's taking for ages. OH I DIDN'T SEE THE HORSEEEEE! OOOH MY HEAD IS ITCHY... 

ARE WE THERE YET! IT'S TAKING FOR AGESSSSSS!!!

When the kids were babies, I just could not deal with weekends away. By the time you pack half the house, you are DONE. This time.. no need to pack entire packs of nappies, the entire cot, half his wardrobe and everything. We fit everything, my large Wang, the boys' teddies PLUS a baby car seat that I was selling into the world's tiniest Asian car and still had room. Now you understand why our Stalk my weekend is always around Melbourne? 

That's sunrise, believe it or not.

We stayed at the Cumberland Lorne Resort. If you read my blog, you would know that I'm a diva with accomodation. Actually I'm a wannabe diva with most things, however in a lot of cases, I don't have a platform to unleash it. Anyway, the room was nice. We booked a 1 bedroom as it has a double fold out sofa bed. Bugger that.. The fold out sofa bed is like a nightmare relic of uni days. Mental note to book 2 bedrooms next time. We had a full kitchen, spa bath and full laundry facilities. So guess who had laundry tumbling in the dryer while sitting in the spa? LOL Two thumbs up pointing to self. Oddly I did not take pictures of our room. We had ocean views peeking above the top of another building block. The building site is actually pretty old. And the lifts took longer than walking up the stairs. But it was kind of funny in a way!

Deep Fried Goodness

We did not do much in Lorne, by the time we got there, there was no way I would get back into the car to endure ARE WE THERE YET some more! So we went down the main strip for lunch. What says holiday more than fish and chips! Here's Pickles stalking some cuckatoos and yelling at them while waiting for our takeaway. Food was pretty expensive for fish and chips but it was not bad. Batter was not really crunchy but the fish was good.

After we had our grease filled food. We head to the beach for a walk. Here's my beach wear folks.. A big ass down jacket. Talk about FoP!

BEACH MUMMY.. watch out for the waves!

On the way back, we detoured to Geelong waterfront. I am sure that I am the only one with a love for carousels. I think this is a throwback to my childhood and always wanting to sit on the horses. Somehow I think I was only allowed on the daggy carriages that stayed flat. Costs for the carousel ride was $3.70 for children under 5 and adults are to supervise so we were free. FREE!

Oh my gawd HORSIES!

Ahhh.. Fishermen's Pier... back in my day (lifetime ago) when I used to be invited to the Chanel parties. Yes I was.. believe it or not. I met the owner of this restaurant and I was invited to dinner after the Chanel party to Langton's and lunch at Fishermen's Pier. I sent flowers to her at that restaurant. Sadly we lost contact, the Chanel purchases stopped and the invites never came anymore. These brands are ruthless I tell you! A quick google tells me that there were also financial troubles on her end. I hope to meet her again one day and hope her family is ok. In the meantime, we decided to get some paella from the old quirky takeaway boat as Fishermen's looked like it was closed. C'mon it's cute. $10 a plate and $7 for prawns with garlic and chilli. I'm in...

D said that he don't eat clams.. he thought mussels with clams. That's ok, more for me. For $10 you get bits of seafood through the rice. Paella had lots of the crunchy bits, rice was tasty and it was topped with 4 mussells and a prawn. First of all, I wished that there were chicken or something else. But for $10 I will deal with it. Prawns were nommy and D said it was spicy. But I think it was garlic spice more than anything. 

Yummiest Food Ever!

Thankful we had a frozen lasagna when we came home. Mick assembled this on Friday and took one to our neighbour that just had a new baby. Yummy.... I make mine with a combination of pork and mince. I was really busy last week and was working in the evenings. Thank goodness Mick took over or we would have 2kgs of meat go bad in the fridge. LOL I'm such a cooking fail! All the intention and no time. 

Stalk my Weekend: Food, Food, Sleep, Food

Ok seriously I don't even know what to write in Stalk my Weekend. All I did was eat, sleep, eat and sleep. Rinse and repeat. I felt so guilty I spent most of Saturday afternoon asleep and left Mick with the boys. On Sunday we made a caramel slice.. then back to snoozing. Is there some bug going around that I had? The sleepy bug! Either that or I was recovering from my rowing outing last week!

We went to not one but two places on Saturday to eat. My reviews will be coming up shortly in separate posts. Yum yum is all that I can say. So in the meantime how about a sneak preview of where we went for you stalkers out there. LOL

OMGAWD LIKE SPICY POPCORN IS SPICY

This is Pickles eating spicy chipotle popcorn.. he insisted on having some even though he knew it was spicy. Then yells out water water, he drank his water and then proceeded to reach for more. He just loves popcorn too much!

Omg we stay cute for the camera with Daddy

Where exactly were we? Well here's a clue! Luna Park is very close to this American style diner. And seriously why is it that the boys will only stay cute for pictures when they are with Mick? If you were following me on Facebook you would have already managed to stalk us on Saturday. So get onto it.. Like mah Facebook page.

Melbourne Convention Centre

Super cool looking bar

We went to South Wharf on Saturday. So those of you who follow me on Instagram would already know where we went. Yeah I know you stalk me there as well! :) The restaurant was too cool for me, I felt like a complete dag who spent the entire afternoon asleep.. oh wait I did sleep the entire afternoon. 

So really I give you hardly anything in this post. What to do to compensate you for it. Check out my one time only special. A stalk my midweek nom feature. A special mention to Operator 25 which is on Wills Street. It is off La Trobe Street between Queen and William street. How good can a pork burger be? Juicy pork pieces with this amazing yummy slaw in the soft brioche bun AND to top it off, boom the best sweet potato fries ever. I cannot eat sweet potato any other way now. Just the name of the burger is just so fancy. Suckling pig burger, yeah I would have 2 of that please. 

Oh.. i'm hungry now

So this puts an end to people telling me, oh you do so much with the kids on weekends. No actually we don't! Don't forget to come back and stalk my noms! 

Stalk my Weekend: Brunch, Soup, Shopping

Oh yeah..... this weekend had been a goodie. I actually did stuffs. People who follow me on Twitter would know that I sometimes tweet that I am incredibly lucky in life. Yeap.. but can you believe this? I sure as heck did not when I received the email. I thought it was spam. I had an email saying that I won the Uni Hill Factory outlet facebook competition. It went to my spam folder - so please check your spam folders in future. I thought yeah right.. the email is probably from Nigeria and wants me to log in with my bank details. I examined the domain name of the email address. I typed it into a new Web Browser... it was right. So what did I win? I won $500 shopping vouchers at a list of stores at Uni Hill. I selected what stores I wanted and how many from each store in terms of $50 vouchers. Nike, Laura Ashley, Cotton On! Then I also won the Kabuki brush from Master Makeup in TheMadeUpMaiden's giveaway. While we are on this subject, more importantly I am also very very fortunate that I have never had to go to a supermarket and thought to myself I cannot buy what I need because I do not have enough money. That's another one of those what I am grateful for this week thoughts.

Cosmetics Fragrance Direct: Ulta goodies

On Sunday we trooped off to Uni Hill as it is pretty much the closest discount store to us. On a WTF note, I actually drove to Southwharf DFO and paid for parking as well to go to Cosmetics and Fragrance outlet. What was wrong with me? There was one with free parking around the corner from me. Check out their store and Ulta goodies. They now have a wall mounted with clear containers filled with Essie nail polishes that are $6 each. I told myself no and walked away!

Pickles wanted to carry the shopping

So with my Cotton On Kids vouchers, I bought 6 long sleeve Tshirts for the boys for childcare. In summer, they wear Threadless short sleeve for daycare but in winter we found that they had nothing suitable! They were on offer for 2 for $20 so I paid $10 for them using my voucher. Also bought some cotton PJ pants with cassette tapes on them for Mick. 30% off storewide that day at Brands United and that included CK bras and underwear that they had. They say that every week they have different offers but I am happy with 30% off. We looked at Nike as I asked for $100 there and Laura Ashley. $60 quilt covers at Laura Ashley AND 25% off storewide too. Hells yeah I love bargains!

Corn Fritters with Avo and Fried Egg

Eggs Benedict on potato rosti

I bring you back to the start of the weekend when we took a train part of the way to go into the city! You cannot imagine the joy the boys had on the train. They felt so special and important going into Melbourne Central. Unfortunately Pickles refused to walk after half a block and had to be carried up the rest of the 1.5 blocks ... uphill. Met up with BFF from work to have a chowdown at this new urban looking Operator 25.
Talk about attention to detail... look at those plates. That one at the top is from Made in Japan! The poached eggs were amazing and having eggs benedict on potato rosti instead of just plain old muffins were brilliant. Corn fritters were yummy and the avo mousse just pretty and so elegant. How good does it look?

D said he wanted chocolate croissant

Boys had their chocolate croissant and Pickles decided he would eat all of his and whatever D left as well. I think he has a chocolate addiction. What a great place this was and would come back. At the same time I am shocked at brunch prices due to eating at cheap Chinese places all the time on the weekend. LOL less than $30 feeds all 4 of us at those places!

After spending all that on just brunch. Frugal Sunday night kicked in and I made Chicken & Corn soup from scratch... read I made the actual stock too. I think my stock needed brushing up but it was ok. I also made Cauliflower & Cheese soup. After all that soup making, Pickles tells me I don't like soup. Fine.. he had leftover pasta. D had several bowls of soup then told me, let's eat the soup together as he starts digging into mine too. There's no pictures of the soup so you'll just have to believe that it happened! LOL

Stalk my Weekend: Benefit and Ezibuy

Well... another late Stalk my Weekend. I have an excuse.. it is called Gastro. Yeah .. the hated G word. When you have kids, it is the single most feared word ever. Did I say ever.. yes I mean EVER.

So D vomited on Friday and I got it on Sunday evening. Gross.. enough said.

Next.. what did I do on the weekend? Filled with guilt because D was sick on Friday night, I still attended the Benefit event as planned. He told me that he was feeling "good" and his tummy did not hurt. So I thought ok, Mummy can go to "work". We have to tell the kids that we are going to work all the time or they want to come along. Somehow he understands the concept for work.. thumbs up.

We went to the Benefit Brow Bar in Myer Melbourne CBD first and had a demo of their brow wax and tint service. I am pretty sure that most people I know have gone to the Brow Bar! A few of my colleagues at work prefer it as you do not have to make an appointment, you just show up. There were a team of brow experts in their pink wigs ready to go!

Benefit Myer Melbourne Makeup Counter

Benefit Brow Bar Myer Melbourne

After we had a play at the makeup counter, we were taken to lunch at Collins Quarters. I have a feeling that I have been here before but have forgotten as it was so long ago. Anyway, there I was shoving food in my mouth and trying to remember what finger I could use to have a play with the new eye shadows.

Some of the bestsellers for Benefit

Sigh... unfortunately I got sick on Sunday so there was no going out and as the boys were also not feeling 100% we spent the day holed up. You know what you do when you're sick. You go through your catalogues and junk mail. I am starting to think that I stumbled on Ezibuy when they were on a roll with good looking clothing. Because since then, all the catalogues they have sent me have been like this ...

Anyone after a new top?

Huh?

This is from their Capture European collection. I am now thinking that Europeans have very different aesthetic tastes. And I am also now waiting for readers to tell me .. what's wrong with that jacket.....

Stalk my Weekend: Mothers' Day Weekend

OMG LOOK PEPTIDES!

OMG it's taking me ages to do my Stalk my Weekends! Before I know it... it's the next weekend!
I was sent the La Clinica Helixer face serum last week and I received it on Friday. On Saturday morning I was examining this in detail.. Snail secretion. I was very curious so I started using it since Saturday. Honestly it is not slimy and quite nice! I am trying not to think of how it is harvested. Mick LOLed about the Peptides ingredients.. he's a Bombers fan.

So in a recent Stalk my Nom, I visited Chef Lagenda for the first time ever. I cannot stop going back! Nothing quite hits the spot as Laksa. Laksa is my best friend like ever. And the boys usually have "chicken and rice and soup". Why would anyone want to go anywhere else? My only issue with this is that their spoons are too shallow and small. I wanted to BYO my own Chinese soup spoons but I forgot!

Port Melbourne Beach

Yay I'm running

It was quite a warm day in Melbourne on Saturday and after lunch, I wanted to take the boys to Port Melbourne beach. This was totally unprepared by the way. We had no towels or anything. At first D was asking to take his clothes off and he was getting upset as his shorts were wet. He got over it later and even sat on the water in his shorts. And Pickles followed as well. I went back to get the car so we did not have to carry two wet and sandy kids 2 blocks away. When I got back there were 2 topless boys waiting for me. Ooopsss should bring spare clothes next time!

Jealous?

Ever since we bought the Nespresso I have to say that we have stopped going out for lunches. This is good news for my wallet. This was my Mothers' Day breakfast. Smoked salmon with Roza's Gourmet Remoulade sauce, avocado and poached egg on english muffin and my fav spinach plus crunchy hash brown! I would imagine having to pay $20 for this at a cafe. Look at our stylish Mick plated up! 

Roasted Chicken and Salad

This was my dinner.. Yummy roasted chicken and salad with haloumi. I have to say that haloumi is my best friend now. Truly.. we are in love as well. :) I requested for no presents because I really do not need anymore things. But I bought myself a pair of Target PJs. $16!!! I could not bring myself to shell out for Peter Alexander. So I can say that I was very spoilt for Mothers' Day. I took Pickles out for a shopping trip in the afternoon and D and Mick started their baking. 

Truly jealous yet?

Hells to the Yeah.. I leave you drooling for some caramel slice... Seriously I think this is my current favourite. Can anything beat caramel slice? Erm no! Hope y'all had a great weekend as well!

Stalk my Weekend: Birthday, Paris, Sausages

So guess what! D has turned 4. What the heck BBQ! Where did that time go and I'm examining my face for minor wrinkle lines. This is how bad we are as parents. We did not anticipate that kids we invited will do a no show for D's birthday party. Mick said invite only a few.. so we only did 3 kids. How the heck would we know that nobody will come? So this was me on Wed/Thurs... SMSing out "I know it's late notice buttttt.. " And on Friday I rang around trying to get a Spider-Man cake for him from Woolies. I rang Coles by mistake and I was told erm.. have you tried Woolworths very softly on the phone. Ooopss.. Problem solved and a 1.8kg cake procured.

This is us going to go pickup said 1.8kg cake. Pickles is featured in double denim. Woolies lady said that she defrosted the cake at 6.30am. Thanks! That's what I really wanna hear when I buy a cake ya know. LOL I probably shouldn't have told my guests that either but anyway...

1.8kg of 110% sugar cake

That's what a Spider-Man cake looks like people! Run to Woolies and get one if you want a bucket of sugar.

That's the boys playing with D's new Lego sets in their party clothes. LOL D said he wanted the blue party shirt. Yeap.. he normally has pink ones. We had a marinated lamb leg BBQ for lunch with salad. Knowing that we had lamb leg, this only means a bit of leftovers for the night and the next day. To break up the lamb leg BBQ overload. We went sausage sizzle for lunch the next day. 

Sausage sizzle!

Roza's Sauces makes really yummy stuff, you need to check it out. If you sign up to their newsletter you will get a discount code. I learnt about that after placing my order. DOH! I bought remoulade, pesto and chutney this time. I have to confess we ate almost half a jar of remoulade with fish and chips for one dinner. Oopss... no low fat here!

Also in the picture was the Scanpan IQ Grill Pan that was sent to me by the folks at Kitchenware Direct. Can I start off by saying I had meant to get a grill pan for ages. I just never got around to it but check out the other Grill pans they have in stock. The reason why I had been wanting one for ages? I am not usually a big steak eater but once in a while, I just really want a steak. And you know those lovely chargrilled marks you get on the lovely hunk of meat? Psychologically I think it makes the food taste better. We Mick has used the grill pan for cooking steak and I think it gets hotter an a normal frying pan and holds the heat better too so he has not figured out the right timing for his steaks yet. It also drains any fat as you can see from the sausages above so your food is not sitting in fat.

This is Paris

Also on Sunday, D was given this chocolate biscuit as a snack after swimming. I was stunned because he said oh.. look, this is Paris. Mick and I had our huh face on because I never thought he knew about Paris, much less there is a tower like that there. Proud... 

And everyone's favourite section as I had been very skincare and makeup focused lately. This is what I wore on Sunday. My hair was straightened -> WOOHOO! Some of you will say OMG Ling your hair is already straight! 

My top was from Ralph Lauren many moons ago. The necklace is called Midsummer Night's from Popbasic. Eyeshadow was Tom Ford not that you can see it and lipstick was Chanel Coco Shine Rebelle. You will have to put up with my bad posing in the future too.

Stalk my Weekend: Meatballs and Heatwave

Don't we all loved the limited edition Speedys?

I bet that everyone's Melbourne blog has this in their first line. What is up with this heatwave? So what is up with this heat?! Poor Mick had to go on site at 6am on Saturday and Monday to get his work done before it got too hot. On Friday night I was reading an old magazine that I borrowed from the library. I think it was Dec 2012 issue of Instyle. Check out the old LV Speedys. I had no idea that graffiti LV was THAT OLD. REALLY!

Mumma needs sleep

Because Mick had left to work at 6am... this is my attempt at a sleep in. Hand the iToys over and hope for the best. D got up at 7am and kept running around asking where was Daddy. He made me call him and said that he missed him and asked if he will come home with Rice Bubbles. So he did come home with Rice Bubbles. The story behind Rice bubbles is that we do not buy it, it is a at daycare food that they get to encourage them to get to daycare in time.

On Saturday we went to Meatball and Wine Bar in the CBD to meet wtmontana who had arranged to meet me since last year when she was planning her trip to Melbourne. It was such a great place to catch up. Casual yet attentive staff and they made a chocolate milk for the boys. 

Cool sign there

Sliders Oh yummy

Missing one ball.. we eated it

We had beef meatballs with pesto salsa verde and beef ball sliders. Wtmontana had ordered an amazing Beef with red sauce and potato smash. SOOO Want some more smash!!! The beef sliders had pickles or gherkin in the brioche buns and I don't normally like gherkins but lord they just tasted so good together. 

Pickles being a ball too and putting his head on the table

For dessert, the boys had whoopie mac and ice cream. It was a lemon macaron with chocolate ice cream sandwich. They had been pointing to it the entire time so we had to get it for them. Again, I could not get a really good picture of it. So here's one of Pickles being a ball on the table. Look at that face!

Mick said we have halos

This is wtmontana and I with halos at the back of our heads. Mick thought it was tres artistic. LOL Ok.... the lighting in the place was not the best so we didn't manage to get more yummy food pics. But I guarantee you that the food is great!

Jade Kingdom Sago Pudding

It was social Saturday as we also took the boys out for dinner at our local Chinese/Malaysian place with Vita! This is what we had for dessert. I call it frog eggs to scare the boys. It was a sago pudding in gula melaka and coconut milk. Gosh it was good but look at how weird it looks.

Flowers from the garden

Social Saturday continued into Sunday! Where I had work Skincare BFF over for a BBQ. Helloooo porterhouse steaks on the BBQ and salad. Is there anything better than that? Nope! Sometimes you just want steak. These were the flowers from our front garden in a Bison vase that someone gave me years ago. How good is Bison Homewares?

Hope you had a big social weekend too! What did you get up to?

Stalk my Weekend: Bundoora Market Smoked Salmon Cakes

What an action packed weekend. Mick has fully recovered and has mended very well with no thanks to me because I was my usual unsympathetic horrible wife. This is where people think I am exaggerating but I am not. If Mick would would guest blog, you will find out just how mean I am LOL. It was Saturday and strangely we had no visitors and nothing planned (WHAT!). Mick said to find a market to go to as we seemed to have dropped off the market circuit. There were not one but TWO on Saturday. Westerfolds and Bundoora was running last Saturday. So we headed to the Bundoora market as memory serves me well, they have a killer pie shop there. You would think I would remember the name of it. I can only remember Gum something so I will have to get back to you on this.

How exciting!

Home Made Peanut Butter WIN

We walked in and saw some chickens in a cage. The lady was trying to get them out of hiding as D and L were trying to take a peek at them. One escaped and I pretty much freaked out. Do not ask why I have an irrational fear of things in feathers. I think it started with the movie Birds by Alfred Hitchcock. I just cannot deal with them. I freak and I run. Watch me scream like a crazy woman - well more crazy than I normally am. Had to usher the boys along quickly so I spotted Home Made Peanut Butter. Oh yes!! Hellooooo, they basically ran to get some to taste. This is the first market that I have seen peanut butter in. Yes.. Winning.

Mexican inspired Icy Poles

Bundoora Market always has good food stalls. This time we found an indian Dosa store that sold Masala Dosa. You can also have it plain, with mashed egg or with Chicken. The pictures did not do it justice so I will spare you. Seriously ... try it! Another new store I found was the Mexican inspired Icy Poles. We bought strawberry and orange flavour. I wished I could tell you more about it but the boys ate it and I had about 2 licks. They cater to parties as well and is called Paletas Hand Crafted Ice Pops. Mental note for next birthday party!! 

Giant Punnet of Strawberries

I think strawberries are going out of season. This batch was a little sour but they are perfect for what we wanted to make with them.. yummy strawberry ice cream. Salivates. This giant punnet of strawberries and a bag of apples were $10. I love concepts where you can mix strawberries, pears and apples and pay a reduced price if you buy 2.

Cinch's Chicken Run

This is Cinch Personal Training's chicken run which is outside their Personal Training circuit and gym. I had to get the boys to leave the market by promising that we would go see the chickens near us. This is Pickles waving Hi to one of them. We had to explain that they did not like the heat and is probably hiding, but they kept complaining that there were no chooks. This is probably as close as I will get to any live feathered animal. The fence is keeping me safe from beak attacks. LOL!

Mash it Good

Panko crumbed goodness

Deep Fried Goodness

In my attempt to use up a giant packet of smoked salmon from Costco. I asked Twitter what I should make. Home Empress said to make salmon cakes. OHHHH YESSSS... I used this recipe and skipped the herb creme fraiche. We are totally unsophisticated with fried foods. Just shove them in my mouth, no sauce required here. Far out, this is a keeper. I think I would probably add herbs into the pattie next time. But it was not hard to make these. The annoying thing about crumbing is I mess up the one hand wet, one hand dry system. I always end up with crumbed egg fingers on both hands. Panko is definitely a winner and lord knows why breadcrumbs still exist for fried foods. Gimme panko on everything. 

This way is home

This is D showing Pickles which way is home. I told them to hold hands and head home as I parked infront of the neighbour's house. I was doing the sneaky snake park my car under the shade of their tree thing. How adorable! Melts.