Melbourne

After a 24-hours flight, we landed in Melbourne.

The city center seen from the ANZAC Memorial

from the riverbank

Federation Square

Some old houses, from the very beginning of Australia

China town

Luna Park

There is a feature of Melbourne I have no photo of: the penguins in Saint-Kilda. You come out when the night has set in. In order not to scare them, tourists are requested not to use flash. Anyway, they are very small, I think they are the smallest penguins, and they are cute.

Landing in Melbourne brought us directly to Autumn. As a funny consequence, I kept looking for Christmas lights and shop windows :-).
Another surprise: there are many cloth shops for men, and many business men look prettry good in their suit. No doubt they do a lot of sport.

I'm back!

Hi everybody, here I am, back home.

My trip lasted almost 4 weeks, and it was just wonderful.

I went to Paris to fetch Emilie. We then flew to Melbourne where Amandine was waiting for us.
The red line shows you our itinary. As you can imagine, it has been a busy trip!

blog break

the ash cloud has been kind enough to let me fly!
I'm in australia for a couple of weeks.
Take care! See you soon

Misc.

Where is the spring??? On Friday it was very hot, I put away all my winter clothes, just to get them back on the next day, sigh!

On Sunday, between two showers, I was able to walk on the hill and found this old shelter, typical from here,

as well as those flowers.

And that was it. It has been raining since Monday, raining and cold, sigh.

The exact weather to make a bag as explained in the last issue of Stitch:

I think the weekend will be spent cross-stiching in front of the TV, the weather is really too bad to do something else...
I hope you will enjoy a sunny weekend, whereever you are

Traveler bag and phone pouch

This week, I made this little set for myself. The traveler bag is the same as this one. This link gives the credit and review of the pattern.
I needed a protection for my new phone, and I tried to match both.
The phone pouch is made of commercial felt, with stem stitch and button hole stitch.

A little change carrier would be nice... We'll see if I find the time.
In the meantime, have all a nice week and take care

Misc.

Hello Ladies,

I had not expected comments on my bento box, but am thrilled you did comment!

Thank you Neki for the link, full of ideas indeed. (And I explained to Emilie what a goatee is, could not miss the opportunity :-), but please, never tell Amandine she has one, that would be a disaster :-)).
Anne, according to the size of your bento box, you do control the size of the portions. I read somewhere that there is even more. If you respect the proportions of rice, vegetables/fruits and proteins (I think 2/3/1), the volume of the box gives the quantity of calories you eat. So I know that the M size is good for me and don't have to worry too much about those calories :-)

Susan, I did not know you have been in Japan! And we used your recipe for Emilie, with ham instead of fish for Emilie (she won't eat anything coming from the sea...)

Poupounette-San, I was sure you were going to enjoy that too.

Today bento was quinoa taboulé, with beetroot and pilchard (from a tin, marinated with lemon, no oil, yummy), melon and pear/sesame crumble.

I'm just back from a walk in the hill. Can you see those wild dwarf irises?

Yeah, the weekend is almost here, take care until then!

Bento!

I was getting bored with cooking, until I've discovered the concept of Bento in December. This gave me my cooking inspiration back. The size of the box makes it easy to keep the portions healthy, and I like the decorating part, although I'm still just a beginner. The many blogs about bento are also very inspiring, with many healthy ideas.
Seeing my new addiction, Emilie and Yann spoilt me with great bentos stuff when they came.
So this weekend I started experimenting with my new toys. First at home, hence the plate:

If you carefully at the boiled egg, you can see its shape, yes, it is a bunny! And there are cheese birds flying over the pasta. I also prepared my lunch for today:

This time, the egg turned into a bear :-) And look at this box:

Isn't it beautiful and handy?