The Long Awaited *drumroll please* Apartment Tour

After days, weeks, months, years.... okay, a few weeks, here are the pictures of our apartment. There are too many to just post, so click here to view the slideshow I have created just for you. :) I hope this satisfies the agonizing thirst for those of you just aching to see how we live our lives. Hope you like it.

New Spice in our Lives

Before we got married, Blake was on his own to register for us here in Aussie land. I sent him some pictures, gave him some guidelines, but he had to do it himself. When we received one of these items, we were in for a surprise. It was a nice spice rack... that contained the spices!!! Yay for spices!!! However, there are a few I am familiar with, but have never used as I've never owned them before. New to me are the Rosemary and Chili flakes. Not foreign cooking elements, but new flavors to me, so I wanted to share a recipe I made with the chili flakes. For those of you worried about heat, I'm not a big heat person so I scraped the flakes off my piece after cooking and there was just a little flavor zing, so give it a shot. :)

*warning (or side note anyway...): the measurements below are from approximate guesses at what I used. You can add/subtract anything you'd like.

Chili-Lemon Chicken

1 or so cups cubed chicken (enough for 2 people)

1/2 cup olive oil

2 T lemon juice

1 tsp chili flakes

1/2 tsp garlic powder

salt to taste (1/4- 1/2 tsp)

pepper to taste

Mix olive oil, lemon juice, and spices to make marinade. Place chicken in marinade, turn to coat, and refrigerate for approximately 1 hour (mine was a little less, but still had absorbed the flavor). Grill or cook on stove. Great with creamy mashed potatoes, especially if you're worried about any heat.

Let us know if you give it a shot and what you think. :)

btw... made it last night with cubed potatoes, mixed both in the sauce, and put them on a cookie sheet to cook. Amazing!

My First Baking... Experience...

So far, everything that has been cooked in this apartment has been on the stove, so yesterday, I decided to mix it up a bit. Blake has been begging for a banana cream pie and I was in the mood for chicken garlic pizza, so time to pull in the big guns and use the oven.

First roadblock: there is no such thing as shortening here, only cooking margarine. This comes in a block about twice as big as a normal block of margarine, but is also about as hard as if you froze the block. After stabbing myself with a fork, I successfully managed to scrape enough off for my pie crust.

Second roadblock: nobody here knows what a pastry blender is. I searched high and low in every store that sells cooking utensils with no luck, so out came the fork and a knife. Again, reminding you that the margarine is hard and in nasty clumps. After a little blood, sweat, and tears, my crust was in the pie pan and looked pretty tasty for an uncooked crust.

Third roadblock: the oven. Now first off, everything is in celcius. Not too difficult to look up online to figure out the conversions. However, they don't have a dial that says bake, broil, etc. What is depicted around the dial are little boxes with different pictures. First shows a light bulb, okay-that's for the light. Second shows a fan with two drops of water below. Third shows a fan with a circle around it. Fourth shows triangles coming down from the top of the box. And last, but not least, shows the triangles coming down with the fan. Now I'm not a major in hieroglyphics, so I put it on the last option and crossed my fingers.

After the allotted time I checked on the crust and to my dismay, there were black spots all over the inside of my crust. Luckily most were the upper layer of a bubble so we pulled them off to try and salvage what we could.

By this point in time, I had already finished kneading the pizza crust and was letting it raise (the margarine kneads in much easier when put with the warm water and yeast than the cold water in the pie crust). I had Blake's help to cook the topping ingredients of the pizza, so I put the dough in the pan and made the pizza. Unfortunately I was so distracted by the burn pie crust and worrying about the pizza that I forgot the cheese... On a pizza! How do you forget the cheese?!? We threw the pizza in the oven and Blake said that at his mom's, they always bake on the setting with the fan in the circle, so we tried it on that setting. After about 5 minutes, the top was all golden brown, but it was supposed to take 25 to cook... We pulled it out and indeed, the bottom was still uncooked dough, so it went back in on the lowest rack possible and we went to the computer to look up those darn symbols.

Fourth roadblock: Australians don't believe in baking with their ovens. After searching many sites, we finally found one that showed the correct hieroglyphics with explanations of each. None of the five settings we have on the oven are for baking! The first was the light, second was defrost (? in the oven?), third was constant fanned heat (used most commonly), fourth was static grilling, fifth is grilling. Suddenly a light clicked in Blake's head. His sister makes cakes and other such goodies all the time, but she always puts them on the bottom, with the setting on the fan in a circle, and leaves them in there forever.

The pizza came back out of the oven to avoid completely burning the top and was cooked enough on the bottom to no longer be doughy. To our joy, it tasted just fine (cheese wasn't discovered missing until half-way through the pizza). The filling for the pie is cooked on the stove, so that also turned out fine. A few bites had a slightly toasted crust taste, but overall, the night turned out alright with some pretty good lessons in Aussie baking learned.

The View

Sorry these aren't the best pictures of the view, but I just couldn't pass up the rainbow when I saw it. This is from our balcony. The opposite side of the building has the ocean, but I like seeing the hills.

Aforementioned Rainbow

Pacific Fair (takes about 10 minutes to walk there and 50 to walk around inside... both indoor and outdoor mall)

The moat around the....

Casino. It lights up at night, but we have great drapes that block it out.

And the far right view of the Gold Coast Convention Center.

Not the most glorious view, but it does help with the homesickness for mountains. Next to come... indoor shots.

The First Three Weeks

Welcome to Blake and my new blog. We'll try to keep everyone updated with the latest and greatest as well as perhaps uninteresting facts about our life together. We have made it to the 3 week mark, and it has been an interesting, but great, adventure to say the least. The weeks have gone by as follows:

Week 1:

Spent 2 days at the Armstrong Manor (great place with really good breakfast)

Packed and said goodbye to family

Flew 7166 miles to my new home

Took a nap, then reorganized clothing to one suitcase

Spent 2 nights at Pether's Rainforest Retreat (a 5 star bungalow in the middle of the rainforest on top of the nearby mountain)

Blake proceeded to get sick

Went to the hospital to check for Swine Flu (quarantined for 24 hours before they said he was clear)

Unpacked suitcases

Week 2:

Went shopping for furniture and bought a couch, computer chair, bookcase, and kitchen table/chairs (Thanks everyone for the wedding money to do so!!!)

Blake started back to work

I proceeded to get sick, but moved in the couch, put together the computer chair, directed Blake on the bookcase, and put together the kitchen table and chairs (everything except the bookcase was assembled while Blake was at work... :D )

Read Dune

Went shopping daily to either Pacific Fair (outdoor mall across the street) or Woolworths (grocery store below Blake's work) for food and household necessities

Attended our Aussie open house with most of Blake's family and a few friends

Organized my kitchen with my new appliances/dishes/etc

Week 3:

Blake worked

Cleaned up the apartment (really organized the bookcase and tv stand, made it feel more homey)

Started the Battlestar Galactica series

Shopped daily for more necessary food and household items

Walked from outside Blake's work on the beach up to the Q1 building in Surfers Paradise (2.5k each way) and slept all evening/night/and morning

Went to the temple in the morning, went shopping all afternoon (bought me a purse, Blake some sweet shoes and new shirts), spent the evening with some of Blake's friends playing games and chatting

Received new callings, Blake is Employment Specialist and I'm a primary teacher (don't know age group yet)

We have had a fun time together, annoying each other, falling asleep early(!!!), making amazing dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (Blake cleans up after :D :D :D :D ), walking miles each day (the car is driven about twice a week as we can walk everywhere we need to go), etc. Keep posted for pictures to come. :)