Photos from the week ending 4th January

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Part of my 52 in 52 list for 2014 is to take a photo a day. Each Sunday I plan on posting photos from the week before.

Wednesday 1st January
Mario (the nickname for my boyfriend due to his Italian heritage) and I enjoyed a sleep in after a party at his friend's place the night before. We were in the middle of a two week holiday, and really struggling to find some time to actually relax. New Year's Day, normally reserved for coping with hangovers, ended up being the first day we relaxed. We had only indulged in a few drinks the night before, nothing heavy, and thus woke up fresh. We went to the markets in the morning, returned home and spent an hour in the garden. We ended up pulling out all the mint that had taken over lots of sections, filling a HUGE rubbish bag with it. We kept a small portion for some fruit smoothies, and the rest got binned. The crazy part is that it will all be back within 3 months.

Thursday 2nd January

One of my favourite people in the world had messaged me a couple of days earlier to see if Mario and I were free for dinner, so we organised it for the Thursday night. We enjoyed a bbq dinner made by Mario including an amazing paleo chocolate tart (sidenote – I'm now sugar free for the year, conditions apply and will be blogged later). It was great to see my friends, since they live down in one of the southern states of Australia, which means I don't get to see them as much as I would like.

Friday 3rd January

Amazingly we got to have another relaxing day on our holiday! We started by visiting a nearby cafe for breakfast, getting some grocery shopping out of the way, then returning home to chill out. It was quite hot, so Mario went down to the beach to do some kitesurfing while I relaxed with some reading material. I also surprised him by cleaning out his oven (it was necessary as he uses it frequently, and the door was coated in oil splatters). The photo for this day was from where we had our breakfast, a cafe called “The Velo Project“, just around the corner from Mario's house. This photo is looking down on my iced coffee and some water. It's a very cool cafe, a strong vintage feel to it and all of the meals/drinks I've ever had there have been amazing. The staff are dressed in some cool funky old outfits too.

Saturday 4th January

Continuing on with my sugar free diet, a friend on facebook had sent me a recipe for raw vegan nutella, a popular chocolate spread. While relaxing the afternoon prior, I had also decided to attempt the nutella. After I made it I stored it in one of Mario's spare jars, which the first one I grabbed was for sweet spiced gherkins. I don't think it's possible to get any further removed from a chocolate spread. This morning while he was in the kitchen doing some things, Mario grabbed out the chocolate spread and ate a spoonful. In my eyes that was huge. He's such an amazing cook, and the fact that he willingly helped himself to something that I had made was a bit of an achievement for me. The taste has a distant similarity to nutella, but it's pretty evident it doesn't contain all the extra sugar nutella does. If you're looking for a super sweet treat, I don't think this is going to be what you're after, but it will help with my cravings for chocolate, I hope.

 

Let me know your thoughts!