Enjoying the outside....

How do you like my office?  It is the most glorious day with the temperature sitting on 21 degrees celsius as I type.

I'm waiting for Philip to arrive home from his ride to Mt Lewis this morning with another cycling friend.  It is quite the ride so he will be looking for some pool time when he gets home.  Thank goodness for heated pools!

On the home front it has been relatively quiet.  The marketing of the property is moving in the right direction with lots of online interest.  I shared drone footage that our agent had posted on Facebook and from that one share we have had almost a thousand views.  It is amazing what a few shares can do. 

The garden is looking spectacular and it was great to see it through somebody else's eyes this week.  They loved it and told us we should host an open garden day.  We'll see.  We really love our privacy...... 😌

My mum is now back in Toowoomba and the day before she left we had lunch at our local pub - The Highlander.  There was a very big crowd there to listen to the live music and to enjoy the "Sunday Roast". This week it was roast pork that Mum ordered and it was huge with no less than six vegetables sitting along side the meat.  A doggie bag was in order.  

I had the pork belly sitting on a potato rosti accompanied by a very tasty pear and apple salad. 

As anyone who knows me well would know, I love cooking and trying out new recipes. These Peanut Butter Biscuits were very delicious for minimal ingredients and work.  

You simply combine 1 cup sugar (I used coconut sugar), 1 cup peanut butter (I used half PB and half Tahini because I didn't have enough PB) and 1 egg.  Shape into rounds and cook in 180 degree oven for 12 minutes.  I cooked for 15 minutes and they were slightly over cooked.

The other thing I made is Nigella Lawsons Sambuca Kisses.  Another very quick and easy recipe that was perfect with a cup of espresso that had a teaspoon of Sambuca added to it.  

The last thing I want to mention is this flower arrangement that has been sitting on the outside table now for over a month.  It is simply Coleus and Azaleas.  I just keep topping up the water and adding new Azaleas when the old ones have finished flowering.  The Coleus is growing in the water. 

An everlasting flower arrangement if you please.....

So slack.....

The blog posts of late have been very hit and miss.  I will blame it on being very busy.
The last post I wrote was just before we had a night at Thala Beach with our dear friends Kate and Mike.  It was, and is always, a lovely place to stay for a quick getaway and I highly recommend it.  We all arrived around the same time....4ish....and popped the cork on a bottle (or two) of Champagne, just because we could.  In reality two bottles of Champagne is two glasses each so we didn't overindulge.  After we finished the Champers we decided to go for a short walk to Pebbly Beach.  It is a very pretty cove and we sticky beaked on all the lucky people that have multi million dollar homes right on the waters edge.  After a quick couple of photos it was time to head back to our rooms to change for our dinner reservation at 7.00pm.

The girls

and the boys

Our room at Thala Beach

We all decided on different things from the menu and each and every dish was beautifully presented and very delicious.  The restaurant is superbly situated with open air views right across the ocean. We were lucky enough to be there for the full moon and had a birds eye view of it rising over the Coral Sea. After a few too many glasses of red wine we all made our way back to our respective cottages for a very solid sleep. The next morning, and all too soon, we had a quick bite of breakfast before heading in different directions to our homes.

That same week we also had friends visit us from Geelong.  We met Lyn and David on the last cruise and straight away hit it off.  It was no surprise to find that they were heading this way to get some relief from the bitterly cold winter they were experiencing in Victoria.  They came to our place for lunch one day and after a bbq lunch we took them for a bit of a drive around the property.  They loved it as do most of our friends that come for a visit and were surprised at how large it was.  We always secretly smile to ourselves because this property is 220 acres and our Julia Creek properties were 110,000 acres and we were small compared to most!
Lyn and David also arranged for us all to have dinner at Nautilus Restaurant while they were here.  I love this restaurant very much and everything we ate from the seven course tasting menu was absolutely delicious.  This restaurant is one of Port Douglas's original restaurants and it is incredible that it is still as great as the first time we ate here in 1980.  It has had a few renovations over the years but each change has been for the better.  We really must eat here more often.  Perhaps when we are living in Port.....

After our friends returned to Victoria, we loaded up the camper and headed south to Toowoomba to pick up mum to bring her here for a mini holiday.  We always love a road trip and this one passed all too quickly.  We drove more than 4000 kilometres in ten days that was a bit too much but our schedule was tight.  It took us three days to reach Toowoomba.  We picked up mum and drove straight to Caloundra where we had a couple of property inspections lined up. Then it was on to Gundiah to have a couple of days with Marco and Suzie before heading north again.  It took us another three days to finally get home and poor mum was exhausted.  Even thought we tried to be at our destination by 4.00pm each day it is still a very long day.

Wattle was in full bloom 

Many, many cattle were being driven along the road and many more tourists!

All together we counted four different droving camps

Took a sunset walk along the boardwalk at Caloundra

Burrum Heads

So, mum is now with us until Monday when she then flies back to Brisbane and buses to Toowoomba.  We have been lazing around and chatting and just enjoying each others company,  and the only outing we have planned is tomorrow when we will go to our local tavern for lunch.

This has been a much longer post than I intended my friends but that's what I get from not posting regularly.
Take care..
xx Judi