25.

I celebrated my 25th birthday a couple of weeks ago. It was an afternoon of sun, fun, food, and rude conversation. I had so much fun, actually, that I only took one picture the whole afternoon!



Here's Toby in my backyard. Please excuse my underwear on the line.

Toby, Kristy, Bron and Liz are vegan, and Preethi is vegetarian, so I wanted to cater for them - after all, the rest of us could still eat the vegan food, and I wanted everyone to be able to eat everything! With that in mind, I whipped up a bunch of tasty treats - green pea puffs, baked artichoke dip and quinoa salad, all borrowed from Cindy and Michael).

My housemate made a killer guacamole, and I also made a chocolate-almond torte and an orange polenta cake. With a heap of gorgeous summer fruit and Kristy's cute cupcakes, we ate and ate and ate until we were stuffed full, and then kept eating!

And two weeks later I'm STILL working my way through the 650g of Belgian chocolate from Bronwyn and Simon....

Random photos #1: Italia.

I've been doing a bit of a clear-out of the photos on my mobile phone and on my computer, and I found a bunch of photos that haven't yet made it online.

This first lot are leftover pictures from my time in Italy.


This is the view from my third-floor hotel room in Rome, taken on my very first night in Italy. Nice, eh?

Another view that people generally don't get to see - Italian backyards, as seen from the train to Prato.





Don't be fooled! This isn't a real bird. There was this clear glass? Perspex? thingo that ran along next to the trainline, with birds in flight printed on it.

Shopping in Zara - these are Holly's feet:


..and my feet.

(I loved those shoes. They were only €20 but it was nearing the end of my time in Italy and I'd run out of money. *cries*)

Un cioccolato caldo. I wish I'd drunk more of these. A. Maze. Ing.


This graffito was on a Milanese Metro platform. Wow! It really perked me up.


Our last day in Venice. It started off foggy, as you can see, but by the afternoon the fog had lifted and it became a glorious sunny (albeit FREEZING COLD) day. Magic.



Basilica di S. Marco.



The beautiful Riccardo and I. We met in a shop in Prato and it was love at first sight.


Construction work out the back of the Uffizi in Florence.



xox Liz