Black & White

Image from ffffound.com

Valentino!

This weekend we got around to seeing the Valentino Exhibition at Brisbane GoMA. We got the free guided tour which was interesting, but unfortunately our guide was a little hard to understand with the large Sunday crowd all around. Although I didn't love all the dresses (there is no accounting for taste, after all), the vast majority of the gowns were magnificent and beautifully crafted, and absolute joy to see up-close and personal. Some of the famous gowns featured were: the dress Jackie Kennedy wore to wed Aristotle Onassis, Julia Roberts' 2001 Oscars gown (vintage from the early 90s) and the beautiful yellow with maroon belt gown worn by Cate Blanchett when she won the Oscar for The Aviator. Definitely a must-see exhibition!

Brisbane Winter Day

A clear, sunny Winter day in Brissie today, max temp today was about 25, felt pretty hot. And a beautiful, cloud-less sky, so I had to take this video off the back balcony at about 4pm to show off our great weather! :)

KKxx

The Isar River - another Germany post

I keep getting reminded by various people that I haven't 'finished' my blog, i.e. put up all my photos from the trip, so I'm attempting to rectify this over the next few days. These photos are from a day that I had been looking forward to for a long while. As kids my brother and I often used to go mountain climbing and hiking with our nan's husband, and although he has given up the mountain climbing due to being an octogenarian he still goes hiking regularly. I was very keen to take a day out of the trip to go for a hike with him and a friend who used to accompany us a lot of the time back in the day. We chose to walk along a river that runs through Munich, the Isar, one of our all-time favourite walks. During the walk we came across a beautiful large pebble that I decided to keep and, I finally engraved it with the details of the walk as a memento of what will likely be out last hiking trip together:

The Bavarian country-side:

Some typography:

Some forest scenes:

Cause-way over the Isar:

Spring-time, the trees are growing:

Apple tree blossom:

I think the clouds look most impressive here. It started raining soon after.

My hiking buddies:

Arrived at our lunch destination:

The restaurant did some very interesting things with interior decorating:

A gorgeous wooden rocking horse
Luscious country-side:

Rubbing the petals on these flowers together results in a strong garlic smell. Very strange.

A church with a huge nursery

I really liked this old wooden door and window, rustic and beautiful!

What we did on Wednesday's Ekka holiday

Lunch at mum and dad's - gotta love my parents' well-stocked liquor cabinet... :)

The Runaways Movie

Image from IMDb

This movie started a little slowly, but once it got going I enjoyed it very much. Some of the camera angles and editing interfered a little with the story for me. Great sets, great styling, great casting! However, someone needs to give Alia Shawkat her own movie - she's awesome and needs to stop being relegated to best friend or side-kick. A great biographical movie, but unfortunately I couldn't really get an emotional connection going with the characters. Still, highly enjoyable, great music and great acting! Kristen Stewart even managed to drop the lip-biting that annoys me so much about Bella! 7/10

Cinco, Old Cleveland Road, Camp Hill

We had a really lovely meal tonight so I thought I have to give this place a plug. The restaurant is Cinco Bistro in Camp Hill, Brisbane. The food is best described as high-end contemporary Australian.
The menu changes regularly, so what's on the website may not represent what's going to be on offer that night, as was the case with us. This didn't bother us much though, as every dish on the menu sounded wonderful and we had a very hard time choosing what to eat.. For entree we had:
Pumpkin gnocchi with pork belly, seared squid in peanut milk - seems like an odd combo of flavours, but they worked together perfectly!
Crumbed chicken liver with beetroot relish - the liver was tender and nicely spiced, complemented by the relish.
Wild mushroom and foie gras tartlett, porcini veloute, port wine syrup - melt-in-your-mouth perfection!
Main courses:
Wagyu beef cheeks with parsnip puree - I've never cooked parsnip before, but I'm going to start now, I am sold based on the puree.
Spatchcock with lemon polenta, asparagus and salsa verde - perfectly balance of the saltiness of the spatchcock with the tanginess of the polenta and salsa.
Duck confit with braised red cabbage, roasted pear, rocket salad - I didn't try this one, but dad loved it.
The desserts all looked delectable, we chose the following:
Pistachio & olive oil cake, rhubarb sorbet, double cream - a light cake, and fruity sorbet
Steamed banana pudding, caramel sauce, nutmeg ice cream - who would've thought you could make ice cream out of nutmeg, but it was very yummy! The pudding was topped with pecan nuts and was beautiful!

We drank Kalleske Pirathon Shiraz 2008 - very yummy!

My only criticisms would be that the tea mum drank was a bag rather than loose leaf, and no vegetarian options. Still, the food was amazing, and great service, so: 9.5/10
I highly recommend that you get your bottoms on seats at this place for a special occasion.

I took a few snaps of the food, but they're are grainy and not sharp, so I apologize, and I'm only posting a couple. Seriously, you gotta go there yourselves!

The spatchcock:

The banana pudding:

Trip down memory lane

A good friend of the family recently came across a box of his old VHS tapes and decided to convert them to DVD. One of the tapes was of his trip to Germany back in 1989, featuring the Christmas period. We watched our copy tonight. I couldn't remember any of it, and since I've never seen this tape before, it was a lovely trip down memory lane and made me a little nostalgic. No wonder I love Christmas - I was having such a good time back then, too! Unfortunately the quality isn't great, but here are a few screen shots of Christmas Eve:

Time for a change?

I really like this shade of red with the light blond streaks through it. I do like my darker shade of red, but the blond breaks it up so nicely! hmm.. something to ponder.
This lovely lass is Jane from Sea of Shoes.