I have a lot of blogging to catch up, so I thought I’d just give you a quick rundown on life right now and I’ll try to come back later with more details!

Stanford ended up finishing 4th in the World Solar Challenge, which is the best they have ever done! Congratulations to them! So incredibly proud. <3

We travelled for about a week after making it to Adelaide, going along the Great Ocean Road and stopping at lots of gorgeous beaches and seeing a few waterfalls too. The photo below is from Port Fairy.

This one is from the Gibson Steps right by the Twelve Apostles. This was one of my favorite days! We spent the entire day in this area. Saw the London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge, Twelve Apostles..

Both photos above were edited almost completely in LR minus a teeny bit of cloning in PS on the second one. I’m taking Caroline Jensen’s LR class right now (Communicating with Color and Light) and it is one of the most amazing classes ever! I am learning so much and have pretty much been converted to LR. Which is kind of amazing, considering I was a die-hard PS girl.

Work has been a little insane lately because my manager went on vacation right before a big deadline.. and I got left semi in charge of making sure we met the deadline. Crazy. We finally got it ready for shipping yesterday.. and I promptly went home and succumbed to the cold I have been fighting off for more than a month! Haha! Stayed at home today to rest up.

The weekend was also pretty busy. We threw a housewarming on Saturday. My room is almost scary clean right now. We also finally got around to hanging up decorations! I hung up my 900 cranes (still need to string up the last 100! But I’m getting there!) and also made some crepe paper flowers. I discovered that I cannot for the life of me use floral tape. So I had to supplement with a little hot glue and craft glue. They came out really pretty though! When I get my camera back home, I’ll have to take a few pictures. We also had lots and lots of cheese. I went a litttlleee overboard. At the last minute, Chris said it was too bad we couldn’t label them. So of course I had to go pull out some cardstock and my calligraphy pen. 🙂

Sunday, we had a duck party at 776. It was amaaaziinnggg. Kiran’s friend’s dad gave him THIRTEEN ducks. We cooked 12 of them. We sous-vided four, roasted four with an orange marmalade glaze, and barbecued four as skewers with almond satay sauce. Then we used the scraps to make duck ravioli! I was initially skeptical and was worried about whether they would be any good.. and also what I should pair them with. But Nathan made a mushroom marmalade to pair with the cheeses.. and when I tasted it, I knew that I wanted to mix that with the duck. I ended up replacing the honey with some reduced apple cider and it was actually the best idea. The hint of apple was awesome. We ended up with a total of thirteen dishes and everyone else brought so. much. dessert. There were like.. five or six pies in addition to a singaporean dessert and apple pie cookies. Amazing.

I stayed over at 776 since I didn’t feel like driving up to the city just to drive down the next morning. Before I left, I assembled some breakfast sandwiches for Nathan, Wyles and Claire. 🙂 We had Tartine bread (which is so. good.) so the night before, all I could think about were breakfast sandwiches. I made a garlic herb butter (fried sage and some basil) and used a mix of the mushroom marmalade with the leftover duck ravioli filling and then added some gruyere and cheddar and a poached egg. Seriously kind of the best breakfast sandwich ever. And yes, I am totally the kind of house guest who will cook breakfast for you. 🙂