Being an April Fools baby (yes, really) some years I get a long Easter weekend for my birthday. This year my birthday actually fell on a Thursday before the long weekend…so I took the day off and had an extra long 5 day weekend. You read that right: FIVE DAYS OFF!!

I spent my day off making easter eggs! Check it out. I’m so domesticated it hurts.

How to make caramel eggs

Melt some chocolate in the microwave – cook for about 2 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds or so. Using a spoon, use the melted choccy to coat a plastic egg mould. Remember they’ll have filling, so don’t fill ‘em up too much.

The recipe I used suggested refrigerating for 20 mins, but we found it worked best to leave them overnight to really harden up. Once they’re nice and hard, flex the mould to loosen and remove the shells then sit them back. (You’re just removing them now because it’s harder once they have filling.)

Heat one tin of condensed milk (recommend you buy 2 tins if, like me, you are prone to quaff all that delish condensed goodness before you get around to using it in the recipe) over a low heat. Add a good dollop of golden syrup and cook for a few minutes until it combines. Leave it to cool.

Crumble some plain biscuits (granita, yo-yos, scotch fingers etc) or give it a whirl in a food processer if you have one. Then add about 1/4 – 1/2 cup of melted butter and mix it all together.

When the syrup mix has cooled enough that it won’t melt your chocolate, pour it in the chocolate egg halves, then top with the biscuit crumbs and pop it back in the fridge to harden up. If you’re really enthusiastic you can ‘glue’ your egg halves together, but we just left them as halves because they are quite sweet and a whole egg would be a bit much :)

Understandably I was not particularly excited about getting up for work today, especially not with the flood of rain we had…apparently that long weekend was the last hurrah for warm weather! The drains around my street are notorious for blocking at the first hint of rain and this morning I actually had to take a running leap to get out of my driveway (and I still got wet).

Wet mornings aside, here’s to winter…and to my 26th year. I have BIG plans for this year! Cross your fingers for me :)

I still have tons of stuff to post from Thailand but I couldn’t resist sharing the latest shot of this rolypoly-bundle-of-pure-adorableness: my niece, Mira.

She is getting so big! And getting more and more fun (and cute) every time I see her. I can’t resist smooching those adorable chubby cheeks!

It seems like it’s a trendy thing for bands to play whole albums during live shows now, but as long as they’re good albums, I’m not complaining. When I heard that the Whitlams were basing their whole set around Eternal Nightcap my heart just about exploded out of my chest with happiness, since that’s one of my favourite albums of all time!

Local guys Special Patrol opened, which was another nice surprise. I’ve seen them open a few times and they’ve always been really good (in fact, the opened for Ben Kweller a year or two ago and they were so good I actually rated them higher than BK).

After the Whitlams finished Eternal Nightcap, they came back and did a second half with some classics from other albums – Royal in the Afternoon, Duffy’s Song, Love This City, Thankyou, No Aphrodesiac, Life’s a Beach and a few from Little Cloud. Now that I think about it, it was a REALLY long set – and all class, even when Tim forgot a few lyrics (ha!). The crowd went off when they ended with the masterpiece that is I Love Hamburgers!

Part of my new job involves working with schools to teach kids about energy. Lately we have been trialing some new stuff, and I’ve been lucky enough to spend an entire day at schools, teaching kids. And you know what…I really love it. Back in my Uni days, I started a degree in Early Childhood Education and being around kids like this makes me wish that I had stuck with that degree.

Today I went to Cowandilla Primary School — it was the second time I’ve been there, and I think it’s a really special school. They get a lot of “new arrival” kids that have come to Australia recently, and the school is like a mini multicultural paradise! It’s so interesting to see children from so many different backgrounds mixing together and — and the cool part is, they don’t think anything of it. I wish everyone could grow up with this kind of experience, I think it would lead to a lot more understanding.