Three months in Canberra

This year is flying by and somehow we've managed to clock up three months in Canberra. At first there was a lot to take in but now we feel right at home and really love it here. Here's a quick look at life in our new city:

Right now we're in the middle of a 10 day night noodle market and last weekend we sampled everything from Peking duck fries (!) to Peruvian street food. The food scene here is really exciting and we have to be so careful not to spend all of our money eating out. There seems to be so many great festivals, this weekend a hot air balloon festival is coming to town!

I really like the independent shops here from record stores to cool new florists and gift shops. I especially love Braddon because it has a place for food trucks and sweet gift shops (this one's my fave) and the best gelato ever.

I'm getting back into cooking again now that everything else seems a little more under control. Food shopping here is amazing, and I've been able to pick up hard-to-find ingredients like fresh yeast and lambs liver pretty close to home. And the IGA in Ainslie that everyone raves about really is excellent. It stocks a bunch of fancy flours and has a wall of cheese.

I've written about our little garden before but right now, we're picking cherry tomatoes and strawberries every few days. It is so exciting, and we're slowly adding new plants now that we've had a bit of success. Radicchio is next!

I was pretty nervous about starting a new job, after spending five years in my last one. So far it's been the most challenging aspect of the move so far but in a good way. At the end of each week, I'm sure that I couldn't have worked any harder, and that's an incredibly satisfying feeling.  One fun thing - there's a bake off every week!

I thought I'd share a few little hiccups too. Since we've moved, we've had our fair share of bugs, probably from being a little run down. Tony's come off his bike and scraped his knee quite badly (it's on the mend - yay!) and I had a cooking accident. But other than that we've felt very lucky about the whole move.

And finally, living here has meant that our friends and family are ten times more likely to visit us. Most of my family will be in town this weekend (including my little niece!) and we have a few more visitors that we're really looking forward to later this month.