chocolate and coffee...... yum, yum.....

today's post is brought to you by my camera and about a million words......

in the past month we've been busy, busy, busy......

we moved into our rental house

{though we are still waiting for our ship to come in so it is

a little 'sparse' and echo-y at the moment.....

we have been assured it will only be about 3 more weeks..... hmmmmm}

however, on the up-side, another container did arrive

 {via Sydney}

and that container made us all very happy......

yes, the boys are back in town......

and how homely they make the place feel......

Cyril's leg is much improved with a covering of {short} fur

and he is racing around and play fighting with Bertie again

which is all good fun.....

we also got a car a couple of weeks ago which has made getting out and about so much easier.....

it's not that we lacked a car before then, the problem was we had a hire car 

and we were limited to driving no more than 100kms a day.......

which sounds quite a fair distance, but in reality, by the time I had done two sets of drop offs,

run errands and picked up some shopping and done the two daily pick ups too

we had just about covered 100kms so we weren't able to just hit the road and see

where we ended up......

that was a little frustrating as one of the things we LOVE to do, 

especially at weekends, is being able to explore new places.....

we did manage to get to the beach a couple of times where it was impossible 

to keep these two out of the water.......

{Isaac and I enjoyed soaking up the sun whilst sitting on the sand..... 

or at least I sat, he dug holes and made mounds.....}

just after getting the car, Brian had a long weekend which meant a Friday

off school followed by a holiday Monday too....

the kids didn't get the Friday {just the Monday} so Brian and I decided

to do a little exploring on the Friday all by ourselves.....

it was fun......

and we had lunch out too.....

double fun.....

we ended up in a suburb called Guildford which had a ton of antique shops, 

a couple of nice looking places to eat and a book exchange too.....

I did end up buying a book here and was informed by the lovely lady

behind the counter that if I brought the book back for them to resell I would

get half the purchase price back to go towards buying something else in store....

what a fab idea, I shall be popping back here again no doubt, 

perhaps with a couple of kids in tow too.....

on our drive back from Guildford we passed this place.....

but decided that we would leave visiting until the weekend when we could 

bring Isaac and Evie with us......

wouldn't want them to miss out on the free chocolate tasting which was advertised.....

so on Sunday afternoon, we wended our way back to the Swan Valley

{home to lots of vineyards and wine tasting places}

which happens to be just a 20 minute drive for us and popped into

the Margaret River Chocolate Co.......

we were greeted by huge metal bowls of tasty chocolate morsels......

so we indulged....
{I've never been one to knock back a bit of chocolate.....
though I did resist the urge to bury my face in the chocolate 'tastings'
incase it caused offence or broke some health and safety rule.....}

behind the tasting bowls on the wooden shelves were bags of all sorts of different

flavours of chocolate covered goodness and you were invited to try the 

samples to see which one you liked best....... 

needless to say, I had to try a few before I found my favourite!!

there were also mountains of chocolate bars......

and giant chocolate freckles....

after we had had our fill of chocolate we were invited to a free 

wine and cheese tasting......

thanks, don't mind if we do.....

then it was on to the honey tasting.....

it amazes me how bees collecting pollen from different
flowers can give the honey a completely different taste....

and bubbly honey drinks too......
rather yum it has to be said......

 and finally it was a stop at the coffee tasting.....

yum, yum, yum.....

we positioned ourselves at the coffee bar where a friendly and knowledgeable 

barista made us the coffee of our choice from their rather huge list of speciality coffees....

it was so interesting to taste coffees in succession and see how very different they tasted......

I settled on my favourite and will definitely be stocking up on that in the future....

I was even treated to an iced coffee before I left

{this is one of those things that I thought I would hate and had always
resisted right up until last year when we visited the USA on holiday
and I found that actually I really liked it......

I mean, I really liked it......}

so, roll on the hot weather so I can start indulging my craving again.....

{to be honest, it kinda still feels like summer here at the moment 

as the temps are usually around the 18-24 degree mark..... 

and I keep having to remind myself that this time of year in Oz actually
equates to December in the UK.....}

and there we have it, a quick {ok, maybe not so quick}

rundown of what we have been up to for the past few weeks.....

hope to be able to add lots more 'fun days out' in the coming months.....