City Hall as the Light Fades

I really wanted to share this beautiful photo with you all.  It was taken by one of the local Tweeters, @iCharlotte and I really liked it, so I asked her if I could share it here on I ♥ BrisVegas.

Doesn't it have an awesome kind of twilight feel to it?  (I'm not talking about the sparkly Vampires people!)

I love City Hall.  I also love King George Square.  I only wish they hadn't put those ugly 50's style buildings in it that lead down to the new bus station.  It used to be a fantastic open space, there for all to enjoy, but the bus station buildings just chop it up and hide the square.  It's a shame.

Thanks again to Charlotte for this one, if you're interested in seeing more of Charlotte's stuff, she has a Tumblr account HERE.

Full of Cakey Goodness

I figured since I have tried the goods from TWO of Brisbane's cupcake boutiques this weekend, that I had better tell you about them.

Thanks to the Brisbane Twitter group, BTUB, I enjoyed cupcakes in New Farm park with some of my fellow Brisbane tweeters.  @shique purchased our cupcakes from two different cupcake boutiques, Poppy Cakes in Fortitude Valley and the Cupcake Parlour at West End.

The Poppy Cakes ones were very good - nice moist cake, sweet icing, cute presentation.  I was really excited to see that they have red velvet cupcakes, as red velvet cake is one of my favourite things in the whole world.  So of course I had to try one of those.  Take a look:

Cute huh?  Want a close up?  Ok, here you go:

My only criticism is that they weren't authentic red velvet cupcakes simply because the icing was plain vanilla icing.  Red velvet cake just isn't red velvet cake without vanilla cream cheese icing.  It's just not the real thing.  But they were still tasty anyway.

The Cupcake Parlour cakes though... what magnificence!  Not only were they totally scrumptious, but every single one was a little work of cupcakey art.  Check 'em out:

Gorgeous aren't they?  Each one totally individually flavoured with it's own style of decoration.  That green one on the bottom right with the pale purple flower?  It was apple.  This is the one that I had:

I also thought this one was extra pretty:

That little rose is just exquisite.
I will say though, eating two cupcakes was no easy feat.  Both types were incredibly sweet (without being sickly) so it was a pretty huge sugar rush afterwards, and then a crash a bit later.  I had to go home and find something savoury for dinner to counter all that sugar!
I'll definitely be buying cupcakes from The Cupcake Parlour again, that's for sure.

Jan Power's Farmers Markets

I finally got a chance to really go and peruse the Jan Power's Farmers Markets in Reddacliff Place, at the top of the Queen Street Mall.  They've been on since the beginning of this month, but I have been on holidays, so I hadn't had the chance to go and really take a look yet.

Running on Wednesdays from 11am to 6pm, the markets have everything from fresh fruit and veges, meat, bread, flowers, cheese and other dairy products, smallgoods and some hand crafted goods.  From what I could see, most of it was very well priced too.

As it was lunch time, I started out with a cheese kransky from the German sausage stand (slapped into a crusty breadroll with sauerkraut and mustard) to munch on while I had a look around.  I picked up a gorgeous ciabatta from the German bread maker (and a cinnamon stick for afternoon tea), some diced pork from one of the butchers, and fresh fruit and veg from some of the produce sellers.  I also popped back down at afternoon tea time to pick up some fragrant roses from the stall out on the William Street end, absolutely gorgeous roses for $8 a bunch.  I think that may become a regular weekly treat for me.

I'm really glad that they've moved to regular weekly markets right in the CBD.  It means I can get fresh, good quality produce at a reasonable price every week, without having to haul myself out to any of the suburban markets on the weekend.

Do check them out!

Lock n' Load - West End

Went to the Girl Geek dinner last night, a group of awesome women who meet up to celebrate, network and encourage geekiness, as well as have some social time.  I'll blog more about that on Sleepydumpling's Big Adventure later.

The dinner was held at Lock n Load bistro at West End, right on Boundary Street.  Google Map here!

What a little gem of a bistro.  Tucked away amongst the shops (as most cafe's and bistros are in West End), Lock n Load has great food, friendly staff, well priced and is a fantastic venue.  They have the restaurant downstairs (which had a live jazz trio playing), a garden out the back and then a lovely room upstairs which seats about 30 people, and has a wide screen plasma on the wall perfect for talks and presentations.

The dinner last night had a set menu, with Turkish bread for starters for all, then several choices for mains, and also salad and shoestring fries served to the table for all.  I had crispy skinned barramundi with chorizo, potatoes and olives.  YUM-O.  The barra was beautifully fresh, cooked to perfection (the seasoning on that crispy skin was divine) and the olives and chorizos really offset the mild flavours of the fish and potato.

I really liked the feel of the place too.  Relaxed and friendly, and looks like it's been built into an old Queenslander house.  The staff were really helpful, the wine was good (and well priced) and the room upstairs a perfect venue for lots of discussion.

I'll certainly go back there.

Tales of Twestival

This is a bit of a late post, but better late than never right?

As per my last post, I went to Brisbane Twestival last Thursday night.  It was held at Metro Arts in Edward Street and was a great night.

I went along with friends and we started the evening with a meal at Wagamama, and then wandered down to Edward Street.  On arrival at Metro Arts we handed our Twestival tickets over to receive our programme, a lollipop, a cute little Twestival badge and a $20 Telstra phone away card.  Bonus!

My friends and I went down to Verve, the fantastic restaurant in the basement of the Metro Arts building.  Now I tell you, if you're in Brisbane, and have never been to Verve, do something about that and go ASAP.  Not only is it a great location with heaps of atmosphere, but the food is AMAZING, well priced and plentiful, and they have fantastic fun, relaxed service.  The whole crew there are heaps of fun and very friendly.  I can highly recommend the blue cheese risotto (I have seen people literally lick their plates) and they have the BEST sticky date pudding I have ever tasted.

We popped down there for a drink before the festivities (or should I say twestivities) started, and I had a rather delicious Sista T cocktail.  Behold!

Anyhoo, after a rapidly mind numbing cocktail, we popped upstairs to the studio for the main programme.  On the way in we popped into the Lolly Shop stall and bought a few of the cute badges they had there.  I quite fell in love with this one, I think you can see why...

They had some fabbo acts on, from local DJ Collapsicon, modern Middle Eastern dancer Moniq, and the AS Theatre who presented an excerpt from their upcoming play "Lazarus Won't Get Out of Bed."  I'm definitely going to see that one.

It's not too late to help with raising money through Twestival for Charity: Water.  Either follow my links  here to the Twestival website, or you can buy the Twestival T-shirt here.

I only wish I could have stayed until the end of the programme, but I was knackered after a rather intense day at work.  Oh well, next year!

Brisbane Twestival

I just bought my tickets to go to Brisbane Twestival next week.  

Twestival is an event organised by the Twitter community across the world for each of their cities, to be held on February 12, which will raise money for Charity:Water.  

Each Twestival is different, but the point is to bring the Twitter community of each city together for an evening of fun to help a good cause.

Brisbane Twestival will be held at Metro Arts in Edward Street on Thursday night, and is will have bands, theatre, art auctions, stalls, raffles and goodies for people to enjoy.  There is also a Facebook event if you want to have a look there.

I'm really looking forward to going along.

For those of you who don't know about or use Twitter, it's a form of microblogging, where you post up to 140 characters per "tweet" or update.  I love Twitter, and tweeting as it is called, has brought me so much cool stuff in my life.  Lots of famous people tweet, the most prolific of which would be Stephen Fry (@StephenFry).  If you want to have a look at my Twitter account, I am @sleepydumpling.

Game On!

My friend Kylie B and I went to the Game On exhibit at State Library of Queensland today.  I got a free ticket last year when I went to the SLQ Unconference, and I've just been waiting for the opportunity to go.

Game On is an interactive exhibit on the history of video games.  As their tagline says, "Play your way through the history of video games."

I don't think I've ever had so much fun going to an exhibit in my life.  It's all there, from Pong through to the Nintendo Wii, and you can play about 95% of the consoles, handhelds and arcade machines there.  Kylie and I had so much fun playing with the Wii, I have decided to buy one myself.  I love the idea of a video game that actually requires activity and movement.  We played tennis on it and it really does feel like you're playing tennis.  I think even without anyone to play with, I could have fun in my living room just playing against the console.  But I fully intend to have Wii parties too.

As well as having all the games there for you to play, you can learn about the music of video games, how the stories and plots of the games are thought up (there is an awesome post-it-note storyboard for Grand Theft Auto), the artwork, the merchandising that goes with them and the actual history of the computing that goes into them.

If you are interested even in the slightest in video games I can highly recommend this exhibit to you, but get in quick because you only have until February 15th!