My favourite Sydney pubs, in watercolour form - Part 1

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the things we've missed most about Australia is being able to go to the pub for a good meal and some relaxed drinks. I've always loved the look of Sydney's older pubs and decided to paint some of my favourites. I'm going to make this a two part series (or maybe more) because it takes a long time to paint these and I keep thinking of more pubs I like. 

Cooper's Hotel, King St Newtown

 I have to admit I've never been to the downstairs area at Coopers, we always head straight upstairs to the beautifully re-done bistro area. They basically demolished half the upstairs area but left the facade, so it's created a great walled-in courtyard above King St. They have nice pizzas here and a delicious Angus steak. I don't think the pub name has anything to do with Cooper's beer, but they do serve it so it seems like a good place to enjoy it. Also, Tranny Bingo on Monday nights! (I'm yet to experience that one).

The Courthouse Hotel, corner of Australia St & Lennox St, Newtown

Extremely popular for a good reason. The beer garden with its long tables and big frangipani trees is perfect on a summer afternoon and pretty good in winter too. Although the Courthouse always seems crowded, you can almost always find a table because there are so many different areas to sit. Food is good and the Courty burger is very popular.

The Erko (Erskineville Hotel), Erskineville Rd, Erskineville.

This was a 'new' discovery on this last trip and I'm putting it straight up into the top five. I don't like a lot of fanciness in a pub and the Erko is just the right kind of relaxed environment where it looks like they've made an effort, but you'd never feel underdressed or not cool enough to be there. We also met one of the nicest bouncers I've ever met, who did everything he could to make sure our group got a good place to sit. I haven't tried the food here yet but I've heard good reports.

The Hampshire, Parramatta Rd, Camperdown

I've ended up frequenting the Hampshire because it's a good midway point between our place and my friend's place in Annandale. It's also close to RPA where a couple of our friends work so it's a convenient meeting spot. There's not really anything fancy about the Hampshire but, as you can probably tell by now, that's the kind of place I like. The bartenders are always friendly and it's always quiet enough that you're pretty much guaranteed to win the meat raffle on a Friday night. They also now have a beer trio taster thing where you choose three beers to try and get a pony (a little baby beer glass) of each for $7 - good way to try some of the local beers they have.

Kelly's on King, King St, Newtown

Kelly's is yet another pub that has become a favourite purely by convenience. For three years it was the closest pub to our house so we went there a lot, and still do out of habit. I can't think of any unique redeeming feature apart from the fact that it's open very late and you're quite likely to be the coolest person there.

Update - Back to Work

First proper update of the year! I've been back at work a week now and so far have been working pretty hard which is exciting for me. I've been running this business from home for three years now (full time for the last year) and it's taken a long time to really get good at working from home, but I think I'm finally getting there.

We had an awesome Christmas/New Years break back in Australia and despite how much we packed into two weeks, it still went way too quickly. We spent the week around Christmas with my family in the Snowy Mountains and then James' family in Newcastle, and the week around New Year's in Sydney. We spent a lot of time taking advantage of the random little things we've missed - fresh healthy food, good avocadoes, breakfasts at cafes, pubs, supermarkets, clean air, usable public transport, quiet streets - I'm not saying we can't find any of that in Manila, it's just all so different. We went from our normal view of tall buildings as far as the eye can see (not that far with the pollution), to views like this:

We were well overdue for a break from Manila and it was just what we needed. I think we've come back pretty refreshed! I've got good work routines in place, we've been keeping the place reasonably tidy and I've been trying out lots of new recipes inspired by the fresh Aussie food we enjoyed over the break.

This is the recipe photo from Real Living. Our dinner was just as good but maybe not as stylish looking!

I've just finished a custom dress order and right about to start another one, and I have a bridal order to work on this year as well! I'm also trying to produce lots of bridal samples for the Etsy store, which is now back online after the holiday break. There's not much on there at the moment so I want to fill it up a bit more with samples and custom orders.

Finally, Jodie from jodiehilton.com did a feature on me and my work for her site this week, so go and check it out here if you want to learn some random little known facts about me!

The Great Big Wedding Post

Our wedding was held three weeks ago at Victoria Park, Sydney. It's a beautiful big park just up the road from where we lived when we first met six years ago. We got engaged two months before moving to the Philippines, so I planned most of the wedding in that time. It was fun to plan and ended up being a fun, happy and relaxing day. All of the beautiful photos were taken by my brother, Mark. He's actually a pilot but he somehow finds time to also be a really great photographer. You can check out his flickr photos here.



I designed and printed our own invitations to look like old library books.



This is my bridesmaid, Jess, and I hanging out in a park (not the 'wedding park') before the wedding. I normally like being ready early and arrive places exactly on time, so this whole 'the bride is always late' thing was pretty frustrating to me. Of course she turns up last - she has to wait until everyone else is at the ceremony site and ready to go!



This little dog came to say hello while we were waiting. Note the pretty bouquets - Jess and I made our own. I love how they turned out! This is also a good point to mention my shoes. They were made by Golden Ponies, who I have raved about on here before - it is my absolute favourite brand of shoes to buy from. Thank you, Erandi, for making such cute, comfortable and affordable wedding shoes! Everyone was complimenting them.



...and we're off! Here's my dad and I walking down the aisle - well, across the park anyway.



Our gorgeous wedding spot. We 'planted' hundreds of fake flowers in the ground to create an 'aisle' and it looked amazing! The flowers, chairs and lots of other decorations all came from IKEA - I used to work there before I moved here.



We ended up with a perfect day, weather-wise, but there was just a bit of wind!



Discussing how to go about cutting the cake - this was deemed necessary after my brother's wedding last year. He and his wife tried to cut into the cake and discovered that the icing was very thick and completely solid, resulting in hilarious photos of him hacking into his wedding cake with a very determined look on his face!



A close up of our lovely book cake made by Glamour Cakes. It was so exciting when the cake arrived, the house just filled with the smell of sugar! It tasted amazing too. The chess piece cake toppers were partly inspired by our tradition of playing chess on holidays, and partly by me thinking 'hmmm, maybe we should have cake toppers... these will do!'
We had the cake and a champagne toast in the park after the wedding ceremony, like a nice afternoon picnic!



After mingling with our guests for awhile, we headed off to take photos around the park.



As I've mentioned before, I made my own dress. I'm so happy with how it turned out! My mum made my veil.





Jess and I were determined to play on the swing set in our pretty dresses. I love this photo with the boys holding our bouquets!



Walking down Glepe Point Rd to our reception at Sappho, a beautiful little second hand bookshop with a cafe & bar out the back. They serve tapas for dinner at night, and they created a delicious tapas menu for our reception that kept everyone very happy all night. I'm still thinking about all that good food!











Our 'guest book' was a library catalogue drawer with dividers that said things like 'Advice for a happy marriage', 'Good jokes', 'Things James should know about Ali'/'Things Ali should know about James' etc. People got really enthusiastic about filling out little index cards and filing them into categories, and they were hilarious to read the next day!



We did our dance to 'You Never Can Tell' by Chuck Berry, inspired of course by the twist scene with John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. This photo captures all the things I love about Sappho - books, plants, coloured lights, and crazy graffiti all over the walls.



Like any good party, everyone went home with a lolly bag. I may have taken two...

Goodbye Sydney

After an extremely busy week of final uni assessments and packing, I closed up my apartment and left Sydney on Saturday. I'm loving Manila so far and will start bombarding you with photos soon, but for now I wanted to share some photos of the city I left behind. Some sites you'll recognise, some you won't - but all of these views became part of my daily life over the last six years and I'll miss them a lot.

Lovely view of the city from Botanic Gardens

Every Sydneysider loves the ferries - the best way to go for fish & chips or ice cream!

Botanic Gardens

All around the harbour there are untouched beaches and walking paths to explore.

I walked through this park every day on my way to uni - and we're getting married there next year!

Another part of my walk home

This 'river' (more of a canal) is right near where we lived for the last two years. It's a great place to walk along and get away from noisy traffic!

The city all lit up for Vivid Sydney

I still love the bridge, no matter how many times I've seen it. It's just so awesome!

I've never known what this building is for but I've always liked it. It's between Circular Quay and the Rocks

Botanic Gardens - I used to walk here a lot the first year I moved to Sydney.

This park used to be a cemetary and was right near our second apartment. In the evening it fills with dogs playing and people having evening picnics!

The Opera House lit up for Vivid Sydney

Another park near our second apartment

Tropfest, the annual short film festival held in the Domain. I feel like EVERYONE goes to this and it almost always rains at some point!

Jacaranda trees are one of my favourite things about Sydney. Every year from October to December, the city and suburbs are dotted with these huge purple flowering trees - and my favourite part is when they start dropping flowers on the ground like a big purple carpet! They look especially beautiful when it rains - it brings out the purple!

This is the view from our last apartment, and that's our little removalist truck taking away all of our stuff! Most of it went into storage, but 2 cubic metres of it should be making its way here soon!