This Magnum's for you, Niss!

So I've mentioned before how crazy popular Magnum ice cream bars are here. Well, for 6 weeks, there's a Magnum pop-up shop where you can make your own. So of course I had to do this.
I headed out at lunch one day to visit this Magnum stand, not sure what to expect. But it was really cool!

It's set up in the middle of the mall.

There's an "m" made out of ice cream sticks, just in case you forget what brand you're eating or why you're there.

When you're ready to make your ice cream, there are three steps:

1. Choose your chocolate coating flavor. I went with dark chocolate.

2. Choose your toppings. There were all kinds to choose from.

I chose hazelnut, rose petals, and coconut.

3. Choose your chocolate drizzle. Same choices as the dipping chocolate, but I went with white chocolate for the top.

Then, all that's left is to be super excited about your ice cream creation and wish that you could do this every day!

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Working with Rufus

I've been working a lot trying to wrap up a big project before I go on vacation next week. It's been pretty stressful and a little chaotic. But occasionally I get to see this really cute boy in the office, and it just melts my stress away!

Turns out, Rufus comes to the office sometimes because he barks at the neighbors cats. The cats' loss is my gain!

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Aroma Festival

Sunday was a gorgeous winter Sydney day, which was lucky because it was also Aroma Festival, a coffee festival held down in The Rocks.

Sydney people really love their coffee. But they're also really picky about it. Which means that instead of 5 or 6 Starbucks in the city, there's 1 Starbucks and about 200 tiny little coffee shops tucked into alleys and hanging off the ends of restaurants. Everyone has their own opinion about which coffee place has the best, and people stay loyal to their favorite places.

So the Aroma Festival was packed with people! But I didn't mind, because everyone was out enjoying the weather and coffee and generally happy to be alive.

The booths of the Aroma Festival were scattered around The Rocks in clumps of tents. I couldn't really figure out an organization to the arrangement, but it didn't really matter.

There were lots of coffee tents (with really long lines), but just as many tents for other things like tea, cupcakes, chocolate, churros, spices, coffee machine demonstrations, etc.

There were also several bands scattered around, all playing really good music. This one band played jazzy-style music on top of a coffee truck. It was so charming!

I met a couple expat girls at the festival, and we unanimously agreed the coffee truck with the band on top was where we wanted to get coffee. And it also happened to have the shortest line. =)

After we had our coffee, cupcake, and cookie break, we walked over to check out the coffee artwork. The "art" was a mosaic made of coffee cups, filled with coffee of different dilutions to make shading. Last year the portrait was of Marylin Monroe, I learned from the Aroma website. This year, we couldn't make out who it was, Google tells me it's Dame Edna.

Even though I couldn't tell who it was at the time, it was still really cool to watch it come together.

Even though the main focus of the day was coffee, there plenty of other things going on too. Like tea readings.

We also found these gourmet chocolate lollipops. I definitely had to try one of these!

I got dark champagne flavor, and it was just as amazing and luxurious as it sounds!

After a couple hours, I put my caffeine buzz to good use and walked back across the bridge in the lovely sunny day!

One final look at the festivities!

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The Opera House in sunlight & moonlight

As I was walking home from work on Monday, Mother Nature put on a great sunset for all of us walkers on the bridge. The sun was setting behind me as I took this picture, but the moon was already up pretty high behind the Opera House.

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