Time For a Break

 

Hi guys! After blogging every week since August last year (45 consecutive posts!), the time has come for me to take a break. As much as I love writing, I'm just not feeling it lately, and I'd rather use the time to focus on other parts of my life. This is not the end for Max The Unicorn though! I'm not sure if it will be weeks or months, but I will be back.

You may have noticed that I've also slowed down my Collabs on Instagram. I was originally intending to have a break altogether from Collabs, both on my beauty and food accounts, but I don't mind working on the odd one here and there. Basically I had up to seven Collabs at once at some points in time, and I was overwhelmed, stressed, extremely busy, unhappy and not getting time for anything else. The last few months I've started being a lot more picky with what I'll accept, because it has to be worth it for me now. I'm up in the air about whether I'll get back to continuously collaborating with brands, restaurants/hotels/cafes and PR companies again (I'll play it by ear), but for now it really has to slow down for a while.

I'm feeling a lot happier with my change in priorities, and the balance I'm creating in my life. Specifically on my food account, this will also give me a chance to post all the non-obligated photos I have built up, which I've been wanting to do for a long time, but Collabs always took priority.

If you want to still follow along with what I'm up to, the best place is my food account @imhungrymax where I do enjoy posting Stories every day. But for this blog, I'll see you on the other side of my break! Happy Week, everyone.

Weekend Walks

 

Hi guys! Another picture post this week, because I ran out of time and I'm still pretty unmotivated to blog, to be honest. I hope I get my mojo back! I've got an Empties post to write but it won't be for a while because this week I have two Collab visits and three collab posts to work on, so I'll be way too busy. Thank god it's the school holidays though! I'm looking forward to sleeping in, as getting up at 6:20 every morning takes its toll after a while!

We went for a couple of walks over the weekend. Here are some photos!

Meow Monday!

 

Hi guys! I hope you're all having a wonderful Easter break! Before we get into the aptly titled post 'Meow Monday', a bit of housekeeping that absolutely no one will care about. I've decided to restrict comments as much as I can (I couldn't find the option to totally disable them) because I'm getting swamped with spam link comments and I'm sick of it. I don't use this blog for work/collabs anymore, it's really just because I enjoy blogging as a hobby, so I don't care about getting comments and don't need to even consider my stats or engagement. So please don't feel obliged to comment as I truly don't GAF.

On to my cats! If you follow me on Instagram, you'll be familiar with my feline family, namely Nutmeg (the naughty one) and Pumpkin (the shy, marmalade-coloured one). I post them on my IG Stories on @imhungrymax from time to time and on my beauty grid @shinyglitterbug roughly every four posts (give or take). I thought I'd post a few cat snaps here.

There are a few where Nutmeg is super grumpy and oh boy, does it show on her face! Make sure you check out the final photos, a surprise blast from the past. So cute!

Happy Meow-nday!

My Week In Pictures

 

Hi guys! I thought I'd do a quick 'My Life In Pictures' post today. Kind of like a #WordlessWednesday but on a Monday and with words haha. Let's go!

Monday I published 'My Top 10 Netflix Recommendations' blog post and advertised it across my social media channels. I really put some effort in on that post and wanted it to do well.

Tuesday I washed my hair for an event the next night and went shopping for a campaign I'm working on. I had a little cat helper when I was getting ready.

Wednesday I shot my first bunch of content for the collaboration during the day. At night we attended the John Wick: Chapter 4 preview screening which was really cool! We went to dinner first at Spargo's but the steak wasn't very good (although the garlic bread was yummy).

Thursday I had planned to go out, but opted to stay home and get all my collab post content ready to publish Friday, editing photos, working out hashtags and writing the caption. But before that, I treated myself to this Chai Latte from a local cafe after school drop off. I also published John Wick: Chapter 4 pics onto my personal and @whatmaxwatches Instagram accounts.

Friday I got my carousel post published for the shopping campaign and engaged on my food account. I also cooked Spaghetti Bolognese, styled and shot content for the second post in that campaign. All this left me exhausted lol. Love Is Blind Season 4 was released on Netflix, so I watched some episodes of that at night.

Saturday, yet more cooking, styling and shooting for this campaign. Two dishes, this time! This took me all afternoon. Again, exhausting work. In the night time we watched John Wick, the original movie, after loving the fourth one earlier in the week. Then I got myself up to date with Love Is Blind S4 episodes.

Sunday I realised I had been too busy all week to get a blog post ready to publish on 27/3, so I sat down and wrote this blog post you're reading now. Nothing like a last minute post, hey!? I also did a few hours of housework. Fun times. Above is a banana bread and juice combo I enjoyed during the week.

I really need for things to calm down, as I've been super busy lately, and there have been a number of occasions where I've found myself totally overwhelmed. I know I've got too many collaborations going at once and even though I couldn't resist accepting another food collab during the week, I did turn down two beauty collabs. So there's that. I think in about two week's time I might be in a better position.

Wishing you all a lovely week Xx

My Go-To Easy Summer Salad Recipe

 

Hi guys! I thought since absolutely no-one asked, I'd post my go-to Summer Salad recipe. This is super easy to make and doesn't require many ingredients at all. Of course, you can add whatever you like and sometimes I jazz it up with extras, depending on how I'm feeling and what we have on hand. Basically it's a lot of green, a bit of orange and no red, because I don't really like tomatoes in salads. This is not one of those blogs where you have to skip through five paragraphs detailing my family history before getting to the recipe, so let's have a look!

This serves one, adjust ingredient amounts accordingly!

Ingredients

Handful of Iceberg Lettuce
1 Carrot
1 Lebanese Cucumber
Smooth Feta Cheese
Handful of Nuts (cashews, walnuts, etc. You choose!)
Italian Dressing (low-fat if desired)

Equipment needed - cutting board, sharp knife, grater, plastic container or bowl for serving/eating.

Method

1. Shred lettuce and pour into plastic container
2. Cut carrot and cucumber on long slit side of grater. Add to container.
3. Cut 1/4 packet smooth feta cheese into cubes. It will crumble but this is good. Add to container.
4. Roughly chop a handful of nuts and add to container.
5. Toss it to combine, or put on lid and shake it. Remove lid.
6. Add desired amount of Italian Dressing and toss salad.
7. Enjoy!

You can make this quite quickly for a weekday lunch. Or you could serve it with dinner as a side salad. Of course, being a salad, it's totally up to you what you omit, change around or add in. Here are some ideas:

~ use a bag of mixed salad leaves for more variety
~ add halved cherry tomatoes
~ add chopped spring onion
~ add shredded chicken or some ham for a protein hit
~ use tasty cheese instead of fetta
~ experiment with the types of nuts added or omit altogether
~ try French dressing instead of Italian or whatever type you like
~ chopped celery also goes well in this salad

The following shows the salad with the addition of cherry tomatoes...

The possibilities are endless! I hope you enjoyed my go-to Easy Summer Salad recipe. Let me know how you go with it!

Christmas 2022

 

Hi guys! I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! We went to a local hotel for Christmas lunch with my Dad this year. Great for me, because I didn't have to cook haha. I tried to get a bit more Christmassy this year, but just with decorations around the house, not with baking, after this disaster. Mind you, I never put up any decorations other than the Tree, so I definitely didn't go over-the-top. This was the first year I put lights on the Christmas Tree though, so go me!

Here are some pics from our Christmas Lunch, which was was a set menu.

Another thing we did this year was walk around our local neighbourhood at night checking out the Christmas lights. Here's the best decorated house we saw on our adventures!

And Christmas Day wouldn't be complete without presents! Here's a pic of our 15 year old son's gifts as hubby and I don't usually get each other anything. Can you spot Pumpkin pretending to be a present?

I changed my mind about baking and made some Rocky Road after all. I just couldn't resist! However, part of my melted chocolate seized up again. So disappointed! I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong (this also happened the last time I attempted to melt chocolate in the microwave). I changed the bowl, spoon, type of chocolate and made sure everything was super dry. The only thing that's different is we bought a new microwave. Anyway I made the Rocky Road with partly seized chocolate and it seemed to work, although it was much harder to mix the ingredients together.

I also bought some meringue nests, whipped some cream, cut up some berries and assembled little fruit meringue nest thingies. The only treat I've made lately that's actually turned out! Probably because of my minimal input haha.

Obviously we watched a couple of Christmas movies, because when else are you going to watch them, if not at Christmas time? I'd like to also watch Die Hard, Bad Santa and How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Here's what we've seen so far...

I hope you all enjoyed Christmas and are having a lovely break!