Toffee hot chocolates and late-night weekend beach walks

Yay! If you’re reading this, it means we have survived most of Cannes Lions 2016! There are still a few award ceremonies to go, with lots of post-Festival of Creativity coverage to come but the bulk of the admin-intensive work is done and dusted, thanks to my most wonderful team at work. And now it’s time to relax a bit, but first, highlights of the past week…

Friday, 17 June 2016: Consumer Goods Forum at the CTICC

I spent a full-day at the Consumer Goods Forum, and wish I’d gone through for all three. T’was a wonderful event at my favourite CT conference venue, the CTICC. Morning tea break was time for networking, quick interviews and sampling some of the biscuits that were simply everywhere. Verdict? Amazing. If you see these various Leibniz biccies in store, buy them!

Concentration flagging during the afternoon tea break, a quick stroll around the expo set-up revealed a stand serving the most amazing coffee in glass cups. It perked me right back up for the final session of the day. Note the complete lack of traffic in the CBD below as many many clever people took the day off work as Thursday was a public holiday. I wrote this and this and this and this and this about the Forum, if you’re interested.

Saturday, 18 June 2016: Toffee hot chocolates and late doggie beach walks

This is just the sweetest dog. Bertie’s “Hello mom, I’m not fully awake yet” face always makes me smile.

Breakfast coffee! We ventured out to Green’s first thing on Saturday. Look at me all casual-like. Lol. That’s actually a very necessary neck up-prop as I was so very tired and the coffee hadn’t yet worked its magic.

Husband went for the mushroom eggs benedict, he loves this version.

Mmm. I went for the waffle with banana and caramel. A very good choice.

Later that day, we stopped in at Reload in Parklands for a coffee break. Husband had a double cappuccino, I had a toffee hot chocolate. Lovely little toffee nibs graced the bottom of my cup 🙂

The doggies were delighted to find their favourite beach deserted that evening. They hopped through the foam and swam and scrambled over rocks. Such fun.

You can just see Bertie demonstrating his doggy paddle here. He’s very good at it.

See how far little miss Bass ran when we freed her from her leash? She’s that little brown dot on the horizon. ❤

Trotting closer to her dad and brother so she could gnash her teeth menacingly at her arch-enemy, the sea foam.

Bassie let me take a photo to show just how late it was when we finally went home. The sun had set! The streetlights were on! It was about 18:40…

The doggies warmed themselves in front of the fire once we got home.

Teehee. Bassie sure does love being warm and dry. Typical mini dacschund

Eventually both settled on the couch under blankies.

Late night coffee and cupcake to keep me going – think this was just before midnight, when the Cannes Lions winner tables were finally looking pretty 🙂

Sunday, 19 June 2016: Father’s Day breakfast and lupper

Father’s Day, Father’s Day! Despite a late night and more work to do on the day, we were “up and at ’em” early enough for the early bird English breakfast at News Cafe in Table View with mom and dad for Father’s Day.

Work done for the day we went in search of another ‘cold day treat’… and we had enjoyed our coffee break at Reload the day before so much that we ended up there again. Here is Husband with his second double cappuccino of the weekend…

I had another toffee hot chocolate – this time with a swirl of toffee syrup on top! Delicious!

T’was cold enough for the doggies to wear their winter jerseys/pajamas that day. Bertie took his off before we went to the parents for lupper, Bassie was still wearing hers. And somehow ended up with cream on her forehead, teehee.

We almost forgot to take a pic of just me and dad together, as t’was Father’s Day. Here you go…

That’s all, folks! We’re in for another chilly weekend so keep warm…