Of Macarons & My New Toy

On Friday of last week, I found out that I passed my final medical school exams. It was such a huge relief, though I'm not sure that it has entirely sunken in yet. I still have six more weeks of shadowing to do and I have to graduate in July, but I am pretty much done, which feels amazing. As you can probably imagine, I'm feeling a little bit pleased with myself and so I decided that I deserve a treat. I have been dreaming of and saving up for a better camera for years, thinking that the end of university would be a good milestone at which to buy one. I am very excited to say that I have done it - I have bought myself a Canon 60D and a fancy lens. I was like a child in a sweetshop, whilst buying it; uttering little outbursts of glee every few seconds. The magnitude of my excitement, however, was only realised about fifteen minutes later when I stopped in my tracks and burst into tears; much to the amusement of the ginge, who is quite used to my tearful explosions of emotion. We both stood and laughed; me with tears included, the Ginge without, until I regained sensibility and we went off to celebrate with a warm cup of tea. The next day, it poured with rain, so I didn't manage to get out and take any photos. I did however have my first successful attempt at making macarons and I managed to take a few snaps of them. I was really pleased with how straightforward the recipe was, even the italian meringue buttercream, which is completely delicious. I made vanilla cases filled with either raspberry, chocolate or coffee buttercream. They are all delicious, but the chocolate is particularly good. I would thoroughly recommend this recipe (thank you so much to Tori for the recommendation). Here are a few photos of my exploits, taken with my new baby. Can't wait to take and show you more - hooray!