Woolworths Carols in the Domain: 2017 event details - dress rehearsal + televised event

Josie's Juice is excited to be attending the Woolworths Carols in the Domain full dress rehearsal TONIGHT and you can be a part of the fun and tradition too! Either tonight or tomorrow, the latter of which will be televised. It will be hosted by the fab 'Sunrise' team:

It's on tomorrow night - Sunday 17 December 2017 - and is now in its 35th year!

The performers include the sensational Dami Im, Todd McKenney, Adam Harvey, Beccy Cole, the cast of The Wizard Of Oz, Justice Crew, CBD, and more. See the wonderful line up pics below.

You can still get reserved seating for tonight's performance.

Here is the link:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/woolworths-carols-in-the-domain-2017-rehearsals-seats-for-salvos-tickets-40122377110?err=29

Tonight is all about getting a sneak peak and enjoying the live rehearsal of all the traditional Christmas carols by your favourite stars.

Due to popular demand and to raise much-needed funds for The Salvation Army Christmas Appeal, there will be 'Seats for Salvos' available at this year's dress rehearsal on Saturday 16 December in the VIP and reserved seating areas.

You can still come for FREE but the best seats in the house (comfy beach chair seating) are ONLY $15 for adults, $10 for children and $50 for a family (2 adults and up to 4 children) and each one comes with the knowledge that your generosity will be helping those in need. God bless the Salvos.

Seating opens at 4pm.

Seating is General Admission.

Check out the bag you can buy for Saturday's and Sunday's event!

Here is some of the AWESOME line up:

So, final deets for you:

SEATS for Salvos Woolworths Carols in the Domain 2017 Rehearsals tonight: seating opens at 4pm with the on-stage action kicking off at 7.45pm. Be sure to pick up your Salvos Candlebag to support our good friends The Salvation Army Australia #WeLoveChristmas#WoolworthsCarolsintheDomain #GiveHope

The event will also be broadcast live on the Seven Network at the new time of 8.00pm on Sunday 17 December.

Get social!

Facebook - @CarolsDomain

Twitter - @CarolsDomain

Instagram - @carolsdomain

Youtube - The Christmas Network

Hashtags #WoolworthsCarolsInTheDomain #CarolsInTheDomain #WeLoveChristmas

'Bad Moms 2': TRAILER

It's here.

And it looks bloody good!

'Bad Moms 2' is coming to our screens this Christmas, and if you've watched 'Bad Moms' you'll love this.

The main characters are back - Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn - plus Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines and Susan Sarandon. Oh, and that hottie Peter Gallagher who is now, gulp, 61 and frankly... looking hotter than ever.

Here is the very funny trailer - some parts NSFW:



'Bad Moms 2' - which is titled 'Bad Moms Christmas' in the US - follows on from the 2016 release of 'Bad Moms', a box office hit, spawning not only this, part two, which opens in the US on November 3, and in Australia on November 2, 2017, but an announced spin off titled ' Bad Dads' (yessss, bring it!).

THE line of the trailer:

“You are a mom,” says Christine Baranski, who plays Amy’s (Mila Kunis) mother. “Moms don’t enjoy, they give joy. That’s how being a mom works.”

UGH.

The PR blurb on 'Bad Moms 2':

Bad Moms 2 follows our three under-appreciated and over-burdened moms (Amy, Kiki, and Carla) as they rebel against the challenges and expectations of Christmas in hopes of creating a more perfect holiday for their families. And if that was hard enough, they have to do all of that while hosting and entertaining their ultimate holiday foes: their own mothers. By the end of the journey, our moms have redefined how to make the holidays special for their families and it ends up bringing them closer to their own moms.

BAD MOMS 2 was directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and produced by Suzanne Todd, who previously partnered on the first “Bad Moms”. The film stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines and Susan Sarandon. 
'BAD MOMS 2' releases in Australian cinemas on November 2, 2017.

For more on Roadshow releases, go here: https://roadshow.com.au/

Follow them on Facebook here: http://facebook.com/roadshow

Exclusive behind the scenes pics on Instagram here: http://instagram.com/roadshow

Follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/josiegags/

Dishes: 2016 Calendar - Restore One Project

Now, this is an exciting - and very worthy - project! If you have not bought your 2016 calendar yet, and you are passionate about food - this is your gift, to yourself or a loved one!

Bringing together 12 of Australia's top chefs including Colin Fassnidge, Massimo Mele and James Viles into a 2016 premium recipe wall calendar made for foodies, where each chef shares an exclusive recipe in their month.

And: it's all for a good cause, with proceeds going to support Restore One who help empower vulnerable women in Cambodia. For more on this wonderful project, see www.dishes.com.au

In basic terms, their mission is to:

To break poverty one community at a time, through:

• Housing
• Education
• Employment
• Health initiatives

The whole calendar is fantastic - the quality photography will be a treat to turn over a new leaf, for real, each month.

You can buy 'Dishes', the premium wall calendar - with twelve of Australia's hottest chefs - in that link.

And, every month, a top chef presents a new recipe that will be sure to please the most demanding of foodies and - all in an effort to raise money for good! What's not to love? Delicious in every way.

Speaking of delicious, here is Colin Fassnidge on the calendar's cover:

'Love Actually': 50 things you probably didn't know about the movie

Some things you may not know about 'Love Actually' (from Buzzfeed):

1. Love Actually was never intended to be a Christmas film.

2. Richard Curtis called the film’s first edit “a catastrophe”, and has claimed he was still unhappy with it by the time it hit cinemas. 

3. The film originally contained 14 separate love stories, but four of them ended up being cut.

4. Two of these additional storylines were shot before being abandoned. 

5. One of them was about an African couple supporting each other through a famine. 

6. And the other was about a stern headmistress who was nursing her lesbian partner through cancer.

7. Curtis wanted to cast a mixture of famous and more unknown actors. Some of the cast members he considered less famous were Martin Freeman from The Hobbit, Mad Men’s January Jones, and BAFTA winner Chiwitel Ejiofor.

8. Curtis’s daughter plays one of the lobsters in the nativity play.

9. Curtis knew he wanted Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson to play the PM and his sister from the very beginning. 

10. Martine McCutcheon’s role was also written for her. 

11. Curtis first spotted her in EastEnders, which he was a huge fan of. 

12. In fact, her character, Natalie, was originally called Martine. This was changed for the audition to ensure she didn’t think she already had the part.

13. One of the first scenes McCutcheon shot was kissing Hugh Grant.

14. Claudia Schiffer was never meant to be in the film. Curtis wanted to cast someone who looked like her, but he couldn’t find anyone. He ended up offering her the part and she took it.

15. Similarly Laura Linney, who plays Sarah, was cast after Curtis struggled to find an English “Laura Linney-type” actor, so he decided to ask Laura herself.

16. Sarah’s love interest Karl, played by Rodrigo Santoro, was originally meant to be English, but they couldn’t find the right actor. 

17. Curtis had two other people in mind to play Billy Mack and couldn’t make his mind up until Nighy nailed the audition.

18. But he’s never told anyone who the original options were. “I’ll put it in my will,” he said. 

19. He claims that the best bit of casting for the whole film was making Thomas Brodie-Sangster Sam.

20. Brodie-Sangstar says that because he played the kid in Love Actually, girls thought he was cute. But “not in a One Direction way”.

21. He was 13 years old when he played Sam – the same age as his character in Game of Thrones was meant to be (despite the fact he was actually 23 by this time).

22. His dad taught him to play the drums for the film. He still plays now.

23. Hugh Grant, who plays David, and Brodie-Sangster are second cousins. “He’d call me cousin and ruffle my hair,” Brodie-Sangster said. 

24. Bill Nighy has said he feels bad for suggesting that Blue have tiny pricks in his scene with Ant and Dec.

25. He recorded “Christmas Is All Around” in Abbey Road Studios.

26. Curtis originally envisaged the Hugh Grant and Colin Firth storylines being two separate films. 

27. Andrew Lincoln’s iconic declaration of love using giant cards and a marker pen was inspired by Bob Dylan’s video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”.

28. Curtis wrote five alternative versions of that scene. He read all of them out to the women in his office, and went with the one they didn’t think was too mushy.

29. Halfway through filming the scene, Curtis’s partner went up to Lincoln and whispered, “You know you’re playing Richard.” Apparently that character was the closest to himself he’d ever written.

30. And there is a man whose proposal to his girlfriend was inspired by that scene.

31. Lincoln has said that pretending to be infatuated with Keira Knightley was “not one of the greatest challenges I’ve been posed as an actor.”

32. When the film first came out, Slate’s film critic called it “too florid, too calculated, too too”.

33. In the UK version of the film, the breakout song was Sugababes’ “Too Lost in You”, which can be heard during Christmas party scene at the art gallery. However, in the US version, this was replaced by a Kelly Clarkson song, “The Trouble With Love Is”. 

34. According to the DVD commentary, the wedding scene in which the band play “All You Need Is Love” from within the congregation was inspired by Muppets creator Jim Henson’s funeral, which Curtis attended. In it, the puppeteers brought along their Muppets and sang a song. 

35. On The Jonathan Ross Show, Martine McCutcheon revealed that she and Hugh Grant used to text each other dirty jokes all the time. 

36. Grant’s PM character was partially based on real-life former PM Ted Heath. Heath was a bachelor, and Curtis had long wondered what would have happened if he’d fallen in love whilst in office. 

37. Grant was very grumpy about having to do the scene where he dances around No. 10. 

38. The crew tried to get into 10 Downing Street but were denied access.

39. When Julia, Keira Knightley’s character, turns up at Mark’s studio to ask for his wedding video, there is a copy of Rear Window on his shelf. It’s a film about voyeurism and watching people without their knowledge, just as he has been doing.

40. In every Richard Curtis film there is an unpopular character called Bernard, after the now Tory MP Bernard Jenkin won the heart of a girl who Curtis also loved in his youth. In Love Actually it is Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson’s troublesome son. 

41. Olivia Olson, who plays Sam’s crush Joanna, is the voice of Marceline in Adventure Time. 

42. She also voices a character in the Disney cartoon Phineas and Ferb. So does Brodie-Sangster, her Love Actually love interest.

43. However they record their Phineas and Ferb scenes in their respective home countries, and so still haven’t seen each other since the Love Actuallypremiere in 2003. 

44. When Olson recorded “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in the studio, producers thought she was so good that people wouldn’t believe it was really her singing, so they asked her to record it again “a little less good”.

45. In 2005 Tony Blair referenced Hugh Grant’s patriotic speech from the film when discussing Britain’s “special relationship” with the USA, saying: “I know there’s a bit of us that would like me to do a Hugh Grant in Love Actually and tell America where to get off. But the difference between a good film and real life is that in real life there’s the next day, the next year, the next lifetime to contemplate the ruinous consequences of easy applause.”

46. Emma Thompson wore a fat suit for her role. 

47. She did the crying to Joni Mitchell scene 12 times in a row.

48. And the crying itself was unscripted. Curtis said: “I just wrote that she goes upstairs, puts on the record, and lets the emotion show. Everything in that scene is just Emma.”

49. Speaking to The Telegraph in 2005, Thompson said: “I’ve had so much bloody practice at crying in a bedroom and then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer.”

50. The word “actually” is said 23 times throughout the film: 22 times by characters, and once during the opening monologue

'The Best Christmas Eggnog': Rock Chic Eggs + The Wog With The Grog Collaboration: RECIPE

We love a collaboration, and it's pretty cool when the brand Josie's Juice reps (well, Josie herself does) is asked to be a part of a food we pretty much all use daily: eggs.

The brand is Rock Chic Eggs, and the collab is with The Wog With The Grog - below: the beautiful, free range Rock Chic Eggs, and some of the range from the exclusive to The Wog With The Grog Blo. Nardini portfolio:

The former is the brainchild of entertainment entrepreneur and dedicated agriculturalist CM Murphy  - and he is three years into his booming free-range egg business: Murphy’s 'Rock Chic Eggs' (cool name, right?)

The business has has won some praise in industry circles and amongst consumers alike for their taste, quality and freshness. And, it’s all about his seriously free-range system.

Converting his then 2500 acre Wagga Wagga farm to sustainable farming practises back in the 1990s, Murphy was one of the first to ‘let the chickens run wild” to seriously free-range it all.

While he was taking INXS to the world’s arenas and stadiums, he always had his sights set on his vision to return to the land. Twenty  years on, demand for free-range is prevalent, and the question on people’s lips when choosing a free-range product is, “what is free-range?"

Says Murphy, “Back in the mid-90s, not too many people took notice or questioned free-range, sustainable farming or where their eggs, meat or otherwise came from. When I re-entered the poultry business back in 2012, I created my own system that we call seriously free-range.

“I found that I could not find any certifying bodies that fulfilled the needs of the hens, so I created my own system. Free-range hen numbers should be determined by inspection where the hen’s welfare is number one; being inspected and approved on its merits based on whether it’s a movable fan, rain fall, soil types and pasture management procedures”.

And a serious free-range system it is, keeping customers and foodies happy with eggs that burst with flavour and freshness. The right environment is provided for the Rock Chic hens, from laying conditions, temperature, the right packing procedure, minimal handling and nourishing, nutrient-dense feed.

The “laid-to-order” (LOVE this concept and term!) Rock Chic Eggs are packed in the paddock and delivered at a consistent room temperature almost straight away. Customers receive the eggs a mere 12 to 48 hours after the eggs are laid in a true paddock-to-plate delivery schedule.

Chefs who only want the best produce are taking notice, including Head Chef at Three Weeds in Rozelle, Nathan Jackson. Says Jackson, “When I first switched to using Rock Chic Eggs, the difference was immediate. Compared to other so-called free range eggs, they are on a different level. With an unbelievably bright yolk and strong inner white, you can tell these hens are living a great life. Paired with great customer service, invitations to visit the farm, and a dedication to true, free-range farming, I would recommend these eggs to any in the industry and at home. A truly great, local product”.

To say seriously free-ranging is a passion of Murphy’s is an understatement. He has an open-gate policy that shows his customers exactly what goes on at his farm on the banks of the Hawkesbury River in NSW.

Consumers can purchase Rock Chic Eggs at About Life stores in Rozelle, Bondi Junction, Double Bay and Cammeray. Log onto www.rockchiceggs.com for retail and industry updates.

The Wog With The Grog, which is the consumer brand from Italo-Australian wine and food importer Euro Concepts, imports only the best brands into Australia, and one of its star products is the Nardini range, used in this recipe below.

And now, the ingredients and method for 'The Best Christmas Eggnog':

Ingredients

700ml milk

240ml thick pouring cream

5 free-range eggs, separated

130g caster sugar

175ml Nardini Tagliatella Liqueur (see stockist, below)

Freshly grated nutmeg, to serve

Method

In a large bowl or using a stand mixer, beat the egg yolks and sugar until pale and thick. Add the milk, cream and liqueur, and whisk to combine.

Place the egg whites in a clean bowl or bowl of a stand mixer and beat to soft peaks. 

Whisk about 1/4 of the egg whites vigorously into the egg yolk mixture. Add the remaining egg whites and whisk until fully incorporated. Chill in the fridge. Whisk again lightly just before serving then pour into serving glasses. Grate some fresh nutmeg over the top of each glass. 

Serves six.

Notes

*Seriously, free-range Rock Chic Eggs can be purchased from www.rockchiceggs.com or from About Life stores in Sydney.

*Nardini Tagliatella Liqueur can be purchased from www.euroconceptssydney.com.au

*We recommend using Nardini Tagliatella Liqueur for this recipe, as it has the depth of flavour you would expect from an amaretto, but it is more subtle and nuanced and perfect for a smooth, creamy eggnog. However, a standard amaretto liqueur or a Marsala may also be used.

And voila! The finished product! Don't you just wanna lick that screen? Or, you know, get in the kitchen and make it? DO IT! It's super easy. Merry Christmas, y'all!