Can’t believe it!

I love calendars, day planners, organisers & lists. I don’t know why, but I always have. I think that I have a fear of forgetting things. I have a calendar on my computer that is linked to an online calendar that is also linked to my husbands phone (I can’t link mine via the internet I have to physically plug phone into my computer). Despite all this……we have triple booked ourselves this weekend! Arrhhh!!!

About a week and a bit ago we agreed to go 4wd with my WH’s brother & his wife. Then last Friday we agreed to cook a BBQ for our church Uni-shop bus ministry and finally my WH said yes to singing at church (church service if also an Answers to Questions from the floor service at our church). I think that we should be able to go 4wd & cook the BBQ (as long as we finish when my WH’s brother said we would finish), but going to church is just impossible.

Don’t you hate that no matter how much you try to not let something happen it just happens anyway. We have alot to think about, choices to make.

I’m back (again!)

Back from our world wind trip to Sydney! It has been such a long time since I have been to Sydney (I have only been once in my life before this trip & I was 12 years old) and nothing was really familiar. Which was good cause everything I saw and experienced with my WH (wonderful husband) was new & exciting.

We flew in at about lunch time (our flight was delayed about 20mins) by the time we navigated the train & streets we got to our accommodation around 1-2pm (local time as Sydney is still in daylight savings time being 1 hr ahead). We had lunch at Maccas across the road from our hotel. This was the first culture shock of sorts as we were pretty much the only white Europeans in the whole place, we were staying near China town so there was a very large number of people who were Chinese or atleast from other Asia countries. Second was how many people called us ‘madam’ & ‘sir’, this was weird because ‘madam’ & ‘sir’ are my parents or my WH’s Grandparents (I haven’t got any Grandparents who are still alive).

Mostly just wandered around on foot (we are the type of people who like to walk on holidays) trying to navigate in a city that we had never been before. We found ourselves at Paddy’s Markets, all I can say is wow! This place was just like those bazaars & markets that you see in Asian & Middle Eastern countries. Floor to ceiling stuff that people yelling ‘$5! You want this $5!’. I would have gone shopping nuts if I hadn’t been with my WH (such a good influence on me). Then we ended up at the Sydney Tower, found Hyde park & made our way to Darling Harbour.

After we made our way back to our hotel we started to get ready for the reason we had come to Sydney in the first place, Tim Minchin! So exciting as we were watching his new show at the Sydney Opera House. Walking up to the Sydney Opera House was amazing! Especially with the knowledge that we were going inside. The place was just amazing & the views of the harbour. The show was fantastic! Funny, entertaining & so much fun.

On Sunday we were out walking again, we went & found Martins Place (where Sunrise & the Morning Show on channel 7 are filmed) being Sunday there was no filming. And 7 doesn’t film on the ground level anymore so there was absolutely nothing to see through the windows other than people sitting at their desks in the news room. Not exciting. From there was went back to the Sydney Tower, this time we went into the Westfield Shopping Centre they have built underneath. We got lost turned around and most of the time didn’t know where we were. Best things is that we found a boutique cupcake store, I bought a rocky road cupcake. It was divine! It came in alittle box that I took home & has pride of place in my craft room.

After a great trip we made our way  to the airport arriving about 2 hrs before our flight. The lovely lady at check-in put us on an earlier flight (without us asking!) so instead of waiting 2 hrs we had 20mins before our flight. After we got some lunch we were on our flight on our way home. On the flight home we were sitting  right up the back of the plane, where you generally find all the children. There was a bit of crying (poor ears were blocking up) but the cabin crew were so nice one guy made balloon animals with  rubber gloves. There was this one little boy who was excited to tell his parents that he knew what to do if the plane crashed into the ocean, go along the wing slide down the slide & get into the boat. Which was cute & it was funny when were we coming into land & we were still over the ocean this kid started yelling ‘Pilot down land on the ocean!!!!’ Then when we touched down and the flaps on the wings came up to slow us down he stated ‘The wing is broken!’. The things that come out of kinds mouths.

Glad to be home, now we’re are on the count down to Easterfest (Christian music festival at Easter time) at the end of April.

Having trouble

I am having trouble with our TV unit, I still love it. Makes such a big difference to our living space. But…..I am having trouble styling it. Here is how things look now

Things just look busy and messy, it annoys me every evening when we are sitting down to watch TV. It does look alot better than previous but still doesn’t speak to me as finished. My main problem is the top shelf

I love the letters that I got at Christmas time & the two small donkeys that are sitting infront of the letters (currently they are purple but am thinking of spraying them white or another colour). Other than that there really isn’t anything I like about the shelf.

As you can just see in the above picture (better in the middle picture) our collection of vintage cameras is trying to fill one of the larger cube spaces on the right of the TV unit. unfortunately they aren’t doing a very good job, might have something to do with the even number of cameras (not a fan of things gathered together in even numbers, just doesn’t work for me), but I think it has more to with their lack of height in such a tall space.

Typing this I am looking directly at our TV unit and have actually had a couple of ideas, switching the cameras & the big letters…..hmmm

I am going to try some changes, but I think that something drastic might be in order. Hunting around cyber space for some inspiration here I come!

Shopping List

Last year in an effort to reduce the amount of money we were spending on groceries, me & WH (wonderful husband) started shopping at ALDI once a fortnight (our closest ALDI store at that time was 45mins away, and we couldn’t justify the petrol usage). For anyone who doesn’t know what ALDI is it is a grocery store that is just a whole lot cheaper than the bigger grocery stores. They sell their own brands (which are made in Australia) as well as some of the well-known name brands, basically instead of haven’t heaps of brand choices (5-10) there are usually only two maybe three.

Late last year ALDI opened a store closer to us (YEAH!), which means that we now shop there on a weekly basis. Still have to go to another grocery store to get a couple of things that I need as I have allergies to certain additives in things like soap & laundry detergent. But overall we have gone from spending upwards of $100 a week on groceries to spending $70-$80 (including fruit & veg from the farmers markets) a week.

I must admit that my favourite part about ALDI are the non-food specials, every week they bring out generally on off items that are usually a ridiculous price (cheap). These range from teatowels & sheets to furniture & TV’s. My WH got his first lesson book when he started playing the piano for $10, and he still uses it. We also got our paper shredder there too (love that thing!).

ALDI have done something that made me very excited, they have launch an online shopping list. Basically before you go shopping at ALDI you go to www.smartshopping.com.au & create a shopping list. The best part is that as you add things to your list the total cost of your list is displayed at the top. Once you have finished you can print your completed list or email it to yourself (hoping that I can email the list to myself & open the shopping list on my phone) or a friend. I love this idea, especially if I can open the shopping list on my phone (hate using a paper list to go shopping with).

Can’t wait to try in out next week!

Travel Wallet

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I got a travel wallet today, I was thinking about making one, but just didn’t have any inspiration about how it would look or how it would even come together. And my new favourite store TYPO (http://www.typoshop.com.au/) had some lovely simple travel wallets that I loved.

I would also love to add this Polaroid camera light to our camera collection, it would look so cool!

Since the travel wallet is so simple I am going to do alittle personalisation with some sticky back canvas that I have, I am using it to jazz up the passport covers that the government sent with our passports as well.

Next weekend we are off to Sydney (so excited!!!), the trip is completely paid for my WH’s (Wonderful husband) work. Woohoo! Just trying to figure out how we are going to get to the airport & how we are going to travel around Sydney. We are going to see the comedian Tim Minchin (http://www.timminchin.com/) at the Sydney Opera House, and he is performing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. I have been to Sydney before (think I was 12-13 years old!) & stood outside the Sydney Opera House with all the other tourists but I am just so excited to be going inside to watch a performance!!!!!!

New home

Welcome to my new blog home!

I have been having some long-term issues with my last blog, which was apparently attributed to the latest version of IE (internet explorer). I tried to use compatibility mode but found that it cause big issues with other websites. So I have been searching around for another home & then setting things up. But as you would probably know I am very likely to change how this blog looks sometime in th future, but for now I am very happy with the overall look & colour scheme.

So far I am very happy with WordPress, though I don’t have as much flexibility as I use to have for now that isn’t bothering me. I do love the teal blue colour, it has been popping up with this that I have been doing lately & I am feeling quite drawn to the colour. Never know teal might start to feature in my scrapping & other projects in the future.

Enjoy my new blog & check back often as I am sure I will be adding things as I discover what I can do with WordPress.

>Best laid plans

>Yesterday I was babysitting a friend of mines wonderful daughter, and I got more done with her than I ever will today because of rain…….

I wanted to do more mulching & was going to wash my car (still probably can vacum the car, if I drive it into the garage) but the constant rain has put a stop to that.

So now to think of somethings inside that need to be done, well there is some clothes repaires that I need to do, the birds tree needs to be cleaned up abit and as always my craft room needs some serious sorting. I am at a real storage blockage in my craft room, no matter how much I put away there is always another pile that doesn’t have a place. I suppose that is what you get with a home with almost no built-in storage.

I am slowly adding storage pieces to our house, while surfing the web I found this article (click on the pictures below) I would love any of these storage ideas for my home (the organisation nut in me went alittle giddy at the site of these ideas).

Other than the curtain for my craft room shelves (still havn’t found my fabric!!!!!), I am currently working on adding another storage piece to my home. A few weeks back I went to Collectarama with my sister-in-law & a friend. I have never been before so didn’t know really what I was expecting. But I am glad that I went! It was at the local showgrounds & there was hundreds of stalls selling vintage, retro & collectables. I bought a few things, including a retro suitcase. I wasn’t sure at first what I was going to do with the suitcase (I think I might have bought it because it was only $8!) but after somethinking & surfing I have come up with a coffeetable that will store all our boardgames that are currently taking up shelf space in my craft room.

I just need to find some legs, I will hopefully be hitting my favourite thrift stores & hardware store to see what is my options are for legs.

Oh it has stopped raining! I am going to go & finish hanging my laundry (downstairs in our laundry room).

>Wicked Weekend

>What a weekend! I am so happy that we finally got to take this little weekend away, it was so overdue.

Firstly the musical Wicked was simply amazing!!!!! Mind blowingly amazing. We did have a couple of issues, we arrived in Brisbane at about 5:30pm and the show was at 7:30pm. Our tickets said that there was a 20min lock out which we thought meant that they shut the doors 20 mins before the show starts (wrong, but we didn’t find that out till later), so we thought that we needed to be at QPAC (Queensland Performing Arts Centre) at about 7pm. We went out to quickly find dinner & went in the wrong direction wasting 1/2 a hour & not finding anything. In the end we descided to get ready for the show & hope that we could find something quick & easy on the way to QPAC. Thankfully the bar at QPAC had sandwitchs but only got to eat 1/2 before my WH (wonderful husband) realised that his ticket had fallen out of his pocket inside QPAC somewhere! Oh no!!!!! WH & my sister (who came with us) rushed off to see if they could find it somewhere & I stayed with our food. I ended up asking an usher what options there was for a lost ticket, thankfully since I had the tax invoice with me we could just go to the box office & get the lost ticket reprinted (YEAH!!!). My WH went & got that done & we all took our seats together. Talk about drama! The show was so worth it. And that 20 min lock out? Basically when I was talking to the usher she told me that it meant that they shut the doors 5-10mins before the show is due to start if you were late they won’t let you in till 20mins after the show started.

So we didn’t get a proper dinner, but made up for it at the buffet breakfast the next morning. Then we headed off to church at my WH’s sister’s church in Beenleigh, it was a Uniting church so was a very different experience for us. After church we headed back to the city & met up with my little brother. Spend the rest of the day walking around the Queens Street shopping mall with my brother, in the arv we had drinks at a coffee shop & walk back to Southbank & hung out on the grass near our hotel. Quite a relaxed day. Got rained on on the way back to our hotel & we said ‘goodbye’ to my brother. Dinner wasn’t fantastic, but atleast we actually got to eat dinner.

Monday (yesterday) was our last day, we had a late check out (thanks to a special membership card with the hotel that we stayed at) so took full advantage & spent the morning at the Queensland museum & the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA). GoMA was so much fun! GoMA was holding an Art in the 21st Centurary exhibition, it was so fun fun & much of it was interactive. There was a slide (yep slide), balloon filled room, pool & fun deck chairs that you could sit in and watch the city go about its business.

We had lunch on our drive home & also grabbed some icecream (we had had hardly any sweets the whole weekend!). Glad to be home but had such a great time!!!!

>Tonight, tonight, it all happens tonight!

>

Queenslands big wet which we experienced at the end of last year & begining of this year. Put a huge dampener on a planned little holiday to the City. We had a great long weekend planned, tickets to Wicked the musical, going to the Art Gallery, Museum, Science Centre, Botanical Garden, etc…. Everything went underwater 😦

After weeks of waiting we finally hear from QPAC (where Wicked is being staged) & got our tickets rescheduled…..for tonight! I am in the midst of last minute packing & preparations. My WH & sister (who is coming with us) have been talking about nothing else for about 2 weeks. As much as I am sure that I am going to enjoy Wicked I think I am more looking forward to getting away from home for the weekend & hopfully doing some actual exploring around the city.

Other than our Wicked tickets we have nothing planned, which could prove to be a bad thing or a good thing. Bad if all we do is stay at our hotel & do nothing, good if we just go out & go with the flow. Hoping that the later happens, fingers crossed!

I love visting the city, I like the atmosphere & the way things look. I don’t know if I could live in the city (not enough breathing space for me) but I would visist every weekend if I could. I watch weekend shows that show you things that you can do in the city, whole streets of amazing stores, exciting activities & yummy looking food. That is what I want this weekend to be. Hopefully I am not building things up too much in my mind only to get very disappointed & not enjoy our weekend away at all.

Have a great weekend!

>Weather

>

Can’t pick it at the moment, we have been having some really H.O.T days. I mean seriously hot & humid, the type of sticky weather that makes it hard to sleep. Then along comes March……and rain. Yep more rain. To be honest with all the rain we had at the begining of the year I am little depressed by the sight, sound & smell of rain (rain smell has always been one of my favourite smell!!! So sad). So to make myself feel better I have been going over the pictures that I took during the last weekend of Summer.

Me, my WH (wonderful husband) & our friend went to a local waterhole for a picnic lunch & swimming. To be 100% honest the water was too cold for me to swim in, that is definatly the risk you run when you swim in a freshwater waterhole in a gorge. But I still really enjoyed releaxing by the water, enjoying the last few moments of offical summer.

Oh yeah and then there is the playing with our underwater camera! Still feels just so weird to be putting our camera underwater. Sooooo wrong!!!! But the results are always so much fun.

Don’t know what WH is doing, but he can cause our camera is waterproof (feels sooo wrong!)

Now what would be a perfect end to a day of relaxing & hanging out together? Gelato!!!! Yummy! I did meantion the gelato in a previous post, but I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed this Gelato. Definatly going to drag my WH back to the store & get me some more. Probably wait until the rain stops & the sunshines, gelato tastes better when the sun in shinning.

My nails look great!!! Little weird statement 🙂