365 Incomplete

So, again, I did not complete my 365 project. I think confining it to 'colour' made it hard, plus when you're working 8 hours and it takes an hour to get to work, AND because of the nature of my work I can't really take photos at work...it all becomes a little too challenging and not fun. I can totally imagine myself being awesome at taking a photo a day once I have kids, but until then...I may just avoid doing the challenge. :) It was fun for the 2 and a bit months I was doing though. No regrets for trying.

What's Up in My Life?

38/365 - What our bedroom looks like at the moment. There's not much there, but we love it. 

39/365 - We went out that night, not much time for a photo. I love my colourful tape though!

40/365 - I bought some gorgeous fabric from Ikea to make some cute room decorations for work. 

41/365 - We also bought the little side table we wanted from Ikea, and I spruced it up a bit with some fabric. Then today I got a cute Koala USB stick for work related things.

What's up in my life?
I've been getting into work early this week so that I can do some laminating and decorating for our room. The flower mural is coming along nicely.

I came up with the super cheesy idea of adding roots to our flowers. We will then put photos of the children's families in the roots as part of our whole 'belonging' thing. You know, because their roots are with their families and now they are belonging to a new group, our Nursery room/our centre.

James' dad started his new job, which means he was in Sydney so he came round to see our new apartment, and then took us out for dinner. Apparently his office is bigger than our apartment. We're 22 and have one income, he is in his 50's and a CEO, I am not too bothered by this.

The Toddler roomleader is annoying us in our room at the moment. We're trying to sort it out.

James surprised me with a bubble bath and candles this week. Was very sweet, and very relaxing. :)

We have two new babies starting in our room next week. They are babies, and not tiny tots, so not on solids, not walking, all that jazz. This means we will have three babies, thankfully, we'll only ever have two on the same day. One of them is allergic to dairy and soy, and has also not been switched to a bottle yet...so it will be interesting.

We went shopping! I have missed shopping so much, been not buying things for quite some time because they aren't super necessities. I got more shampoo, and extra deodorant so I have one for work and one for home, sunscreen because it's sunny when I walk to work, face cream, face wipes, nail varnish (just because), two SUPER comfy pairs of black trousers for work (seriously the most comfy trousers I have ever worn, they are so easy to move in too!), a bubble gun, the cute USB stick above, a new To Do list pad, cute A5 notebooks for me and my colleague to write notes about our focus children in, cute pens to write said notes with (cute stationary makes work WAY more fun in my opinion, and this stuff is strictly for our room!), and some whiteboard markers and crayons for our day of the week clouds where we will be displaying photos of what the children did that day (means we can write the date on them in fun colours!). There was quite a bit bought for work, but most of it was for me to use at work...although walking through the kids section of Ikea I was so tempted to buy LOADS of toys for the children...I resisted!

We have a massive TV. After getting the bond, the first thing James wanted to do was buy a new TV. I let him. We now own a 42" TV. It's HUGE, like 4 times the size of the one we had before. Haha. It's pretty cool though.

That's been my week. :)

Another 365 Update

35/365 - Lime and strawberries. Yummo!

36/365 - I got paid AND we got the bond back. Yays!

37/365 - Prep for our flower wall. :)

I finally got paid. Apparently I wrote my bank details wrong, but it's all been sorted now, yay! We also got our bond back from our old place, so we currently feel like we're swimming in money compared to the $30 we had in our bank accounts. So, we're pretty excited! 

Other than that life has been pretty normal. :)

More 365

29/365 - The results of the painting I did on my day off.  

30/365 - lots of hugs from the kids at work makes me feel pretty loved.

31/365 - Technically not my photo, James took it, but with my camera and to show me, so counts enough for me. He did have some 'better' photos, but I love this one.

32/365 - It rained a LOT yesterday.

33/365 - A little insight into whats on our bookshelf. 

In life related news this week has been a bit...odd. I loved my day off, and been really enjoying being back at work. My Nursery colleague and I have been making a lot of progress in finding a routine that works with all the children and their sleep and eating needs, we've also got some exciting ideas for decorations and holiday arts and crafts that are coming along nicely, so it's been feeling very positive at work. However, I've got issues to sort out with work. Wednesday was supposed to be pay day, but I have yet to receive any pay, which kind of sucks since we were relying on it. Apparently everyone actually gets paid on the Wednesday, rather than the money going out that day, so it's quite concerning, and a little frustrating that I have to sort it all out. Otherwise, lovely week. :) 

This photo stuff is proving to be a challenge...I really struggled to get photos this week. I may find myself doing a whole bunch of colourful pictures to photograph as photos for the day, which isn't all bad, but not quite what I had in mind. 

Painting

28/365

Today is my first ever paid public holiday. I am getting paid to have the day off. I am sure the novelty will wear off by the next public holiday, but today I am very excited. :)

That said, it's been a miserable day. Non-stop rain. We've barely been able to see the city because it's been hidden behind clouds most of the day. Dismal. Needless to say, we've stayed in today. I've done some painting for 'prototypes' of the decorations I want to make with the kids art in our room. I'm going very much along the lines of Eric Carle's kind of art, I think it will work best with the kind of paintings 10-18month olds can make. I've also had a bubble bath and a nap. So, despite the weather it has been a very nice day off. :)

27/365

27/365

Today has been a very relaxed day. The rain that has been forecast for the last week finally arrived, so we took it as a welcome invitation to stay indoors and do indoorsy things. During the morning we got a visit from the little guy above. He was sitting on our balcony for a while, but decided to move to our neighbour's balcony when I got my camera out. He looks very wet, bless him. I've spent the day sorting out my half of our wardrobe, and making ladybirds and spiders for work. Our room is called 'In the Garden', my kids are the ladybirds and my colleague's kids are the spiders, we're making one of our walls into a garden mural on which we'll have photos of the kids as ladybirds and spiders, everyones birthdays in flowers, and clouds for each day of the week in which to put a little summary of what the kids have done during the day. James has made ice-cream. Yum! :)

I'm enjoying that tomorrow is a day off, AND I'm getting paid for it. Tomorrow will be awesome.

Homemade Pizza

 

26/365

I found this recipe on pinterest, and thought it was worth a try. It's been sitting on my food board for a while now, and today I thought it was about time I tried it. It's a pretty awesome pizza dough recipe that requires only 2 ingredients: Greek Yoghurt and Self Raising Flour. The recipe calls for 1 cup of each, but we needed quite a bit more flour than that. Next time I'm going to try 1.5 cups of flour and 1 cup of the yoghurt and see how that works. 

The pizza turned out super yum, so it's definitely a recipe we're going to keep. :) Homemade pizzas are yum. 

EDIT 27/01/13: We tried making the dough with the ratio of 1 cup of greek yoghurt to 1.5 cups of self raising flour, and it worked MUCH better. We also experimented with seasoning the dough, we used mexican seasoning since it was a mexican inspired pizza, and it was yum. :)

Another 365 Update

24/365 - taken on my phone, so it doesn't quite capture the gorgeousness of this building next to a blue sky. It makes me think of Mexico. I don't know why, it just does. 

25/365 - I was seriously unwell. Thankfully, I only had a 6 hour day at work. I ended up having a 3 hour nap once I got home. I was not a happy bunny. 

23/365

23/365

We like making fruit infused water. I love the colour of the strawberry and lime infused water, it's a lovely peachy colour. :)

I'm feeling like my colour photos are becoming less colourful compared to the beginning of the year. I am going to try and work on this...but it's proving a challenge now that I'm working again, and it feels awkward taking photos at work. But I shall try! It is called a challenge after all!

365 Update

20/365 - In our kitchen

21/365 - funky purple plant near our place

22/365 - our new curtain

19/365

19/365

Today has been long. Our wardrobe and bookshelf was delivered around 10 in the morning. We were pretty happy with how early they came, we were waiting a lot longer for the mattress. We kind of got a complaint from our downstairs neighbour whilst putting the bookshelf together. I say 'kind of', because we had made next to no noise putting it together and had been careful not to make too loud a noise. About three tiny nails hammered in the backboard (at about 11am) our downstairs neighbour was already at our door to explain the noise comes down through the flooring because there is no underlay or something. We tried to keep the noise down from then on by doing everything on top of lots of cardboard, but seriously, by the third nail she had left her place gone up the stairs and knocked on our door...she got annoyed pretty quick. We don't want to be inconsiderate though, so we are trying to do our best to be quiet.

Anyhoo, we've also made one 'shell' for our wardrobe. Got another to go, and the door. The mirrors for the door are SUPER heavy, and we're a little concerned about the wardrobe staying upright given that the only wall we can anchor it to is actually an air-duct, so that's a no go. It's pretty sturdy though, and I've read a lot of people saying their wardrobe isn't anchored and has been standing for many years. So I'm hoping it's not a problem. :)

Other than our DIY, today has been very chilled out. Lots of lemon water (hence todays photo), music and chatting. I'm looking forward to going back to work next week, but I'm going to miss these chilled out days with James. :)

17/365

This is the beautiful flower I get to walk past every day now. :)

Planning For Furniture

16/365

Today we did a good scrub of our old place so it's in tip top condition for maximum Bond-getting-backness. We both pretty convinced the place is now cleaner than it was when we moved in.

We then treated ourselves to some yummy Thai and spent the afternoon chilling in our new place and marking out the furniture we want, to make sure it won't be too cramped with it all. We are happy to say everything will fit pretty nicely.
Below is what will be our living room, the cardboard on the left is where our sofa will go, and the cardboard on the right (with the sheets and stuff on it) will be where the desk goes. The TV unit will be along the wall opposite the sofa. The circle in the bottom photo will be a small table for keys and maybe a nice vase of flowers. :)

We are seriously looking forward to this whole decorating thing! :D

Happy Chants

14/365 - we got a table runner at the markets. I love it.

Today we are going to spend our first night at our new place. We got our fridge and mattress, and admired our awesome view. I promise I will take some good photos of the view for here. Also, we realised this afternoon that we can see the Harbour Bridge. Super excited.

Due to all these exciting events I have been chanting "We have an awesome view! We have and awesome view!", "We have a fridge! We have a fridge!", and "We have a bed! We have a bed!". I have also been doing a lot of happy dances. Needless to say, it's been a very happy day.

Heatwave? Pfff.

13/365

Unrelated to the photo, but related to the title, Australia is apparently going through quite a heatwave at the moment. Weather people have been all concerned about the heat, the fires caused by it, and the fact that some watery/rainy stuff has not been happening (a kind of monsoon? It apparently normally cools down these high temperatures, I don't know, I was only skimming the article). I think we have somehow, unintentionally, managed to avoid this heatwave as it's moved around Australia. Whilst we were in Canberra, it was Melbourne that was getting super hot. As moved up the country to Queensland for our holiday, the heat moved up to Canberra and Sydney, both places getting to the high 30's. We then leave Queensland before the heat reaches them there, stay in Canberra one night, and leave the morning of a day that is supposed to reach 38 degrees to a lovely Sydney that is cloudy and at temperatures in the 20's. Today there has also been a serious lack of any 'heatwave' concerns in Sydney, with the temperature being mid-20's, the sky being covered in clouds, and now a whole lot of rain. I wore trousers. Black trousers. In Sydney, in the middle of summer, and I was not hot. Tis awesome.

Anyhoo, related to the photo, we went to IKEA! Yay! I love our little trips to IKEA, and am pretty happy that we will probably be making quite a lot of little trips there in the next month or two. We ordered a mattress, it should arrive tomorrow, meaning tomorrow we shall sleep in our new apartment! Yay! We also got a few little bits and bobs we'll need, and some bits of fabric. I don't know if all IKEA's have this, but our IKEA has a little box of fabric offcuts that you can buy, so I picked up a few to eventually do something with. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with them yet, but I am excited to have them.
We were going to move quite a bit of stuff over to our new apartment (side note: the newly cut keys work, phew!) but the 'whole lot of rain' we have been having this afternoon has been kind of putting us off. Ho hum. Tomorrow we get a fridge AND a mattress, such an exciting day!

Update on 365

9/365 - at the markets.

10/365 - the best bit of the Aquarium. 

11/365

Holidaying

4/365

5/365

6/365

7/365

8/365

The place we are at has internet you need to pay for, but James has needed to sort out some bills and whatnots, so I have internet on my computer that it would be such a shame not to use!

Our holiday to Queensland has so far been wonderful. We arrived in Queensland at noon on Friday and drove to the Motel we would be staying in for the next two evenings. I had a little nap whilst the boys watched the cricket, and then we went to James' Aunt and Uncle's for a lovely BBQ dinner. It was super yum, and really chillaxed. We had a belated Christmas on the Saturday, after a morning shop  (hence the photo of my new Sharpies, I am maybe a little too excited to have Sharpies in my life again). It was a lovely day. Moments of it felt a little...slow...the cousins don't seem to actively chat to one another, so it feels a little strange. The atmosphere amongst the 'adults' is much nicer. We did enjoy ourselves a lot once we started playing Balderdash though, very fun. 

On the Sunday we got up early (and missed the family get together for breakfast) to get to Movie World as it opened. I wasn't extremely thrilled about the whole day, it takes a while for me to warm to theme parks. I think I may need to be forced onto a roller-coaster first thing as that seems to help me open up to the idea of going on more. :P In the end it was an awesome day, with lots of fun. James and I enjoyed posing for the cameras, we did a very good 'Serious Face', 'Scared Face', and 'Look Over There Face'. If we had a good amount of money to part with I would have bought them all, but we do not so I settled for a Wonder Woman top (which will make me feel awesome at work!). We then drove up to the coast where we are spending the rest of the week with pretty much all of the family that turned up to the Christmas do.

Both yesterday and today have been lovely and relaxing. I think this is going to be an awesomely rejuvenating holiday. I got myself 'Eat Pray Love' on the Saturday and have been loving reading it ever since. And what better place to be reading a book than on the beach. I've been loving the little views I catch over or to the side of the book as I'm reading. :)

Day 3 - Swimming

I decided the other photo wasn't colourful enough. I know this one doesn't consist of many colours, but it's bright and vibrant, and I love it. At first I didn't like that you could see a reflection of me taking the photo, but after staring at the reflection for a while I realised it added another sort of dimension to the photo. I like it a lot. So, here you have it, photo 3/365.

In slightly related news (water and swimming), we're off on a little 'family' holiday for the next week, so I may not be updating with my photos everyday, although I would quite like to. If I don't get round to updating, then I'll probably be back after we get the keys to our new place! Quite exciting! :)

Day 2 - Colours for our home

Today we went out to Bunnings (the Australian version of B&Q) to look at paint swabs, because there is nothing Katie likes more than paint swabs. Seriously, there isn't much. We have bought a cheap fridge (we're so excited to own a fridge!), and are planning on getting a 4 seat dining piece from Ikea for a cheap price...and I'm feeling they could maybe do with a bit of a spruce from paint to make them a whole lot cooler! I'm still a little undecided about painting the fridge, but I definitely want to paint the chairs in the dining set, so we were looking for a collection of colours we like so we can sort out some sort of colour palette for our new little space. Above are some of the colours we chose. We found a little book thing with "Retro Revival" colours in it that I quite liked, so we chose colours from there. It made it a whole lot easier because I pretty much loved every colour! I'm so very excited to have a space to decorate!

The New Year

Happy 2013 Everyone! I hope it has started well for you all!

We had a lovely evening in last night with James' family. Lots of champagne, lots of chatting, lots of fun. I did miss what had become a New Years tradition back at home, but life goes on.

Today has NOT been spent trying to start as many resolutions as possible, mainly due to the fact that I have only thought up one, and was instead spent chilling and being very relaxed. It may have been the first day so far in my 'holidaying' that I haven't made myself stressed about money. Yay! We caught up with the 'Big Fat Quiz of the Year'. We each had our own answer sheets and competed against each other. I even did a drawing of most of the contestants. I am very happy with how Richard Ayoade turned out, and yes Jonathan Ross is drawn as a pile of poo. We don't like him much, he wasn't as annoying in this years show as his has been in the past, but he's still not our favourite person. Jack Whitehall and James Cordan on the other hand, LOVED them!
After the Big Fat Quiz I did some more present wrapping for James' dad's sides Christmas that we are attending at the end of this week. I made my own ribbony things. Very proud of them. I'll take photos tomorrow.
James and I also went for a walk. And then we watched some cricket. Not the most eventful day, but lovely nonetheless.

So. My resolution. I'm going to try the 365 challenge again, this time with a theme: Colour. I know it sounds like a very broad theme, and it is, but it's also quite limiting. I'm excited, and have already started. let's hope I can make it further than last time. I made it 262 Days last time I did the challenge. Here's my first photo.

I'm going to do a bit more thinking about some other resolutions. I have plans for the year, I always have plans, my head is non-stop thinking of things it wants to do...so I'm going to try and sort some of my ideas out into attainable and measurable goals for the year. :) I'm feeling very good about 2013!