Christmas Present Wrapping

There are many things I love about Christmas, wrapping presents is high up that list. For as long as I can remember I have LOVED wrapping presents. I really enjoy making things look pretty and being creative with ribbons, tissue paper and decorations. I like making the wrapping look so good that people don't necessarily want to open it. My recent present wrapping love consists of that plain brown wrapping paper and awesome glitzy accessories. I was hoping to wrap my Secret Santa gift like that, but had trouble finding the plain brown wrapping paper (seriously, all year round I see it everywhere, Christmas hits and it's gone!) so I settled for some plain gold paper instead, and lots of awesome bows in different sizes. 

Here are the results. :) I'm pretty happy with it. I'm going to write the recipient of the gifts name to the left so it ends near the big green bow. :D 

'Clock' is Not an Easy Word to Say

I haven't shared a work story for quite some time (unless you count the occasional complaining, but I don't), so I thought it was time for a little work story.

Yesterday I discovered 'Clock' has an unfortunate mispronunciation if a child has difficulty pronouncing the 'cl' sound. One of the little boys was sitting with me during the afternoon and noticed my watch to which he very excitedly announced "Cock!". I wasn't quite sure I heard him right, but he then quickly began to proclaim "Katie's cock! Katie's cock!", and I assume his Mum has a watch too because he also added "Mummy's cock!" whilst pointing at the door. I tried my best to keep a straight face and get him to say 'cl' or 'watch', but he was very insistent on using the word 'clock'. Children are so sweet and innocent.

In work related news, my beautiful reindeer head from earlier collapsed yesterday. The cardboard wasn't strong enough to stay rigid. I have since cut the antlers in half and created two reindeer profiles on the wall. :)

Christmas Nails

I got myself some festive nail varnish, and I'm loving it! I painted my left ring finger and right thumb nail green and the rest of them a beautiful red. The colours are wonderfully festive and I feel happy whenever I see them. :)

I have also added a deep pink Santa hat to the top of my hat for work. I feel awesome in it! :D

Getting Ready for Christmas

So, I decided to go for it and spend a little money every month so I can share photos. Yay. I am happy with the decision. I've been missing being able to post things here, plus I have plans, small plans, to slowly start making my blog feel more 'me'.

If you didn't already know, it's December. In my world that means only one thing: CHRISTMAS! I am a HUGE fan of Christmas, I don't know if I've made that at all clear the last couple of years, but it's my season, it's my holiday. I love it. It is happiness. So, naturally I have been Christmas-ing it up at work. I have been told a couple of times by the room leader to pack away my the Christmas craft I was doing with kids so that they can eat, or have so staff can do some serious tidying before the holidays...but Christmas activities are way more important in my book. I've tried to cram in as much Christmas crafting as possible into the last two weeks so that our room can look super awesome and festive, and it turns out to have been a good idea because I have been told 'no more crafts'. Lame. Anyhoo, this week we made my favourite craft: A Christmas Reindeer Head. The template is from here, and the result is awesome. I cut out the cardboard and let the kids go to town with some coloured paper, stars and feathers. I am in love with the outcome. Our little reindeer head has since been given a tinsel scarf and some the wall has been decorated with festive words. It's a wonderful little corner.

I've also created Christmas CD's for work. I said I was Christmas-ing it up. I made both an upbeat, fun CD to play whilst the kids are having fun outside, and a sleepy CD for when the kids are napping. Even though it's summer outside it is starting to feel quite Christmasy now. :D

Continuing with the Christmas theme. I put my name in for the Secret Santa at work. I got Angela, the room leader in my room. She's very much a closed door. It's very hard to figure out what she likes, people who have worked with her for 5 years have no idea what to get her. I've been struggling to come up with something, but this Friday I noticed she kept turning off my Christmas music and seemed to enjoy having the kids sitting quietly in the book corner reading books with her, so I decided she liked quietness...so maybe she likes quiet, relaxing baths? We went the Broadway and in Target found the beauty below. I think I won the lottery with this one, we have a budget of $25-30, and this fit into it. The stuff is supposed to be valued at $107, which I may not entirely believe, but I do believe that for $30 it was a steal. I am super chuffed with it. Fingers crossed she likes it. :)

In other news we went apartment hunting this weekend. It was a bit of a failure. The one apartment we really wanted to see had been leased Friday afternoon, and the other apartments were either tiny or had no natural light. We're hoping next weekend will offer better options, and already think it might. :) We were supposed to meet an old friend for a coffee catch up after the apartment viewings, but we'd both developed some seriously bad headaches (walking in the sun with limited water, no bathrooms and no sunscreen is NOT the best idea...I felt like I was going to faint at one point), so we had to cancel and went home and slept most of the afternoon.

We're feeling much better, and now own a small portable tube of sunscreen. :) Time to make some peppermint playdough whilst listening to Christmas music! Love this time of the year.

Christmas Season

It's the 1st of December. Advent is here. I would normally have Christmas decorations up, and Christmas music playing non-stop, and a super warm feeling that Christmas is coming, but I'm still working on fitting those in with Summer. My mind is still a little confused. I love that it's getting warmer here (although, temperature's being in the 30's and it still being spring is a tad worrying!), but I am a HUGE fan of sun filled days, long days, gorgeous bright and vibrant days, days that make me want to get out and do things. It's just, to me, and I think I may go on about this a lot, aren't Christmas days yet.

I've grown up in Europe, Christmas to me is a Winter holiday. Christmas brightens the dark days of Winter. Christmas is filled with gorgeous warm lights, warm shops playing Christmas songs, the warmth of holding a pack of roasted chestnuts, sitting by a fire, hot coffees/teas/hot chocolates, snow. In the darkness of Winter Christmas keeps spirits up. It's magical.

Christmas is also about family and friends being together. Giving and being kind. Happiness and togetherness. At least I still see a lot of that here. Even with my mum, dad, brother, sister and childhood friends all the other side of the world, there is an overwhelming sense of love at Christmas. I love that, and at those times, no matter what the season, it's very hard not to feel like it's Christmas. 

Postponed

I was planning on updating about my day today. I had a lovely day meeting an old colleague for brunch and a swim at Bondi, and then a relaxed afternoon and evening with James. However, I seem to have finally hit a limit on the storage space in my Picasa file so can't upload any files over a certain size to my blog...the photos I took today are over this size. 

SO! I'm going to do some planning, decide if it's worth paying to get extra storage, and will be back as and when I've come up with a game plan on how to share photos here again. :) At the moment I'm thinking $2.49/Month for 25GB isn't too bad considering I've only just reached 1GB, and I've been blogging since 2009. But we'll see. :)

In other news, 1 month until Christmas! I'm still finding it hard to believe. I think it will definitely take a couple more years for me to get used to Christmas in Summer. 

Dumb Ways to Die

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for posting two videos in a row. Secondly, I'd like to take back that apology because this video is awesome.

I get to work early pretty much every day, I feel calmer that way, so I usually sit in the staff room and browse the news on my phone. The past week or so there has always been a little article about a cute video from Melbourne that's gone viral. Today I was listening to christmas music on Youtube when I saw a link to this and thought "That looks a lot like it'd fit the description of the cute Melbourne video.". I clicked it, and I was right, and it is adorable and catchy and funny.

You're welcome.

White Wine in the Sun

We don't get the joys of watching Children in Need down here in Oz, but the BBC does put some of the performances up on it's Youtube page. After excitedly watching the Doctor Who preview (eee! can't wait until Christmas for the new episode!) I started browsing my way through the Children in Need videos and came across this. I already love Tim Minchin. His songs are super awesome, I especially love Prejudice and his Lullaby. This one is also amazing, and sad, I almost cried listening to it, but that may be because like him, my family is the other side of the world, but maybe also because of the happy realisation that I have a new family here that will be having white wine in the sun with me this Christmas. :)

1 year in Australia

Today marks 1 year since I 'moved' to Australia. It's been a pretty wonderful year. I have absolutely LOVED being here with James, and think it was definitely the right decision to move here rather than staying in the UK to do my PGCE. I think finally getting to live together properly has brought us even closer together, and it's so nice to have him here with me rather than the other side of a computer screen. :) It's been a very happy year, and I look forward to many more!

We weren't really planning on doing much with our day, but turned it into a bit of a treat. I got my hair cut in the early afternoon, it had been about 6 months since my last one, so I thought my hair needed it. We then went down to Broadway and had a late lunch at a yum American Diner like place, even treating ourselves to a scrummy sundae. :D I then slept most of the afternoon and James had a bath. Then we tried to take some nice photos together, but we don't like our faces much (hence the lack of photos of us) so we resorted to funny photos. It was a good laugh. :D

Love this guy. :)

Floriade 2012

At the end of September James and I visited Canberra for a long weekend. Whilst there we visited the Floriade, it's a big flower park/display thing. Basically, it's lots of pretty flowers. Cameras ready?

Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy and rainy the day we went, so I didn't take as many beautiful photos as I would have had it been sunny. I am happy with the photos I took though. I love taking photos of flowers. :)

These are my favourite flowers, they look like paper flowers and are such gorgeous colours. So pretty. :) I would be very happy to have a garden full of these beauties.

This tulip was beautiful too, like a crazy fiery flower. Gorgeous!

And my favourite thing of the whole Floriade was the gnomes. Gnomes had been painted by all sorts of kids of different ages. I loved pretty much all of them, but this guy, he was my favourite. If I could have, I would have bought him and taken him home.

I think we may definitely go again next year. :)

Humidity

For what has felt like the last month my hair has been looking horrendous, well, I've felt like it's been looking horrendous. It wasn't too bad tied back...but it was frizzy and pouffy and would kink in all the places it had been tied back at. I was not liking it, and put it down to the humidity in Sydney.

We have recently been fluctuating in temperatures here in Sydney. We've had days were the temperatures have gotten up to 30 degrees centigrade, and others were the days have been as cool as 15 degrees centigrade. The humidity, however, has been happily sitting at 60% plus, some days getting as high as 85%. So it's been humid. It sucks. I can definitely say I HATE humidity. I can see no benefits of humidity. It makes things hotter and stickier and so much more uncomfortable. I shall melt away this summer...

I hadn't put my hair problems entirely down to the humidity until we went back to Canberra this weekend (which has a humidity of 40% throughout the weekend) and my hair was back to it's usual gorgeous self. I did the obligatory 'google' for hair in humidity and found that soma anti-frizz shampoo should do the trick. Sure enough, my hair is now back to its former glory! Yay!

OMG, PINK!

I LOVE these girls, and this video. They are so infectiously happy and hilarious! Oh my goodness, what I wouldn't give to look inside their world for just 5mins. I imagine it would be a very pink and sparkly world.

If you need a cheer up, this video should do it. 

All by myself

I'm home alone the next two nights. It's a little lonely. I know James and I have done proper long distance, but now that we're living together two nights feels so long and weird...

...off to my Pad Thai for one. :)

Bubble Flowers

The kids at work have been loving the bubbles we've been blowing outside. I love how excited they get when I pull them out. They have all also been super keen to try and blow the bubbles. Since we haven't done much art in the room I thought I would build on the bubble blowing to make some bubble art. I found this on pinterest, and thought I'd give it a test drive this weekend before trying it with the kids (the pin hole in the straw is a pretty nifty tip). I couldn't find any tempera paint, so I don't know how well that paint works, but ordinary washable paint didn't seem to have much affect on the bubble's colours. It is possible I needed to use more paint than I had available. However, food colouring did work. For the best effect I blew a whole bunch of bubbles and then dropped in the food colouring, it had the added bonus of looking super cool too!

I think this one may be worth trying with the kids this week. :)

Cutest Halloween Costume

Source

I know Halloween was Wednesday, but I just had to share this. Aren't they just the cutest family ever? I love the costumes, they put a massive smile on my face. These guys have the cutest costumes every year, you should look them up. I love this family way too much considering I've never met them.

It's "Spring"

Today was SO warm. It is apparently "Spring" here in Australia...but it feels a lot more like summer. On my walk to work today I could have SWORN it was 30 degrees Celsius. But no. It was 20...what? How? There is no way that heat my body was enduring was 20 degrees Celsius...it felt so hot. Weather people, I am on to you and your lies! We keep our apartment at 20 degrees, and outside was definitely a LOT warmer.

I have already experienced one Australian Summer, but most people have told me that last Summer doesn't really count. I am not exactly looking forward to finding out what 30 degrees feels like. 

Ho hum, there are much worse things than living in a beautiful and very warm country. :)

Cutest Ghosts Ever

I've been feeling very crafty recently, and was feeling that all the stuff I did over the weekend just wasn't enough to make our nursery a Halloween wonderland. So, on my walk home I popped into K-mart to pick up some super bouncy balls, some elastic bands and a 3XL white t-shirt. The result is a collection of the cutest ghosts ever. I LOVE them! I'm keeping one at home just incase they get played with beyond repair at work. :)

Preparing for Halloween

Halloween is next week, and as I explained yesterday I have taken it as an excuse to organise all sorts of fun activities for the kiddies in the Nursery room next week. I was hoping to make some gloop/slime as a textile exploration for the kids, but unfortunately ALL of our attempts at that have resulted in something that would not be suitable for little kids. We did have a lot of fun, but none of the attempts could really be called gloop or slime. Oh well!

I did manage to make myself a Halloween costume (I'll share that later), some Monster bowling pins, a pumpkin bowling ball, a sign to remind parents we are dressing up for Halloween on Tuesday, some pumpkin spice playdough and am waiting for the orange dye to dry on some felt so I can make some felt pumpkins that the kids can arrange faces on. :D I also have some painting plans for next week too: Feet ghosts (white footprints look like ghosts when upside down) and blob spiders (the kids have been loving bubbles and so want to try and blow the bubbles, so I thought they could use straws to blow spider legs for a blob of paint). I am excited for next week. :)

Why hello there!

 Hi there!

I know it's been a while, but it's been good for me. :) I'm not completely back to where I wanted to be with my break from my blog, but I'm definitely getting there. I've gotten back to the point of wanting to share rather than feeling like I should.

So, in the past month and a half I was asked to become a permanent casual at a childcare center I'd been working at, to cover for a sick staff member. James and I have pretty much planned the furniture we'll buy as and when we have an apartment to furnish, and we've started saving up for all that. We've also started making weekends full of treats, which we are loving. :D

The center I've been working at has been going through changes, but it now has a new Director and she is doing wonderful things to improve the center. The room I'm working in needs the most change, and unfortunately the permanent staff in that room are the most reluctant to change. It's been driving me a bit crazy, but I'm coping with it. We've done barely anything creative with the kids, and I've been in the room since August. The new Director has done painting with the twice, and I've got the crayons out for them. The Director gave both rooms a playdoh recipe this week which we've made, and I am getting out every day...but we have yet to get the permanent staff actively being creative with the kids. With next weeks being Halloween I've decided to find anything and everything toddler worthy to do next week.

Today we went for a walk to Darling Harbour. We got some Gloria Jeans. We went to Broadway and did a whole bunch of shopping for my Halloween ideas. We then spent the afternoon making (and failing quite a bit) goop. Tomorrow we're going to Ikea and I'm making the rest of my Halloween crafts. :D It's a good weekend.

Break

Photo by me. I miss the gorgeous blossom tree from home.

I'm going to take a break from my blog. I know it wasn't long ago that I finally decided what I want my blog to be, but I think I need a break. I need to live life a little more. At the moment I feel like all I do is work and sit around drinking tea, there isn't much I want to share from that kind of life. This blog was created when I was at uni, when it was a super welcome distraction, when I loved taking photos of my life, when I had things to take photos of.

I want to rediscover my love for photography, it's practically disappeared, and that makes me a little sad.
I want to start drawing more.
I want to get out of the house more.
I want to read more.

I want to sort myself out, just a little bit, get myself to a proper happy place. :) The posts I am drawn to most on other blogs are those with gorgeous photos, and thats what I want to fill my world with...but I know I can't at the moment, so I need time to work on that.

I'm not leaving. I'll still be reading. I just won't be posting anything here for at least a month. :)

See you on the other side.