Always Welcome

I wish these little guys would visiting more often, I love them.

In other news, I can now officially say I have lived in Australia for more than 2 years!

Sesame Street - Don't Give Up

In my opinion, this isn't as good as the Will.i.am song, but I still enjoy it. :)

Fudgesicles

The other day, on my walk in to work, I thought I had left my purse at home, my purse containing my swipe card to get into work. My initial reaction to this realisation was "Sugarpuffs", and this somewhat shocked me.

Most people that know me well can tell you that swear words are very unlikely to come out of my mouth. I don't know what it is about them, I just feel uncomfortable saying them, with the occasional exception for varieties of the word 'poo' (which to be honest are so common in most peoples day to day speech, and are much better at describing a bad day or situation). Despite knowing this about myself I was still shocked, that in a park, on my own, with no one around, my response was "Sugarpuffs".

Where does 'Fudgesicles' come into this? Well, I then started thinking about what words I do use in place of your typical swear words, and my list consists of: Fudgesicles, Fiddlesticks and Sugarpuffs. The first two are my preferred substitutes.

Anyone else have words they use in place of swearing?

Sony BRAVIA

I was browsing Pinterest and came across some images from the Sony BRAVIA bouncy ball ad...and that lead me to finding all of Sony BRAVIA's awesome ads. They are seriously some of the coolest ads ever made.

The bouncy balls and exploding paint are my favourites, what are yours?

Sesame Street - Celebrity Lullabies with Ricky Gervais

I am so torn about whether I like Ricky Gervais or not, he seems like such a prick, but then I watch video's of him and Elmo and he doesn't seem so bad...this video is hilarious.

Blog on my Mind

If I blogged posts as much as I thought about blogging posts this blog would have a lot more posts. Got your head round that one yet?

I spend so much time going "This would make a good blog post" and then narrating it in my head. I then forget all about it and sit at home in the evening thinking "What was that thing I thought was blog-worthy?"

I do this at least 3 times a week.

Why Must You Do This To Us?

It's that time of the year again, where people start making you cry with their Christmas ads. In Australia we don't get as many sad Christmas ads, so I'm not subjected to being made to cry every time I watch TV. However, through my Strictly Come Dancing following I discovered that John Lewis had started to show their Christmas ad, and curiously looked it up. I'm not entirely sure why I looked it up, they are notorious for making people cry about Christmas, and I am one big cry baby, but I did and I cried.
If you don't want to watch the ad, it's basically about a bear who has to hibernate through Christmas. The bear and his hare friend seem pretty sad about this. So, for Christmas the hare gives his bear friend an alarm clock so he can wake up for Christmas and enjoy it with his friends. This should be a happy and sweet story, but they do it to the song "Somewhere only we know" and that seems to make it super sad.

Why do British Christmas ads have to be so sad?

Michael McIntyre FINALLY in Australia

Yesterday James woke up at the same time as me, and we both sat at our computers as we woke up for the day ahead. James then read an article titled "Michael McIntyre: the biggest comedy star you've never heard of", yeah, we know, what? Excitement ensued. We looked up tickets. Limited tickets left. Eeeek! We booked. We're going. We're excited.

For those of you who don't know who he is, here's a video (if you do know who he is, enjoy anyways):

PS: Parents, I know you like Michael McIntyre on Facebook, and he mentioned his visit all the way back in September...why did you not tell me????? Seriously? We are disappointed in you. 

Currently Loving...

Mr Fox by Ylvis.

A friend of mine originally brought this song to my attention by saying "I've found an awesome informational video you can incorporate into your nursery classes". She's not half wrong, I think the kids would love the song, it's fun and it's catchy. It also becoming hugely popular.

I'm thinking we may need to buy some fox onesies some time soon.

Weekend walking

This week I started the 10,000 step challenge. We started on Monday, so the end of last week I wore the pedometer to see what I normally do. Weekdays are awesome for me, walking to and from work already gets me 10,000 steps, so I was ending my weekdays on around 16,000. The weekends were a different story...I managed about 1,000 steps each day. Yeah, weekends are going to be a challenge.

I did a lot better this weekend. We went out to Ikea yesterday, and walked along King Street, so I got around 8,000 steps. Today we had a HUGE day out. We went to Circular Quay, around the Rocks, walked to the Australian Museum, walked around the Museum and got a grand total of 5,000 steps. What? Yeah, so today is not that great...I spent a lot of time walking around in 30 degree heat and still only half the steps. At least my 22,000 from Friday should make up for it!

Lets hope next week goes a little better.

Sesame Street Love - What I Am

This is the first Sesame Street video I fell in love with. It's awesome and cute...and seriously makes me like Will.i.am more than being on Graham Norton did.

Floriade 2013 - Part 2

 

Sight Seeing

Because our friend is visiting Australia for the first time we have been feeling the need to do touristy things. Today that involved driving out to Goulburn to see the Big Merino; actually stopping to take a look at Lake George, which is a huge expanse just outside of Canberra that used to be a lake, but not has sheep and cows grazing on it...it's weird to hear stories about people drowning in Lake George when all you've known it as is a huge dry piece of land; and visiting the War Memorial. It has felt like an incredibly long day. Being touristy is tiring!

From top to bottom: The Big Merino; Lake George; Poppies at the War Memorial; War Memorial from inside.

Floriade 2013 - Part 1

Today we went to see Floriade. I love the flowers. So pretty. :) These are my pink, white, purple and blue photos.

Sesame Street Love - Max the Magician

This was the video that started our Sesame Street marathon on Saturday. We know it's you Gob, you can't fool us with your fake name.

If you don't know who Gob is you need to watch Arrested Development, and then you'll have a whole new appreciation for this video.

Also, Chris totally looks like no-one told him how "Max" was going to actually do his tricks.

I look forward to sharing more.

(Also, sorry about the poor quality of the video. Sesame Street does have it's own youtube page, but they started it after this episode aired and don't seem to feel the need to upload it. This is the best I could find.)

Malt and Teaser

What is it? Adriano Zumbo's Malt and Teaser
How does it taste? Amazing. I want more now please!

If you've heard of Adriano Zumbo you'll know he makes all sorts of different, interesting and intricate desserts. He is a regular challenge setter on Masterchef Australia. I've tried a couple of his things and found the flavours too intense, or just plain wrong for my palate. This, however, is AMAZING. It's chocolaty; it's light; it's fluffy; it's crunchy. Mmmm. If you like desserts, and chocolate, and are in Australia I recommend trying one.

Today was Productive

We have a friend coming to stay with us for a couple of weeks, arriving tomorrow, so took the opportunity to use the visit as encouragement to spring clean. Man did we get a lot done. It probably helped that we both naturally woke up at 7:30...which I still can't get over. I woke up at 7:30 on a weekend day, for no other reason than I was awake and didn't want to sleep. Anyhoo, because I am so proud of what we got done today I wanted to share.

Today we:
-Visited our Real Estate agents to discuss the tiles in our bathroom that have fallen off. The tiles just randomly popped off. We sent an e-mail on Monday and had heard nothing back since, they've been sorting things out for us...just not letting us know about it.
-Made mango ice cubes for easy smoothie making. Last weekend I'd made coffee ice cubes, mango and passionfruit ice cubes, mixed berries ice cubes, and banana and blueberry ice cubes...mango ice cubes were the last on my list. Mmmm smoothies.
-Sorted my flowers out. I still hadn't cleaned out some of the vases after throwing out flowers last weekend...they were looking gross. I also rearranged the flowers we have.
-Wrapped boxes. Remember me talking about making boxes for our appliances look pretty all the way back in June, well we got more boxes, so I made them pretty too.
-Wash, fold and put away our clothes.
-Went to the shops and had a treat before some shopping. It was about 11 at this point.
-Got some REALLY soft and lovely sheet set for our room. We wanted something new and light now that the weather is getting warmer. What we ended up with is AMAZING. If I could spend all day in bed stroking the sheets I think I would.
-Got an inflatable mattress, pump and some single sheets for our friend to sleep on. We discover this evening that the pump we got needs to attach to the cigarette thingy in a car to work...so we will have to find another pump tomorrow.
-Had super yummy chicken wrap for lunch from Oporto. We're loving their new wrap selection. So so yum.
-Watched an unhealthy amount of Sesame Street clips. I am thinking of creating a mini-series here to share some of my favourites.
-Sorted out our kitchen. We tidied it and did a complete clear out off all the useless stuff/expired stuff we did not need. It looks very tidy and organised now. :)
-Tidied the bathroom.
-Tidied the rest of the apartment.
-Threw out about 3 bags of rubbish.
-Vacuumed the entire apartment.
-Flipped our mattress and made our bed with our gorgeous new sheets...and then lay on them for a bit raving about how incredibly soft they are.
-Did a little bit of grocery shopping.
-Had a G&T to celebrate an awesome days work finished by 5.

I think we did incredibly well. It has felt like an awesome day, and despite what we have got done it's also felt really relaxed and laid-back. :)

Today was lovely

 

The forecast today was rain. We haven't seen a single drop, or even any signs of this forecast coming true. Today has been lovely. Last weekend we decided we should do more with our weekends...maybe even get into the gorgeous city we have on our doorstep instead of sitting inside all the time. So today we went to explore the Strand Arcade, David Jones, Westfield and the QVB. The Strand Arcade and the QVB are so very beautiful, and the two shopping 'centres' photographed above. The shops inside each of them look ridiculously expensive...like I didn't dare step inside them for fear of damaging the beautiful things inside of them. Gorgeous.

So yeah, we got off of our backsides today and it was well worth it! We also did a couple of others things, but my brain is not working enough to go into them...maybe another time. We have more planned for tomorrow too, and I got my tax return recently so I'm doing quite of bit of treat shopping that I may share.

Off to a night of Turkish takeaway and some rugby. :)

I have pretty flowers!

On Monday I bought myself some pretty flowers. I love having pretty flowers in the apartment. I went in hoping to get some colourful gerbera and tulips, and that is part of what I came home with. The gorgeous pink gerbera I came home with were displayed next to beautiful purple orchids and some blossom branches; so of course I had to get some gorgeous purple orchids, blossom branches AND the gerbera and tulips I hoped to get. It's only been three days, but I LOVE my pretty flowers. They so purty. They make me so happy. Why my lovely James does not buy me flowers I do not know, because I so love flowers. 

Eeee, pretty flowers!

Happy Father's Day

This would have been a lot better had I known Father's Day was today and not next Sunday before Wednesday this week. We've been going crazy at work getting the Father's Day present sorted after our little revelation!

Hope you have a relaxing day. Love you lots! :)