The Best Bits About Work

I am loving work at the moment, and these are some of the reasons why. 

Getting the tightest hugs ever from some of the kids. It's not just any hug, it's a super-tight-i-love-you kind of hug.

When the babies learn how to blow kisses, and will do so whenever you blow them a kiss. Melts my heart.

Smiles from babies who are still unsure of this new place they are being left.

Giggles. I love children's giggles.

The general amazingness of children. They are so much smarter than I ever gave them credit for, and it is amazing watching them discover the world and grow. 

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.

Australia Day Fireworks

We were pretty excited about the Australia Day Fireworks, because we knew this would be our chance to see if we could actually see fireworks in the city from our balcony. We can! These fireworks were at Darling Harbour, and we could see them! No more "Is that fireworks?", "It sounds like fireworks.", "We can't see them though, probably in the city.", now it'll be "Come look! Fireworks!". It's a small thing, but it makes us pretty excited! There were also some fire works out by Circular Quay last night, which we could also see. So very awesome!

I hope those of you who celebrated Australia Day yesterday had a fab time!

Happy Australia Day

Today is Australia Day. We haven't exactly done much, but it has been a lovely day. In honour of Australia Day I thought I would draw things that I now relate to Australia after a year of living here. :)

We're now going to watch the cricket, and then later watch the fireworks at Darling Harbour from our balcony. :) Hope you've had a fab day!

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. 

Ally McBeal - Best Part

Did anyone else watch and love Ally McBeal? I loved that show. I thought I would grow up to be like Ally, and I was perfectly happy with that. My favourite character, however, was John Cage. Who doesn't love John Cage and his adorable Barry White dance. It is by far my favourite part about the whole show. Never fails to make me smile.

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

Inside my Head

Yesterday, whilst we were going to sleep I could have sworn I heard the TARDIS. You know, that whoosh whoosh-ing noise. I got pretty excited. I am British and a redhead, it was only inevitable that I would eventually become the Doctors companion some day. He never showed. I was disappointed.

Last night James and I were also discussing why things get serious when the gloves come off.
J: "Why does it get serious?"
K: "Isn't it something to do with..."
J: "It's taking your glove off to slap someone for a duel."
K: "Yeah, exactly."
...silence...
K:"Do you only know that because of a Simpsons episode?"
J:"...yeah."

Needless to say, inside my head is pretty awesome.

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. :)

Ribbon Banner

Yesterday I made some banners out of bits of fabric from Ikea. We handed in the keys to our old places yesterday, and spent the rest of the day chilling, tidying and making pretty banners. :D I am very happy with the outcome, they bring a bit of colour and happiness into our little unfurnished home. One of the above photos will be my photo for today...I just haven't decided which yet, I love them all.

Today, was hot. Apparently the hottest day in history for Sydney. So much for my avoiding the heat. We did limit our exposure to the heat by spending 3 hours at the air-conditioned IKEA. We got ourselves a wardrobe whilst they were on sale, and a few other bits and bobs that we have realised we need but do not have. We also saved $30 using our little $10 off vouchers that have been coming through the post. It's supposed to be one per household, but a lot of our apartment neighbours have been just dumping theirs on a shelf with no interest, so we have slowly been accumulating them. We had 12, we now have 9. We sort of tag teamed today to make our 3 different purchases. We also giggled a lot at what we consider to be extreme sneakiness. 

We didn't manage to avoid the heat altogether, as it was in the 40's when we were waiting for the bus. We were in the shade, and it still felt HOT. There was a breeze, but it was a hot breeze. We decided it felt a lot like sitting in front of a fire. It has now just tipped it down with rain, I don't think the weather knows what it's doing. 

All in all, it's been a pretty awesome day.

We get a wardrobe tomorrow! It's has fancy mirror doors! Eeee! 

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

Our View

15/365

Our view, as promised. We love it. We can't get enough of it. I am looking forward to being able to drink a G&T on our balcony, because it will be awesome!

And incase you couldn't spot the Harbour Bridge, because it is hard to spot, here's a close up. It's the thing with two flags on it.

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!

Moving

12/365

Today has been very much up and downs.

We got up at 5:30 to get the bus to Sydney at 7. We only got back the night before at about 11 in the evening, and had to pack...so we didn't get much sleep, I was maybe a little cranky. We got a phone call whilst on the bus from the real estate lady handling our new place. She was going to be out until 2:20 doing viewings, so we wouldn't be able to pay our bond and pick up the keys until then. So, we decided to have lunch and then go to Ikea to get a mattress. On the way to the lunch we dropped in to the real estate to find out how they would like the receive the bond payment so that we could have it sorted for 2:20. Bankers cheque or Money order...and apparently we only have about half an hour until banks/post offices close. It was 11:30 at this point, so we postponed lunch to go and sort that out. The bank was closed. 11:30 on a Saturday. Banks need to sort themselves out. Saturday is THE day people have to go get everything done, why banks aren't open is beyond me. It really stuffed us up, because it turns out that I can only withdraw a certain amount a day...and this certain amount was not enough. James took out money too, but we were still quite short. All the money was in my account, and we couldn't get it out. ARGH! I waited in the long line at the Post Office whilst James ran back to the apartment to get all our Christmas money. We were now only $100 short. We hoped maybe I could pay with my card since I was not withdrawing...but no. I am now aware of my daily limit, good to know for our future furniture buying. I left the Post Office in tears. The lack of sleep and money debacle had somewhat gotten to me.
We walked back to our apartment feeling a bit...meh. We tried seeing if I could transfer money to James, and problem solved! I sent money, James took it out, got another Money Order, and ahhhhh. We felt A LOT better. We then had some lunch and sat in the park until 2:20, since we wouldn't be able to pay for a mattress today.
We successfully paid our bond and got our keys. We headed off to see our new place. I don't know about others, but I always make a place seem WAY nicer in my head that it actually was when we saw it, so I was eager to see how this place held up to my memories. Well, that had to wait. We got into the building. We checked the post. We got to our new front door, and the key didn't work. We called our lovely lady and she came over with the office keys. They worked, thank goodness! So, we got to keep that and were asked to make some copies.
Our new place has potential. It's got a few cracks here and there, could have maybe done with a fresh coat of paint, but does the view make up for all that! I'll have to take a photo tomorrow, and will probably take loads more during the year. It's awesome. I have so many wonderful plans for this place. It's going to take quite some time, but we are so super excited!
We then got the keys cut and then spent the rest of the afternoon recovering from the morning/afternoon events.

Let's hope tomorrows plan go more smoothly.

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! :)

DIY Ribbons

On Tuesday I mentioned sitting around and making ribbony things. I also said I would share a picture, and having recently read through my blog a bit I have realised I promise to share a lot of pictures that I then never do, but no more! I shall resolve to keep to my picture sharing promises, beginning now.

I made the ribbons for the present I got for this weekends Secret Santa. I'd pinned a tutorial quite some time back, and had used my memory of it for actual Christmas to decorate a couple of presents I wrapped. I decided for this present I would try and follow the tutorial as true as I could, to get the best looking ribbons. Unfortunately, the paper I had to work with wasn't long enough to use the exact same measurements as in the tutorial, but I kept with the inch-ish shortening for each different length. I used scraps of the craft wrapping paper and covered one side with pretty tape (I love pretty tape, I only have four little rolls, but my are they the coolest thing ever! I may have to start a collection). I then cut the lengths, and got to it. I was also lacking some double sided tape, so used the old folding normal tape trick, which has left the ribbons a little 'bouncy', but I am still super happy with the outcome. :)

I'm not sure if I'm going to count the image as my 365 for the day, I don't quite feel like there is enough colour...but we'll see. :P This colour theme is proving to be a challenge!

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!