Happy Easter

Paris Love

In my mind there is no doubt that I love Paris. I find it hard to pinpoint exactly why because it is a combination of lots of little things. I love the culture. I love the people. I love that pretty much every little street looks gorgeous. I love the food, the coffee, and the macaroons. I love the architecture. I love the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Arc de Triumph. I love the memories of long weekends there with my mum. I love the feeling I get of being in Paris. I just love it. 

I've never quite felt like my photos of Paris have ever done the place justice. They just don't seem to capture that 'essence', that romantic, slightly uplifting and inspiring air. I have found someone that has captured all that I love about Paris. I cannot for the life of me remember how I came across her blog, but I did, and I bookmarked it, and I have been spending way too much time browsing all the different posts and getting lost in her photos of Paris. It is a gorgeous blog, and if you ever need to waste away a couple of hours looking at beautiful pictures of Paris I highly recommend checking out Paris in Four Months. 

Now to dream of living in Paris. 

Easter Chicks

I bought a whole bunch of adorable little chicks to decorate our classroom with. I made some (in my opinion) adorable garlands with some of these little chicks, but had a couple left over, so they have made themselves at home on our bookshelf. They make me smile every time I see them. :)

It's a long weekend! Yay!

Quote to Inspire #39

I haven't been drawing any awesome quotes lately, but I have been collected them, and thought it might be about time I started sharing some again. Since I am currently loving every minute of life, I felt this one was very appropriate. :)

A Chilled Out Sunday

After an awesome Saturday, we have had a chilled out Sunday. It's been a lovely weekend. I love lovely weekends. I also love that we have lots of wonderful weekends lined up. Next weekend is a long weekend for Easter, the weekend after is the weekend before my birthday, the weekend after I'm taking Friday off and we're seeing Tracy Morgan, then a weekend with nothing planned, and then Trevor Noah and Danny Bhoy the weekend after. Times filled with fun! :D

This morning we enjoyed tea and the scrummy cake we made yesterday out on our balcony. It was very warm. We didn't stay out long. The cake, today, was super yum. We had some yesterday for dessert and it was really rich and sickly sweet. We decided to keep it and see if it was better today, and it was a whole lot better. So I would recommend it as a super indulgent treat, but only if you leave it over night first.
We then went to the shops to get a jewellery tree, look around a gorgeous tea shop and get some dinner. Our looking around a gorgeous tea shop ended up in us buying two types of tea, two teacups, a teapot and becoming members. Not what we had planned, but we like our tea, so we are happy to be members of a tea shop. :) The tea cups and teapot are pictured above. The photo doesn't quite do the colour justice, they are more of a vintage-y blue, a gorgeous blue. The teapot has an infuser in it too, which is great considering the teas we bought are loose leaf. We were going to try out one of our new teas this afternoon, but it's been so hot (seriously where is Autumn??) so we decided against tea for now.
We did however throw out all the cardboard rubbish we had accumulated from getting bedside tables and whatnot, and sorted out all our washing...about 3 or 4 loads of it.

Now it's Grand Prix time with some yum garlic bread, pasta and beer. :) Then maybe some tea.

How to Have an Awesome Saturday In Like Katie and James

Today James and I chose to have a pretty chillaxed day in. It has been awesome, and looks to continue that way. So I thought I would share how you too could have such an awesome day/just tell you what we did in the form of instructions. Let's begin.

1. Wake up at 8:30. It is a sad realisation I made this week, that I may in fact be a grown up now since I consider 8:30 a sleep in. I am only 22, should I not be out all night and sleeping in until past noon? Anyway, wake up at 8:30 and make tea or coffee/get James to make tea and coffee. We/James made both, tea for James, coffee for me.

2. Spend until 12:30 in bed doing online quizzes.
2a. Hear "Mars: Bringer of War" and decide you make actually want to go to the BBC Proms.
2b. Thinking of the BBC Proms, watch Tim Minchin's Prejudice and fall in love with it all over again.

2c. Notice all the recommended video's for you on youtube are My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic related, and feel like you may need to look at some of your life choices. 

3. Decide on a scrummy cake you want to cook. We chose this one. 

4. Go buy the ingredients for said scrummy cake and get some Thai takeaway. Yum.

5. Eat Thai takeaway at the dinner table and have a conversation. None of this sitting in front of the TV stuff. 

6.

7. Chill on your laptop for a bit.

8.

Even with the tape they are still falling off. :( The instructions do say you need a flat wall, all our walls rough. We are blaming the walls.

9. Whilst one of you cooks the scrummy cake, the other shall browse through photos to put on your cork-board map.

10.

11. Update your blog.

We also got some chicken wings when we got the ingredients for the cake, and some BBQ marinade. The wings have been marinating since 1pm. They are going to be so yum with some potato and sweet potato chips and a beer whilst watching the Grand Prix qualifiers. :) And then we get to try our cake. Mmmm. THEN Melbourne's Comedy Festival Gala is on TV. All we need to make the day even better is for Vettel to not get pole position, or even better, not make it to Q3.

I hope you all have an awesome Saturday too! :)

Made in Chelsea

Made in Chelsea started when I was still at university, and one of my housemates and I found it became one of our guilty pleasures (along with Keeping up with the Kardashians, Super Nanny, My Sweet 16, Young, Dumb and Living off Mum). It was just ridiculously ridiculous. I haven't been keeping up with it since I left the UK, but I did stumble across this ad for their next season, and if you have ever seen the show I am sure you'll appreciate this.

I love practically everything Francis says (he's the ginger for those of you not in the know). He is by far the best person on that show.

We bought it!

 

On Saturday, yesterday, I took James to see the poster I wanted. He liked it, we got it. Yay! Very excited. We are now the proud owners of the poster that was hanging above Monica's TV in FRIENDS. It's gorgeous too, and really fills up the empty space we had above our shelves.
We also got some vases, because I love flowers but couldn't buy them since I had nowhere to put them, but no more! Now I can buy myself flowers whenever, and so can James. I am seriously loving these additions to our home. :)

We are slowly getting there with the decorating and adding our personality. I'm hoping by Easter that we'll have received the painting for our bedroom, and we'll have finished decorating so that I can take some photos. :)

Onesies

Around November/December time we had to take staff photos at work. We had to take silly staff photos at work. It was decided at our centre to take the photos in out PJ's. This led me to realise that I do not own fun, kid friendly PJs. I have kind friendly stuff, but it's all grey and black...doesn't exactly scream "childcare". A lot of other centres I have worked at have also had PJ days, where everyone comes in in their PJs...so I've sort of made it a mission to find some fun, childcare PJs. So far this mission has been a fail, mainly because I want to like the PJs. I then remembered seeing some awesome onesies on the internet and decided they could easily be passed off as PJs. I know have my sights set on owning one (or two, or three), it's just a matter of deciding which one. Currently I am loving the ones above (the bunny is only because Easter is soon, and a crazy part of me wants it to wear for our Easter Egg Hunt). James quite likes the Emperor Penguin onesie, which makes me tempted to get the Penguin onesie, because penguins mate for life. :P I also like the idea of the Kangaroo, since we are in Australia, plus you get a Joey too. Eeyore is just awesome, and I love Winnie the Pooh. Ah! The choices!

I have, however, decided that Pedobear would definitely be the wrong choice for childcare PJs, no matter how funny I think it is.

Sydney Comedy Festival

We booked ticket to the Sydney Comedy Festival!!! YAY!

We went last year, only finding out about it because of their brochure being in our favourite Thai takeaway. Last year we saw Danny Bhoy (awesome), Simon Amstall (depressing), and Steven K Amos (swore for comedy). I only enjoyed our night watching Danny Bhoy, but that hasn't deterred me from wanting to try other comedians.

So, this year we have booked tickets to see:

Tracy Morgan! We love 30 Rock.


Trevor Noah! David Pocock (Brumbies and Wallabies player) has said this guy is hilarious. :P He's South African.


Danny Bhoy! Again! He does the best Aussie accent.


Axis of Awesome. Music and comedy, I think it should be a fun evening.


Cannot wait! :D

Balloons

On the Sunday in Canberra we got up at 6 so that we could go watch the balloons. We tried to do this last year but the wind wasn't right, so we tried again this year. We appear to have bad luck, as the wind was again not right, so most of them had gone off somewhere else to set off. They do always leave behind some cool balloons for people to watch go up, so we got to see a Peacock, a Turtle and a Lion...plus Darth Vader was there too, and we got to see him with three adorable dogs, priceless.

We then drove to the lake and sat and watched the balloons on the horizon. We were hoping they would fly towards us, but the wind was wrong. It was very peaceful. :)
We then headed to the shops to get 'some' stuff for a scrummy brunch. We had bacon, sausages, smoked salmon, toast, spinach, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes and hollandaise sauce, plus a bit of sparkling wine and orange juice. A very indulgent and lovely brunch!

It was then the LONGEST day as we waited until 5pm for our bus back to Sydney. I some of the time to tidy pretty much all of the closet in James' room. He has so many clothes! Then back to Sydney to watch The Block and Elementary, and bed.

It was a wonderful weekend, I felt like we had had a week off. Loved it. :)

 

Brumbies Birthday Game

69/365

So, I started telling you about last weekend in parts, here is Saturday.

We started the day at noon. Yay! We got a proper sleep in. To me it felt good, however, it gave James a headache sleeping that much. Oh well! We then enjoyed the lovely (I'm sick of it, but it is still nice) weather by having lunch outside with James' family, with a bit of Rose wine as well. I love lazy lunches like that. James and I then headed out to the shops for a bit of shopping, because we seem to be incapable of visiting Canberra without doing some sort of shopping. Shopping done, we wait until the game. (If you don't care too much for sport, you may want to skip the rest of this...)

This game was purposely held at home as it was Canberra's 100th birthday weekend, which I think added a whole lot of extra pressure for the Brumbies to perform. Not only was it a special birthday home game, it was also against their rivals, the Waratahs. The Waratahs are to the Brumbies like Everton is to Liverpool, or Man City is to Man U. Or that's how I understand it anyways. From reading the little booklet we get at the games I learnt that the Brumbies were originally made up of 'unwanted' Waratahs, they were basically players who were told (apparently not in the nicest of terms) that they were not good enough. So beating the Tahs is pretty important to the Brumbies. Thankfully they did so, it made for an awesome night.

The Brumbies scored the first points of the night (off of a penalty), which I think really helps the momentum of a team. They also got the only tries (of the whole game), two in the first half. The ref called a lot penalties, and a lot against the Brumbies for "not rolling away". This is a piece of information we would not normally have known, because there was never any announcement or mention for the crowds at the game why a penalty was called. This issues was obviously mentioned as at this game they had the reason for the penalty up on the big screen, along with a replay. The ref was very consistent with his calls, but he also only gave players about 2 seconds to roll away before deciding to give a penalty. Anyhoo, near the end of the first half one of the Brumbies got a yellow card for not rolling away too many times. So that sucked a bit. Pocock also left the game during this half with what looked like a minor injury, but turned out to be a torn ACL/ligament in the knee. So he's basically out for the season, boo! BUT Brumbies' fans were very happy that this meant George Smith came to the field earlier than planned, so...yay!

The second half started with the Brumbies down a player for the first 7mins. You wouldn't have known it though, they dominated. They were pretty much in the Tahs 22 for most of that time, and if I remember correctly there were also a few close tries. Two players, one from each team then got yellow cards at exactly the same time, so it kind of didn't matter. The second half was somewhat boring but exciting at the same time. The Tahs didn't get any points in the second half (so this is the third game in a row that the Brumbies haven't conceded a point in the second half). The Brumbies scored another 2 tries, both near the end of the game. We have watched two games, and both have had awesome end of the game tries.
In the first game we watched against the Reds (who also seem to be a much hated team, at least in James' family). The Reds have Quade Cooper on their team, who according the James and his family is a douchebag...and I kind of agree. He's the Reds flashy player, kind of like Cristiano Ronaldo. This isn't a random fact, it's important. In the last minute of the game against the Reds the Brumbies were in the lead, they also had the ball and all they had to do was stop the Reds from scoring to stop them from getting a bonus point (for being within 7 points of the winning team). The Brumbies kicked the ball to the Reds, meaning the Reds had possession of the ball in their 22. The Reds began passing the ball trying to move forward to get those much needed points. The ball is in Quade Cooper's hands, he passes forward, but it doesn't matter because Jesse Mogg (Brumbies player) intercepts and scores a try. AWESOME!
In the game against the Tahs the Tahs have the ball and are making a pretty convincing run for the try line. Guy with the ball (think he was called Folau) has the ball, he kicks it to chase after. Jesse Mogg catches the ball, he runs through heaps of people, passes it to Coleman who kicks it over the last defender, catches it and gets the try. This was almost a full field run for the try. Everyone was up on their feet. AWESOME!

The game ended awesome, we were happy. We found out the bad news about Pocock after the game, which was a bit of a downer, but George Smith is back, it's OK. We then watched the game AGAIN on the TV...it sounds so lame now...BUT we were on TV! I thought we might have been, I saw a Fox Sport camera pointed our way. So yeah, cool. At about midnight I was knackered so headed to bed.
So, to end this story the Brumbies won 35-6. The game ended awesomely. I am being sucked way too much into this sporting world.

Enlighten

We went back to Canberra this weekend. Our intention for going back was to watch the Brumbie's play a home game, but it turned out it was also Canberra's 100th birthday weekend (the Brumbie's game was at home for this reason). This meant there was all sorts of awesome stuff on, such as Enlighten.
We decided to try the train to Canberra. It had a lot more room, and was more comfy, but we're not sure about the price. Anyhoo, taking the train meant we arrived at 10:30pm on Friday night. We were picked up and drove to Enlighten to decide if we wanted to have a walk around that night or the next. I'm not sure who decided, but somehow we ended up walking around that evening. It was pretty awesome. The Art museum, National Portrait museum, Questicon and Library were all lit up for the occasion. My favourite was the Art museum. For the 100th birthday year of Canberra, the museum has been exhibiting Toulouse-Lautrec artwork. For Enlighten they had pieces of artwork from the collection lit up on the outside of the building. I thought it was gorgeous, and really enjoyed it. The other light shows were a bit too 'modern'. Some of them were weird computer generated bug stuff...weird. It was a nice evening though.

Here are some of my favourite parts of the Art museum. :)

Bowling

 

Yesterday we went bowling. James' uni friends wanted to meet up over the weekend, and had decided on Sunday lunch, but being the way they are hadn't decided what they were doing by Saturday afternoon. I suggested to James that we could try out a bowling alley I had read about whilst he was fixing his dads TV. Everyone agreed, so Sunday we headed out to Mascot to go bowling at this awesome bowling alley. We had lunch in the Bistro next to the bowling alley, they had yummy chips! So very yummy. Yum. We then headed over to bowl! We had a good time. I was awful, I blame it on not having been bowling in the last 3 years. I was very proud of myself for still enjoying myself despite being last. Our second game was spent bowling in interesting manners. I think we decided to stop this idea after someone almost threw a ball down another alley whilst spinning around, and then that same person decided it would be a good idea to sit down and bowl backwards over their head...I think pretty much everyone started going "No No No NO!" when we saw her lift the ball above her head.

We enjoyed ourselves. I think we should go bowling more.

Living Life

I skyped with my parents today, and was told that apparently my last post 'left things hanging'. So, I thought I should do a little update.

In terms of decorating our place, I LOVE the colours from the last post, and you may have noticed have used them for a little blog spruce up, but I'm not so sure about using them for our place. I have kind of decided that we'll use the painting we bought as inspiration for bedroom colours, we'll do neutrals for the bathroom, and the rest of the apartment will just be a combination of different things (hopefully) beautifully put together. Which means I can get gorgeous pieces like the picture above, which I happened to find in a store near us and which if you are a big fan of Friends like I am you will know is the same poster hung above Monica's TV. So it's pretty and it says something about my character, that's the kind of stuff I want to fill our place with. :)

In other news, this week I feel like I've been living life. I've always felt like there's not much time to do much with my day after work, or I've decided I was too tired to do anything, but this week I've been ignoring that tiredness and actually doing stuff, and it's felt good!
On Monday we had an Oscar night. We recorded the Oscars, dressed up a bit, had some beer and a yummy cheese platter, and enjoyed ourselves.
Tuesday felt like a super day. I was asked if I could start 30mins early because all the kids had arrived SUPER early, so I worked half an hour extra that day. I was then informed by James during our usual phone call on my way home that we were meeting his dad that evening, at 7. It was 5:40. I take about 40-50mins to get home. We then had to get back into town. I got back at 6:20, got ready and we somehow made it to his dads Sydney place for 7. James helped his dad sort out his TV and we then went out for a nice meal at The Rocks. It turned out to be a lovely evening.
On Wednesday we bought a Stickmaster and made some green smoothies. They were yum.
Thursday was a normal day, minus my usual nap when I get home.
And Friday was the first day of Autumn, it was grey and raining. We took this as an excuse to have a super cozy night in, we got pizza, had G&T's and make some yum choc-caramel smoothies with our awesome new Stickmaster. :)

Today we went shopping. I looked at clothes I am interested in buying. I have recently realised I don't have much to wear other than comfy home clothes and work clothes. I only own one pair of jeans that fit, and they cost me $9 and usually have bits of playdough stuck to them...so I may need to invest in some new nice ones for evenings out and weekends. I'm also looking at getting some new tops and shoes, because why not? We also looked at some home stuff, and found the self proclaimed 'softest towels in the world' which were actually the softest towels I've ever touched, so we may be going back for them. We also got a food slicer/thin cutter thing, so we can make homemade uniformly cut crisps out of all sorts of cool vegetables. Yum!
This afternoon I met up with an old colleague of mine and had a good look around a lot of the shops on King Street that I've always wanted to go into, but never have. This is how I came across the above print. We also found an awesome Dalek prink, which we both really want to get.
I then skyped my parents, and had a lovely catch up with them.

Tomorrow we're meeting up with some of James' uni friends, and having dinner with his grandparents in the evening. So all in all an eventful week, and I've not felt exhausted by it! Maybe I should live life a little more from now on. :)