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 From reading the little booklet we get at the games I learnt that the Brumbies were originally made up of 'unwanted' Waratahs, they were basically players who were told (apparently not in the nicest of terms) that they were not good enough.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. :)

Colour Inspiration

           

    

I have been driving myself, and James, crazy with decoration ideas for our place. I am super happy with our new painting purchase for our bedroom, and using those colours to inspire (or 'inspirate' for any of you watching My Kitchen Rules) the colours we use in the bedroom. I am now, however, super confused about what to do in our main area. I really like our new bedroom colours, and kind of want the rest of the apartment to have similar colours, but not the same, if that makes any sense at all. I don't think I like any of the colours we original chose as our colour inspiration anymore, so I've been doing a bit of pinterest searching. Above are some of the colours I am really loving at the moment, they are very fresh and happy, and I love them...BUT I know that once it become winter and dark and cold, I will want home colours to reflect it...Oh I'm so confused! I really do overcomplicate things. I always realise how silly I am with my overcomplicating when I write posts like this...

In other news, we have recently discovered Darling Harbour puts on a firework show about three times a month, so our balcony looking out towards Darling Harbour is pretty awesome, and once we get some chairs and a table out there we can be sipping G&T's watching some fireworks, living the high life.

What we bought

I can't quite remember when I came across COZAMIA's art, but I've loved it since then and have always wanted to own a piece. I was following her blog, but she is currently moving it so I signed up for her newsletter. Today I got an e-mail about her art being on sale in Australia. I showed James, we decided we loved this piece and order one. We're going to put it in the bedroom, I think the colours are gorgeous and calm. We're pretty excited. :)

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

I'm not an all out Valentine's day person, but I do love an excuse to spoil loved ones. That said, I've not done much spoiling of James today. We did get ourselves some yummy gin and some steaks. Yum yum, we're spoiling ourselves rather than each other. :)
I also received a package from a good friend of mine today, with the shirt I'm wearing in the photos in it. It's a gorgeous shirt.
We've also had a wonderful day at working, baking all sorts of goods and having an afternoon tea with the parents.
All in all, today has been fabulous for me so far, and I hope your day will be just as fab!

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. :)

Videos I am Currently Loving

These two are absolutely adorable! AND there are more videos. So super cute! I may have spent half an hour today watching them dance...time not wasted, in my opinion.

On my lonesome

34/365 - not overly colourful, but it is golds/coppers/creams, pretty colours.

James has gone back to Canberra, for the Super Bowl, so I am alone for a couple of nights since I have work. :) Whilst I do love James' company, it is nice to have time to myself. I don't get much alone time, I'm either at work or at home with James. Walking to and from work is the only time I kind of 'truly' get to myself. So, I am enjoying time on my own. I've done some tidying, had a nap, made dinner, done the dishes and enjoyed some TV. I enjoy the quiet and calmness that comes with my own company.

Tomorrow I'm thinking of having a nice bath when I get back from work, and maybe painting my nails. It's nice having some time to myself. :)

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. 

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!