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Sunny weather is here

Or at least within 300 kilometres of here...

On the weekend we drove up to Sydney after John's game of soccer and stayed with a friend in their Bondi apartment (thanks Milly!). Sunday morning, we woke up to this view:



The temperature was predicted to be 29 degrees celcius that day, how badly do you think I wanted to stay there, walk down to the beach and lie in the sun for hours (Covered in sunscreen of course)? Very. Very Much.

But alas we had things to do, people to see, cars to collect... John was picking up his new car (Holden Monaro, photos to come another day) from Alexandria, and I wanted to do a quick run through Ikea in Rhodes before heading back to Canberra in time for my soccer game at 3pm. On the plus side, I had a really good game and scored a goal, my first of the season! About time, since we're 2 games out from the finals...

And on a totally unrelated note, here is a photo of a succulent plant I have not managed to kill yet! Give it time.

What a day...

It was rainy and blah when I woke up, and that's how I felt all day, rainy and blah. It seems to be just at that exact point in the year where it is basically spring, you can smell it on the air, the sun shines most days, and it's not dark by the time you get home from work... it's glorious, actually, when you realise the blossoms are starting to come out and everything smells fresh... And then you get a day like today that reminds you it is actually still cold, windy, horrible winter, and it just puts you out of sorts.

Lovely Weather


Always Fresh

We went to my in-laws for dinner (as is usual on a Friday night, Taco night, very delicious, but no photos as it's quite a mess usually), where there are regularly fresh flowers on the table. Orchids are one of my favourites, mainly because they last for months and still look fantastic, like the day you bought them (that's value for money right there!). My mum kept the orchids from my wedding bouquet and they still looked fresh when we got back from our honeymoon, 3 weeks later.

After dinner I sat and created some jewellery for my new online store (opening soon!) while everyone else watched the cricket.. a very exciting Friday night indeed. Though I wouldn't want it any other way =)

OmNomNom

Dinner: Beef Pad Siew

Made from the recipe found on Taste.com.au (needed a bit more flavour, I added some hot chili sauce that we had in the fridge)

Breakfast: French Toast

Eggs, milk & cinnamon in a bowl, soak bread in mixture, cook in lots of butter to cook bread through then give it a blast of high heat to make crispy and golden on the outside

YUMMO

There will be more delicious (hopefully!) photos with recipes included on my blog, hopefully a few meals a week probably on the weekend.

Please follow my blog if you would like to see more of these!

Projects in the pipeline...

If you don't already know me, then you also probably don't know what I do, in life. You know, to earn a buck. I'm a teacher that looks like a student. I'm halfway through my second year of teaching college (in Canberra, Australia, that's year 11 & 12. 16-18 year olds). I look about 17. I'm 24. Other teachers come into the classroom and look around for a good minute until they realise that yes, there *is* a teacher in the room supervising these young rapscallions... but really, is she even qualified? Does she really know what she's doing? The answer is yes. But that is actually not the point of the story, and if you come back to read any more of my posts you'll find I probably do this a lot, go off in tangents to stories, come back to the story, forget the point, remember, build it up, then conclude in a dramatically anti-climatic way. You know you want to stick around for that.

So the point of this particular story? Well I'm getting there...

Besides being a teacher, I am also a designer. I studied Graphic Design at Uni for 4 years, then completed a diploma of education so I could teach design. This arrangement allows me to freelance from home when I'm not at work. For the past 7 years I've also been doing a lot of photography, portraits and model portfolios, a couple of weddings, lots of hours editing photos. So this was all ading up to me being in front of the computer A LOT, and feeling guilty that I wasn't doing work, when I'd take an hour out to watch NCIS. Work life balance? Is that a catch phrase?

Some model portfolios I've shot

I also play soccer (as does my husband) so our weekends are taken up with going to games, I train twice a week and he trains once (on different nights). If you can't tell by my internet tone, I'm at the stage where soccer is more of a chore than a hobby.

Action Shot! That's me on the left, looking about 12. In reality I was about 22 here.

To combat my growing stress levels and annoyance at working constantly I decided shortly before the wedding that I would stop doing photography for other people. No more commissioned work or portraits, for at least 6 months, maybe a year.

I also applied to go part time at work, so am now on a .85 load, which means I go in 85% of the time, and get paid 15% less. This in turn has allowed me to work more routine hours from home on my design business (www.danverscreative.com), which means I know I have 3 hours on Tuesday and 3 hours on Thursday to get the work done, and if I want to watch TV on a Wednesday night that's fine and dandy because it's my night off work.Work life balance? Ohhhh yeah I remember what that is now...

I've also found that getting into more of a routine with the business has helped me in my house routines, with keeping the place clean and tidy and doing washing regularly, not letting it all pile up etc. I'm a messy person at heart. When I was a little kid you honestly could not find the floor of my room... I would clear a path to my bed and that was good enough for me, until I'd decide to do a MASSIVE clean up and spend a whole day tidying and sorting, putting everything back away in it's place. As an adult, I do not want to live like that. I've learned that to keep things tidy, you need to have not a lot of junk, and good storage. I've made a concerted effort to chuck a lot of old stuff out (always sending things to St Vinny's or the recycling where possible, of course), and this book is really good inspiration if you're feeling stuck and not sure where to start.

Washing? Check. Colourful undergarments? Check.

Gosh I've gone on another tangent.

What I'm getting around to, is that now I don't feel so burdened with work, I have a few fun little projects in the wings that I will be working on in my actual spare time over the next couple of months that I'm quite excited about. One is jewellery design (which I was heavily into about 5 years ago and really want to start up again), and one is wedding related, with a few different elements that should come together nicely. I'm still trying to find a good name for the jewellery design business, so if you have any good ideas, throw them my way!

Please feel free to leave a comment about how you are dealing with work/life balance, and what the "life" portion of that consists of for you, I'd love to hear from you =)

Wedding

My husband and I got married on Friday the 13th of March, 2009. Rain threatened, but I had faith it would hold off and we were rewarded with the most gorgeous of days...

The following is what I wrote on weddingbycolor.com the day before, day of, and day after (with photos added for your viewing pleasure...)

DAY BEFORE

Disaster strikes?

No bridesmaid dresses 1 day to go

So the dress guy meets me today and says he won't be able to finish them. Uh-oh. I was kind of expecting it and actually wanted to laugh, but he looked like he was going to burst into tears so I didn't.

Luckily before he told me, he had talked to my MOH and one of my BM's, and they had already gone and sussed some dresses at a department store. So he left, we had lunch, and then went to check out the dresses. We decided on a really nice strapless, fitted dress, and they look gorgeous in it. The only problem was the store only had 4 (5 BM's), so we had to ring a store in Sydney (3 hrs away) and they had a small size for my smallest BM, and one of the groomsmen brought it down with them this afternoon.

Phew! Hope it fits! haha

Wish me luck ladies!

(The Pre-Drama to this post was that I received my dress from my dressmaker 3 days before the wedding...)

DAY OF

Today is the day!

woohoo

It's 8.19am here now, I have to leave in about an hour to meet everyone at the hairdressers. Then my smallest bm will try on her dress that *may* be too small for her, fingers crossed it fits!

I slept ok last night, woke up pretty early and couldn't get back to sleep, I think I was feeling nervous. Then I got up and there was a hot air balloon fiesta thing happening right above my house, so I just watched the balloon for awhile and that was nice an relaxing =) Also some China Jasmine tea has helped!

About to hop in the shower now, then as I said off to hairdressers, then back to my mum's for makeup, meeting up with the boys for photos, then it's ceremony time!

Better get off this damn internet, have lots to do before I go... FH is still asleep in bed!!

Happy Weddings ladies until I return =)

DAY AFTER

It was a really REALLY good day.

here it is blow-by-blow:

My last post was telling of getting ready to go to the hairdressers....

So I get there a little late, everyone is there (with the sushi YUM) getting their hair started.

My dad arrives with the flowers and Lisa's dress (the one coming from Sydney). Firstly, the BM's bouquets are perfect, the grandma's corsages are beautiful, but my bouquet is ugly as hell. It was my fault, because I wasn't specific enough about what I wanted, I got to the point where I said to the florist "I'm sick of making decisions, make it sort of this size and with these colours and surprise me." Not a good idea... It looked like a beehive. Not what I wanted at all. (I regret not taking a photo of it!)

Then Lisa tries on her dress... and it doesn't fit! HMMMM.. we ponder over whether a seamstress will be able to take it out in the next 2 hours.... so Lisa and one of the hairdressers go running through the city, dress half done up, hair clip in her hair, trying to find someone to help. They went to an alteration place and they said there was nothing they could do, no way they could fix it... then they came across this little old lady who said she could do it but she didn't have the right machine here, and she started prodding and poking her, managed to do the clip up at the top and actually just zipped it right up! So poor Lisa couldn't really breath, but they did it up! So she left it on for awhile to stretch it out then we knew we'd be able to do it up again later. Lucky the stitching was quality otherwise it may have bust open!

So I sat down and got my hair done, he did a really really great job, I was very happy with it, exactly how I envisioned

We then went home, and had more snacks and nibbles, and I took my bouquet apart while my girls got their makeup bases done... one of my BM's helped me, we took off all the outer layers of leaves (which were folded over and looked kind of dumb), then the masses of blue orchids which made up the main "beehive" shape, then found some absolutely gorgeous black and white calla lillies in the centre! So we rebuilt from there, putting just one stem of orchids in front of the lillies, and three green leaves in behind everything. Then I just wrapped left over ribbon around and around the stems and secured it all with coloured tipped pins. It looked AWESOME. much much better, and I'm so glad I did it. Disappointed I didn't take any "before" photos to show the difference though!

Then I still had some time before I needed to get my makeup done so I made 2 more flower arrangements to go on the certificate signing table and the drinks table, out of parts of my original bouquet, some left over palm leaves and the big bunch of flowers the dress guy gave me to say sorry for screwing up with the BM's dresses. They also turned out really well =)

Then I got my makeup done, and it looked totally hot. VERY pleased with it, and I knew she would do a fantastic job as I'd used her a few times for photo shoots before.

I put my dress on, and we were running slightly behind schedule (about 10 minutes) so I sent the Photographer off to meet the boys at our first photo location, then the girls also, while one of my BM's stayed to help stick my dress to my skin =P Then my dad drove me, my BM, mum and aunt, and dropped my BM and I off to get photos taken. We were there for about 20 minutes, then went to the park to meet up with everyone.

We get to the ceremony site and take a few quick shots with family, there were a few guests already gathering so they saw me before the ceremony, but I didn't mind, it was nice and casual. Then we're about to start, and we get told we just need to wait for a few minute cause my friend doing the music was still on her way... she had been AMAZING setting the whole place up and had to race home to get ready and come back again, so I didn't mind at all, we just took some more photos.

Then it was time to go, and it all went swimmingly. Except my little flower girl niece wanted to walk with me down the aisle instead of going with her little sister in front of my parents! But that was fine, and very very cute. I think a lot of people cried during the vows, and a couple of little speeches my friends did. It was a really nice ceremony, and we had fun.

Afterwards we let the dog off the lead to run around (he was the ring bearer) and later found out he actually jumped in the lake and had to be rescued by one of John's friends! silly dog =P He had fun though.

We mingled for awhile, then took a few more photos, then everyone started to pack up for us and we wandered back to the cars. We had to take our time as we were meant to arrive at the reception 15 minutes later than the guests.

Once we got to the reception we had our first real hiccup, again my friend doing the music was running late (because after the ceremony had been packed up she had to take everything home in a big truck then come back again), which was fine, but we had no music to make our entrance to. It didn't matter in the end, we just walked up and everyone clapped and blew bubbles over us. My dad did his speech which he did very very well, it really was lovely. Then we mingled some more, had some canapes and drinks, and went inside for entreés.

After the entreés we did our father/daughter dance, with John and his mom dancing also. That was nice, but I always think it's a tad boring, which is why we did it early on. Then my BM Lisa (my oldest friend) did a speech on behalf of the BM's, she was so nervous I think she was going to vomit haha, but she did beautifully. Then Hart the Best Man did his speech, it was lame haha, but in a good Best Man sort of way.

Then we had our main meals, which I couldn't eat because I felt so full! But everyone said they were really really yummy so I'm glad about that!

After the mains we did our thank you speech, which turned out funny because I had written something quite short for us to read taking turns, but on his first turn he went on and said all this wonderful stuff (he's good at public speaking) and I said afterward "well he sort of diverted from what's written here but I'll just read my bit anyway", then he did it again for the next bit! haha it was funny but lovely.

Then we did our dance! It was a real hit with everyone, so many people said it was their very favourite part of the whole day, but I am disappointed because I know I could have done it better... I got really nervous legs and stuffed up a couple of times, and no one even noticed but you could probably see it in my face...... OH WELL. Apparently it looked good, everyone was gushing so I guess that's the main thing =P

Then dessert was served (again YUMMO), and later we did the bouquet and garter toss, which were both a bit anti climatic and we could have left them out completely, but it was a bit of fun.

People danced a lot, my little 3 year old niece was the superstar of the night, SO cute, she cracked up laughing during Hart's speech when everyone else was silent, which made the whole room explode with laughter, and she danced all night long, til about 11.15pm!

We had a photo booth also which was a total hit, we had a competition for whoever could take the ugliest photo, so we have some hilarious pics of people pulling the funniest faces. We have all the photos in an album and all the guests got to take a strip home with them too.

Everyone loved our Pacman cupcakes, and they were really yummy too!

Probably almost half our guests left just before us, around 11pm, and we made out exit at 11.30pm. We just stood at the doors and Hart announced we were leaving, and to farewell the bride and groom, and we waved and everyone cheered, and we left! Simple as that nice and easy =) My mum organised to get all the presents and pack the whole place up, she's a gem.

I drove us to the hotel we were staying in, and there was come random concert playing in the Lobby that kept us awake and was quite annoying, but never mind.

Today we got up and got dressed, and realised I hadn't packed any shoes for John, so like a bum he wore no shoes down to the shops to get some breakfast from the bakery =P

He then dropped me at my BM's house for her surprise baby shower (she lives about 20 hours drive away, so we had one while she was down for the wedding).

Then we went to my mum's house for a bbq and opening of pressies! 3 of my BM's and their partners, and 2 of his GM and their partners came, along with a couple of other friends, my grandma, my godparents, and other good family friends were there, it was really nice. And boy oh boy did we score big time! Everyone was super generous, I think we got most of the things off our gift registry list, as well as lots of cash (thankfully as we've got no money left for our honeymoon haha) and lots and lots of gift vouchers for Bunnings (hardware/garden store) to landscape our yard when we get back, so we are really really lucky!

Now I've spent the last 45 minutes typing this up when I should have been double checking lfight detaisl, typing an itenerary for the honeymoon for our parents and packing! So I'd better go, our flight leaves at 3pm tomorrow, Bali here we come!!

Again, happy weddings ladies! xox



And there it is... Perfect day =) I'll post about the Honeymoon another time!