Our Engagement Story

  

For those of you who don't follow/know me on social media, SJ and I got engaged earlier this month!

I'd love to say it was a total surprise, but I'd be lying. We've long intended to marry each other (and have babies) and are have been working to a rough time scale. So I was expecting it at some point soon you could say. Even less of a surprise was the weekend itself, Poor SJ booked us flights and put my frequent flyer number on them. We had an time change for our Paris/December flights and I had to approve it...and spotted flights to Canberra for September. So I knew for a few weeks before the trip that we were heading south for the weekend and painted my nails just in case...

So SJ told me on the Thursday that though we were flying to Canberra we were actually heading to Thredbo for the weekend. Thredbo has some significance for us, if you're read our 'how we got together story' you might remember that we visited Thredbo with friends the week before we got together and in was, in a sense, the start of us. Heading the Thredbo where there was still some late season snow had the added advantage of allowing us to trial some of the gear we have purchased for Iceland. He planned it well.

Friday morning we flew down to Canberra and drove from there down to Thredbo. He had no plans for that afternoon (turns out he did originally, they'd been moved to Saturday instead) so we checked into our room (we stayed here) and chilled out for the afternoon. Dinner was nothing too special but there were more gluten free options than expected (ate here)

Innocence Lost

This post is likely to sit as a draft post until I feel comfortable to share it.

This is the story of my first pregnancy.

Our Wedding - The Dress

This is the first in a series of blog posts about our wedding. A few things made our wedding a little different and I'd love to share some of the behind the scenes. To begin with, I'll start with some photos with a particular focus on 'the dress'. Designed by Wendy Makin, I first saw 'Daphne' at the Queensland Brides Design Awards and knew it was perfect for me. Photos in this post are by Blue Tulip Imaging.

Tick tock

I am running out of time.

3 pages...the length of my to-do list.
5 days left at work.
9 days until we leave for Europe.
27 days until Christmas.
47 days...how long we're away, which is great but also really hard because...
113 days until the wedding. And still so much to do.

It's all very exciting but also a bit stressful. Planning a DIY wedding in 6 months from the engagement is crazy and I don't recommend it. Particularly not with a 6 week holiday smack bang in the middle.

On the upside, I'm getting much better about making decisions. No time for deliberation here!

I will post about my trip on Instagram/Facebook for anyone that's interested. And I'll probably have time to post a bit more about the wedding plans then too and the various DIY projects that have been going on lately.

I'll be back in 2016!

Review: Go-To Skincare

For the last few years I have habitually used MooGoo Skincare (and still do!) but in the midst of the great rosehip drought of 2015 winter took its toll on my skin and I looked outside the MooGoo world.

I looked at reviews and blog posts for face oils searching for an alternative to rosehip oil that might bring my face back to life. In my search, Go-To Skincare's Face Hero popped up, given Go-To is all natural, australian owned (and made in NZ), cruelty free and a little quirky (all the things I liked about MooGoo) wrapped up in chic peach packaging, I decided to give Go-To Skincare a shot. Three months on and I'm now converted, so with my second order placed I thought I would share my thoughts.

Photography tips: What is twilight?

Everyone who owns a camera has photographed a sunrise or sunset at least once and it's well known that the 'golden hour' (the first or last daylight) is the best time for photography. I have countless photographs of sunsets (particularly from my balcony while living in Melbourne) but it was only once I started planning our trip to Iceland that I really researched the three different phases of twilight.

Blogging revisited.

I'm back. Again.

I actually thought a lot about my blog during the last three months as I struggled for the time and motivation to post. I would like for it to be more of a true expression of me and my life. Despite my lack of consistency, I don't want to shut it down, this blog represents some significant periods of my life and I will stubbornly continue to 'be a blogger', sporadically if need be.

SJ turned 30

So it's the big dirty thirty year for SJ and I and most of our friends. We didn't make a big deal out of our 29th birthdays (no real presents and we bought a house the day before his!) and given we are likely to have kids before our 40th birthdays I figured it would be the last chance for a proper party. We didn't make the decision to have a party until 3 weeks beforehand though, so once the decision was made I had to act FAST.

Visit to Darwin

Bringing you up to speed with what I've been up to over the last 4 months will be hard work, so to start simply, this week I've been in Darwin for work. I bought a new point and shoot camera a few weeks ago (an Olympus TG-3 if you're wondering) and took it along for a trial. Given it was a work trip, I didn't have too much down time so this isn't a long post (and actually most photos are from the plane...) but better than no post at all though!

I'm still breathing...

Just wanted to make you aware I'm still here for those of you who don't follow me on Twitter/Instagram or have me as a friend on Facebook.

I'd like to say we've been super busy renovating over the last few months, but the truth is, we haven't got much to show for our work since January. We've both been a bit busy with work and my lack of blog posts is due to a perfectly mixed cocktail - part no motivation, part no inspiration and part 'I have so many other things I should do'.

But I'm back (and I know I've said that before, but hey, sue me). I'm going to prep a few posts now so I'll at least have something to say over the next week.

Stay tuned!

ABCD #001 - #010

I'm a bit behind on my ABCD Series so I'll have to churn out a few posts to catch myself up.

Leaving work just after the storm came through (flooded Ann St)

Decorating...Christmas and Photo Gallery

In the last two weeks I have managed to both print and hang 33 photos for my wall gallery and buy and assemble a Christmas tree and decorations. Reasonably productive I'd say.

You may remember I spoke about my travel photo wall gallery plans here. I really wanted to fit the maximum number of photos I could manage onto our walls, while still looking organised of course.

Well they're up and I love every one.

ABCD

I've been struggling for blog post inspiration lately. We haven't worked that much on the house (a combination of attempting to have a life and helping my parents with a big cull and house move) and I've also been really tired and lazy lately. So much so, I don't even feel the need to apologise for it. I have been thinking a lot lately and want to start a new series to help me stay motivated to blog.

G20 Cultural Celebrations

SJ and I took a break from working on the house last week to head into the city to see the lights and displays for the G20 Cultural Celebrations.

I signed up to 'design' one of the Colour Me lights displays online, so I was camera ready at 7:08pm when my purple and green design lit up the city. I don't think there any slots left now to submit designs but you can still have a play here: http://colourmebrisbane.g20cultural.initiatives.qld.gov.au/

Decorating...A new table

We swapped our dining room table with a cousin over the weekend. She's moving to a much smaller place and liked the look of my cheap tiny one.

So we went from this...

Decorating...Shaggy Rag Rug

Since I figured I wasn't busy enough with all our renovations, I've also been working a little side project....I'm making a rug for our living room.

I started during the first few weeks we owned the house, before the asbestos was removed and we couldn't do much. After that I worked on it while we were staying at Mum and Dads, particularly during the week we had to wait for the floors to cure.

Since then I work on it every few nights depending on what else I've got going on (at the moment, cleaning a lot of paint flecks off the floor because I wasn't as careful as I should have been painting the skirtings!).

Renovations...The almost AFTER photos

We're almost at the end of 'Stage 1' of the renovations and the house is looking a lot different to it did in those BEFORE photos. Which I posted at the end of September, along with a list of things we still had to complete:

Still to complete over the next few weeks:

- replaced the rest of the internal doors and paint them

- fill (nail holes) and paint all the skirting and architraves

- install roller blinds  (half complete)

- install kitchen kickboards

- paint the kitchen cupboards

- tile the kitchen splash back

Still to complete over the next year:

- the entire front room (still gutted)

- the downstairs bathroom (still gutted)

- renovating the existing bathroom

- sanding all the timber casement windows back to bare timber

- building a new deck

- painting the house/roof (external)

- all landscaping

Decorating...Travel Photo Wall Gallery

This is just a quick post while I get a few others sorted. Friday's post should be photos of the whole house as it was a few weeks ago before I started painting all the skirtings, architraves and doors.

While renovating the house has been fun (sometimes) I'm really itching to get into decorating the house properly. All the furniture we have is second hand or old (our bedroom setting as been mine for almost 10 years) for the most part, we'll make do for the time being and slowly upgrade but I'm really keen to starting putting a personalised mark on the house...beyond choosing the paint colour.

I'm really excited to be able to put up photo frames and want a travel photo wall gallery. SJ and I have so many good photos that need to be freed from the computer.

Renovations...The kitchen (part 2)

Attaching our cupboard doors was a bit of a drama. When my cousin delivered the kitchen to our house, I was busy painting the bifold door and window. I didn't help unload it but her husband presented me with a bag of screws for the doors reminding me that they were very important and I should put them somewhere safe. I swear I did but for the life of me, I couldn't/can't find them. I fear they were put with other old screws/nails/etc. and thrown out by a helper. We searched for new screws to purchase, but most are sold with hinges (worth $10-20 each) but in the end bought a $3 pack of screws the right gauge but wrong length which SJ cut down at work. Worked a treat in the end! Now we have cupboard doors the kitchen looks a lot more finished.

Renovations...The kitchen (part 1)

After waiting the required 10 days for the floor to cure (and they were a long 10 days when we couldn't do any work!) we were able to start installing the kitchen. It was also the period where we started to really move into the house, filling up the garage with our stuff...after making some room amongst all the tools and supplies.

In the end, we had to buy both a new sink and oven. The day we installed the oven, it fell over and the glass front shattered...it may be repairable, but we decided it just wasn't worth it. I'm hoping to sell it on Gumtree. The sink had a dent in it when we removed it from the packaging, the corner had rolled over, and while we may have been able to bash it out, again just not worth it.