Long time, no blog....

Hiya world!

It's been so long since I was last in the blogosphere!  It feels like so much has changed!  Last I knew it was mid-October and my world was gearing up to be quite hectic....but nowhere did I imagine I would fall off the face of the inter-pla-net for near on 10 weeks!!!

So what have I been up to?  What has stopped me from my daily stalking and losing of hours via the internet???  Weeellllll, so glad you asked, let me give you an as-quick-as-I-can-in-one-longish-blog-post rundown....!

Around the end of October I'd finally wound down birth-day-week-fortnight celebrations in time for the startling realisation that my mum was also due for a birthday - hers of the significant milestone variety.  So I whipped up a cake and set to work decorating it.  Eventually, a week out from party-day, the grapevine alerted me that my aunt (cake-decorator extraordinaire whose cake decorating equipment I was gifted a couple of years back xxx) would be at the shindig.  EEEKKKK!  All of a sudden, designs and plans were reassessed in the cold hard light of a higher level of scrutiny and attention...I jest....but in truth, I did feel the pressure a little more.  I managed to complete mum's cake over the course of a week's worth of evening-after dinner sessions (I'm still working full-time in my admin job) and get it to my mum's house despite the rain on the day....and both mum and my aunt were suitably impressed with the results..!  Nice!

Around this time, I was also asked by my soon-to-be-bride sister and her husband if I would make their wedding cake.  Of course, the answer was always going to be YES but that didn't stop the stress levels climb to all sorts of new levels.  I mean, I've now done a fair few cakes - for fun and for celebrations - but nothing to this level.  After a flurry of text  and facebook messages (she lives two hours away), as well as a couple of face-to-face catchups in the middle, we came up with a design that both she and her fiance liked, and that I was confident I could pull off!  My biggest fear around this time was a request for a five tier masterpiece to rival the royal wedding!!!  So then I started....baking fruit cakes, making sugar roses, sourcing cake toppers and ribbon and the like....it's a big job when the pressure is on!

I had learnt to make a flower spray two weeks before I had to do this - nothing like FREAKING ME OUT!!!

Around this time the weather was great.  Nice sunny days with not a hint of wet in the nightly forecast.  That was a big worry - that the rain would come and I would be in all sorts of bother.  Too damp/humid or too hot and the fondant icing melts...and given that my old queenslander house is not air-conditioned and has gaps and holes everywhere, a big concern.  But it held in the end and everything was made and assembled without a tear or a tantrum.  :)  I had a momentary panic on the afternoon before the wedding when came the realisation that the assembled cake (three tiers high) would not go into our car without the need to be tilted - not in this lifetime!!  Luckily mum was over viewing my creation (and giving much needed compliments) and volunteered the use of her little buzzbox (a Toyota Echo) to get it to the reception venue.  That there was only an inch to spare around the base board when the cake was in was by this time not an issue at all. LOL We delivered it safe and sound in the end and at the very moment when it was on the table in the reception room and I'd taken a photo as proof, I swear my blood pressure dropped considerably and I regained a load of much needed sanity!!

Around this time also, in fact the day before the big day, the LOML and I had signed up on a second casual store for Christmas.  To be opened in three days.  From scratch.  A big ask at any time of year but at Christmas time? Huge undertaking given that the madness of Christmas for giftware retailers begins back in September so that stock can be ordered and delivered in time for the start of the buying frenzy.  But we (the LOML) took it in our (his) stride.  Go hard or go home.  We have had two years of tough to get us to this position and we were not going to let an opportunity pass us by (this second store was in the 'premium' shopping centre in town - the BIG one).  So in two days we got it all set up - stocked, signed, staffed - all while I was still working full-time in my week-day admin job.  Insane now when I look back on it.

I couldn't have made it through December without these....and lots of Mega B vitamins!

And so we continued until Christmas day - the LOML working everyday in either store, me working during the week at my job and then working in the evenings at either store merchandising stock or serving or both, both of us working all weekend in both stores (paying weekend wages hurts small businesses)....and then we stopped for one day (Christmas day) where we did nothing (I did the washing and swept the floor), got sick (always going to happen given the hours we were putting in), and then started all over again on Boxing Day....madness.

And so that's it..Christmas is done and dusted, the New Year has been and gone, and before we know it, we'll be bemoaning how quickly 2013 has disappeared and wondering what 2014 will bring!  I must say though, that I am looking forward to 2013.  2010 sucked, 2011 was worse but 2012 turned it around.  Life has been getting better each day so it figures that 2013 can't be anything but good.  Here's hoping.  

Happy New Year world!  Hope it promises to be grand for you also!

Invitation

I received a special package in the mail the other day...

My younger sister is getting married in just a few short months.

Sometimes it's still a shock to me that she's old enough to be a bride.  In my mind she's still my little sister, excited about her first day at school, loving her teachers, looking forward to holidays - I do a double take when I remember she's now a young woman about to embark on her own life journey.

She and her fiancé make a wonderful couple, I can't wait for the big day.  

Carnival 2012

This weekend just gone has seen the end of the annual Carnival of Flowers.  The gardens around town are just blooming with flowers this year - more so than previous years if that's at all possible and the fireworks have been amazing (as viewed from my back steps).

The carnival kicked off last weekend with the parade.

The biggest one I've seen, it went for a good two hours.  Apparently, back in the day, two hours was a short parade.

The best part again this year, I think, were the storm troopers.  I had to wait so long I was starting to think there was a space battle somewhere that was keeping them from participating.  But it was all good 45 minutes in.  Even Vader put in an appearance this year.

 I'm thinking about joining this club so I can put my beetle-bug in the parade next year.... LOL

I also ran into my friend Kel and her walking artwork too.  Kel is an artist (among other things) and has a talent for body art.  I keep meaning to do a post on her work - amazing! - until then, here is a taste....

What a great parade!  Next year's has very big shoes to fill, very big shoes!

Getting my Spring on

I absolutely, positively, without any shadow of a doubt, LOVE this time of year.

These camelias are all off the one tree we have growing outside our bedroom window.  It's a massive tree, not a bust,
and I couldn't begin to guess its age....

In my ideal world, spring and autumn are the only two seasons - spring being the longest of course.

We have Jasmine growing along the fence out the front - the smell is divine.

Three weeks ago I smelled the warm on the air and started preparing for it.  Down came the blankets nailed over the windows and doorways (I do what I can in this icebox house!) despite the weather reports of another cold snap.  The doors were thrown open and the breeze blew away all the winter stuffiness.

This year I've planted heaps of flowers in my veggie garden...

Glorious.

The colours are gorgeous....

The plants outside are all telling me spring is here to stay.

  Thank you plants.  I love spring too.

Falling off the face of August.....

Seriously, where has this month gone.

I'm flailing in my lack of date recognition and the disappearance of the days.  I'm really pinning all my hopes on the longer days meaning I get back on top of things again - in my world, we're only just into the first week of the eighth month...very disappointing, and more than a tad scary, to realize with a jolt that we're nearly into September already.  I'm just not ready.

That being said, a lot has been happening in this neck of the woods lately.  A blog post in each to be sure, but in a nutshell.....(not, as the LOML would say, you're a nut-Shell)....

......it's been Languages and Cultures Festival time again....

.....I've been working long enough to accrue a week and bit holiday - so we headed south and spent a week and a bit in Melbourne and Sydney....

(I loooovvveee hotel freebies)

....saw some sights...

Could I get a bigger pole in the centre of my frame????

 ....made a few donations....

.....welcomed home some olympians....

....did some shopping, met some rellies and then headed home loaded up with goodies....

.....I've since been out in the garden with gusto (this weather is glorious, just plain glorious!)....

.....we've also been cranking up the little Webber on the deck again with the LOML showing off his chicken-stick prowess...

Hopefully now I'm back in the routine of blogging, just like I'm back in the routine of exercising.  But while I despise with the white hot intensity of one thousand suns the necessity which is exercise in my life, (a routine that is a must.  M.U.S.T.), blogging (both reading and writing) is my outlet and my release and I'm glad to be back into it.

Cheers!!

Marching along

And so another month has begun.

I can't believe how quickly the first couple of months disappear every year.  First thing it's new years and then the next, it's Easter.  Insane.

I had a customer tell me once that the years seem faster the older you get because you get slower.  Sounds true enough to me and explains a whole lot!

The LOML and I are viewing this year as a Transition Year.  A year of change to get us to where we want to be.  Not that we're 100% certain of what that entails or where it will be, but it won't be what we've been doing that's for sure!  My new job fits in with that plan nicely giving us the small amount of financial security that comes from a predetermined salary as opposed to the how-much-shall-we-sell-today insecurity that comes part-and-parcel with selling things people want but don't need in an area where income is spent first on booze, then cigarettes, then food and then bills.  Giftware is rarely on their register.  Hence we're changing tact.

I'm looking forward to this year.  Much as I was last year but this year I'm hoping for a little more.  I do hope I'm not let down - that's the problem with raising your expectations, there's always the risk you will be let down but still this year I live in hope.  Truly, I shudder to think that things could get worse.

So in the meantime I'm enjoying life day to day.  Enjoying the minimal responsibility that comes with only having to answer phones, handle the mail, keep the photocopier full of paper and type a few things in my day.  Enjoying the sleep in on weekends that seems like at least three hours but is only about one.  Enjoying this lovely summer-is-officially-over-autumn-is-on-its-way weather while it lasts.  Enjoying life really.  Enjoying life as it is right now, rather than life tomorrow.

It's making me a little bit excited about the future and where we are headed.  And that's exciting.  I haven't felt like that in far too long.  Far too long.

Here's cheers to tomorrow!

Can you smell that?

.....That scent in the air - a vague hint at something different, something new, something.....better than where I am right now.

That's what I'm picking up.

The times they are a-changing and the smell of it is making its mark on the air around me. 

It's making me excited.  It's making me take a big, deep breath and sigh in relief.  It's bringing a smile to my face and a foreign, forgotten, kind of relaxation to my shoulders.

After so many months of stagnation, going backwards and being a little bit afraid of what the future will bring, finally things are looking up.

I start my new job on Wednesday.

I applied online this Wednesday night just gone.  Thursday morning I got a phone call for an interview.  Today I had the interview.  Today I was offered the job.

Very happy right now.  And very relieved even more so.

Could be more exciting news to share soon too but I don't want to jinx it....

(No I'm not pregnant)

Happy New Year World!!!!

Here's cheers to a new year, a new chapter, and maybe a new direction....!

Photo: Anna Cervova

Fare-thee-well 2011 (or not, I don't care)

Dear 2011,

Bite me.

I'm glad to see the end of you.

I had such high hopes for you.  2010 ended up a shocker of the worst kind and I was really hoping you would deliver.  But you let me down.  Right from the start you were bad news.  I should have paid more attention then and not been blinded by the rose-coloured glasses I didn't think I was wearing.

Sure you had some good points - though right at the moment I am struggling to think what they were - but on the whole you sucked.  I'm glad you're over.  Floods, financial crises, rain, colder than normal winter, bills that kept coming, appliances that kept shitting themselves.  Truly, I am done.

Let your mate 2012 know that I'm watching.  

My expectations for its success are extremely low.  

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Afterthought:  If you do want to redeem yourself 2011, I have two tickets in tonight's Lotto draw - you know what to do.....