28.08.06

no luck with the house. we were in a serious bidding war with one other guy and ended up going up to $340,000 before pulling the pin - 10 grand over what we agreed was our maximum price! shane got a little caught up in the bidding and i can't say that i blame him, it's incredibly frustrating to think you may miss out on the house by one or two thousand dollars. i think the other bidder would have kept going for quite awhile further though and i'm okay with the whole thing not working out. we'll find something yet and the whole experience was pretty cool as we hadn't even attended an auction before. at least now we know how it all works and can be a bit more confident next time.

24.08.06

this week marks my first real* year in australia. on one hand i can't believe it's been a whole year - okay, really it's a very small hand, maybe only a finger or two, because this has been pretty much the longest, most stressful year of my life. (getting married, moving across the world, starting a new job, new friends, new life, losing much-missed family members on both sides, looking to buy our first house, acquiring our first dog, etc, etc, etc, etc.) lately though i've really been enjoying myself, feeling more and more like i'm meant to be here instead of having pangs of nostalgia for vancouver, which is a nice, nice change.

at the moment i'm pretty much consumed with house hunting. we've found a little 2 bedroom that we're pretty happy with, going up for auction this saturday. it's quoted at $270,000+ and we're willing to pay up to $330,000 for it. wish us luck!! there have been tons of places popping up on the market in the last few weeks though, spring is the house season after all, so if this one goes above our price it's not even remotely the end of the world. as long as we have somewhere to move into on november 16th when the lease is FINALLY up on the apartment we're currently in. must get away from screaming child upstairs as soon as possible, a good night's sleep is just a distant memory at this point.

wow, i managed to fit a lot of disjointed topics into one small post - quite an achievement.

* i say "real" because the 11 months in 2003/2004 i spent living in bendigo seems like a completely different country altogether.

21.08.06

i'm feeling such a spring vibe lately, my favourite time of the year! flowers are blooming, the days are just that little bit longer, i feel like cleaning and organizing - love it.


gorgeous magnolia down the street


don't know what this plant is but the colours are lovely

19.08.06

i spent wednesday and thursday this past week at st john's ambulance first aid training in the city and, MAN, had i forgotten how much i despise sitting and listening to someone "teach" for hours on end. my mind wanders and my back aches and i just want to flee. it didn't help that our instructor seemed slightly senile or insane (or both) and kept going into random tangents about his family that he managed to only tenuously at best tie into the training information. there were many, many eyebrow raises from me over the two days. the best part was having lunch breaks to roam about downtown (or the CBD, Central Business District, as they call it here). thursday i ventured over to the queen victoria market for a kebab and look around. it has such a great atmosphere during the week, i could've spent hours wandering the aisles, through the hordes or aussie souvenir crap to the homewares. the food stalls, especially the many, many cheese purveyors, are, of course, my favourite:

13.08.06

okay, so this posting everyday thing hasn't really been working out for me so far but i will persevere! and try! harder! i have plenty of pics to show on onegirl of some fabric printing i've been experimenting with but for you kind folk, you get the good stuff.


baxter, 15 weeks old, giving you the grin.

it's sunday night - what have i accomplished this weekend?

• two loads of laundry
• two loads of dishes
• 1 bath for baxter
• 10 houses we walked through yesterday
• 3 we're actually interested in
• 1 pack of medium ash brown hairdye with highlights applied with quite good results
• 6 million blogs perused
• 10 pieces of felt, linen, silk and cotton dyed shades of grey
• 2 different methods of printing on fabrics trialled
• 3 new oobees completed
• 3 extra new oobees cut out
• 60 minutes spent at the dog park with baxy
• 1 post written (oops)


**one small side note: as i type this i'm watching the audition episode of australian idol and i just CANNOT understand how all these people can actually, truly BELIEVE they can SING???? it blows my mind.**

10.08.06

random fun facts about my workplace:

• we made budget last month which means we get alternating friday afternoons off for the next four weeks. to me this means two friday mornings of bringing baxter into the office and then two friday afternoons (after the complimentary friday lunch that we all receive every week) of thrift shopping in the (hopefully) sunshine. yay!

• all the staff members on our floors were given brand spankin' new Sony handycams this week so we can start documenting our work for use on the web, etc. we are highly encouraged to take these cameras home, treat them like our own, and shoot footage of whatever we want to build up our camera and editing skills. sweet! expect video of shane and i being jackasses and baxter being cute (and undoubtedly biting stuff) real soon.

• my company has a policy of sending every staff member to both first aid and a defensive driving course. i have two days out of the office next week, learning how to do CPR and bandage limbs, something i've actually always wanted to learn anyway!

• we had a 15 minute debate/discussion this morning about the canadian vs. aussie way of pronouncing things. the gool old internet saved the day and proved my arguements that it IS mandarin NOT mandaRINE and that aluminum and aluminium are actually two different words with two different spellings (meaning the same thing).

08.08.06

i think i need to make a committment to writing in either this or my onegirl blog EVERY DAY. right now i have a huge debate about whether or not something is worth writing about which results in me not writing about anything at all. so yes, for the rest of august i will be writing something each and every day, not counting the camera tribute posts that i have occurring on onegirl this month as well. granted this will mean that some (most) days i'm going to be blabbing about crap like what i had for breakfast just to fulfill my daily post quota but so be it. (just to get that out of the way, i eat the same thing every single day since i've been trying to cut wheat out of my diet: Carmen's muesli with added chopped almonds and flax seed, low fat natural yogurt, honey, and berries, be they fresh or frozen. yum!)

04.08.06

it might come as a bit bizarre when placed above my last post but everything in my life is just really positive right now. flowers are blooming, signaling a wee hint of spring; we're pre-approved for a home loan and have come to terms with the crazy amount of money we need to spend so can really be serious about house hunting now; baxter is just the cutest, best little guy around and is becoming much more dog-like and less puppy-like in his behaviour, a bit more chilled out and not as hard to control, although he's still teething; i've been getting out for walks at lunch with work friends and in the evenings with shane and bax - it's amazing what even a little bit of exercise can do; i've been designing and sewing bears, totes and zipper bags, learning some new techniques which always opens up the doors for more new designs and sewing...; my new nikon d70s camera arrived from the states and i just need a bit of sunshine to play with it; i'm going to be taking some advanced web design courses through work next month and i'm REALLY excited about getting skilled up in web again and work on my own sites; i'm getting a much needed and overdue haircut tomorrow; i've been discovering heaps of beautiful, inspirational blogs lately, especially cheeky beaks, who designs the most fabulous prints and has them silkscreened onto fabric to make into bags, etc. and hoping for happy accidents, who posts beautiful things every day.

here are some pics from our wee family outing to the brighton dog beach last sunday, baxter's first beach outing.






baxy's ears catch some serious air.