What I've been doing for the last six months...

Wow.
It's been a really long time since I last wrote here.
Plenty has been happening.
Christmas and St Valentines Day kicked my butt at work, but check out the ah-mazing creations I see on a daily basis:

It's a pretty amazing thing to see such extravagant beauty on a daily basis. It almost takes the edge off those 6am starts!

We moved out of our modern condo-type apartment and into a smaller, 70s block near the beach for cheaper rent to save some moolah...and then in the last fortnight we've moved again into a truly amazing two story apartment in a boutique block in the city fringe suburb of Glebe. This place is an actual dream come true, and a total blank canvas. It's still almost entirely unfurnished - think a lounge, a mattress on some slats...and the TV and that's about it. Stay tuned for some projects and updates as we work on making it a home...mostly on strict budget and with very little free time!

Here's the photos from the original real estate listing:

Living space and kitchen. Behind those...interesting...blue blinds is a decent sized balcony. One of the first things we did was rip out those blinds!

The place has two bathrooms. This is the upstairs one, and the downstairs one is the same in miniature. We love the white tiles, don't mind the blueish floor tiles...the sinks and toilets could use an update and I don't much like the woodgrain in the cabinets...but re-doing a bathroom is waaaay out of our budget. And really, they're pretty inoffensive to live with for now

The upstairs bedroom - not our furniture, and the lighting in this photo makes the walls like white...which they were not!

Annnd this is the rooftop. It's unfurnished, but look at those MFing views! That's Sydney's CBD you can see under bright blue skies. On that garden ledge is where we made the decision we wanted it...and emailed the agent on the spot before the inspection had even ended!

The apartment also has a sort of spare room/study that looks out over the sunken living area, underneath the stairs and the upper bedroom. It was full of ugly built ins and weirdly a left behind ultrasound of someone's ovaries.

So the first thing we've done is remove the dated, damaged blinds from each room, ripped out the ugly orange built in desk and bought a lovely big L-shaped lounge in charcoal grey from Ikea (possibly my favorite place on earth right now - it's a Karlstad corner sofa if you wanted to know. Available at my local ikea here in the colour called Sivik Dark Grey). We then hired a painter to tackle the grimy, damaged off-white walls. As much as I would have loved to paint myself, one of the nicest features of the apartment is amazing soaring ceilings...some of which soared over the twisted staircase and made it pretty impossible for an inexperienced painter like myself. I can't really say it's a shame though, the finish is immaculate and they had it done in two days, ready for us to move in.

Here are some in-progress shots so far. Not much life in it yet, but there's something kind of exciting about such a blank canvas no?

The kitchen remains totally unchanged, but every wall has been coating in Dulux Vivid White paint. We had originally picked a British Paint colour called 'Love Note" but the painter we chose didn't use their brand. I took the love note swatch into Bunnings and found the perfect dulux match...I heard bad reviews about Taubmans which is the other brand he said he'd use. Theres message boards everywhere claiming that the bright, cool white they'd chosen looked off white and creamy when they began painting. I would have HATED that. The apartment has so much warm wood in it that is desperately needed a cool white to not look so cottage-y

Hallway, looking from the sunken loungeroom towards the door (to the left of the back wall) and the stairs up to the bedroom (to the right)

No more weird headboard height scratches on the walls! Even the mirrored built ins don't look so bad.

some of our Ikea finds...and a temporary LACK coffee table from the bargain corner until we can decide on what to *actually* put there.

Kittenface's new hiding spot, lowest shelf in the upstairs bathroom cabinet.

And lastly, I went back to Uni!

I got early acceptance last year and am about to start my second semester. I've stayed working full time thus far (hence the lack of posting) but I'm cutting back (hopefully) on work for the next few months to focus on classes.

The sometimes very pretty Mac campus. One of the perks of working all day and going to uni late afternoon is no crowds and very pretty dusk light.

So that's about it for now!

I'll be keeping you posted as I try to inject some life into this apartment of ours, we've got travel on the cards later this year if all goes well, and I'll be trying out some recipes from Not Eating Out in New York and long time fave Closet Cooking (seriously, Kevin is the king of imaginative grilled cheese sandwiches).

Bye for now!

Birthdays, Mustachey Kittens and Bourbon Street at 7am

It's my birthday today. I turned 23, and while I realize that Next Year Me and every Me that has a birthday after that will hate 23 year old me for saying, I feel just a touch like this is the beginning of the end.

I think that actually 22 was probably the beginning of the end, but this time last year I'd only been back in the country for less than two days and I was too jetlagged and New York-Hung Over to care much.

This year I just got up at 5:45am, left the boyfriend asleep because he was working a night shift tonight and needed to sleep in, and went to work :S

 Mustachey kitten from Apartment Therapy. If ever get another teeny kitteny thing to be friends with Wayne, it will definitely be a mustachey kitten. Maybe called Nigel. Nigel and Wayne.

But the girlies (and charming accented gentlemen) decorated my computer screen and my desk with balloons and ribbon and a Happy Birthday banner for when I arrived. And they made a little fuss with carrot cake and sparklers. Which is insanely lovely, because they've barely known me a month. They're darlings. All of them.

This teeny birdy is from one of my favoritest blogs. Mackin Ink is written by a very charming American woman with three twinkly daughters, who bounces around the world with them and her hubby, and writes very beautiful words. Read her, she's lovely

My lovely boy had a cake waiting for me last night, and has issued me an IOU for a little iPad and attatchy keyboard or Microsoft Surfacey clicky thing before I go back to school, so I can take lecture notes all stylish-like and don't have to trek my jumbo pink laptop back and forth. So exciting. I want to do the clicky dance from the Microsoft ad. Such a sucker for musical advertising.

Bourbon Street, New Orleans, the morning after. Most tourists don't see it, but  at about 6am street sweepers come down Bourbon Street, scoop up all the rubbish and beads, and then spray lemon scented hospital grade disinfectant all over the streets. So Bourbon Street at 4am smells like beer and puke and smoke. By 7am it smells lemony fresh.

And I have a work Christmas Party at a restaurant on the water in Brighton Le Sands on Friday, and a lovely brunch and shopping day planned with my awesome mother, Kate.

It's no Bourbon Street night out, but birthday loveliest has definitely taken the edge off having to grow up. Maybe next year I'll be around to walk through lemony fresh Bourbon Street in the morning for beignets and lattes.

Typical Wednesday. What of it?

So I get home today...

...and Mr Richard has bought me a birthday cake and is singing "Happy Birthday Eve to You!"
Totally makes up for the cranky people I spoke to on the phone today at work.

Now he's trying to learn to play happy birthday on his piano iphone and throw rice on me.

Kittenface.

I was going to write a proper post, but I have a kitten who has decided that his new favorite game tonight is trying to attach and eat my fingers while I try to type. So since he's insisting, I may as well introduce him.

 This is Wayne. R named him, after I said I wanted the name to remind me of New Orleans. He suggested Lil Wayne, and then spent the next hour calling the kitten nothing but. Now the kitten wont answer to anything else...only Wayne and Kittenface.

 This is how he feels about me writing this right now. I've temporarily relocated him to my lap, but he's clawing my foot a bit so I'll have to make this quick.

He was rescued by a friend who found him wandering around alone. She thought he was a bit teeny to be out on his own, so she took him to the vet. He didn't have a microchip, so she took him home and found him a safe room where her big puppy couldn't eat him, and put posters up to try and find his owners. A few weeks later, she'd still had no luck, and she couldn't keep him there locked up in one room away from the puppy, so she asked if anyone wanted him. R miraculously said yes, and we picked him up a few days later. R likes him just as much as I do, he just wont admit it.

He's one of those cuddly little things that follows you room to room. He gets in the way of whatever you're trying to do. Beats you to the bath, sits on the laptop's keyboard, beats me to the bath.

And he's especially fond of recipe books as beds. This is him relaxing on the open pages of Jamie's 30 Minute Meals (while I'm trying to plan dinner) but he's also quite partial to Cajun Country Cooking too.

Everything is coming up rosy

So things are looking rather up. 

Not to jinx myself or anything, but I'm kind of coasting right now. Do you ever get the feeling that you're on the verge of something interesting? Not when you know everything will go your way, but when you know that things are going to change...and it's going to be big.

I love this feeling. The only other times in my life I've been in this position, I was sort of not in the right mindset to embrace it. Now? Bring on the change. I've kind of learnt that every single thing I'm used to can fall apart, and I'll be fine. I've got all kinds of fall backs, and even if I didn't, I've got the strength now to pick up the pieces.

I'm enrolled to go back to uni next year, at a really cool campus, and in a really cool course.I'm studying to become a speech pathologist. Which is super cool, because it's a helping-people-and-doing-good kind of job. Even the days it sucks, at least I'll know I'm contributing in a very direct, tangible way to bettering people's lives. It's also an industry that is experience massive growth, a huge shortage in pathologists and a massive demand. The option to work in public or private health, to run my own practice, to work with the wealthy and charge lots, or to work for next to nothing in a community that needs the help. I can do this work all over the world, and I can earn as much, or as little as I want, and work as much or as little as I want. I'm pretty excited.

I'm also moving house in less than two months. We've been looking at little run-down rentals by the beach. We're going to downsize, ostensibly so I have less financial pressure on my while I cut back work hours to study, and so we have a better chance of saving some money to travel with. 

I've also got a shiny new job. Also with a major florist company, but this time the environments couldn't be more different. Have you ever been in a really horrible situation - a job, a relationship, a friendship, whatever - and it wasn't until you actually got out of it and into something functional and sane that you realised exactly how effed-up it was? Thats how I feel about my last workplace. I knew I wasn't happy, I knew that some of the people I was working with were toxic, but it wasn't until I started working in this lovely office, with sweet, funny people who want to help. In a company that isn't run entirely on someone's ego, and that has actual policies and supports in place, where my boss talks and listens, and doesn't shout, gaslight, verbally abuse and throw temper tantrums - often when he's the one at fault. It should be a given, but I'm still amazed every time someone acts like a decent human being in this office...the contrast couldn't be greater between it and the last company. 

I've got not a damn thing to complain about at this new place, and I'm so excited by that.

Cheating on my blog

It's been far too long an absence, little blog.
I'm pleased to report that my absence has not actually been because I've been lazy and neglectful and not writing at all. I actually have been writing. I've been road testing a couple of options, because this blog was starting to feel a bit angsty. I kept going to start a new post, and it kept quickly turning into a woe-is-me self pity party about miserable and uncomfortable things like miscarriages, workplace bullies, funerals I've attended and people who have been astonishingly nasty to me. And I don't want to fill this pretty little space with all that negativity. This was meant to be about adventures - the good ones and the ones that turned sour. But not about everyday, banal misery.

The thing about writing is that for me, at least, can't help but wander into the cathartic category. So I couldnt write here without writing about the sad things. So I found somewhere else to channel it. Have you ever heard of the 750 Words Project? Here's the theory:

"I've long been inspired by an idea I first learned about in The Artist's Way called morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in "long hand", typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It's about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day."

The problem is, that while I can muster the motivation to get up a bit earlier and write three pages before work if I start at the leisurely hour of 9:30am as I did previously, when I changed job to one requiring regular 7:00am starts plus smart casual grooming standards, the idea of getting up at 4am just to write first thing in the morning didn't really fly.

I also dug out a brand new 365 Journal that I bought years ago and didn't use, because I had already started one in another colour and tried to write in it every day. Its actually reasonably easy, because theyre single, unlined pages per day. So when you have a crap day and don't want to go into it, a large fonted "fuck" in the middle of the page would suffice. Other days you write really tiny to fit it all in. If you're like me, you forget to take it with you a lot, so you have lots of notes scrawled on napkins, and envelopes, and work stationery stuck into it. I love my 365 books. The dream is to have a lovely row of them, each one documenting a year in my life. I'm not quite that disciplined yet. I journal in fits and starts and then when things get too rough, I don't want to play anymore and I stop writing until things calm down, and I get bored and restless and need to inspire myself again.

So, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf with this blog, and focus on the loveliness. And in that spirit, here's some prettiness:

The baby lop ear rabbit I had when I lived in Summer Hill. His name was Iago (he had a brother called Othello) and he slept in a vintage suitcase and ate bok choy and celery.

 I like very few things more than how clouds look from planes...when I was little I daydreamed about getting out and walking on them. I hate how information gets in the way and ruins plans like that.

 This bird lives in an old Irish pub in Glebe. I've forgotten it's name, but it tried to join in our shoeless pool game one afternoon.

 Back when I worked in a Swedish stationery shop, this is what happened when we worked too many hours, had not enough customers and not enough to do. We invented faux Swedish names, made name tags and called each other by our Swedish names for the whole day. We also perfected our Swedish chef impersonation, ate lots of ginger snaps, learnt pointless swedish phrases - like "Santa is coming" and "Register Fairy". <3

My American Crush

I don't know if Americans are aware, of if they even feel the same, but when you're Australian born and bred, it's hugely politically incorrect to love the USA.

Sure you can holiday there, and you can have a good time. But when you return, you must have a couple of 'stupid american' stories, a couple of "australia does this better" comparisons and you must promise sincerely that "It was fun, but you could just never ever LIVE there"

Just quietly, I don't really feel that way.

I've never been very patriotic about my own country. Not that I hate it, of course not, this is a wonderful place to live and I wouldn't have given up my childhood here for anything, but I'm well aware that the world is a big place, and I'm not ready to claim 'greatest place on earth' just yet. Not without seeing everywhere else first. And I'm also aware enough to know there are things about my motherland that make my blood boil, and damage it's 'greatest place on earth' ranking. Namely, our track record with our indigenous people, our appalling attitude towards refugees, the lack of legalised gay marriage and the inherent racism that still permeates our society outside the centre of our major cities.

So when I came to visit the States, I wasn't prepared to apologise for liking it so much.

The list of things I've loved is ridiculously long, but the revised version is as follows:

1. Macaroni and cheese is a valid meal, and one people make from scratch, using actual recipes. In Australia mac and cheese is a microwaved instant meal. It's on the same level as 2-minute noodles, and you should feel insanely guilty for eating it...and you may as well end it now if you feed it to your kids. I love mac and cheese. I'm all for legitimizing it.

2 Thanks Giving. Whatever criticisms one might have of the US, you cannot argue with Thanks Giving. I think it's a lovely tradition. One day I really want to make Turkey and sides from scratch and have my whole family together with the sole purpose of celebrating what we're grateful for. What a lovely thought. Thanksgiving doesnt exist in Australia, and Christmas is in the middle of summer, so it's waaaay to hot to eat roasted turkeyness. I'm thinking a Thanksgiving in July, when it's cold and rainy and we all need some comfort food.

3. Almost limitless cities to explore. Australia has two worth living in, and a handful you could consider as a second choice. Sydney and Melbourne are it. I'm in Sydney. I've lived in Melbourne and Brisbane too, and visited Adelaide and Perth. Theyre nothing special. I was bored after a week.
In the states, I could go to a different city every week and in a year I would still be discovering and learning new stuff. The cities I visited in the month I was there were all completely unique, and I was enamoured with every single one.


In conclusion, I left my poor heart behind in New Orleans. It yearns to be back there more than any city I've ever been to.

I still crave the sun in Miami. Australian sun stings in summer. It burns through your skin in just a few minutes. In Miami the sun warms you to the core, but you never burn. It's blissful. And the people are beautiful, bouncy, shiny things.

San Francisco treated me good. Wanted me to read, write and paint. Wanted me choose discerningly what cocktails to drink, sourdough to buy and wanted me to lean Juliette style out of the fire escape of my dollshouse terrace and be courted by an artist. And San Francisco definately wanted me to buy a puppy.

And New York. New York. He's like an enourmous old chandelier. It shines so damn bright that it's dazzling, and all you want to do is get amongst. The city never sleeps because nobody in it wants to miss a single second of it's sparkle. And the grime and the flaws only make me love it more. The same way I'm drawn to antiques with cracks and fading plaster, the Bronx, the darkness in Harlem, the graffitti in the subway call to me.