Right Now

I'm ba-ack. I didn't know whether to do a big post about why I stopped blogging. I guess I don't really have an answer other than that life got overwhelming. Wedding + house hunting + finishing my degrees + graduate job hunting = no writing. Which made me miserable. I'd find myself constantly thinking I'd like to blog that, or I just want to get that out in writing. You know, because writing is super therapeutic and someone cathartic for someone like me. But instead of writing a big teary post about coming back to this blog that I love, I thought I'd jump right back in as if I'd never left. HA.

Reading: A Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd. I know that everyone was reading this one five years ago, but I went to the Lifeline Bookfest and picked it up... and now I can't put it down! Aside from that, I've just been reading tech-y blogs that are making my head spin (anyone get their head around Google's new SEO algorithms? Anyone?) and home decorating magazines. On my list for books to buy, Clean Living - Luke Hines & Scott Gooding and Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life - Dani Shapiro.

Watching: I'm excited about My Kitchen Rules starting on Monday. Is that dorky? I feel like it is. I can't wait to sit down and watch it with my family! We all love it, including all the cheesy drama between the contestants.

Listening: Wade bought the HAIM album from iTunes last week and we've been playing it on repeat ever since. It's pretty awesome. He also bought a couple of the songs off the Walter Mitty soundtrack after we saw the movie. The soundtrack is a bit of a Jose Gonzales tribute, but I'm not complaining.

Doing: I've shifted roles at Photo Continental, so now I'm working more on the tech side of the business than the creative side. It makes me a bit sad that my life won't be immersed in craft anymore, but I get to do other creative things seeing as my role is in online marketing. I've had to brush up on my HTML and CSS knowledge a lot more than I ever expected (I'm redesigning the website - eek!) but I think it's going to be a good change. Also, I have the urge to do creative things when I get home, seeing as I'm not getting my fix at work anymore, which is nice.

Loving: Our new apartment! I've been waiting for a space that I could decorate and make our own and now I finally have my blank canvas - yay! Pinterest has been my friend in figuring out what I want to do with it, and today I showed Wade my apartment pinboard (which you can see here). I've been feverishly researching indoor plants for the living room, kitchen and bathroom. For some reason I have a vision of picking fresh basil from a pot in the kitchen as I cook. I can't wait to finish and do a little reveal! (Side note: how awesome are indoor palms?)

- Heather

Engagement Shoot

Wade and I recently did an engagement shoot with our crazy talented photographer, Scott, one Sunday afternoon because, well... because we could. It was such a gorgeous day, and we went to these hidden away little gardens in Mount Tambourine that I had never heard about, and ended up having a complete blast. As in, we didn't stop laughing the entire time. So our photos ended up comprising of lots of shots of us cracking up, and a few shots of us trying to look serious and dreamy and in love - but failing miserably because we were trying not to laugh.

In any case, I love these photos because they are just us all over. I have so much fun with Wade, and we never stop laughing when we're together. And I love how these photos reflect that. So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorites!

Thanks for stopping by!

- Heather

Summer Beauty Favorites

I find myself - although it's only one month in to Spring - saying to everybody I know, "How awesome is it that it's Summer?", "Don't you just LOVE Summer?", "Isn't this hot weather amazing?" because it is so incredibly hot here in Brisbane at the moment. The skeptic in me knows that I only have such an obsession with hot weather because I work in air conditioning, and therefore only have to spend time in the heat on the weekends where I can wear cool dresses and laze around by pools and such. But I digress. This post is about Summer Beauty, because I find my regime changing a lot in the hotter months. I've brought my beauty routine down to a finely-tuned art so that I can spend as little time as possible staring at the mirror. And my Summer routine is no different. Here are my top Summer Beauty Favorites, which help me get through the hotter months without looking like I'm overheating.

1. Dove Summer Glow. I only just discovered this recently, and have almost used up my whole bottle, which is very sad. This stuff is super moisturizing (which I haven't found with many gradual tanners), plus it smells nice all day long. Have you found that some tanners smell amazing when you put them on and then smell musky from about two hours in? This one smells nice all day. The only problem that I have with it (and this is probably because I bought the Fair - Normal Skin version) was that it isn't dark enough to build up my tan in the first few days. So I "helped" it with a few squeezes of leftover Le Tan. :)

2. Olay Complete Defence SPF30+ Daily Moisturizing Lotion (Sensitive). I have used both this lotion and it's twin, the SPF15+ Moisturizing Lotion, for about ten years. What can I say? I know a good thing when I see it! I use it on my face and all over my chest, and it's amazingly effective at blocking the sun. So awesome for Summer!

3. Chi Chi Mosaic Face Bronzer. My sister offloaded the early version of this bronzer on me a few years ago when she was clearing out her unused makeup. Needless to say, I am still a huge fan of the bronzer and go through it like crazy in Summer.

4. Juice Blemish Be Gone. I break out a lot more in Summer. I think it's a combination of exercising / sweating more and wearing moisturizers with SPF in them - but a pale girl's gotta do what she's gotta do, right? Especially in the skin cancer capital of the world! So rather than can the SPF, I went hunting for a good pimple buster, and found this little gem after reading reviews by some of my favorite beauty bloggers. I was happy that it had all organic ingredients, so it was something that I felt happy about putting on my blemishes. I found they cleared up quite well - but a warning, the blemishes don't disappear quickly (as the name suggests). I found that putting it on at night before I went to sleep reduced the size of the pimple quite dramatically by the time I woke up.

5. Maybelline Baby Lips. Obviously I had to include a great lip balm in there! Baby Lips are my all-time favorite balm, and Quenched would probably be the one I go through the fastest.

I hope you enjoyed reading my top beauty favorites for Summer! No doubt I'll be posting more as the season progresses and I discover new cosmetics that work when my face is, um... glistening.

- H

I'm Still Here!

About a month ago, life started to get crazy busy. Wade and I had thrown ourselves into house hunting - going to open houses, making appointments to look at other houses... it was getting insane because we couldn't find what we want. Finally, after a lot of discouragement, it was nice to step back and think let's get through the wedding first. So the house hunting is officially OFF for the time being, which, amazingly enough, freed up a lot of spare time to do things that I had let slip, like, for instance, this blog. I've missed writing for enjoyment! This blog is a bit of a haven for me amongst the craziness of life. So, this is just a little post to say, I'm here to stay!

- H

P.S. Oh, and by the way, this is kind of my feeling about searching for a house.

Week One of the Twelve Week Challenge

One week over, eleven to go. When I signed up for this challenge, we were encouraged to set goals every week. I kind of laughed at this. Weekly goals? I only overall goals: I want to lose a few of those extra kilos, tone up and get fit. But after week one of the challenge, new goals have started to emerge.

On Day One (Monday of last week), I tried going a whole day sticking to the eating plan. Which meant that for the first day in (quite possibly) my entire life, I tried to go a whole day without sugar. If you had asked me before the challenge if I was addicted to sugar, I would have told you Yeah! with a huge grin on my face because I didn't really believe it. Do I like sugar? Definitely. Am I completely dependent on sugar? No way.

And this is how I was still feeling when it got to ten o'clock at night on Day One. I was getting ready to go to bed. But I couldn't relax. My palms were sweating, I was shaking a little bit and I was starting to get a headache. Finally, after bursting into tears, I raced down to the kitchen and started tearing through our pantry and fridge (all of which had been cleaned out in anticipation of the Challenge). Finally finding some sweet crackers and a half-full bag of chocolate chips, I turned on the grill and melted chocolate chips all over the crackers while simultaneously pouring the chocolate into my mouth.

I wish I were joking, and that my need for sugar was a joke. But after looking back at how I've been eating I started to get a little a lot scared. I realised that I have a sugary drink with most meals (usually fruit juice or iced tea), and that there are most often baked goods lying around in the staff room at work for morning and afternoon tea. I also will tend to grab a muesli bar as a snack at Uni. So basically, without realizing it, I have been feeding myself a constant stream of sugar for most of my adult life.

So my new goal is: break the addiction! Have any of you tried to break a sugar addiction? How did you do it / how did you go?

- H

This is sort of a post about money

Ahh August. We are just over one week in, and I feel like I already need to make some changes to the way this month is going. You see, my sweet friend Elza has just made the life-changing decision to go and bring help and healing on The Mercy Ship - a ship that sails doctors, nurses and thousands more around Africa. Incredible, right? When Wade and I broached the subject of donating to her (she has to raise over $10 000 to cover her flights, insurance and stay on the ship), we both agreed that in order to donate as much as we would like, we would have to sacrifice a little bit.

Now, when I say sacrifice, I don't mean eating rice and tinned food every night, walking to work and the like. Although I definitely could do that. No, I just mean cutting down on the little luxuries that I afford myself every month. Just by eliminating some things from my routine, we should be able to save enough to donate. This will mean not going across the road and treating myself to sushi during my midweek shifts, and instead bringing lunch to work. This will mean not buying cute tops as soon as I convince myself that I need them, and instead creating a wishlist here on my blog. This will mean making my own damn espresso at home with my amazing espresso maker that my friends gave me for my birthday, putting it one of the three thermoses I have and taking it with me to work or uni instead of buying a cup when I get there. This will mean no impulse purchases of books (when I have some I still haven't read sitting on my kindle!), music (after Shazamming that awesome track that was playing on the radio), or - my weakness - nail polish.

I'm going to be honest here and say that being frugal - isn't that an ugly word? - isn't my strong suit. At all. And if I'm trying to save for myself, it is almost destined to fail every time. But when I'm saving for a friend - well, that's a different story. I'll probably be documenting long, mournful posts this month about how much I'm missing my sushi, or crafting clothing wishlists on Polyvore, or trying to talk myself out of buying yet another shade of blue nail polish. Ugh, I just read that last sentence, and I kind of hate myself. I feel like I should hashtag it #firstworldproblems. But I really need to practice reigning in my spending and I'm feeling that August is a good time to start! Who's with me?

- H

Happenings

Reading: Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones. If you haven't read Mister Pip, you need to run - run! - to your nearest bookstore and buy it. Or get it on your kindle and devour it. It's that fantastic. I read this book a couple of years ago when I picked it up at the Lifeline bookfest. I grabbed it because the title of the book reminded me of my favorite Dickens novel, Great Expectations (sidebar: I think it's my favorite because of its conciseness - does anyone else think that?). Imagine my delight when I discovered that the whole book was about the transformative power of novels; in this story, Dickens' novels. Also - get excited! - they are making a movie, due soon, starring Hugh Laurie as the kooky Mr. Watts. Then, a couple of weeks ago, my friend Annie (who has scarily similar tastes in books to me) added this book to her "Books I've Read" section on Facebook, which prompted me to go back and re-read it because this book is pure magic.

Watching: Bones is back on TV here in Australia, so I'm falling for the show all over again. *Sigh*.

Listening: I'm falling back into old habits, listening to music that can take me to favorite times and places. Chase This Light by Jimmy Eat World is notable when I get in this mood. I think that was possibly one of the happiest periods of my life. I was just starting Senior Year, I was getting my driver's license, I was full an insane amount of confidence. Oh, and I was falling in love with the boy who had given me this CD.

Loving: Here are three things to give you the happies!

1. Nerdy Love Song - filled with nerdy pickup lines. I tried some of these on Wade tonight, as he's currently at an extremely nerdy debate featuring Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig entitled Life, The Universe and Nothing. Please excuse the language - but this song is a classic, and the kitty is gorgeous.

2. Following Grammarly on Facebook. Because of a glitch in completing my Arts degree I have to take another subject on grammar. This is my third grammar-intensive subject in four years, and it has caused me to start calling people out on incorrect uses of who / whom. Yeah... Anyway, Grammarly is awesome because every day you get pictures like this one that make you want to punch the air, even if you are on a bus. I do have an opinion about the Oxford Comma!

3. Annnnd, the 27 Most Relatable Jessica Day Quotes. Especially this one.

- H