Coast walk, sculptures.

Lots of walking this weekend. Walked to Coogee, met my walking friends, we walked to Bondi. Here are some photos because sculptures by the sea was on.

Ate our lunches along the way, and the 4 who made it to the end got ice creams. We caught the 362 bus back to Coogee. It's a weekend only bus from Bondi to Coogee, very handy. Then I walked home. Did some stretching. So much walking. I wore my hat, it was good.

More walking on Sunday, for the maroubra fun run. Watched The Fellowship of the Ring in the afternoon so that I could watch people walking across Middle Earth. Surprising how many lines I still know off by heart. "Eight there are here yet nine there were set out from Rivendell. Tell me where is Gandalf, for I much desire to speak with him." I also ate many lollies I bought at the fun run. And defrosted the freezer. Then church. 

Today I am tired. Must have walked 12km or so over the weekend.

Photo wall.

I redid my collage doors last week. I threw out some tatty posters and put up a lot of photos instead, in a nice grid, with holiday postcards and some drawings and other little posters as well.

Step 1.
Collected the best photos from the last few years together and printed them at a shop on matte paper, MOST IMPORTANTLY paying extra for a white border. The white border frames each photos and makes the display of photos more uniform and designy.

Step 2.
Buy Scotch sticky squares. They are on the officeworks website but not instore. They are better than blu-tak cos they don't stain or damage surfaces. I found I could cut each square in half to stick a photo to my glass door surface. They stick better on smooth surfaces, I found they didn't always stick on my concrete walls cos they are a bit rough.

Step 3.
Stick photos up in a grid pattern. I organised them in columns.

Now I just hope the photos don't curl.

Dress alteration: secret waistband.

I have a dress made of stretch fabric and it's got lots of layers so it's heavy, stretching down from the shoulders under its own weight, so I feel like I have to keep hitching it up. That kind of annoyance hinders my cost per wear. I think it was $70 and I've had it almost a year and only worn it half a dozen times.

BUT I found a solution on the internet, I think it was called "hidden stays" or something, but I can't find it now. Basically, a secret waistband inside a dress to pull the weight up around your waist instead of all off the shoulders/bodice. The one I found had a ribbon you tie around your waist on the inside of the dress. Since my dress has layers, I could easily sew things to the inside layer without it showing.

I got a piece of elastic, safety-pinned it snugly around my waist. Waistband.

Then I put the dress on over the top, and pinned it to the elastic around the waist. Then took it all off in one go, fixed the pins a bit straighter. So the waistband is pinned to the inside of the dress.

And sewed the elastic to the inside of the dress, to the inside layer only. I tried hand-sewing, but elastic is really hard to get a needle through so I ended up getting out the machine and doing a zig zag stitch.

Now it doesn't all hang off the shoulders, it hangs off my waist! Also the elastic kind of holds my tummy in a bit. Not in a corsetty way but when you wear a dress with no waist your tummy feels no resistance so it takes advantage of the freedom and lets itself go, but with a waistband it knows there is a limit. Like the difference of putting on jeans after you've worn track pants. I maybe should have wrapped the elastic in something soft so that it isn't so scratchy, I'll have to see how I go when I wear it for a day.

So I'm proud of that, I've made a dress less annoying and more wearable with a clever hidden elastic trick. I'm not proud that I watched Big Brother at the same time.

HAT!!!!! My beloved hat.

I collected my custom made and fitted hat on Saturday! I also gave the maker my details in case she runs a hat-making class. She's a really nice lady. We bonded over neither of us liking fascinators very much. Both times I went in, once to measure and choose and once to collect, she said "do I know you?" and turns out I look like a friend of hers called Boadicea. She also likes my eyebrows. But importantly, she listened really well to what I wanted. So she said that a high crown and short brim would look best, but I wanted a wide brim for sun protection (rather than fashion), so then she helped me with that.

We narrowed it down to either a grey straw hat or a brown panama hat. Straw hats are a braid of straw that is sewn in a spiral. Panama hats are woven from some kind of flaxy fiber. Panama felt smoother and softer, but the grey straw had more height and the colour looked better on me. Could choose the ribbon and the shape of the crown and the width of the brim, and she fixed it up during the week.

It fits firmly but well. Although by the end of the day, the firmness felt annoying, just too much pressure on the head for too long. Like when your hair done professionally and all the bobby pins start to ache. But that was a lot of wearing and I suppose it will stretch a little over time. It really just felt comfortable yet secure in the wind for most of the day.

Hat: Grey straw, square crown, 13cm brim, narrow grey ribbon and band.
Cost: $155. So I have entered it in my closet app to track CPW. Aim is $4 per wear by the end of summer.
Maker: Rosie Boylan, in Newtown.

Sore.

I've gone from one sort of sore to another since the long weekend. I don't know if resting/inactivity or movement/stretching would be the best thing but whatever I do seems to be wrong. One thing leads to another, so my hands and wrists and various things are super sore today, possibly from the yoga I was doing for my hips which were pinched on Friday. GRRAAAH.

I went to a hat shop on Saturday and got a hat to fit my head, the hat is being adjusted this week. My head is 60cm. That's above average enough to make it hard to get a hat to fit. It was expensive, as in, more than I would spend on a pair of shoes. But I think it might be a hat for the rest of my life. Unless I become a milliner, which is rather tempting. If I didn't have to earn a living, the world would be a better place.

Write it down.

After my holiday I had some really nice ideas in my head. But I was afraid I wouldn't do them once I got back into normal life, so I wrote a "todo list", even though they were fun things not jobs. J saw me and said "well done! writing something down makes you 70% more likely to do it, whether it's a fun thing or a boring thing!" (I forget the percentage but it was a lot.) This is extremely useful to know. I wonder why writing things down is so powerful? It vents emotion, calms stress AND helps you achieve your dreams. What magic is this?

Whether it's because I wrote it down or not, I have actually accomplished one of the fun things!

I bought some herb babies! Peppermint and lemongrass. $5.50 each from Heritage Gardens in Maitland. I will try and use them to make my own fresh tea.

I've previously tried to grow herbs from seed in my kitchen, and they sprouted but never grew properly and the soil in the pots went all manky so I had to give up. I don't believe that lame cliche "I'm so hopeless every plant I get dies lol lol!", it's just that I have very difficult circumstances to grow plantlife: most herbs need a lot of sun, and my apartment gets only occasional morning sun. Maybe I'll have to be very dedicated and carry them out of the house regularly to give them enough sun. Which is a pain but I guess it's still less work than a pet. Mint is very tough so it might survive. My aim is to get at least one cup of tea from each one before they die. If they survive the summer and actually grow bigger, this will be a roaring success beyond my wildest dreams.

Maitland blanket shawl.

We did a Jelssievision on Saturday morning and then I went to Maitland on the train. Maitland was relaxing and productive. I shall list below.

• Spotlight with mum to buy new curtains, and I bought some fleece for a wearable blanket for my fridged office.
• Tax with Dad.
• Mum cut my hair.
• Brother came out for lunch at Billabongs.
• Church.
• Cut out my wearable blanket using mums as a pattern.
• Read.
• Went to garden nursery with mum and bought plants (I got lemongrass and mint), did gardening.
• No snacking.
• Caught train home, the 4.15 from Morisset on Monday. It took 2 hours to get to Central, which would have been well quicker than the F3 because we actually hit that traffic at the Morisset exit. A 17km traffic jam apparently.
• Did some grocery shopping for the week ahead, and broke my no takeaway rule. You gotta know when to break a rule.
• Sewed my blanket shawl!

Only complaint is my body got all weird and achy on the train ride up on Saturday so that was super uncomfortable, and it hung around on and off, I think I'm still achy today actually but I've also got some sore Jillian muscles so I cant tell where one ends and the other starts. But it's like how your body feels when you have the flu, but only from the waist down. Achy back and legs.

I saw my cross stitch framed! It looks very amazing. I couldn't bring it home on the train. But I took a photo on my ipad.

How to make a blanket shawl.

Buy some fleece. It is usually about 150cm wide, so buy 1.5m of it so that you have a square. Buy 1.5m of 2 colours that go together nicely. Or 3 metres of one colour. Or if you want the cheaters version, just 1.5 of one colour. I went with dark navy and a medium brown. I spent $22.

I used my mums shawl as a pattern to cut around because she'd done all the hard work, but the idea is, cut the fleece (both pieces) into a square. Then cut about a 90cm square out of one corner of the square so you have an L shape (layer the two pieces on top of each other to make sure they are the same). HINT: round the corner so it sits comfortably around your neck. Use a dinner plate to draw the round corner.

If you're doing the cheat version, once you have one L shape you are finished. You have a blanket shawl to wear. But the reason not to do the cheat version is, fleece will curl around the edges. So keep going.

Put your two fleece Ls together with the fluffy sides facing. Pin them. Sew around the edges but leave about a 20cm gap somewhere. Then turn your L inside out through that gap, and now you have an L which is fluffy on both sides. Handsew the gap closed. 

The last step is just to finish it a bit nicely, top-stitch all the way around the edge to keep the edges flat. That means, sew all the way around the edge about 1cm from the edge.

Tada! It's also reversible.

Part 3.

I had the worst cold sores ever. My one stupid cold sore triplicated over night so I woke up on Wednesday morning with my lower lip twice as pouty, and I'm already endowed* with pout. Things on your face are so annoying cos your face is sensitive and you want to avoid being seen, not that it looked really terrible. We drove back to Armidale via another cafe in Bellingen that has nice views, a piano and homemade lemonade, but a limited menu. I had nice banana and coconut bread though.

The rest of the week past quietly. I did the rounds of the op shops in Armidale with A, and the tea shop got some economic stimulation. Watched Smash on DVD, read a light romance about a gardener/illustrator set in Wales, ate, drew some wrens while J did her invoices.

The above is my bounty of treasures! Tea, an egg ring, honey, op shop things.

* word of the week is embrowed. It means well endowed with eyebrows. Well-enbrowed.

Part 2.

On Monday we drove to Bellingen. We stopped for a rest in dorrigo which has some exercise equipment to play on in the park. At Bellingen we had a picnic by the river and then trolled a few of the shops, there are some great op shops so I used the holiday clause of the stopping shopping challenge and bought a $2 skirt and a $4 bag. I really like a $90 yellow bag in a nice clothes shop so it's on the wish list. I used to have a useful small handbag from Colorado, it went tatty and then mouldy in the wardrobe so it got binned. That's how I justify a purchase. Replacement is frugal.

We went on to Urunga and our holiday cottage is in an ordinary street but its really nice.

After a long sit down we drove to check our the nearest beach. There was fine sand blowing like mist.

We got fish and chips for dinner and I was most proud of myself for buying only a piece of grilled salmon instead of battered fish and chips. It was small and not good value but delicious and healthier. Cracked out wine and cheese and chocolate after dinner, had an amazing shower, one of those really generous gushing shower heads in a bathroom with lots of hooks and shelves and things.

On Tuesday we had a sleep in and then went out to find the local honey shop, which makes and sells honey. It says its unbeelievable. Expensive, but delicious honey with ginger in it. Ginger is a positive theme this holiday. I must eat and drink more ginger. Then we went back to Bellingen. Checked out the rest of the shops. We had lunch which was healthy veggie wraps and burgers. If you eat out on holidays it pays to aim for the healthy menus! I bought the yellow handbag from the day before for $90, that's my budget-blower for the week, and a new-quality sense and sensibility book from a second hand book shop for $12, and sent a postcard. We bought fruit and macadamia sourdough and some fruit and veg and cruised back to urunga and got meat at the butcher there. And there was ANOTHER op shop so I bought a teacup with matching saucers for $3. A has been restrained with her shopping and J has bought many op shop clothes.

Then we went back to the beach. Water was a lot colder than the day before but I got value out of my swimmers, J and I had a decent splash about, and we walked the length of the beach which was long. Nature can be exhausting. Then it was evening. We cut up the bread, cracked open some ginger honey and some double Brie and had a pre dinner feast. SOOOOOOO yummy.

Holiday part one: weekend.

Started well enough, but I got a coldsore and probably a bit of a cold too, so on Sunday I was the walking dead. I had a nice time at the art gallery though, where I sat with a teapot of fresh lemongrass and ginger and honey in the sun, magical. The other girls looked at the art, I just sat in the sun recharging and got refills of hot water whenever I finished my tea. Value!!! I must try and grow lemongrass.

Our friends house is badly cluttered and we'd been asked to help tidy while we were there so we spent some time doing sections of that. Eg the walk-in pantry was non-walk-in. It's pretty quick to fix areas like that when it isn't your stuff. No trauma in the throwing away. But the satisfaction of the giant clean is spoiled by not knowing whether it will be maintained. Entropy is not a good system. Organisation takes effort but it is its own reward.

1. A place of everything and everything in its place, like with like.
2. Throw it out.
3. Don't buy it in the first place.

So there was cleaning, and I was feeling run-down and gross. But we had some nice dinners with people on Saturday and Sunday nights and went to church.

Away.

I can't leave that hideous puffy eye photo up any longer. My eyes look a lot better now. I've had a super busy week in many ways. I've been thinking about my future and have put things in God's hands in a proactive but calm sort of way. I've ticked off a massive to-do list of work and personal jobs. I did my first ever dry-cleaning! Which I still haven't collected. I printed photos, which has made me very happy. I paid 5 cents extra per print for a white border, which is worth it because I'm not going to frame them, I'm going to stick them up with reusable sticky tabs, so they'll look semi-framed for very cheap. Photos to come later.

I'm off to Armidale in a little plane tomorrow!

The holiday highlight of my year, along with going to WA. Here are some pleasant memories of last year to make this blog more attractive. I'll be redoing these things.

Pre-holiday week.

My eyes have recently started flaring up. I thought it was a new moisturiser, so I stopped using it, but it hasn't gone away. It might be some common ingredient in a lot of moisturisers, and I'm using a lot of moisturiser around my eyes because the skin is very dry and itchy, and then the allergic reaction on top makes them puffy. I get mornings with eyes so puffy I've got 2 creases under each eye. Think I need to do systemic trials of what I put on my face, one week at a time.

I'm really busy at work this week, which is a shame because I won't be able to go to the New College Lectures.

But on Saturday I'm flying away. Yay.

Home weekend!

This would be a brilliant weekend to wash the winter woolies and put them away. But it might rain. So they'll probably stay in a big pile. I'm going to a Mad Hatter afternoon tea on Saturday, which I am not going to dress up for, although I could probably wear my normal clothes and look reasonably costumed actually. Fail for effort but win for effect, then. Also I'm not going to take any food because I'm not organised enough and also these things are always supremely over-catered for. Because each person brings enough for 7 but eats enough for 1, so there is 7 times as much food as people need. I'm going to help out by eating.

Right now I am waiting to meet E, and we're going to have a quick look at the spring flowers display in DJs which is esp nice this year apparently, and then meet G for dinner and swap nail polishes. It's a frugal way to enlarge your nail polish collection. I call it the nail polish library. Cos after one use, you want a new colour. This way I don't have to buy a bright coral that I'll only use once, I can just borrow one for a few weeks, and other library members can borrow the bright red I'm bored of. I've stuck stickers on all mine so I can get them back eventually. What fun Friday frolics we do have, us city girls! I am so excited.

Church weekend away.

My small evening church went to Long Point (in Maquarie Fields) for the weekend. Even though it's just the edge of Sydney it feels very isolated and quiet. The topic was gender. The talks and seminars were mainly on being God's children and gender roles and how we can love and serve each other. We had delicious slab cake from yael. Best cakes ever. I played the piano. We did Wii Dance Party and trivia. There was a tame pet parrot and some little kids. There was a swimming pool. Saturday felt like the first day of summer. I enjoyed that feeling of being warm and sticky and dirty at the end of the day. No snacking (nacking) went out the window a bit. I didn't have afternoon tea or supper on Saturday but there was so much food. I'm glad to be in control of my own food again. I just eat whatever's in front of me so ove-catered Christian events do me no good at all.

In other news, I'm trying not to grocery shop at the moment. Trying to eat my way through the freezer to clean it out, and the pantry too with any luck. And save money. Apart from fruit and milk.

This is my favourite dance.

Bathurst: Part 2.

 On Sunday I did jillian and then went "up the street" with grandma. At the chemist I scored an amazing bounty! Burt's Bees was 20% off so I got a lip balm and a cuticle cream. Then I noticed it also came with a free gift. The girl forgot to take the discount off the cuticle cream but the free gift made up for that cos I got a second small cuticle cream, two hand creams, foot cream, and face scrub. I kept saying "really? are you sure I get all of these?!" All small sample sizes but not to be sneezed at!

 Dad's cousin visited in the afternoon. It was really warm and sunny outside.

Grandma dropped me at the station on Monday morning at 5.30. The ticket machine only took coins, and I luckily had $8.40 but unluckily it was in too many coins and there is a limit where it cancels the ticket after too many coins so I had to trade a 50 cent from the boy behind me. There was a queue, it was one of those anxious idiot situations. There was a coffee cart there so I could have bought a drink if I needed more change, I realised later. I stepped from 2 degrees into a warm train, and settled in for a very comfortable trip through the foggy hills as the sun came up. There was fog and frost. I did some nice dozing. Got to work at 9.40.

It seemed kind of cruel to be catching the train through the mountains on such a sunny day. So lovely, but staying on the train and going to work.

Bathurst: Part 1.

So long train trips at night are very boring, because its like sitting next to a dark mirror for hours. But I've got lots of podcasts on my iPod and I curled up in scarves. The man behind was an annoying people-person, oversharing to the lady behind him. At 8pm the train stopped in nowhere cos an engine died so he alternatingly complained and played his guitar. The guitar was quite nice.

We were totally broken down for 25 minutes but they got it going again. Everyone clapped. Train got in at 10.05.

I walked in the morning to find some markets, but there were none. I did browse through old stuff for auction so that was nice. Since I didn't want to buy anything anyway.

This is the showground pavilion where the auction stuff was.

I did some useful shopping in town. Walked through the park and took photos of ducks.
Ducks with curly tails.

I went into the old Bathurst hall which  is a liquidation store now. But you can tell there is a ballroom. It's quite interesting. Grandma and grandpa met at a dance there. Fancy. What a terrible shame nobody dances anymore. It would also make quite a good church. There's the main ballroom and lots of side rooms and some upstairs rooms.

I brought Crawford DVD with me and we put it on in the afternoon, grandma really enjoyed it.