New swimmers

Yesterday after work, I made my way to the nearest Seafolly store and the amount of happiness that came over me when I read the sign, “40% off all swimwear” was overwhelming.

Don’t you just love a good sale? Especially a Seafolly sale! Their swimwear is pretty expensive – at least $160 for a nice pair of swimmers – so I was so happy there was a sale!

I’m not sure if I mentioned it but we are spending a few days in Thailand with some of our friends after our wedding. And before yesterday, I was in a desperate need of a new pair of swimmers! It’s been awhile since I’ve bought a new pair and they had so many cute ones… I tried three on and decided to settle with this cute, blue, stripey number… I think it’ll look nice with a good tan :)

Houzz App

I found this app and it’s freaking amazeballs.

Like AMAZEBALLS AMAZING.

If you’re like me and love interior decorating, renovating or just have about a gazillion ideas trapped inside your head for when you want to build that dream house… you’d love this app!

I’ve only bookmarked about a million pictures.

Sorry I haven’t written a proper post this week. Feeling a little blah – no particular reason. Just taking it all day by day, work’s going fantastic though stressful, wedding plans are… well, they’re going… in fact, as much as I love this whole journey towards my wedding day, a big part of me just wants to fast forward to when we exchange our vows and then fast forward a little more to when we’re both in bed on our wedding night. And I don’t mean that in a dirty, raunchy way at all. I just want to feel that feeling of ‘Ah, we did it! And now we we can move on in peace and no more organising a wedding!’.

Anyway. I’ll be back!

A pretty bargain

I stumbled upon this beautiful tin jug at Typo the other day. It was a simple coincidence that I even laid eyes on it. The front of the shop had signs everywhere saying items on sale were $5 or less. I could not find the ‘sale’ section anywhere and was about to give up and leave the store when I saw the ‘sale shelf’ in the corner! I went over and browsed and saw this lovely thing… of course, I fell in love immediately. Picked it up and it had the orange sticker on it saying “BUY ME, I’M ONLY $5!”. Okay it didn’t really say ‘buy me’ but it did say $5 and I just couldn’t put it back down. I LOVE IT. It sits on my kitchen bench now with my utensils in it. And it adds a very nice splash of red to my kitchen… what can I say, a pretty bargain makes me happy!

On a completely different note, it’s officially Autumn! That makes me happy too. I’m looking forward to scarves and beanies. It’s been raining so much I think I should start wearing my NYC gumboots! I’m looking forward to snuggling up on our comfy couch under home-made quilts… we have many, many home-made quilts, quilted with love by Marc’s mum… I have to take photos of them one day… they’re beautiful but we haven’t had a chance to use them just yet!

Friday tomorrow!

I hate spiders

As I sat at the lights tonight on my way into the city to pick Marc up from class, the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life crawled across my windshield. I swear it took all of me not to scream and jump straight out of my car.

I was terrified and almost paralysed with fear and had to do a double take to make sure that it was on the outside of the windshield and not on the inside. I don’t even want to think what I would’ve done had it been on the inside.

After it crawled away, I desperately looked at both cars on either side of me to see if they saw what I saw… I wanted someone to acknowledge what I’d just seen and share the feeling of “OMG did you see that?!”. Of course I was entirely alone in it.

When the lights turned green and I had to start driving again I couldn’t shake off that creepy crawly feeling… I started getting super paranoid about the spider getting into the car… Through the air-conditioning vents. It’s happened before you know. Not to me but I’ve heard stories – like the one where a spider crawled out of the air-conditioning vent in Marc’s old car once… He jumped and managed to pull over safely to try and get the spider out. See, I don’t think I could’ve done that. If it was me, I would’ve more than jumped… I would not have been able to pull over without swerving like a maniac and I would probably have to surrender to the fact that I may very well lose control of the car and slam right into a tree or pole or something and that would be that for me. Because of a spider.

When we got home tonight there were no signs of the spider. I hope the morning does not bring me surprises… I love surprises but not the creepy crawly kind.

Just a little me time

Oh, to-die-for windows!

I’ve taken a ‘mental health’ day today. I just needed it. I think I’m also coming down with a cold… you know, heavy head and just feeling completely exhausted and run down. I was a little disappointed yesterday morning though, when I could feel the tiny, tiny presence of a cold creeping up… I was determined not to get sick for an entire year. I haven’t been sick since the start of December last year when we got into LA. Even then, it was completely minor, had a bad throat for a day, a runny nose for another day and then I was good as gold. A few months prior to our leaving for America, I made it a ritual each day to just take in a vitamin C tablet or two. You know, build up the immune system to the cold germs, especially when we were heading into a super cold and freezing American winter. So yes, I was a tad disappointed yesterday. But hey, six months of feeling perfectly fine? I’ll take that. It was only a couple of years ago when I used to get sick almost every couple of months.

So anyway, continuing with my mental health day. I am going to spend my day in my pajamas, catching up some of my recorded TV shows. Real Housewives, Khloe & Lamar, Bethenny Ever After… you get the drift. I love my reality TV, what can I say. Looks like the sun is peeking out to play today, so I may even go for a walk…

My boy is going to be away this entire weekend. Which I’m a little bummed about. It’s not very often that we spend more than a night apart. So although it’s completely fine, I know that by hour 25, I will be a lonely girl. And I never sleep good without him in our bed anyway. So here’s to a couple of bad night’s sleep!

I’m off to rest up on my mental health day! Have a great week…

Gumboots

Image via here

Whilst we were extremely prepared wardrobe-wise for our chilly visits to Chicago and New York, I have to admit I intentionally went under-prepared when it came to footwear. Obviously I knew we would see snow and would of course walk in snow. I honestly looked all over Melbourne for a pair of decent boots but had no luck… I saw a couple of ‘okay’ pairs but none that I fell in love with. If I was going to pay a bit of money for something I’d only possibly wear once (I’m not much of a ‘boots’ gal), I wanted to make sure I absolutely loved it. So, when we left for our travels, I only took sneakers with me.

Surprisingly they survived Chicago’s snow. When we got to New York, they didn’t do too badly either. Until the snowstorm hit us on Boxing Day, two days into our New York stay. The first day or so after the snow storm was fine… the snow was beautiful and powdery. By day two when it all started to melt and turn to slush, I had to pretty much walk around with my eyes fixed to the ground to avoid stepping into slush puddles and hence having frozen feet which would most likely have grown frostbites.

I noticed that almost every Manhattan woman in the city were wearing gumboots. It was somewhat of a winter fashion trend which kind of caught me by surprise actually, since hardly anyone in Melbourne wears gumboots. In fact, I only thought they made gumboots for kids to jump in puddles and for men who were going fishing or working in a fish market. God I was so naive. So, of course I had to say goodbye to my sneakers and look for alternative options. I decided to give gumboots a go and purchased my very first pair from some shoe shop on 6th Avenue…

It’s not a great picture of it but I loved it. After I purchased these gumboots I would intentionally step into cold, freezing, slushy snow puddles just to rub it into everyone else who were completely focused in avoiding them. I wonder if this trend will slowly pick up here in Australia? Not very likely since we don’t experience any sort of snow here in the city area but I think gumboots (some, not all!) are cute enough to warrant an occasional appearance in winter… don’t you think?