Wedding planning panic?

Yesterday I talked to my lovely friend C who is going to be one of my bridesmaids. I'm so happy she will come to the wedding and I'm so excited to see her. I don't see enough of my old friends (for obvious reasons) but it always amazes me that when I do see or talk to them, everything just seems so natural and not like we have been living in different places of the world for the last five years. I also realised how much I've missed C. Maybe I can talk her into moving to Sydney. A least for a couple of years.

Our wedding planning is moving quite slowly at the moment. We have some great ideas of what to do with the invitations and have a few other fun ideas for the reception. But nothing is locked in. Not even the celebrant. The only things that have been decided are my dress, the date and the venue. The other day I was talking to a girlfriend who is getting married in August and she has already planned everything - including accommodation for their honeymoon. It made me panic a little. But then I realised that B and I don't work that way. We don't plan things six months in advance. We usually book our holidays three days before we leave. I love being spontaneous like that.

But I realise that a wedding is a bit different to a holiday, so my plan is to have everything sorted at the end of May. We've even started looking into honeymoon options. At the moment we're thinking that Argentina could be a really cool place to go to. And maybe Brazil. After all, we did meet in South America.  

Abandon ship!!!

We've been out on Brett's parents boat outside the Goldcoast. Had an amazing day but we had big dramas last night. At about 5am the depth alarm went off. Both Brett and his dad rushed up to see what was going on and apparently the anchor had somehow tangled on itself, drifting us several hundred meters up the beach. And finally into it and onto a sandbar. For a while it seemed like the boat would tip over and we would have to abandon it. But somehow they managed to get it fixed! Too much excitement for too early in the morning. And today I'm even more tired than I was yesterday. Getting on a plane back home soon - if we can get on that is. Apparently the whole country decided today is a great day for flying. Looking forward to lying on the couch eating pizza and watching mad men. And sleep.

Off to brissie

Back again tomorrow. Looking forward to an hour of sleep on the flight - starting right now.

Fragile

I'm a little fragile this morning. And when I say a little I really mean a lot. That's all I have to say right now.

Relaxing morning

Relaxing Saturday morning with newspapers and breaky at Bench. Just what I feel like. Brett is analysing house prices in domain and I found a Forester for $35,000 drive away in the car section of the SMH. I'm totally convinced I want a Forester now. A white one.

Friday at last

The long weekend is within reach. I am on my way to the city to drop off an assignment, do some shopping and then have birthday dinner and drinks for Miss Lemona in Glebe. I'm still amazed by the weather this autumn. It's been perfect for months. As in warmer than a regular Swedish summer day every day.

Meanwhile it's supposed to snow in the snowy mountains next week and Brett and I are hoping to get some skiing done. I still don't understand how it can be 25 degrees in Sydney and snow in the mountains only 6 hours away. But I love it! It's like the best of two worlds.

I'm eating a...

...fiancé-made ANZAC cookie on my way to uni. Yum. I wish this long-weekend had already started. So over this week. On Saturday I'm going to sleep until midday. Try waking me up before that. I challenge you! But a word of warning to anyone who tries - I will be as angry as that volcano that noone can pronounce or spell the name of if you succeed.

Housewarming cake

Today LMC and Shg moved into their new city pad. Wohoo! I made them a Swedish princess cake to celebrate!




The cake before the marzipan




Voilà




It was painful getting the right green colour for the marzipan. I was mixing and matching colours for ages. And I ran out of yellow so I thought it was going to look like a soccer field for a while. But I think it turned out pretty well in the end.

After eating far too much cake we helped put together some of their new IKEA furniture. LMC and I were racing R in chair assembling. I can't believe how difficult it is to put together ikea furniture nowadays. It used to be so easy. There was no way we could have built even a chair without the instructions. But at least we tried.




After a while LMC got sick of building Swedish furniture and started role playing instead.

Now we're back home and I'm so ready for bed. B is already sleeping and kitty is getting ready for a fun night of playing and disturbing us. I know that because she just walked up to the bed, dropped a paperball in front of me and meowed. When she does that at the start of the night it's almost guaranteed that you won't sleep at all that night. Great.

Wine delivery this morning...

Five cases. 60 bottles. Apparently Brett went a little bit crazy.

The delivery guy sucked though. He asked me to help him carry some cases of wine up the stairs. While I was doing that he loaded a trolley with two cases that he decided to drag up four sets of stairs. When he was halfway up the stairs I had already finished carrying three out of five cases to our apartment. When he finally made it all the way up with his trolley he was bucketing sweat and complaining about us not having an elevator. I guess some people are delivery people for a reason.

Technology failure

I just spent 30 min writing a post about our scary climbing adventures yesterday, when my iPhone decided to shut down and delete everything. I don't feel like rewriting everything right now so it will have to wait until tomorrow. Now I'm on my way to the opera bar for some afternoon drinks in the sydney autumn sunshine!

The mountains of blue

B and I are on our way to the Blueys for some climbing at Mt Piddo. The sun is shining and the trees are red and yellow (at least some are) but it's freezing cold. Really looking forward to doing some climbing. And some cottage spotting. We're going to buy a cottage here one day. I can't wait! Just need to renovate our apartment, get married and buy a new car first..

The Castle Hill coffee conspiracy

I think I've mentioned that our coffee machine has been getting repaired over the last few weeks. Yesterday we got it back and I don't think I've ever looked forward to a coffee as much as I did this morning. But when B went to put the machine parts back together, he realised the useless repair centre (power coffee) had forgot to reinstall the brewer unit! So no coffee and we have to drive all the way to Castle Hill to get it back.
Such a screw-up would upset me a lot no matter what was getting repaired, but the fact that it was our coffee machine combined with the fact that I get very grumpy when I don't get my coffee in the morning makes it all a little bit worse.

Open mic night at four pines

B and I had dinner at four pines last night. I really like that place - nice ambiance and good beer! On Tuesdays they have an open mic night where local talents can rock up and perform.



Last night this 16 year old little guy was playing guitar and singing and he was really great! A bit too inspired by Jack Johnson maybe, but he's got everything going for him. And he's only 16!! I hate young people with a talent. They make me feel old.

John Blund - where are you?

B left at 4 to go to work. Between 4-5 shirin decided to sleep on my chest while purring extremely loudly straigt into my ear, which made it impossible for me to go back to sleep. Now my eyes are hurting because I'm so tired but I'm wide awake and just can't go back to sleep... So annoyed. Not a very nice way to start the day.

Bodega

On the ferry to the city and to dinner at Bodega with some friends. B is busy with his iPhone so I have to entertain myself. And what better way to do so than to blog? I'm really excited about having dinner at bodega since everybody's talking about how good their food is. But I might have too high expectations though. Not good. Although I'm starving so anything would taste good right now... Now we're almost in circular quay so I guess it's time to stop writing.

And I'm sorry about the total pointlessness of this post but it was the best I could do right now.

Saturday 7.53

It's early Saturday morning and I'm at a cafe having coffee since our espresso machine is still on repair somewhere in Castle Hill...
I thought it would be nice to be out and about before everyone else this morning, but I have clearly misunderstood what time other people wake up. Manly is already packed! But it still feels good to be up this early. Now I've got the whole day to do stuff!

3 things I have done today that have been extremely frustrating

1. Spent 45 minutes resetting the router, pulling out cables and swearing over the Internet not working only to realise I had turned off the wireless switch on the laptop
2. Walked to Coles to get groceries only to realise I had left my wallet at home
3. Walked 5 minutes to get a backpack from the car only to realise I didn't bring the car key

What is wrong with me? Maybe I need a holiday.

Jogging mania

I have become totally obsessed about exercising and eating healthily. My goal is to jog at least three times a week and also do some other exercising like playing tennis or rock climbing. I'm thinking of joining a tennis club to find someone to play with once a week. And LMC is about to move into a new apartment with a pool and gym in the building and we have a master plan of how to get back into shape. I've also stopped eating cream, creme fraiche, sugar and trying to cut down on carbohydrates.

My worst enemy at this stage is alcohol and all the binge drinking, which is impossible to avoid when you live in Australia -  and in the same city as ML :). Somehow there always seem to be a bottle of wine involved when the two of us hang out. But I guess you have to live a little as well. Surely exercising 3 times a week, eating minimal amounts of fat, sugar and carbohydrates will make up for having a few drinks every now and then. Besides, they say that red wine is good for your heart.

Yes I realise I'm trying to justify my actions. Reduce my cognitive dissonance. But since I'm aware of what I'm doing I don't really see a problem with it.

Dreaming away

I don't have very much to blog about today. Got home about an hour ago and had dinner. Now I'm wishing the house would clean itself and googling renovation ideas. I've come to the point where I'm not excited about living in our apartment just because it's huge and we have awesome balconies. I want it to be done up. I want a massive kick-ass kitchen with a built in espresso machine. I want a spa bath. A large dining table. Large French doors to the balconies. A king size bed. And absolutely no junk. Anywhere. I'm going to be like a nazi and will probably only allow Scandinavian interior design stuff to enter the front door once this place is done up.

 But now - time to stop dreaming and start cleaning!

Lake Glenbawn

Had a very long snooze on the couch last night and didn't wake up until this morning. I'm extremely tired still so I think I must be "jetlagged" from the time change. I have been trying to get a grip of behavioural finance today but it's so difficult that I think even Einstein would have struggled. So now I have decided to let my brain rest for the remainder of this Easter Sunday and eat chocolate eggs and blog about our camping trip instead.

I picked LMC up from the city about 3 pm on Friday afternoon and then went to pick up PB in St Leonards. Since we left so late there wasn't any traffic at all and we had a great time in the car. Somehow the power source in the car stopped working, which meant I couldn't use the GPS or my mobile charger so we had to find our way the old fashioned way.

This is our campsite. We look like really serious campers, don't we? But not as serious as everyone else. We were probably the only people who didn't bring our own toilet. Another bizarre thing was that everyone, except us, drove to the bathrooms - even if they camped 50 meters away. And everyone, except us, were obese. Do you see the connection??

    LMC was supercute in her dress and beanie! So cute that PB, ML and I had to copy her style and bought very similar beanies at country target in Scone. And also because it was freezing cold at night.

PB and N bought a new car. A volvo with 7 seats! 

We had sparkling wine and played Jenga and Kubb. Everyone stared at us.

We left quite early on Sunday to visit some of the wineries in the Upper Hunter and found a really nice place to have lunch amongst the vines. 

For our next trip it will probably be to cold to go camping so we're thinking of renting a house in the Blueys. Can't wait. Just hope B can make it next time!

Back home

Back home after the longest drive ever. But luckily I had the best travel buddy ever- LMC! She's great for entertainment/gossip and made the drive really enjoyable. Will tell you more about our trip after I've had dinner and possibly a snooze and cuddle with Shirin on the couch. Shirin spent Easter at the Marrickville mansion with her favourite uncles. But I think both of us are very happy to be back home right now!

Easter camping

Sorry I've been slack updating lately. We're out camping in lake glenbawn in the upper hunter. There's no reception at the campsite so will tell you more when I get home on Sunday. Right now we're in bogan central, Scone, getting groceries. Happy Easter!