15 thoughts I had while taking a bath tonight

After a long and tiring Monday I decided there was no better way to clear my head than a nice warm soak in the tub. That was until my brain decided the peace and quiet provided the perfect opportunity for a million and one random thoughts to pass through. Here are just 15 of those:

1. Mmm this is nice. Nothing but me, the warm soapy water, the soothing scent of my candle and the dulcet sounds of Ben slaying dragons on his computer.
2. What should I take for lunch tomorrow?
3. I must not forget about the five Chobani yogurts I bought for $5 at Coles. What a bargain.
4. Rove McManus was an excellent choice for the new host of The Project. Carrie and Rove, back together at last.
5. I hope I don't slip and fall when I get out of here.
6. *Picturing myself falling out of the bath*
7. It's funny how the water rises when you hop in.
8. Can't wait to make a pizza after this.
9. I should write a blog post about this!
10. Remember when I used to blog every day?
11. I hope this cheap bubble bath doesn't make me itchy tonight.
12. How cool were those foam toys we used to stick on the walls in the bath when we were little?
13. I should have put some music on.
14. Time to get out before I turn into a prune. Also, pizza.
15. Must...not...fall.

This post was inspired by Bec from My Bloggable Day. You can read 30 thoughts she had during a run, 30 thoughts she had on a trip to Medicare and 30 thoughts she had while waiting for her coffee. Glad I'm not the only person susceptible to brain overload!

Lately

Goodness me, it's been three months since I last blogged. The year is flying by, as expected, and between work and wedding planning I haven't had the energy for much else!

I've taken a much needed day off work today and am enjoying it immensely. I took myself on a little shopping date, to buy new work shoes and pay off some money on our wedding rings. I also treated myself to a mani-pedi (and for some reason went with eggshell blue polish, but I'm digging it).

It's just over 6 months until the wedding, which means we're half way! How crazy. We're pretty organised, with all of the following locked in: venues, catering, my dress (being made by the wonderful Bell Street), bridesmaids dresses, bridesmaids shoes, flowers, makeup, hair (my sister), cake, styling (Styled by Linda), wedding bands (on lay by), stationary (Suely Lu), photographer (James Goff), wedding night accommodation and save the dates (were sent a month or so ago). Things we still need to organise: all the boys' clothes, wedding favours, cars/transportation, music, order of service/running sheet, speeches, my shoes (!), accessories (for me and the gals), honeymoon (!!), all the little decorations...and I think that's it! Getting there.

Ben and I are a bit restless at the moment. It's a combination of excitement for the wedding and also a bit of uncertainty in terms of what we want to do after that. It's also been about a year since our last holiday and work for both of us has been a little full on. I'm not feeling stressed about the wedding itself. Financially, it is challenging and with our landlord just putting our rent up we're feeling the sting even more. It feels like a bit of a first world problem to complain about this. We truly are lucky and this is a very exciting time for us. Overall, I'm really enjoying the planning, no matter how time consuming it is!

I was just trying to think of other news aside from wedding and work stuff.......there really is not much else! We had a close friend of mine stay with us for a few weeks, which was fun. I enjoyed having her around as we really haven't seen much of each other over the past few years. She's also one of my bridesmaids.

My older brother got engaged about a month ago (exciting times for the Lewis clan!) and we're all over the moon. His fiance is from India so they are heading over there for a big engagement celebration with her family in June. Mum, Dad and some of our other relatives are making the trip too. I really wish Ben and I could make it, but it's too hard at the moment. Looking forward to their wedding in Tamworth in about a year! We just had Sam (brother) and Asha (his fiance) stay with us this weekend, which was really lovely.

I went to Perth for work about a month ago - it was my first trip to Western Australia and I loved it. We also joined the gym and have been going fairly regularly.

Back to wedding stuff - my hens is in about a month! I'm having it early as two good friends are going overseas. My bridesmaids are organising it and I don't have a clue what we are doing which is kind of killing me but I trust them. All I know is that we're 'going to a destination'. Exciting!

Anyway, if I have any readers left I hope you're all well! Will try and post again soon xo

Hello 2014

1. Ben and I on NYE. 2. The family minus my brother on NYE. 3. A visit to The Gap at Watsons Bay. 4. Adventuring at Bondi. 5. The Gap and I.

Well folks it's been 13 years since the Y2K bug threatened to kill us all. I for one am quite pleased it didn't.

The festive season is almost over (almost because it's my birthday on Monday) and I certainly ate, drank and was merry. Ben and I spent Christmas in Tamworth with our families. We stayed for five nights which is the longest we've spent at home in a while. Every time I go back I gain more of an appreciation for just how beautiful it is up there. #howstheserenity

We returned to Sydney for New Years Eve and what a spectacular night it was. Definitely the best NYE I've had in a long time. We had some family visiting from the US so we (my parents and sister also came to join the festivities) began our night with expensive champagne at their hotel. We were very lucky to nab a table at Jamie's Italian for dinner so headed there for our last feast of 2013 - it did not disappoint.

For the grand finale we were fortunate enough to have access to my office building and therefore an amazing view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House to watch the world-renowned Sydney fireworks. Most of us had never seen the fireworks (apart from on TV) so it was a real treat! We managed to wrangle our way to the very top floor of the building (with thanks to a friend of my cousin who also works there) and had an absolutely incredible view. It was such a special way to bring in the new year!

Like life in general these days, 2013 was non stop, but in the best possible way. I really cannot think of many gripes. There were certainly challenges - a new job and sad goodbyes at the old one, for example, but on the whole it was pretty damn tops.

I haven't written any resolutions as such but I do have a few things I'd like to do this year, or new habits I'd like to make (I guess they kind of are resolutions).

• Practice yoga more regularly.
• Ride my bike.
• Buy some new plants (and keep them alive).
• Organise and redecorate our spare room.
• Set up a cocktail cart for our apartment.
• Keep up with my $5 note challenge (saving every $5 I get).
• Switch off.
• Read.

And of course, I can now officially say I'm getting married this year! 2014 is definitely going to be a busy one and I'm sure it will fly by. In fact, it's exactly 9 months today until we get married. I'm looking forward to all the planning and festivities along the way, but I'm mostly excited about the guarantee that I'll get to party with a lot of our friends and family (many of which we don't see often) on the big day. It's going to be a hoot! Plus, there's the honeymoon, which we're currently researching. Thinking Bali, so if you have any advice, be sure to comment!

Wishing you all a really wonderful, safe and happy 2014. I hope it's full of adventure. xo

Engagement Party

We celebrated our engagement last weekend with a casual picnic style party with a bunch of our friends and family. We decided to hold the party in Newcastle and were fortunate to be able to use a lovely common park area near my sister's place (also where Ben and I used to live). This meant we had free venue hire which saved us a lot of money. We were blessed with perfect sunny weather which made for a beautiful afternoon/evening of celebrations.

My wonderful friend Linda helped me with the styling/decorations and kindly lent me a lot of her props, including some beautiful picnic baskets, rugs, bunting and the beautiful drink dispensers for our beverage table. I chose the drinks (Pimm's, pink lemonade and water with lemon and mint) and bought all the ingredients, cups, straws etc but it would not have turned out so well without Linda's creativity and attention to detail.

For the food, we decided to put together 10 picnic baskets full of goodies for people to share. They contained cheeses, crackers, dips, chocolates, fruit, nuts, jams/fruit paste and fresh bread. I had heaps of fun buying various things to put in the baskets, such as wooden cutlery, paper plates, mini jars for jams etc. Most of it I bought at two dollar shops! Ben had his own bar too (not pictured) with a few different types of tap kings (beer in a mini keg thing). We also had wine and champagne aplenty.

We had a few games set up for people to play - darts, ring toss/quoits and boules. My mum and Ben's mum made cardboard bunting and asked us to write 10 things about ourselves and 10 things we love about each other, which they then wrote on the bunting and hung around the park. It was a good conversation starter and quite funny to read what each other had written.

Ben's grandma made our engagement cake - a delicious mud cake. It was so good. Ben's mum decorated it with fresh flowers and cute paper bunting. I was so happy with how it turned out!

It was a really lovely afternoon and so nice to see so many of our friends and family who we don't see very often. It was also great to introduce some of our Sydney friends to our families and other friends from various places. We feel so loved and excited about our wedding next year! Thanks to all of the special people for helping us celebrate and pitching in to make it such a nice party.

Special thanks to my brother Sam and our friend Ian for some of these photos.

Wedding Update

Well the whole 'now I have a laptop I can blog again' thing didn't really go as planned! I could try and come up with some kind of excuse or go on about being 'busy' but in reality, I probably could have spent less time stalking former Big Brother contestants on Instagram and Twitter and more time blogging.

Anyway! The wedding plans are coming together - we've locked in our date, venues and photographer and I'm currently looking into florists. We're getting married on 4/10/2014 which is actually a palindromic date (4102014...geddit?)! We actually didn't plan it that way but it's pretty cool. That's the long weekend and probably one of the most popular weekends to get married on, hence the need to plan things quickly!

We've chosen a beautiful old church in Hamilton (Newcastle) for our ceremony and will be married by the minister from our parents' church (both our parents go to church together). He's a good friend of both of our families and a really down to earth, funny and personable guy. The reception will be held at the Newcastle Museum in their awesome event space. It's a beautiful room with exposed bricks and lovely arched windows. Very industrial but also kind of rustic. Oh, and I've also booked our chairs which I'm probably more excited about than I should be. But they're awesome chairs!

I've been using Pinterest a lot which is a life saver. Seriously, how did people organise weddings before it existed? I kiiiind of have an idea of the type of dress I want, but I haven't tried any on yet so I will have to wait and see. My amazingly talented friend Linda will be our wedding stylist and we're already having heaps of fun sharing ideas.

But first, we've got our engagement party in a few weeks and I seriously cannot wait! It's going to be a blast.

xo

Back in business

Hooray! I'm back! After over a month without a laptop I can finally blog again thanks to purchasing a shiny new Windows Surface tablet. I know what you're thinking, it's not Apple (shock horror!), but this thing is seriously awesome. It has all the convenient features of a tablet but is basically a very powerful laptop as well. I can even draw on photos as it comes with a digital pen thingy. You can expect lots of that in the future.

Anyway! Life is pretty awesome at the moment. We're busy planning for our engagement party in just over a month and have even locked in a date and venue for our wedding. It's going to be on 4/10/2014 (which we just discovered is the same backwards - how cool!) in Newcastle. Feels so good to have that locked in already.

My new job is keeping me busy but I'm settling in and enjoying the challenge.

Now that I can blog whenever the heck I want, I'll be back soon to share some wedding inspiration and a few sneak peeks. Yay!

Life Update

Greetings internet. Is anybody out there?

I just wanted to pop in and say hello. When I gave up my old job I also gave up my laptop. It belonged to work and they kindly let me use it for personal stuff as well. I miss it terribly! So until I save up for one of my own this little old blog might be a bit quiet. I'm currently on Ben's computer which is quite literally a MACHINE.

Anyway, life's been busy but good. I'm a week and a half into the new job and while the days are long (largely due to more travel, the hours are quite good so far) I'm really enjoying it. Working right by Circular Quay is amazing, especially with the good weather we've been having. It's so awesome to be able to pop down to the water or grab a baguette and a macaron at the French cafe at The Rocks during my lunch break. I'm finally starting to feel at home in Sydney - it's only taken two and a half years! We also have an incredible view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House from our office. I try and act cool like I don't care but secretly I'm super excited.

It was really sad finishing up at my old job. They made me feel extremely loved with a special farewell afternoon tea (complete with a table of cheeses!), a huge indoor picnic lunch, a bunch of gorgeous flowers, an Asos gift voucher and an incredibly special photo book full of sweet farewell messages from the team. I'm so grateful for the experience and everything I learnt while working there. The fact that I was able to make some great friends at the same time is truly awesome. I'm going to do my best to stay in touch with everyone and so far so good.

On the wedding front, we've been investigating our options for holding it up in our home town of Tamworth. It's now starting to sink in just how much is involved in planning a wedding but I'm going to try and enjoy it as much as possible. My ring had to be resized so I've been without it for almost two weeks now. Thankfully I'm picking it up tomorrow! The separation anxiety has been intense ;) We're also organising our engagement party and hoping to have that before the end of the year. I'm really excited to celebrate with our family and friends!

We have a long weekend coming up and Ben and are I joining our parents at the Central Coast for a few nights. We'll be camping by the beach and I'm super keen for some lazy days in the sun. I hope you're well wherever you might be!