Beauty Sleep

I was tierd of looking at this sad little sleeping mask from my last flight from Bangkok back to Australia.

(When I got bumped up to buisness class!!!)

I needed some kind of creative 'me' time, away from assignments and lesson plans. I decided to compliment the vintage slip I bought for my sister with a decorated mask.

Thanks mom and dad for the lovely Ralph Lauren sheets that you let me bring to Oz and cut up to make dresses and sleeping masks:)

Brittney, sorry for ruining the surprise! xx 

Recycled wedding wrapping

Every wedding dinner I serve every weekend at work reinforces my feelings that weddings are just an insane waste of money for one evening. Often half of the people attending the dinner are looking at their watches or drinking themselves into oblivion, thrilled that there is an open bar. It's roughly $100 ( at the lower end) that you pay for one dinner guest. Almost every time at least one person just "doesn't show up!" and another dinner is wasted!

I have gotten a lot of ideas about "what not to do" for a wedding and have come to the important decision that Cupcakes are way better than cake! (homemade ones in my future case)

While cleaning up after serving a fairytale wedding last weekend, I collected these scraps in the hopes of creating something cute out of them. I couldn’t let them go into the trash after looking so elegant wrapped around the heart chocolates handed out to the dinner guests.

I ended up using about five pieces of the decor to make a flamboyant head piece.

Ocean Grove

The day before starting our teaching rounds we decided to go to the beach^^

I agreed only if someone would bring a sun umbrella! thank you Nick and Nancy!! hehe

End of Lectures!

It's really hard to believe that we're finished the in class lectures for the seven month Primary teaching course!

To celebrate, the girls and I had our fellow students over for a bbq and much needed drinky poos!

The weather was good and we were all just so happy to be done sitting in a classroom and start working in one (which we have all begun this week).

Asia seems to follow me everywhere (which I'm more than welcoming about). Our friend Melissa brought her karaoke machine over and it ended up being quite the highlight of the ridiculous events of the evening^^

Me and some of the veggie girls grilled Portobello mushrooms that I had soaked in red wine vinegar, with crushed garlic, butter and cilantro. On top of that we had grilled tofu with Indian Masala spice, zucchini  and onions. I made some Spanish tomato gespacho soup too! yum yum!

I'm having trouble eating poultry, seafood or meat at the moment. I don't know if I will come to a decision about eating them again until I finish the book "Th ethics of what we eat." Brilliant book but don't read it if you love fish, chicken or cow meat^^

Puffing Billy

A morning trip on “Puffing Billy,” the steam engine that uses diesel to avoid forest fires. It was incredibly scenic and again, all the trees smelt so good! The train is run by volunteers, so it felt nice to contribute.

I heard two Korean guys chatting away and couldn’t resist trying to practice out my hard learned Korean lessons.

I’ve been studying Korean on my ipod for about two months now and am most likely known in Geelong as “you know, that girl whose really tall, walks everywhere and talks to herself.”

(I have to repeat the words and sentences in Korean to ensure I learn to my greatest ability.)

 I’d like to say I blew these two guys away with my Korean. However, I choked. I couldn’t remember a single thing I had learned and they were speaking English anyways. Booooo.

Catherine and I were very silly and got off at the wrong stop. Her confused cousin couldn’t find us and had to drive to the next small town to fetch us. We spent the rest of the afternoon exhausted from the heat and back onto the couch to watch an interesting movie “burn after watching.”

A few hours later we were jumping out of Catherine’s aunt’s car and into the rainstorm without an umbrella. We were fearful that we’d been hit by the excessive lightening. We hopped onto the train headed for Melbourne and got about 5 minutes into the stormy trip before the train stopped. An announcement came over the speakers that due to the weather the trains had lost signal and until further notice we would be stuck. All the trains were stopped and apparently there was chaos in Melbourne!

 Catherine and I were soaked, freezing from the air con and surrounded my drunk ACDC fans who were infuriated that they might miss the show. Fourty Five minutes later, we began to move and made it to Melbourne. We decided that there was no way we were getting on another train back to Geelong with out something warm in our bellies. Catherine had never tried PHO before so we went to an extremely busy Pho place which was guaranteed to be good. It was delicious and exactly what we needed for the cold.

A little bit warmer, we hopped on a tram full of ACDC fans and got the train back to Geelong. This time, the train was full with the Aussie businessmen who did not go to the ACDC show and had to wait hours for the trains to start running again.

Up Up and away

A place called Upwey

After working on papers for three days straight I was relived when the Tuesday evening came for Catherine and I to board the train into Melbourne. We got some dinner in Chinatown and I throughly enjoyed my $4.50 glass of house white. It was blistering hot so we took a walk to Section 8 for my second time at the drinking spot. Catherine’s uncle was kind enough to pick us up promptly at 9:30pm to take the hour drive to Upwey. Upwey is a small mountain/hillside town an hour north of Melbourne. It is home to the infamous Puffing Billy train and Catherine’s aunt and uncle.

Miss Catherine, Miss Canada!

At The Healesville sanctuary in fourty degree weather the next day. The drive to the sanctuary was an hour of beautiful forest scenery. It sounds silly and way too hippie for me to say that I can’t remember a time where I have smelt trees that smell that good! The drive was also a bit of a dance party with Catherine’s cousin's trendy Aussie music^^

We arrived at the sanctuary and were rushed to the “birds of prey” show. We got to see some massive and strange looking creatures swoop over our sweaty heads with their massive claws.


Next on our list of priorities were the Kangroos and Koalas. It was so hot outside all the animals wanted to do was sleep in the shade. We were lucky enough to get some good pictures and become within a close distance to them. There were hardly any cages to be seen and it felt more like a walking safari.

It's a DINGO!

Up on the hill

When the weather got a little cooler, Catherine’s aunt took us for a night drive through the forest and way up to a beautiful look out point.

Some place nice

Nancy and Nick were kind enough to invite me to venture outside of Geelong to an even town, famous for it's spas. We didn't indulge in any spas, but Nancy and I did find huge coffees in this country of little cups.

Every year there is a Farmers Market where there is wine tasting and delicious baked goods. It cost only $5 to be able to do some wine tasting and get quite drunk if you wanted.

It was a very posh place that we somehow got into^^

I also am a lover of food!

On the way back to Geelong we stopped at this delightful fruit and veggie shop. We were travelling in the wrong direction actually but I think it was just 'mean't to be.'