Baa-leted

We had a local council election this weekend. Annoying after just having voted in the state election, yes, but I was rather looking forward to checking out people’s voting day garage sales.

Unfortunately it poured down rain and my enthusiasm was dampened (I borrowed a little pun from my twitter there, it was so good I just had to repeat it, sorry. I’m not witty very often). Instead I stayed inside and pottered about doing housework. I also seized the opportunity to do a few things I have been putting off to do with wedding photos – ie. Email them to people as promised and also upload a heap of the professional ones to Facebook.

I continue to be overwhelmed by my friends’ and family’s interest in my wedding photos – they were THERE for goodness sake. But I get it, I get it. They didn’t get to see the bridal shoot so I have emailed some of the prime ones off. I also put a heap up on Facebook.

Within an hour I was deleting a Facebook comment for the first time. While this may be a familiar action to many of you who run fan pages for your blogs (though I hope to god people don’t leave nasty comments on them regularly!) it was a first for me, and remember this was my personal page.

I posted this photo:

It cracks me up. We were supposed to be taking a shot of us kissing with the silhouette being the feature. C was making me laugh by making shadow puppets, and the photographer captured him doing a barking dog. A friend commented – “what was he doing? Is he insinuating you’re a bitch?”

I’m sorry – WHAT? How do you even interpret that from a fun, lighthearted photo. FROM OUR WEDDING DAY. Anyways, I responded by explaining no, he’s just making me laugh. Then deleted her comment. I didn’t want my family reading that!

Whenever I delete a useless email at work I say obnoxiously “BAA-LETED!”. I must admit I did it with this comment too. I have no idea where I got this from but I still find it amusing.

When was the last time you deleted a comment? Do you exercise your right to moderate your own Facebook or blog?

Lipstick

I just snapped this photo of myself while waiting for the train. You ever get that paranoid feeling when you're taking a "selfie" in a public place that everyone is secretly laughing at you?

Anyway, the point is, today I wore lipstick to work for the first time in... well... probably over a year. Why did I stop? Can't remember. Probably something to do with the fact half would come off on my morning cup of tea. Why did I decide to wear it again today? I DON'T KNOW. I just felt like it.

I was then very self-conscious about it. Like everybody was looking at my lairy lips. Halfway through the day a workmate came up to me and said "Your lipstick!" in an alarming manner. My heart jumped and my fingers went to my mouth. What about it? Was there some on my teeth? Had I managed to somehow smear it everywhere like a sad 90s version of Courtney Love?
"I love the colour! What is it?"
Relief. Followed by embarrassment because I really didn't know. Further inspection proved useless: it had been in my handbag so long the label on the end had rubbed off. I was forced to admit I believed it might be a Nutrimerics one.

But someone liked my lipstick! They didn't think I looked like a little kid playing in her mum's makeup box! That, folks, I'd what's known as a Warm Fuzzy. Speaking as a girl who never gets beauty product compliments, it felt pretty darn good.

When's the last time you got a compliment? Did it make your day?

A new friend

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On Saturday night, reclining on the couch in my most slothful position and discussing tall building engineering, I realized I have a new friend.

It’s my mum.

It was a lightbulb moment. I went up to the farm this weekend to visit our wedding photographer and collect our proper photos (excitement! But that’s news for another post) and C then went back to Brisbane as he had to work. I spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday just hanging out with my mum.

I realized that I love doing just that – spending time with her. Not only is she nice and willing to pay for things (thanks mum!), she’s smart and interesting and we can talk for hours. We’re interested in the same things, so we always have something to talk about. In fact, hubby is convinced that we talk TOO MUCH.

We had a fab old time – watering the garden, BBQ dinner on the patio drinking wine and listening to the radio, Sunday breakfast at a café (The Engine Room in Railway St, Toowoomba – highly recommended!), markets then garage sales. I think she was delighted to go to the markets and garage sales too because dad always refuses to take her! My newly-minted hubby is the same, though he supports my thrifting habit, he draws the line at going with me a lot of the time!

The whole time I spent up there was not only fun and relaxing, the fact that I discovered a new friendship made it a golden weekend. I think now that I’m older I can appreciate my mum more as a person, not just the lady who raised me.

Are you friends with your mum?

Life Lately

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Quite a few things have been happening around the traps lately.

I’m fully back into the work groove and really, really finding it boring. It’s such a First World whinge, but I can’t help it – I’ve been there almost a year and yes, they pay me well for what I do, but my role has become extremely repetitive.  I have been hanging on until the wedding so that I could get leave, and now that it’s all over I am looking to move on. I’ve applied for one particularly intriguing job I spotted yesterday, and am also going to recruit my cousin who works in HR to see if she can find me something were I actually have to use my brain to solve problems.

It’s quite an exciting time in our lives as I have been discussing with hubby how this is a time of change. All the projects and plans that we have been saying we’ll do “after the wedding” are now coming into focus. We now have the time and freedom to concentrate on those plans that have been placed on the backburner! For C, this entails putting his energy into his business, and for me it means focusing on my career path, and also starting the small business that I have been thinking about for quite some time. I’m going to open an Etsy shop!

That’s right, I’m going to turn my hobby of op shopping for vintage homewares and kitchenalia into a business, and sell some of the lovely things I find. I’ve done lots of research and am in the process of working out how to photograph my stock. Once this is done I’ll be one more step closer to opening. Watch this space. I’ve so excited about it, I’ve been sitting on this project for such a long time and haven’t talked about it with anyone besides hubby and my mother, so it’s great to finally share it with you all, my readers.

In other news, I’m slowly progressing in the laborious task of changing my name on everything. Still waiting for my “proper” marriage certificate from Births, Deaths & Marriages but I’m already asking for mail to be sent to me in my married name. It makes me smile when I get post with “Mrs” on it. Dorky but true.

This weekend we are going up to Toowoomba and the farm. We have an appointment to see our wedding photographers and I cannot wait to see all their pictures! We have ordered a gigantic expensive hard-paged (I don’t know how else to describe it – it has pages like cardboard?) album too so I’m hoping it might be ready. And then LOOK OUT, I’ll be scrapbooking up a storm with the proofs. Lucky I’m going on scrapbook camp again in June, I’ll have days to work on my wedding album projects! Yes, projects plural. I plan on making more than one for sure :p

My social media story

 

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Today I realized I have far to many fingers in far too many social media pies. The realization came when I started looking at reddit and linkedin, just exploring as I had heard them talked about in various spheres both online and off. And then I started thinking about how many accounts I already have, how many I have tried and deleted accounts for, and how many I have yet to explore. Let’s make a list shall we?

I LIKE

Twitter – obviously a fan. Now my main source of news, I don’t watch TV news or read newspapers any more.

Facebook – have considered deleting a number of times however have stayed for the Zynga games. I also have started liking it again post-wedding as my cousins all told me it’s the only way they have of keeping up with family news. I’m reading my feed more often now to be more involved in their lives, and also actually posting status updates now after being begged to by a relative :p Considering removing everybody except family, close friends and game neighbours.

Instagram – got on the bandwagon early and stayed there. I love this app so much. I love taking iphone photos and sharing them with my followers AND with my social media networks. What I REALLY love lately are the celebrities on there. Getting a small glimpse into their lives is so interesting. I recommend: Jamie Oliver, Chris Lilley (who is an amazing photographer btw), Jessica Alba, David Blue and Kat Von D.

Tumblr – I didn’t understand it for the longest time, but now I love it for its quirkiness. Like twitter, the quality of what you see depends entirely on who you follow. I like to keep mine full of prettiness and memes. Haven’t devoted much time to it lately due to my crazy wedding frenzy.

GetGlue – I wanted something that I could use to check in to TV shows and participate in discussion and GetGlue was recommended. You can check-in to movies, books, music and “things I’m thinking about”. You collect stickers when you check into random things, or check into something a number of times. Apparently you can get these sent to you in real life via the post however I have yet to figure this part out. Thinking of deleting this one as superfluous to my social media suite at present.

I TRIED

Pinterest – it’s now incredibly popular but I started using Pinterest after getting engaged in January 2011 (does this make me an early-adopter?) after my friend recommended it for wedding planning. I recently blogged about my problemswith it and have now stopped using it. I haven’t deleted my account though, and am getting new followers and repins every day despite not being active. I am considering using it once more for business purposes in the future however.

Foursquare – I deleted Foursquare because of privacy concerns. And also because I literally never go anywhere interesting. If I do, I now use Facebook check-in instead.

Path – though it has such great potential, I had big privacy issues with this app (they had some negative media coverage regarding the way it was accessing your phone contacts to find friends). Also, despite me requesting it not to display my location, Path persisted in posting my suburb to my timeline every time I ‘slept’ or ‘woke up’. One thing I did adore about this app though was the moon rising animation when you ‘go to sleep’. It even showed what phase the moon was in that night. It also calculates how many hours you’ve slept, which is handy. That part was great. As an interactive social media platform it did have potential, with the ability to check into places and also share music, however I felt the simple addition of a few more check-in options like what book I’m reading or tv show I’m watching would make it truly unbeatable as a sharing app.

Google+ - ‘nuff said. Deleted as it was sharing my real name and I couldn’t figure out how to change it.

YET TO EXPLORE

Reddit – interested because the guy in the ‘Caine’s Arcade’ video described it as ‘the front page of the internet’. And lo, that is also their tag line. On my to-do list to check out, also because @wilw uses it.

LinkedIn – I understand this is for ‘professionals’? Has been recommended to hubby as part of his business strategy but I understand it also can help drive blog traffic.

Digg – seems to have been around forever and I keep seeing little Digg icons everywhere (like, for years) but have never really looked at it.

Delicious – again, keep seeing icons for sharing things on this site, no idea what it is

StumbleUpon – as above

Flickr – though I have an account, I rarely use it for social media purposes. I understand it has quite a strong community thing going on however

What social media platforms or applications do you use regularly? What ones have you tried and discarded?

New post on Surely a Bride

I finally got time today to sit down and put together a post about the wedding! You can find it on Surely a Bride here.

I'm not dead

I haven't blogged in a while - I think you all know why!

I am taking a day or two to relax, regroup, organise my photos and then sit down and blog. There will be a few wedding blogs and also a honeymoon blog on Surely a Bride. Hopefully life will now get back to normal.

Now, to get my name changed everywhere... nightmare.