Ooh! That's Pinteresting! - Doors

My mother has a slight obsession with doors and windows. Whenever she's overseas, she's always take photos of interesting doors, and landscapes through windows. I was thinking of her when pinning this week, when I stumbled on a pin of a beautiful yellow door.

There was a lot to uncover under the search term, let me share some with you.

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I don't know about you, but I have a sudden urge to paint my front door!

Linking up with tinagray.me's Ooh! That's Pinteresting!

Surely a Bride - honeymoon hiccup

I'm blogging on "Surely a Bride" today. We've had a bit of a honeymoon hiccup.

Click on over and read all about my lack of organisational motivation messing things up a bit.

Taken over by fear

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I don’t normally blog about intensely personal things, particularly things to do with my relationship. But I had such an emotional time last night, I need to write about it. Here’s what happened.

My fiancée was working yesterday at a contract job about a half hour’s drive away. He expected to finish up about 9pm. I got a text from him at 9.30pm saying he was nearly done and would be home soon.

But he wasn’t.

I waited another hour before calling and texting. Got messagebank, no response to my text. I went to bed. I could not sleep. I kept telling myself that nothing was wrong, he had probably been delayed or sent to another job for a few hours. He had told me earlier that day that his boss was talking about sending him to another job for a few hours after his first shift ended. He had also mentioned his mobile was playing up.

I couldn’t sleep, and C didn’t come home. I started calling his mobile every half hour, the last two times the line went straight to messagebank without even ringing. I lay there trying not to think about what might have happened. He has been riding a motorbike recently with his truck off the road (yes, again, please spare me the rolled eyes) and has borrowed a mate’s bike to get around.

I hate motorbikes. As a child, my friend’s father was killed instantly when a woman ran a stop sign and ploughed into him. My brother nearly killed himself on the farm bike numerous times (once our dog lead us up the paddock to find him unconscious after knocking himself out riding over a contour bank). I have explained that in my opinion, motorbikes get you killed, but C would tell me not to worry, he is a good rider. My response: it’s not your riding skills I’m worried about – it’s all the other drivers on the road who don’t see you in their blind spot.

After a while my thoughts turned morbid. I thought about him lying dead on the road somewhere. I prepared myself for a call from the police. I thought about what time I should start calling hospitals to see if he had been admitted. I thought about what I would do if he died. While thinking about this and crying a bit, I fell asleep.

At 1am I heard the motorbike pull up the driveway. I raced outside, and it was really him. I cannot tell you the relief I felt. Turns out he had been sent to that other job for a few hours. And his mobile was stuffing up. He assured me he had tried to call and text me heaps of times, and when I had rung him his phone wouldn’t let him answer the call.

So, other half not dead. Emotional rollercoaster of fear thankfully over. But I’m not liking Apple right now.

Pinteresting - Gardens and herbs

This week I've been thinking about gardens. Because though I possess a "black thumb" and do no gardening myself, I like looking at other peoples' green stuff. Plus I'm wanting to grow some herbs (more on that in an upcoming post) and have been looking around for pretty ideas for herb pots. I am especially in love with the tea tins. So rustic!

Linking up with tinagray.me's Ooo! That's Pinterst...ing!

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I Heart My Body 2011

I struggled a bit with body image in my teens and early 20s. I was always the slightly-larger girl, never slim enough to fit into trendy clothes, or pull off the kind of outfits my friends never gave a second thought. Additionally, I'd had huge boobs since primary school and it was hard sometimes knowing they were the first thing people noticed about me!

I never hated my body but didn't think that much about it - except when I couldn't find clothes in my size at the shops.

Meeting my partner was a big revelation. He thinks I'm pretty (hee hee) and LOVES my big boobs and hips, and every lump and bump. He even loves my frizzy hair and snub nose. I only realised that I do in fact have a tiny waist when he told me! I have resolved recently to try to dress to emphasie this more, as I really feel it's an asset.

I bought this dress for our engagement party, and yes it's probably not the most flattering piece of clothing on the planet but it shows the real me - big boobs, belly and hips too. I have large thighs and I was once asked if I had been bitten by something because my ankles appeared "swollen"!

I would have to say my fave body part is my boobs, then my waist, then my hands. Heh. I have lovely hands and fingers, if I do say so myself :p

I think it is important that you love yourself first, and not rely on the validation of others to boost your self esteem. Yes, I adore that my partner loves me just the way I am - but I am comfortable with and love my body interdependently of that. The last few years, I have even become less anxious about appearing in a swimsuit. I'm resigned to the fact that I will never look like a model, and when I look around on the beach, there are more ladies that look like me than look like Miranda Kerr!

My photographer abandoned me this morning, so these are iphone pics in my messy bedroom. I'm not going to ask you to excuse the mess though, because I happen to know you all have similar-looking houses (I love that bloggers tell the TRUTH about these things!) I am sans makeup and hair styling because I wanted to look more "real" - if other brave ladies can post their bodies in their underwear, surely I can post something where I'm completely without product to aid me! When I first heard about the We Heart Life link-up on twitter, I didn't even posting a pic of me in my underwear. I applaud all those folks who have - but it's just not me :)

Honey & Vinegar

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I have a favourite saying. It’s “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”. I use it all the time at work, because the general public seems not to have heard of this tried and true maxim.

I include in the category of “vinegar”: shouting, whining, moaning, sob stories, crying of all kinds, threats, blustering, name-calling, swearing and blackmail.

Under “honey”, I include: manners, courtesy, asking politely, logic, compromise, common sense and calm rationality.

The first way will get you absolutely nowhere with any customer service person worth their salt and force them immediately into a position of hating you; thus decreasing dramatically your chances of getting any kind of satisfaction. The other will open doors, work miracles and probably result in a happy resolution.

Those people who use vinegar to try to get what they want are just bullies. But what most of them don’t realize is that I have the power in this conversation. Not you. Me.

Ultimately I can bend over backwards to help you, or make your interaction with our company a living hell. The true art lies in making you believe I’m doing the former whilst actually doing the other. A range of harmless punishments might include:

- putting you on hold
- making you recite all your personal details before even letting you even state the reason for your call
- listen to the epic story of your problem before advising it’s not my area, and transferring you to someone else to repeat it all again
- advising that I will have to get someone to call you back about that particular problem as it needs further investigation
- launching into highly technical explanations which you won’t understand

I can think of a lot more evil ones too, but I am not that mean. But if I stretch my imagination a bit, a really, really awful customer service person might:

- be assured that the problem will be fixed, but have nothing done
- leave a message, then not have it passed on
- accidentally have their email deleted
- accidentally have their fax lost

And then there’s the really scary thought – that this person, whom you have abused, screamed at, swore at, called names and generally treated like crap, has ALL your personal details. Vinegar people need to think about that. Note that I have never seen customer information misused, and would NEVER do such a thing myself, but I ALWAYS keep this in mind when dealing with companies. Because I know: I am their customer. They have the power.

Are you nice to people to get what you want? Or do you find being a vinegar person works better?

Scrapbooking Day

This weekend I went to another scrapbooking event with Creative Memories. Regular readers will know that my mother and I have been customers of Creative Memories for some years now, and we always try to attend their big workshop “Extravaganza” events which are held about 4 times a year. We also go on scrapbook camp once a year to enjoy two full days of uninterrupted scrapping bliss!

One of my pages - I am up to scrapping the January floods

This event was aimed at raising funds for the Make-a-Wish foundation. Creative Memories releases exclusive product every year that contributes money from every sale to the foundation. The consultants also frequently come up with ideas to put more in the donation tin. This year we had an auction – each consultant donated their old, no-longer-offered products and everyone had the chance to bid. It was great – everyone was very competitive, especially for the exclusive products that were customer gifts and never offered for general sale! We raised a couple of hundred bucks that way. Also the consultants were donating 20c for every completed scrapped page on the day. I’d estimate over 60 people were there so I think some of them may have shelled out quite a bit, especially when some were completing 15+ pages!

Love the colours in these layouts.

As usual at these events, we were fed and watered well. Subway was the caterer for the day and I wolfed down my sandwiches. Scrapping makes me hungry! Fueled by frequent cups of tea and inspired by the day’s workshops (how to use the new border tool and page layout ideas), I managed to scrap my way through 9 pages of my “everyday” album. Not up to my usual standard but I found myself taking it easy, talking and eating a lot! I also spent quite a bit of time looking at the example albums of the consultants and admiring the new product (the new “Reflections” set is just so gorgeous, wish I wasn’t so broke!)

The other very cool thing was spending time with my mother. She’s getting progressively more deaf and now can only really hear clearly on her right-hand side. In between her tinnitus and Meniere’s it is very difficult for her in a large hall with lots of conversation going on, but all her friends know to speak up when they are talking to her. Her scrapbook albums are just amazing and I always love watching her put them together.

I had a great day just spending time with people who love scrapbooking as much as I do. The next event isn’t until January so looks like I’m going to have to find some time to do some more scrapping in my own time, or my album will never get done!

Some inspiration

What do you do with your photos?