Creating – Page 9 – helenthura.com

September 15, 2010October 29, 2011

25 things to do before 26

Well I’m most certainly 25 now; I had a lovely weekend, went to Gerties on Saturday night with some friends, had breakfast at Sassafras on Sunday with N and then a browse at the Paddington Antique Centre, where I picked up the most amazing find; a Figgjo Lotte Salt Box/Cellar. I remember when I first saw one of these listed on ebay, I just was awe; the amazing shape, the placement of the designs, the everything. I also remember the price the auction finished, whoa that was some money. The next few times I saw one come up on ebay, the auction finished at similar prices. I can happily say that I picked up mine for a whole lot less.

Isn’t it beautiful? I’m not sure what I will put in it yet but I can assure it won’t be salt.

Yesterday I had a great day. It was a training day at work so no candidates and a chance to have lunch together as a department. I went to the orthodontist and got the news that I’ve been wanting to hear for the last nine months or so, it’s time to go see the prosthodontist, yay! I have an appointment on Oct 5, which will hopefully be an x-ray to confirm root placement and the like and that we can move forward with the implant procedure. Cross your fingers. It’s now week 9 at Uni which is hard to believe, it seems like just yesterday I was looking at my lecture notes for week 1 and thinking it sort of makes sense. I’m really looking forward to next year. When I got home from uni I was presented with the most amazing bunch of red, magenta and orange gerberas from one of my flatmates as belated birthday present. It’s gorgeous, I’ll have to take a photo later.

Now to to the meat of this post. 25 things that I wish to do/complete before I turn 26 next year.

Be finished with orthodontic work.
Challenge myself to take more thoughtful photos.
Ride my bike more.
Get a will.
Get better with my practice of one thing in means one thing out for my belongings.
Spend more time creating.
Print and frame more photos.
Bake a rainbow cake.
Do more study.
Go to the Drive In – hopefully the Wonga one if it re-opens in the next few months.
Go media-free for at least 48hrs.
Make marshmallows and honeycomb.
Be more regular on my blog (gee, that sounds like an All-Bran ad).
Grow my investments.
Reduce the stack of clothes in my mending/alterations stack.
Make my own tea blend.
Make strawberry jam.
Get fresh flowers more often.
Write and comment more.
Grow professionally.
Get my routines started again – planning meals for the week and exercise.
Read some more classics.
Finish my granny square blanket.
Make mulberry crumble or pie from the mulberries in the freezer.
Turn 26

There it is, some things are small, some things not so, some things are little, something things require effort.

And we’ll end off with two books that I’ve been enjoying immensely at the moment. 50/60/70 : Iconic Australian Houses by Karen McCartney and The Iconic House by Dominic Bradbury.

September 10, 2010

24.99726 years

Tomorrow I turn 25. As of tomorrow I am most certainly in my mid 20s. 25 it sounds so much more formal than 24.

For everything that the last 364 days have brought me, from the good, the bad, the ugly, the forgettable, the unforgettable, the amazing, the challenging, the one thing that I think will always be a hallmark of my 24th year is of course Pabbi dying. My 25th year starts to unfold tomorrow and as the year passes it will be interesting to see what it brings. I’ve got a number of things I want to complete/accomplish next year but mostly I’m here to live and to make the most whilst doing just that; living life.

and to move away from birthdays but onto happenings of the last week.

For the past week I’ve been literally overdosing on strawberries.

I am very pleased to announce that I got 80% for my accounting exam last week, it put me in the top 9% of the class, I aim to improve on that as the semester continues. The exam was Saturday morning and Saturday evening was Riverfire which we watched from a hill in Wooloowin. Oh sigh, we had 3, yes 3 dump and burns this year from the one plane. Oh the F-111 is one special plane.

Tonight after work N and I had “dinner” at the 40 Days and 40 Nights of Chocolate Buffet at the Bistro Allure. Oh I’m just recovering from chocolate and sugar overdose. I’ll go again in a couple of weeks with some of the girls from work and I’ve got a game plan worked out. The plan from which I shall not deviate is to get one piece at a time, eat that piece and then go back for more. mmmm chocolate ….

One of the many cases of goodies

N’s plate

My plate

This is one of the adorable presents I got from one of the girls at work today. A mini tea set. The perfect desk accessory for a tea fanatic like myself. I had received the little sugar pot at Easter and was told that I would get the rest of the present for my birthday. Total gold. The best thing is that the tea pot actually pours 🙂

September 4, 2010

Riverfire tonight

It’s Riverfire tonight and it is quite windy… We’ll have to see how it pans out but fireworks and the amount of wind we’ve got at the moment tends not to make a good show.

This is the last year for the F-111, well so they say since last year was meant to be the last as well, frankly I’ll believe it when it doesn’t do a flyover next year …. There are no Roulettes this year which is quite a 🙁 for me. I love seeing them doing all their formations etc instead there’ll be some Black Hawks flying about …

I made pizza muffins earlier – basically this recipe but with more veggies in. They’ll be snack food tonight along with some Lebanese pastries I picked up on the way home from uni this morning.

I had my first uni exam this morning, 9am on a Saturday … I was fairly confident going in, going out well, I’m still confident I’ll get a decent mark but not as confident as I was going in.

Some collected links from the last little while which I’ve been meaning to share.

this photo of my brother

The Cath Kidston August “magazine” arrived the other day and oh so many pretty things. Kind of makes me wish I had picked up another bag whilst I was in London

If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses 1 and 2

this amazing blog which puts the fun back in the sky

Scratch It World Map – I so want one of these (me and everyone else on the net it seems)

Amazing collection of photos from Russia circa 1910

Amazing interactive panoramas

Fish Apartments, makes me want a fish

New York, the tale that was

August 19, 2010

afternoon light

The afternoon light recently has been glorious and the last few trips to the farm, I’ve had a great time capturing the light round the place.

This Kookaburra was part of a family of three which were quite happy for me to photograph them.

I had a great time trying to find the perfect clover flower, the above are a few that were close.

Grandad’s orange trees are full of oranges in various stage of development.

The nasturtiums really show the beauty that the 135mm catches.

Little trumpets of orange.

Take a seat on one of the smoko benches and watch the sun setting over the strawberry fields across the road.

Strawberries, sweet, sweet strawberries.

The past few weeks I’ve been eating a lot of stawberries… I’ve certainly been getting my daily dose of flavonoids … on my breakfast, with my lunch …

July 31, 2010July 31, 2010

Iceland at work

This is what my desk looks like at work, at knock off time when all the files have been locked up. I’ve always had 4×6 photos or postcards running along the top of the mini-wall. A few days after I came home from Iceland I made 9 A4 collages of a whole bunch of photos from the trip to put up at work. It has been a great improvement over a bunch of 4x6s and I think it looks a whole lot better than the digital photo frames that are typically used. Co-workers pause and look at them, I get to smile at all those faces and places I miss and it just brightens up my drab desk so much!

Week 2 of uni is now over and I’ve got a lot of respect for all those who work full time and study part time…. It’s a hard slog, I’m slowly getting into the swing of things and I’m sure in a few weeks it will be like I’ve always been doing this.

Here is a photoshop comp of the 9 A4 pages together. Click on the photo to see it full size.

July 25, 2010August 9, 2010

back in the swing

Well I’ve been home from Iceland for 10 days or so now and things are slowly settling back into some sort of resemblance to how they were before Pabbi died. My mind stays more focused and doesn’t jump about quite as much as it was. I’m getting back into the work routine but man I’m probably shouldn’t have had so many sleep-ins whilst in Iceland. Getting up by 0630 is just a wee bit harder at the moment than it was before going to Iceland.

I miss Iceland (probably the family/people more than the actual physical place, though I miss that too) terribly but oh when I walked into my own bedroom at 2am last Thursday morning, I felt things for my room that I don’t think I’ve felt before. If I could have hugged my room I probably would have, instead I opened the door and just sighed. My bed, my stuff, my own tea collection, my everythings. I picked up a few things in my travels to add to my room and in the below picture is one. I could have spent a lot more money and time in the Cath Kidston shop… My new cup for when I want a biggish cup of tea (I might have 4 cups that I drink tea out of at home depending on the type of tea, the mood I’m in etc).

Not just my house but also the farm, collecting macadamias, playing with my camera in the afternoon sun.

This past week was also my first week back at Uni for the first time in a good 3.5 years. It’s good to be giving the brain some more stimulus. It’s going to take a while to get used to class from 1800-2100 on Tuesday and Thursday nights but I’ll get there. A bonus to the late finish is that I get an off-peak train fare home 🙂 and since I’m at uni on Thursday nights I can’t be tempted by late night shopping. It does mean that I miss ballet this term though which is a bummer.

Now a picture or two from Iceland

mmm Irises. There were so many in the botanical gardens.

Bro, where’s my fish?