Where I've been and what I've been up to...

Hello there, long time no see! I've been run off my feet with one busy day after the next. To say there is a lot going on in my life at the moment is an understatement but here is what I've been up to for the last few weeks, in a nutshell and in no particular order.

I made a rainbow cake! My parents were away in Fiji for two weeks and got back just before Mother's Day. So A and I invited them over for a lovely Mother's Day lunch and I surprised the family with this ripper of a rainbow cake. It turned out just great and was delicious so I'm pretty rapt with my first attempt.

I got the recipe from Pixelated Crumb, the recipe is American and full of butter and sugar but was delicious and moist. I'm a 'bake it from scratch kind of girl!'

School Camp at Camp Manyung, three days and two nights away with 108 ten year olds was exhausting, completely wiped me out for the week and was the start of my blogging hiatus!

Speaking of school we are now entering 'report writing' mode so I expect I'll be blogging more as a mode of procrastination haha! Better not with 28 reports to write ah!

My first shipment of wedding invitations have arrived! Therefore my 'Save The Date' cards are officially mailed out! It took me an afternoon to collate names and addresses into Excel and onto sticky address labels but it was well worth the effort because now I just need to press print for invitation and thank-you card labels. I cannot believe I was even entertaining the idea of writing out all those addresses on the envelopes. Avery Labels from OfficeWorks and their downloadable templates have saved a lot of time, I even put a chandelier on the label!

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A and I have been out and about eating our way around Melbourne on the few weekends I haven't blogged about. We went to Rockpool in the Crown precinct on Southbank last Saturday and it was amazing! The food, service and dining experience were as impeccable as each other, so we'll definitely be going back!
We also ate at what I think is a new addition to Southbank as I haven't seen it before, Ludlow's Bar and Dining Room (Ludlow Foundation). It was a spur of the moment choice and we shared a tasting platter and a serving of churros for dessert. These churros were the most delicious thing I've ever had, seriously up there! And Ludlow's is a seriously good looking place to eat, definitely worth a visit!

A photo I took of a spectacular sunset as we walked around our local wetlands

Holly! More iPhone pics using Instagram and Camera+

As much as we love where we live it's... SOLD! We sold our house, finally! So now the hunt begins for a new block of land to build le dream home. I'm so excited for what the rest of this year will bring, a small move while we build, a new block of land, playing with house plans, watching A build our new home from the ground up and a wedding! We'll be busy!
Here's some of my latest house inspirations from a collection of display homes I can't stop oggling.

 

Large and spacious entry

Love a free-standing bath and huge windows

The ultimate bathroom and walk-in robe

Love this kitchen and living (all images)

Well, now you find yourself updated on me and my hectic life right now. What's been happening with you? X

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What's on my Kindle?

So while on holidays I whizzed through many a book because I had so much time on my hands and because a few were quite spectacular reads. Here is what has been on my Kindle.

I've reviewed a Sophie Kinsella novel once before here and I decided to dive into another of her books on my holidays as they are easy to read and provide light-hearted, funny and girly storylines that appeal to me when I want a lazy read on the beach.

I downloaded 'Can You Keep A Secret?' from Amazon.com for about $7.00.

I loved this book because Sophie Kinsella's female characters seem so much like real girls in real-life situations. Not everything works out perfectly all the time, her characters go through break-ups, mess up their careers, have fat days and struggle to nail a perfect outfit or hairstyle.

Sophie Kinsella's writing style is quick, witty and best of all believable. 'Can You Keep A Secret?' is no different. The story was full of twists and turns and even when my Kindle said I was 97% through the story I still had no idea how it was going to end and where the protagonist Emma was going to end up. For a girly story it was a gripping and enjoyable read and I will continue to read and recommend novels by Sophie Kinsella.



Next up and probably not surprisingly I have jumped on 'The Hunger Games' bandwagon! And wow what a story! You must read these books! I have so much respect for the author Suzanne Collins, as I do many authors, who can create a whole new world, my mind boggles at the imagination of authors such as Suzanne Collins and JK Rowling who can create entirely new societies in print.
Again I purchased 'The Hunger Games' from Amazon, for only $4.00. I obviously began with the first book in the trilogy, more out of curiosity as to what all the fuss was about.

The storyline took me hook, line and sinker and I read the first book in less than three days. The story is fast-paced and is so engaging because its content spins a story that is unique, contains events that are unheard of and characters that suffer so much at the hands of a government so powerful, unrelenting and merciless.

I'm not a fan of rehashing storylines and plots, as I believe you should do yourself a favour and grab the book for yourself as Suzanne Collins' work is one of the best and most exciting books I've read in a very long time.

The content of 'The Hunger Games' trilogy has been a contentious issue in the media and as a teacher, also in the staffroom. I did not find the book to be particularly violent, and that is coming from someone who shys away from AV violent movies and horror flicks. 'The Hunger Games' is an excellent read, the most contentious point is perhaps the way the Panem/Capitol society functions in its lack of morality and empathy for the loss of human life and childhood innocence at the hands of a powerful government.



After finishing the first book in 'The Hunger Games' trilogy, A and I went to see the movie and then jumped straight into the second book, 'Catching Fire.'
I honestly wasn't impressed with the movie. After reading the book I felt that the movie left out too many important details and made the actual Hunger Games look like a piece of cake for Katniss, the main character, when in fact she nearly died on multiple occasions in the book.

However, the second book has not disappointed. Suzanne Collins has delivered yet another world of terror that is sad through both triumph and suffering. I read 'Catching Fire' (also from Amazon) in less than a week, and that was not during the holidays, and I cannot wait to get started on the final book in the trilogy 'Mockingjay.'

If you haven't yet read 'The Hunger Games' trilogy, I highly recommend these books! Just read the first one and you'll soon be hooked!

Happy reading!



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Wedding Invitation Suite

Hello! Apologies for being a bad wedding blogger, my wedding posts seem to be few and far between even though I feel I'm so organised! I guess I've got lots to talk about!

At the moment my wedding invitations are on their way from the USA to my hot little hands and I cannot wait to receive them! Yes the wedding isn't until January but everything is booked and we decided to order the invitations at the same time as the Save The Date cards.

So as you can gather after my dilemma here, I decided to go on, order and send out Save The Date cards to our guests to give a bit of extra notice as our wedding is not long after the Christmas and New Years period.

Here are the details of my search for the perfect wedding invitations.

The first invitation range to catch my eye were from Alannah Rose Wedding Stationery. I've always liked the look of a professionally printed invitation and the Alannah Rose designs are truly stunning. I'm sure their quality is exceptional but I found the pricing to be a bit exorbitant and I would have been up for $1400 for a double sided invitation, RSVP card, Save The Date and Thank You cards (not including shimmery paper or postage).

I found this gorgeous example of a chandelier themed invitation on Zazzle and was actually really impressed that they allowed you to presonalise the invitation before ordering what I thought was a sample. So after spending two hours moving text around and playing with fonts and text sizes I was very disappointed to find out that there was a minimum order of 10 invitations and no samples offered. I was not prepared to spend over $50 for multiple samples and there was also no guarantee I'd get matching accessories to the invitation either so I gave this one a miss too!

As with most Australian shopping, locally made wedding invitations are costly and over-priced so I turned my focus to the online world and thought I'd revisit Minted where I bought my lovely Engagement invitations from. Clearly I'm heading towards a 'Chandelier Theme' here to tie in with the exquisite chandeliers in our reception ballroom!
So I ordered samples of the above Save The Date cards and Booklet Wedding Invitations as I thought the booklet would be a smart alternative to squeezing too much information on a small card invitation. Unfortunately I wasn't impressed with the quality (they were nowhere near as nice as the Engagement invites, however there is more scope to customise with Minted than with Zazzle) so back to the drawing board I went for the last time.

And then I stumbled across this little beauty on Etsy. It was everything I wanted (minus the pink!) Chandelier-themed, customisable, printed, booklet style and it came with an included RSVP card in a cute back pocket.
I got right onto Terri from Envy Martketing on Etsy and the sampling and ordering process has been a breeze! Terri has been lovely to deal with, very accomodating, prompt and it feels like I can talk to a real person even though she is based in the USA on the other side of the world!
I purchased a sample invitation and was able to customise it right away. I asked Terri is she could make the invitation in a black, white and silver theme with black ribbon and a matching Save The Date and Thank You Card and she made and included these samples for free. Here they are!

Our custom made Save The Date Card with rhinestone details

Our custom made Thank You Cards

Our custom booklet wedding invitation with rhinestone details

 

Page 2 of the Invitation Booklet

(the 1st page details our full names, parents and the ceremony details - you can see how it's set out in the above Etsy listing)

Our RSVP card included in the back page pocket

So there are our wedding invitations! The invitation booklet consists of a front cover and two separate pages to list the ceremony and reception details beautifully without everything being all crammed together.

We made a few tiny changes to the samples and Terri emailed new digital briefs over to check before the printing began. The invitations are entirely handmade, I love the quality and love that I'm getting a handmade and printed invitation suite for half of what I would have paid at AR.

All I had to do was purchase my personalised listing at Etsy.com. In case you were wondering, I was up for $5.35 per booklet invitation including RSVP card and envelope, $1.95 per Save The Date incl envelope and $1.25 per Thank You card incl envelope.

The overall theme of the wedding is black and white. I'll be in white, the boys will be in black tie tuxedos and I'll add touches of silver through the stationery and touches of pale pink through the BMs dresses. Lovely to see all my ideas coming together!

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Customer Service Kudos to Oroton

I've spoken about my love for my Oroton bag before, so imagine my pain when the handle broke beyond my ability to repair it. Ok I know we're talking about a bag here, not a broken leg, but still I was pretty upset that my daily wardrobe staple had basically fallen apart and because of its design was actually useless without the handle.

I knew that bag came with a one year warranty but I was pretty annoyed when I contacted Oroton via email and after explaining the situation was told that the warranty only covers hardware, doesn't include replacement parts and doesn't cover anything that may be deemed to be my fault.

Not happy! But I explained my situation again, reinforcing the points that it was in fact the handle hardware that had broken, it was not my fault as it was in fact a faulty part and I also questioned why on earth a company would offer a 12 month warranty on a product that they don't offer replacement parts for? I insinuated that a refund or replacement would surely be in order and was brushed off to simply take my bag into an Oroton store for 'assessment.'

So I went... and was ready for a battle! I pulled together all my receipts, warranty tags and emails with customer service (anal I know but I wasn't letting that much money run away on me!)
Luckily enough, my conversation with the manager was nothing of a battle and after showing her the bag and mentioning I'd spoken to customer service I was offered a brand new bag on the spot! After hearing that a few Luca satchels had also been returned for the same reason I decided to pick up a new bag instead.

Lucky me! My day got even better because there was also a sale so for what I paid for my Luca satchel I picked a brand new Ive Barrel Bag and some Oroton essential ballet flats!
So all in all I only have excellent things to report on my Oroton customer service and shopping experience, a luxe experience at that! I'm a happy shopper here!

I'm a happy Oroton shopper! I love their luxury little touches like men's and women's product brochures, the huge silver bag and the little receipt pocket, cute!

My new Oroton Ive Barrel Bag $695 on sale for $490.

It's actually more practical than the satchel and easier to carry, my diary even keeps the square base perfectly in shape!

Oroton Essential Ballet Flats $195 on sale for $140

Love them! I've also never purchased a pair of shoes that have come with their own little shoe horn before, more cuteness!

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I'm back from my tropical getaway!

Hello again! I hope you all had a fantastic Easter break and that those of you who are lucky enough to be enjoying the school holidays as well are also having a nice relaxing time.

I'm very relaxed, as I should be, after spending six glorious days up in Port Douglas with my best friend. It was amazing, no alarms, no work, nowhere to be except for at the pool, the beach or chilling in a Macrossan Street restaurant.

So this is basically what I did for six days, sand, sun, swim, beach, lying around, reading, you get the idea.

I actually didn't take that many photos as my friend and I just lounged around and spent time walking though the main street of Port Douglas looking in shops, visiting juice bars for sorbet smoothies and picking out nice places for dinner. I took most photos on my iPhone 4 and used Instagram as well.

I'm not one of those people who takes photos of my food, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say that the food at the Italian restaurant Bucci was outstanding, definitely a must visit. I wish I had a photo of my dessert so I could reminisce in its deliciousness!

Beautiful Four Mile Beach at Port Douglas.

We stayed at Mantra Aqueous which we booked through a deal we found on Expedia which I spoke all about in this post here. I only have good things to report about this resort.

We stayed in a great room on the third floor which even had a spa on the balcony! I loved the location of this resort as it was about 50m from the main street and less that a 200m walk to the beautiful beach. Mantra Aquaeous also has 2 pools which stretch the entire length of the resort on both sides so there is plenty of room for swimming and sunbaking, we were also very lucky that it was very quiet and most of the time we were the only ones by the pool.

 

A few photos from our balcony and down by the pool.

I loved our stay in Port Douglas and the highlight of the week would definitely have to be our tour of the Great Barrier Reef with Wavelength Tours. There are lots and lots of tour companies to choose from should you want to see and snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. We chose Wavelength because they are a small family-run business that only take out 30 people at a time, they only offer snorkelling so you don't need to wait for divers to put on all their gear and get in, they were the #1 ranked tour on TripAdvisor and they also travel with two marine biologists to tell you all about the reef as you travel which was great and very informative.

I highly recommend touring with Wavelength as they covered everything from a great lunch to providing travel sickness tablets and photos of the day!

 

A few photos from our Great Barrier Reef tour including the boat, the reef sticking out of the water and Nemo! We also chose Wavelength because of the variety of reef stops they visit. We saw the Opal Reef and Turtle Bay and swam with thousands of tropical fish, sea turtles and even some reef sharks. The water was an amazing 32 degrees in some parts of the reef and was 28 degrees every day at Four Mile Beach.

Here's some more snaps of the reef tour courtesy of Wavelength.

It was an awesome trip to Port Douglas and I wouldn't rule out another school holiday getaway as it's not too far to travel, but far enough from Melbourne to be a bit exotic, the weather is glorious and it was a nice little place to potter around and relax in the sun. In the meantime I'll keep dreaming of sunny paradise to get me through the winter!

 

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Wedding: The Cars

Another wedding requirement is locked and loaded, as in booked and deposit paid haha! Last week we decided on and booked in our wedding cars.

I wanted something classic to suit the theme and venue of our wedding. I was dreaming of classic, shiny, black Rolls Royces or Bentleys. Like these ones!

After I got the first quote for two classic cars, my fiance A was dreaming of something cheaper, more cost effective and something that we, the bride and groom, as well as the bridal party could all travel in together. So we started investigating ten seater Chrysler limosines like these.

A wanted the Chrysler limo because it was a bit cheaper and he thought it would be really fun for the whole bridal party to be together on the day as we travelled to photo destinations and between venues.

I wasn't really impressed to be honest and as neither of us are 'car' people, the process of deciding between the two styles became drawn out as we couldn't agree on a mutual decision for a few reasons.

The configuration of who would travel in what car, when and with who was by far the hardest thing to agree on and lock in. We discussed the option of cars for the parents to make their day easier but with those additions and cars for the boys to get to the church, the number of required cars and costs were blowing out.

I got quotes on both options, two classic cars or one Chrysler limo, from Silver Service Limos in Melbourne.

The classic cars were only a couple of hundred dollars more so we decided to go with a classic black Rolls Royce and a matching black Bentley.

I also found the same cars and a more competitive quote from Always Classic Cars in Box Hill, Melbourne so I have booked through them and am happy with our full service package that includes uniformed chauffeurs, ribbons, red carpet as well as champagne and water throughout the day.

The cars we have chosen for our big day are:

Bentley Silver Cloud (seats 4)  - My Dad and I will travel in this car to the church and A and I will travel in this car after the ceremony.

Rolls Royce Austin Princess (seats 7) - My Mum and three bridesmaids will travel in this car to the church and our bridal party of six will travel in this car after the ceremony.

All up A and I are happy with our choice. We have both cars for five hours for under $1600. A and his groomsmen will travel to the church with a friend or parent on the day because no one really sees that car on their early arrival. We have also kept costs down because we don't need the cars after the reception because we're staying next door to the Plaza Ballroom at The Westin on our wedding night.

 

My Dad is also ridiculously excited because The Beatles travelled in the Austin Princess on their tour of Australia in the 1960s.

All images from here.

Speaking of driving around in posh cars on the wedding day I also thought I'd share some of my ideas for photo destinations between the ceremony and reception.

Melbourne's Parliament House on Spring Street (Image)

The steps of Melbourne's Parliament House (Image)

 

Melbourne's Treasury Gardens (Image)

 

I love this avenue of trees (Image)

Wouldn't be a Melbourne wedding without photos along Collins Street (Image)

 

Collins Street, Melbourne CBD (Image)

 

And of course under the twinkling lights of the Regent Theatre at our reception (Image)

Do you know of any other stunning photography locations in and around the Melbourne CBD that I should keep in mind?

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