Decoration!

I've finally re-decorated since my last Christmas overhaul. This layout was a lot of fun to make. I got the papers and brad and text and ribbons and things from http://www.shabbyprincess.com . I downloaded the bird raster from http://digifree.craftcrave.com and used the papers from Shabby Princess to snaz him up. The layout itself is actually a lot bigger than my lap-top screen so we're not getting the full effect here. The full effect (on Chris's 24" monitor:)



I can't be bothered to re-size everything at the moment though, so it is what is it is for now. It's so much better than the awfulness we had to look at before and for that I am truly grateful. Ha!

After today I think I might be interested in doing some digital scrap-booking. I had a lot of fun! There's enough free stuff online to get me started....could be worth looking into. I LOVE photoshop (my only real hobby) and have dived into researching photo editing more than anything else lately but it's nice to do some more creative things with textures and distressing that I haven't done in a long time as well. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I always have a good time in that program. :) Now that Chris is doing a lot of photography, I've been thinking about investing in Adobe Lightroom as well. There's a lot of things I've been wanting to try in there that you *can* do in Photoshop but are given pre-sets in Lightroom so it's that much easier. It could be exciting!

Where have all the bras gone?

Okay, what is WITH the whole no-bra trend as of late?? There is a plague of girls and women alike roaming the streets with no bra on. Usually just a white tank-top or t-shirt and nothing underneath. Not so flattering. I could almost understand if they had undergone a recent breast augmentation and wanted to show off their new body. (Hey, those things are EXPENSIVE!) But these are usually just typical A/B-cup girls (often with a bad case of cone-boob) swinging to and fro like there's no tomorrow. Really??

Okay, okay, I admit that I actually do get it. You want attention. You think the guys are gonna be drool because you don't wear a bra. I have to break two things to you; 1. they don't want to take you home to momma, they want to take you home to bed. If that's what all you're interested in fair enough, that's definitely your prerogative. I wouldn't have thought wearing a bra would stop a man from taking you to bed...but I digress. The second thing I think you should know is that running around without underwear on isn't exactly commanding respect from anyone, male or female. You're degrading yourself to a piece of meat and it's neither cute nor classy. Men will picture you naked even if you're wearing a push-up and a turtle-neck, why not leave a little something up to the imagination??



Put a bra on for crying out loud, your boobs will thank you in 20 years.

Toe Stepping

I'm not the argumentative monster I was as a teenager...yet I still feel like I've been stepping on a lot of toes lately. I have a very matter-of-fact attitude towards life and conversation, I'm admittedly opinionated and am less than shy when it comes to giving one, an opinion that is. I've been accused of having chronic verbal-diarrhea, no filter between my brain and mouth and of not thinking before I speak. Perhaps all of the above is true...I really think it might have something more to do with the fact that I am just about as extroverted as possible in a human and so it feels natural to me to verbalize most things as I think them. Not every thing as I think it (what a scary world that would be!) But I am often guilty of saying anything and everything that I deem safe and harmless without considering what I find inoffensive might actually be offensive to someone else. I would NEVER intentionally be rude or hurtful (except in cases where I feel someone else is being rude or hurtful and I deem it necessary for them to swallow a taste of their own medicine.)

What’s worse is that Australians are, on average, more passive than Americans. So if I step on someone’s toes here, rather than them just calling B.S. they will make an ever so subtly passive aggressive comment and laugh at the end of it as if something’s funny. I stand there confused….are they trying to be funny or are they trying to say something else?? I want to ask “is there something you aren’t saying?” But then, if they really were only making an attempt at humor, I’d only make things awkward for both of us instead of just for me. But half the time I think that I really, truly, possibly could have offended a friend or acquaintance and they are just too passive to spit it out and say so. I want to apologize but don’t know if there’s anything to apologize for. Asking if I was rude would only be insensitive as my faux pas would seem bleedingly obvious to them and asking about it would either make me extremely ignorant or even ruder than they’d previously thought.

"Foot-in-Mouth"

Truthfully, I am extremely ignorant in these cases. Especially any time I make a comparison between America and Australia in front of Australians, and some Aussies get REALLY defensive. I only compare because I find it interesting, not because I’m trying to explain why America’s better than Australia. There are heaps of things that Australia is better at than Americans and vice versa, I’m not trying to start an argument when I say those things. Sometimes I feel like putting my hands in the air and just letting everyone else do all the talking. This could prove to make me a much more likeable and less controversial person overall don’t you think? It’s probably annoying for some people to hear me comparing all the time anyways….but that’s what’s going on in my head. It’s a coping mechanism of sorts; cataloging the differences so I might better understand them. It helps me to learn about myself and learn about Australians. I’m going to try to keep my mouth shut from now on. I’m tired of feeling embarrassed or looking back on a conversation and cringing because I said the wrong thing. I could be like Other Wybie from Coraline, you know the one that doesn't talk? Ha!

It honestly feels like the first day of high school every day. You know when you walk through the doors and are floored by the hugeness of it all and are searching the thousands of faces for one that your recognize? And then you spend the whole of your freshman year jumping from group to group trying to find where you belong, that if you say the right things they’ll give you their phone number and we’ll all go to the movies Saturday night. Only it’s worse because I feel like I’m the only freshman in a school of juniors and seniors, where everyone’s older than me and knows more and has done it before. Where everyone has their friends and their routines and doesn’t really need or have time for another face. It’s exhausting. Where do I fit in? I feel a bit lost. Maybe I try too hard. I want to belong.

Lose Weight!

http://plussize2dreamsize.blogspot.com

I'm getting pretty active in my goal to lose weight and get healthy. It's going to become a BIG part of my life so, if you don't find me posting as often in this blog here, there might be something new going on in my weight loss blog that's consuming my attention or thoughts. Just a heads up if you didn't know about it. :)

From another blogger's recent post. I'm a real sucker for these things. hahaha

1. How often do you wash/change your sheets?
Almost never. (judge me if you must :P) I don't think about it. They have to actually start looking dirty before I think "Oh yes, the sheets." Since we don't have a drier, washing the sheets means we go without them for a couple days. What's that you say? Buy another set of sheets for washing day? Scandalous. ;)

2. When is your birthday?
February 9, 1987

3. Have you ever met a bloggy friend in real life?
Assuming that I hadn't met a blog friend prior to writing our blogs? No. I'm not at all opposed to it though. I met my husband online and several other friends as well. They're just people!

4. Brad Pitt or George Clooney?
Neither. Too O.L.D. for my taste at 23.

5. If you could change one thing about your body what would it be?
My weight. It's getting really unhealthy, like REALLY unhealthy. I plan to change that myself though...as far as things I can't change that I wish I could? My shoe size. I wear a size 12. I don't want to hear any "Oh I know what you mean, I wear a size 10 and can never find shoes!" Really? Yeah. At least they MAKE shoes in your size. I don't even have Payless anymore....anyone want to send me some cute pumps?? hahaha

6. How often do you wash your hair?
Maybe once or twice a week. If it starts getting too greasy I'll rinse with some water, but I pay too much money for my color to wash it down the drain. lol

7. Do you have pets?
2 cats, Ender and Bean. Ender is a Maine Coon and lives in Texas with my parents now. Bean is a black domestic shorthair and lives with us here in Queensland.

8. How many social networks do you belong to..if you had to give up one, what would it be?
I have accounts set up on Blogger,Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Xanga, and Live Journal. I haven't been on Live Journal since maybe 2004 and the Xanga wave gave way to the Myspace Wave so I'd completely abandoned my Xanga by mid 2006 when Myspace added a blog function. Then the Facebook wave came when they opened it to anyone instead of just college students and I abandoned my Myspace by late 2008. Twitter came around and I checked it out but still don't really understand the point...and then I joined Blogger to keep in touch with my fam and friends when I moved. So...even though I haven't been on some of those for years, a lot of them are like a catalog of memories; old messages sent, old journal entries made and so on. I don't really use Twitter at all so I'd have no scruples deleting it even though some of those sites I haven't been to in years.


So, did you learn anything? ;)

The Time Traveler's Wife

I think I should reverse my technique of always reading the book before the movie....reading the book before hand usually leaves me disappointed about the movie. Now that I've read the book following the movie for the first time, not only was I so excited to read the book, I am BLOWN AWAY by the book itself. The Time Traveler's Wife book is only about 1 million times better than the movie. I thought the movie was great....but now I think, if I was the author, I'd be insulted by the movie. The book has so much more depth and color and, though a bit darker than the movie, is also much more intelligent. Wow.

I love time travel books. I think if I ever wrote a fiction novel, I'd want it to be about time travel. The idea just fascinates me. The rules in this book are a bit different than in others I've read in that there's a complete absence of the whole Butterfly Effect panic associated with meeting your former self in the past or your self-to-be in the future. It runs with the idea that everything only ever happens one way and so everything is the way it is. You can't change anything. It's kind of a pre-destination sort of thing that doesn't entirely make sense to me. Because they say, in the book, that you still have the freedom to make choices, but you will only make a choice once. For instance, you choose to read this blog. The idea is that, no matter how many times you come back in time to try to stop yourself, your future self would be blocked from doing anything to keep you from reading this blog. You've made the choice to read it, and so that's the way it will happen every time. Any person from the future is incapable of intervening. It's like instead of the analogy where the whole of time is like an infinite piece of string, the past, present, and future all exist at once. Your present is the past of your future self and your future is the past of an even later future self.....so even if a past you goes forward in time to intervene with something, in their mind, that hasn't happened yet, it HAS happened to an even furthur future self so say, if someone was meant to die and you were trying to prevent it, no matter what direction you come from to try to stop it, past or future, it will happen when it's supposed to happen the exact way it was meant to happen and you'd find yourself incapable of intervening in any way because things are what they are.....

Very very lengthy explanation, but I thought it was interesting enough to share. I love speculative/science fiction and really encourage everyone to read this book. ha.

RE: "Grocery Store Glamour?"

A response to my good friend's recent entry.

I'm a victim of What Not to Wear in that I am VERY aware of how I look at all times these days even if I wouldn't have been in the past. While college might be a bit early to be worrying about these kinds of things, ANYONE (not just women) should seriously consider their appearance before going anywhere, even the grocery store. Unfortunately (and since we don't live in a society of blind people) you WILL be judged you based on how you look, like it or not. You can stand there indignantly in the middle of the produce section in your sweatpants and XL jersey shirt, but people will judge you all the same. Maybe less so than they would have 60 years ago and perhaps more than they would 60 years from now but fashion is always going to matter. In men and in women. Either you can conform to social norms (i.e. look presentable all the time) or act out against them (i.e. wear your running shoes when you're not running) people are going to judge you either way and you will change absolutely nothing either way....just sayin. At the end of the day, it doesn't take ANY more time to throw on a pair of jeans and a cute top with a pair of sparkley flats than it does to throw on your sweats and tennishoes (maybe less without all that lacing of the shoes and the whole socks thing.) So what's the big deal? Make an effort. When you run into your boss in the bakery, you might be glad you did.