Monthly Update #5: May

How is it June already?!

May has been a really busy, but also really fun month :)

It started with a trip down to Adelaide for a conference for work.

Conference aside, I have to say - I freaking love Adelaide!  It is just so pretty, and quiet.  So much slower, and friendly than Sydney :)

The conference was great, as always - one of my favourite speakers was Andy Dexterity, who opened the second day with a performance of Bohemian Rhapsody, in sign language.  It was seriously amazing - you will never hear the song the same way again.

You can see this here.

The following weekend, Mack and I then headed up to the farm with a few friends.  Pretty much to just escape the city for a night - it was so lovely.  Having a fire (despite the rain) and hanging out without anyone being able to be distracted by their phone is amazing.

On the Saturday, we went 4 wheel driving (just a little bit), and Mack, Mickey & Em went kayaking, whilst Rachel, Grant and I went for a little bush walk.

It is also that time of year again... the Vivid festival is on!  It's no secret that it is my favourite festival of the year.   It kicked off on the 25th May, and runs for just over 3 weeks - I am volunteering again, because it was super fun last year.  I definitely try and get around to as many as the areas as I can (on a quiet week day when there are less crowds haha).

Here is what I have seen so far...

And that is all of the highlights - the rest of the busy days came from planning planning planning for our Tassie trip - not long now!

Until next month.
Hx

Monthly Update #3: March

I really cannot believe how fast this year is going!  How is it April already!?

I have had a rather quiet month, by my standards.  The first week or so was used to relax and sleep and just decompress from the crazy that was Psyfari!

The second weekend, I had a Melbourne adventure with Tara (and Tim).  My flight landed in the afternoon (yes I did fly, for once!), and we begun the trip by going shopping.  Didn't end up buying anything, but never mind.  We then headed to Supernormal for dinner.

I had never heard of this place, but my goodness!  It takes a lot to really impress me in a restaurant (thanks to a decade of hospitality life haha), and this one just exceeded all of my expectations.  Service was sensational (you wouldn't get better service in a hatted restaurant), and the food was incredible!  You can find them here - if you are ever in Melbourne, go check it out!

We then were really full, so to make room for dessert, we went for a walk around the park nearby.  Once it started getting dark, we went to Storyville - a delightfully themed book bar on a little side street.  The decor is so amazing in here, and their drinks are book themed.  I had the polyjuice potion :)

We had a reservation for dessert at 10pm, so we headed over to Om Noms for a late night dessert and cocktail feast.  If exquisite desserts and cocktails that are smoking with liquid nitrogen is your thing, then this is definitely the place for you :).

I feel like this monthly update has turned into a recommendation list for restaurants and bars in Melbourne!!

The following night, Tara and I headed to see Ed Sheeran!  We were in the standing section, so we arrived pretty early and waited for a couple of hours for the show to get going.  His support bands were Bliss N Eso and Missy Higgins, which was so great - 2 artists I probably wouldn't have bought tickets to go and see, but definitely enjoy their music, so it was cool to see them live.  Ed then played an amazing set!  Even though I have seen him before, I still think it's insane (and seriously impressive) that one human can keep a stadium that huge entertained on his own :).

I headed back on the early morning flight, straight to work.... but managed to miss my flight for the first time ever, so I was a little late!  Note to self - be earlier to the airport on a commuter flight!!

Other than cleaning the house and getting back into some sort of routine, the majority of the month continued to be pretty quiet.

I was involved in planning an event at Luna Park in late March, which was really fun!  I had never been to Luna Park so that was a bit exciting :).  The event was for work and SUVA - I won't go into  detail on a lifestyle blog about work, but if events and finding unique venues is something you are interested in, head here.

The last weekend in March was then my cooking weekend with Tara.  This particular weekend is getting a whole series on its own it was so massive!  We managed to make 12 weeks worth of food in about a day and a half.  The first in this series can be found here, and if you're into meal prepping, or are looking to start a meal prep routine, then this is for you.  To be honest, this weekend was more like Meal Prep: Extreme Edition, but if you would like advice on how to get started on meal prepping like a normal person, then follow the series, and feel free to comment/message with questions!

And that's it.  Thank you for being a bit calmer, March - it's been nice!

See you next month :)
Hx

Monthly Update #2: February.

What. A. Month.

Seriously.

Not only did it speed by, and I can't believe it's March already.

But SO many things happened in such a short space of time!

The first half of February, very few things happened really.

Dancing started back up again (ballroom and Latin dancing).  We also spent a whole lot of time at home prepping for Psyfari Festival.

From the 16th February onwards, that's where all of the things happened!

We built a festival, for one thing.  All of our hard work prepping paid off, and we spent many a day and night bumping in all of the things we had designed and made.

photo credit: http://gusarmstrong.com/

I think this part deserves a whole blog on its own, but until I get there, here is a quick summary...

It was so hot and so dusty for most of the week,  We met lots of new people, became a solid part of the noisy chicken crew, developed great friendships with people I didn't know very well before.

We didn't sleep very much, and everyone got super stressed and tired and cranky.  But we built a festival, from the ground up, and that is one hell of  an achievement for such a fabulous group of people.

The weekend then went fairly well, even with the huge storm and the insane amount of rain!!  What was a super dusty site became one giant mud pit!

Dancing to Da Heebie Jeebies is always a massive highlight, and was a great way to round out the already amazing weekend :)

Two non-Psyfari related life things also happened.

1. I got older!
I spent my birthday that week building all of the things, staying up so late to get the site ready on time for the gate to open the next day.  Not necessarily the most chilled birthday, but it was a whole lot of fun and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

2. We got engaged!
Mack and I were admiring our chicken archway with all of the lights on at 3am at the end of my birthday.  And then he pulled out a ring.  I don't think I could have asked for a more perfect proposal <3.  On the site of Psyfari, in the middle of nowhere, with noone around.  It is where we met all those years ago, and now where we decided to take that next step in our lives.

And that's it!

Thank you February - it has been truly insane, and truly amazing :)

Until next month.
Hx

Monthly Update #1: January

Another new series here we go.

2018 has gotten off to a seriously busy start - I really cannot believe that it is February already!!

We welcomed in the new year in Victoria, at a music festival with a group of friends.  The whole festival was small (ish) and intimate, and just generally had lots of happy vibes.  We (Mack and I) taught a dragonstaff workshop there, which was a lot of fun.  The whole weekend was really hot (I got so sunburnt), but I had a really beautiful time with a lot of really beautiful people.

We arrived home after the festival, looking forward to a super chilled out and quiet January... only to receive a call from a friend asking us to work at their festival working on the site decor.  There will be a blog on this after the event so I won't say much on that now, but it meant that January turned into a crazy month!!

That weekend after new year, we headed up to Capertee Valley to do a bit of recon for the festival.  It has to be the hottest weekend ever!!!  We spent the afternoon in the pool on the property, and successfully organised everything in between trying to cool down.  By the time we got back home that Sunday, our house was pushing 50 degrees - insane.

In between all of the crafting and building we now have to do, I found time to attend a really gorgeous backyard wedding in the Blue Mountains.  Congratulations Jess and Josh :)

The sign I made for the happy couple.

The Australia Day long weekend saw us heading down to Melbourne again, this time to see Brain Candy Live.  What an amazing show that was.  Adam Savage (Mythbusters) teamed up with Michael Stevens (v sauce), with front row seats.  Really educational, really funny and such a great experience.  We met them both after the show, and they are both just so smart and funny.  It would be great to be able to sit down with them and just talk about random things - I imagine they are very very similar to Mack!

Our roadtrip home from Melbourne (yes we chose to drive... again... there will be a number of blogs on this in the coming months!) was just beautiful.  We selected the back roads, and adventured back to the border the long way.  Totally worth the time it took - the highway for 8 hours is just so boring.

We began in a whisky bar we found just outside a town called Yea.

We found a spectacular lookout point, on a random side road we decided to take a detour down.

Met the world's smallest puppy, that was so young it didn't even have a name yet.

Realised that we had taken probably the most gorgeous, but also the longest possible route back to Sydney, and headed out onto the highway to finish the second half more quickly!

I then rounded out the weekend, with a Foo Fighters concert with my dad and sister!  I have never seen them before, and they are just incredible!

And that's it!  One crazy start to the year.  Super great though, with lots of exciting things to come.

See you next month for the February update.
Hx

Reflections?

For the second year in a row, Mack and I are heading on a roadtrip over Christmas and New Year, so I am rounding out the year with a final blog post before we go.  This trip is not such a huge trip this time, but I think it's going to be great!  There will certainly be no breaking down in Broken Hill or changing the car radiator on the side of the road of Boxing Day, which is definitely not a bad thing - that is a long story for another time :)

As I do every year, I grabbed my goals I made at the start of the year, and went through the goals I achieved, the goals I didn't, and the ones I forgot about completely.  I set 18 goals for 2017, and I managed to achieve 10 of them, which I am pretty proud of!

Most of them were small things, like visit my best friend's new house in Melbourne, and go camping, and see Green Day live with my dad.  Some were slightly bigger, like pay off my credit card debt (which is a fabulous feeling by the way).

Goals I didn't manage to achieve include blog fortnightly (clearly didn't manage this), hoop/spin more (that just didn't happen) and read 1 book per month (I did manage 8!).

After going through the goals for 2017, I also then wrote down the things I did achieve that I hadn't even imagined for this year.

2017, I have found, has either been an amazing year for some people, or a really awful year.  For me, I have to say it has been wonderful.  I have been the busiest I have ever been, and certainly the happiest as well.   There are so many highlights (and of course some lowlights... but I am that annoying person that manages to find the silver lining and create a positive experience).

We made it to Uluru for real (only we could manage to get rain in a desert for 2 weeks... but we saw waterfalls on the rock, which was amazing).
I checked Tetsuya's and Vue de Monde off my restaurant bucket list.
I volunteered at Vivid Sydney for the first time.
I kept up the meal prep system I have going.
My best friend got married (which really wasn't on the cards)
I fell head over heels in love with yoga (and had the honour of practicing with Patrick Beach, who is an amazing Yogi).
I had an amazing whirlwind trip to the UK (not for great reasons, but it was a lot of fun).

There are so many more, but I don't need to bore you with them all.

The final step is, of course, to set the new goals for 2018.  There are 18 of them again for next year, and they are already tucked away, waiting for another 365 days to go by so I can see how much I achieved and how much I have changed in 2018.  This is a tradition I accidentally started without thinking about it back in 2012, and I really do love it.

Christmas this year is going to be spent at a hotel in Bowral; we've never done a hotel Christmas before, so that will be interesting, but I'm excited.  We are then camping from Christmas Day onwards until the 3rd January, in Victoria, which is going to be so much fun.

I love welcoming in the new year in the bush, away from civilisation with a close group of friends.  So special.  I can't wait.

Whatever you are doing over the holiday period - ENJOY!
Have the best time, relax and recharge, and get inspired and get ready for 2018 - it is going to be even more amazing than 2017!

See you on the other side.
Hx