Reading... Retro style!

If like me you follow this lovely blog, you might be currently reading a particular children's classic, 'James and the Giant Peach'.

Some of you might be wondering, why would you want to read a kids book. Well I say, why not! If you were an avid reader as a little one (as I was) you'll remember long afternoons spent cuddled up with your favorite book and falling asleep at night time with your book flopping across your little face as you literally couldn't keep your eyes open any more! Many a night my Dad had to come into my room, put away my book and switch off my light for me, as I had fallen asleep mid sentence! I confess that I still do that sometimes now... just one more page... Zzzz.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. I'm reading 'James and the Giant Peach' as part of the Meet Me at Mike's Retro Readers book club, and I'm remembering just how ace kids books are and in particular how fantastic Roald Dahl is. James wasn't my childhood favorite though, this honor would have to go to 'Matilda' or the 'BFG' and don't get me started on Enid Blyton... The hours I spent reading her novels are too many to count!

So if you loved reading as a little tike jump on board and get reading with me, retro style!

Check your letterbox!

I posted a few weeks ago about letters, or more specifically, hand written letters and how much pleasure you can receive from sending and receiving letters.

I'm pleased to report that I have since written five letters to friends and family. I've also received one letter back! I was so thrilled to open this beautiful letter, where one of my dear friends explained how my post had reminded her how much she used to love writing and receiving letters.  After reading her awesome letter, of course I sat down and wrote her back! I think this might mean that we're pen-pals now!

The last time I had a pen-pal was in Primary school. I think that the girls name was Caroline and she was from the U.K. I have no memory of how we came to be pen-pals, but it must have been arranged through my school. We wrote each other a number of letters back and forth and I remember that I used those funny blue aerogrammes, how retro! Imagine telling my future children about that one day! Mummy used to have to write a letter on funny blue paper which folded up into an envelope, as this was the best way to write to someone in another country. I'm sure I'll be asked why I didn't just Skype, email or Facebook them. How much communication has changed in the few years between my childhood and adulthood.

I still have more letters to write and I still want to encourage you to write a letter to someone special in your life. Don't worry if you don't have pretty paper (although you can pick some of that up at Kikki K!), just grab a page out of your notebook and write a special hello to that special person.

The only catch is having to trot down to the post office for stamps!

Feisty Jane

Jane Eyre was one of my first literary loves. The character of Jane resonated strongly with me, I admired her and wanted to be like her; she's strong willed, independent of thought and determined not to be looked down upon because of her gender, her position or her lack of money or status. To put it simply; she kicks butt.

I saw the recent adaptation of Jane Eyre last weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Mia Wasikowska gave a beautiful performance as Jane and I was pleased to see that Mr Rochester was just as handsome as he needed to be! I always thought that he should be handsome in a strangely compelling way; not traditionally handsome, or 'hunky' but oddly handsome and you should feel drawn to him. Michael Fassbender was a perfect Rochester in my eyes.


Jane and Rochester

In closing, if you haven't read Jane Eyre before, you really have to. It's a novel before it's time. I also highly recommend this film adaptation; it's probably not showing for much longer, so get down to your local cinema and grab your ticket!

Big wool!

Check out the size of my new yarn! No wonder it's called, Big Wool! I was sucked into buying this yarn and knitting a last minute winter garment for myself (seeing as I didn't finish my blue jumper this season, it's been put aside for completion next year!)

I've also started a blanket, for a new little baby who was born on Census night. The body of the blanket is in moss stitch and there's going to be a special lace style border, that will be a bit more challenging to knit. The moss stitch is getting a little tiresome, but at least it's something easy to work on while watching something nice on TV (like 2 episodes of Mad Men Season 4 on Sunday afternoon!)



Now it's hard to choose which one of these new projects I should be working on right now!

Challenge finished!

8 weeks ago I started the 'Happy Heart, Healthy Me' challenge at Curves.  My goal was to lose a few centimetres from my waist to make sure that I'm not at risk of developing heart disease. If a woman's waist measurement is 80 centimetres or more, then she's at risk. Scary, huh?

The 8 weeks finished on the weekend and I'm very pleased to report that I lost 6 centimetres! Woo hoo!

Completing the weekly activities and committing to at least 3 workouts every week really helped me keep the focus on my health over the colder months. Now it's time for some new goals just in time for a new season.

Change is in the air

If you've been reading along, you'll know that I've had two great experiences lately. The first was attending the '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' seminar. The second was reading, 'The Happiness Project'. Both of these experiences resonated very strongly with me and have resulted in some big shifts in my thinking and doing.

As a result, I'm making a few changes.

There are a few little things; like no TV nights, writing a daily one sentence gratitude journal (sounds a bit 'Oprah', but is helping me focus on all the great things I have to be thankful for) and taking time out for fun.

And there are a few bigger things; like creating my personal commandments (or personal mission statement as Mr Covey refers to), goal setting, committing to an exercise routine and making sure I stick to my new weekly and daily planning routine.

So far so good, but feel free to drop me a line and make sure I'm sticking with my changes!

Winter into Spring

I finally finished this man's snood that I was planning to send to Jock Palfreeman, but bad news... I just checked the details for postage and there have been changes to what he is allowed to receive in prison.

I'll contact the administrators of his appeal group and hopefully I can still get this snood to him.

I'm really pleased with the finished product; it even looks good dangling in my tree, imagine how much better it will look on!

It certainly is pretty dreary outside at the moment, but I'm sure that I can feel Spring in the air.  While outside taking these photos the sight of my daffodils certainly lightened up the drab front yard. I love that daffodils make the effort to get you through these last few weeks of a long winter and it's not long to go now, we officially have 2 weeks of winter left and until Spring springs into action.

Keep warm and enjoy the last days of hot chocolates and snuggling in front of the heater.

C-Day

It's Census night in Australia and I'm about to complete my form online (technology = awesome).

I was chatting with a girlfriend on the weekend about completing our Census list of questions.  In particular, we chatted about the heritage questions.  We were wondering which ancestry options to choose; the questionnaire asks you to select 2 ancestries which you most closely identify with.  Interestingly, one of the options is 'Australian'; that's not something that we normally have the option to select, it's always whether your English, Scottish, Irish, Italian, Greek, Chinese etc. This led us to question how and why people would select 'Australian' as their ancestry. What's the cut off point? Maybe if your grandparents were born here you can say that your ancestry is Australian. Or is it your parents? Or do you need to be a 5th generation Australian?

At the end of the day, unless you're an Aboriginal Australian, we all came from somewhere else, but I'm wondering when we get to start identifying ourselves as just Aussies and not as people from somewhere else. As someone whose family has been here for a number of generations, I most definitely identify myself as being Australian and I have no clear connection to any of my other ancestries; although it's clear that these blood lines have shaped some of the cultures and traditions in my family.

Nationality and cultural identity are always hotly debated topics in this country and I look forward to the day when we can just think of ourselves as Australians. With this option on the Census form this time around, maybe we're getting a step closer after all.

Curvy

It's the end of month 4 for me and my new relationship with Curves and we're still going strong.

I wasn't that confident when I put myself forward to complete the monthly weigh and measure (dread...); but it wasn't a bad result at all.

There's now 31cm less of me than there was 4 months ago and I'm feeling SO good about it!

For the month of August, I'm going to up the workouts to 4 per week and am hoping to say goodbye to a few more centimetres.

Watch out for another update in 4 weeks time...

Letters

When was the last time that you received a hand written letter? Was it back in primary school when you had a pen pal, or does your Grandma send you a letter for your birthday each year (along with a $5 note!)...

Personally, I can't remember the last time I received a letter, let alone wrote one, which makes me a bit sad. It's so lovely to check the letterbox and see a handwritten envelope amongst the bills and other boring bits and pieces that we receive. With my recently rediscovered interest in writing, I'm thinking that writing letters will give me another way to indulge in some creativity and also to let my friends and family know that I care enough to take the time to put pen to paper.

I've loaded myself up with some funky paper, envelopes and a pen (surely that's another bonus... stationary shopping!) and I'm looking forward to writing a few letters this weekend. If you're lucky, one might make it's way into your letterbox; and if that happens, I dare you to return the favor!