#photoadaymay update

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#grass
Yup. That’s pretty much just some grass.
#love
It’s been really cold this week. As a result, I have reignited my love affair with my ugg boots. They’re so comfortable. They’re so fluffy. They’re pretty much amazing. You have no idea how upset I get when I have to leave the house and put normal shoes on for the day.

#whatyourereading
I am very, very slowly reading Charlotte Gray. And by very slowly, I mean I’ve read one chapter. In three weeks.

#snack
A chai latte at Jam cafe! I actually cheated and took this the day after I was meant to. It was stupid as well because I had the perfect opportunity for a snack photo on the proper day – a bunch of us were working late in the uni news room and we had some chocolate digestives which are my favourite thing in the world. They would have made a stunning snack photo. Except because I’m an idiot and I hadn’t consulted the list that day yet (despite it being 10pm) I forgot to take a photo. How dumb is that? But chai lattes at Jam are pretty awesome too. So I took a photo of one.

#somethingyoumade
My scarrrrrf!! It’s taking longer than expected but it’s getting there. This is a photo of it all rolled up in my knitting suitcase. It’s such a champ.
#afavouriteplace
Little and Friday! So fab. We went there yesterday. It was swell. It always is.

#somethingyoucantlivewithout
Water. How creative am I? As you can see, I decided to take today’s photo challenge very literally.
And that’s all folks! I’m aiming for 7/7 again this week so wish me luck! I hope you all have a wonderful week this week and I promise I will blog again before it’s time to do another Sunday review. Stay well! Eat lots of oranges! And if in doubt about anything, anything at all, have a spoonful of honey. It’ll definitely help.

The Sunday Review: Stuff that happened to me this week ordered from most to least cool

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One I started the week off with that not-so-nice feeling of “Wow. I have a lot to do this week. And wow, I don’t have much time to do it.” But guess what?! I got it ALL done. All of it. How’s that for encouragement at the start of a week in which I’m facing a completely identical situation?
Two Went to the Degas to Deli exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. T’was most enjoyable.
Three Caught up with lots of people that I haven’t seen in AGES this week. Lots of laughing and reminiscing was done. And that’s always a good time.
Four Saw The Dictator. Omg. My stomach still hurts from the laughing. So inappropriate on so many levels, but my god. So funny.
Five Seven out of seven #photoadaymays!! (Once I post today’s one.)
Six I saw a rainbow. I saw it from the newsroom at uni that I spend 99% of my time in. Then I instagrammed it. (See picture.)
Seven Have you ever walked through a completely packed underground carpark (i.e. the Civic carpark in the CBD) when there has not been a SINGLE engine running and not a SINGLE person talking/walking/doing anything? Well as of Saturday, I have. Creepiest thing of my life. It was the middle of the day, the car park was full of cars and it was dead silent apart from my footsteps and my mum and sister’s footsteps and all our voices proclaiming how fricken scary it was. It felt like there had been an apocalypse or something. Luckily there hadn’t been.
Eight One of my nails has cracked and is starting to peel away. Before this happened, it was the longest and prettiest nail I had. Now it’s breaking and I don’t know what to do.
Nine That new thing on facebook where it tells you whether the other person has seen your private message. NO. Not okay.
Ten The fact that I didn’t blog at all this week. I’m sorry.
Eleven This coming week and how ridiculously much I have to do. I don’t anticipate it’s going to be very fun, but I DO anticipate I will be a much better blogger. And that’s an achievement… right?

#photoadaymay update

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I know, I know, I missed two days this week. I’m sorry. I’ll be much better next week. Promise.

#someonethatinspiresyou
The person that invented these. Feijoa macaroons. What a genius. I ate this at Smith and Caugheys and wow. So good. So good that I blogged about it.

#smellyouadore
Chanel Chance! My very first proper perfume that I ever owned. I got it in Christmas 2008. I tried a few different ones since then, but came back to this one when I needed to buy a new one this year.

#somethingyoudoeveryday
I rejoice, like actually rejoice, when I get to go to bed these days. Too many late nights in recent times.

#somethingthatmakesyouhappy
MY UKULELE!! Man oh man. This hasn’t gotten old yet. Not by a long shot. Still as fun today as it was when I first got it. 

#mum
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY MUM. My sister made tiramisu. Because it was mother’s day. Weeee =)

HAVE A GOOD WEEK ALL. And get excited because I’m going to be SO COMMITTED to being a good photographer this week. So committed. You just wait and see. xx

The Sunday Review: Stuff that happened to me this week ordered from most to least cool

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  1. Coldplay. New Zealand. November 2012. I will be there and I will probably be passing out because I’ll be overcome with euphoria.
  2. Black Keys. New Zealand. November 2012.  Same sort of reasons apply.
  3. I went to Mexican Café with some of my lovely friends and it was super fun (and yummy.) This would have been number 1 on the list but one friend couldn’t come so that made it a little less perfect.
  4. I had tiramisu for dinner tonight.
  5. All the leaves on and off the trees look so nice in their autumyness (see picture above. I took that. And guess what I used to take it?…
  6. I finally got instagram! (and that’s what I used for number 5 btw just in case that wasn’t clear). So that means I’m going to be so, so, so on track with #photoadaymay from now on. You just wait. It’s going to be off the chain.
  7. Guess how many followers I have on instagram? I have one follower. As in one. As in one more than zero. ONE.
  8. Number 1 and 2 on this list, as amazing as they both are, are going to cost me a bomb. An absolute bomb. Oh well. YOLO!
  9.  I just said YOLO.
  10. The fact that the phrase ‘You Only Live Once’ has been turned into an annoying internet-acronym-fad. “You only live once” used to be the phrase I employed when I needed to justify ANYTHING to myself. And now every time I say it I feel like I’m just copying a trend or something. It’s kind of like how every time I say “next minute” I feel like I’m saying it wrong and I should really be saying “nek minnit”. Ugh. Stupid social media and its effects on the English language.
  11. I missed some #photoadaymays this week.
  12. Our TV is still doing that annoying thing where it randomly won’t turn on. Sometimes it does and then other times it’s just like “naaa.” It’s like it’s going on strike. Or trying to ration how much TV we’re watching or something. The robot revolution is approaching my friends, and our protesting TV is the first rebel.
  13.  I have about 20,000 assignments due this week. And that’s not an exaggeration.

Anyway, stay tuned for my #photoadaymay update folks! I know you’re all waiting with baited breath.  I hope you had a wonderful week and an even better one this week. And happy mother’s day!

Love Rachel x

Hummingbird Cake!

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Hello friends! Hope you’re all having a lovely week and are managing to avoid the rain as best you can.

Guess what? On Friday it was my parents’ wedding anniversary. 28 years. Holy moly.
I thought such a momentous occasion deserved a truly momentous cake to match, so I spent Friday afternoon hunting down cake recipes, shopping for ingredients, yelling at my sister for eating the eggs I had intended to use and sending her down to the supermarket to buy more.  Continue reading →

5 amazing things you can do with feijoas

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(Weird fact: Microsoft word doesn’t know how to spell feijoa)

Hi my name’s Rachel and I’m a feijoaholic.

I’m not kidding either. It’s a little bit crazy. You do not want to see the amount of feijoa carcasses spread around the kitchen right now. I’ve eaten so many feijoas over the past few days that I’m honestly getting slightly concerned for my health. I have feijoas for breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and then I have a huge pre-dinner gorge as well. I don’t have them for actual dinner (that would be kind of weird) but I do sometimes have them for dessert. Continue reading →

Stuff that happened to me this week ordered from most to least cool

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One The weather. The weather. The  weather. Oh my god. The weather. (See above for proof of how completely amazing the weather was.)
Two Feijoas. Feijoas. Feijoas.
Three I had my first hot water bottle of the season! T’was stupendous.
Four My scarf progressed wonderfully ( so wonderfully that my next scarf update will be the completed project aaaah omg how are you possibly going to contain yourselves?!)
Five I made a hummingbird cake  and it was quite charming (I’ll be posting it on here probably tomorrow)
Six Did 6/6 #photoadaymays this week! (Stay tuned for a separate post about that)
Seven I just made myself a cup of tea and completely forgot about it so now it’s gone cold.
Eight Last night I sat down to watch An Education and our TV inexplicably wouldn’t turn on. The little red light was on and the remotes were full of battery and all the chords were plugged in but it just refused to work. We spent an hour googling things and switching around chords and pressing the ‘on’ switch just that much harder in our attempts to fix it but it was all to no avail. Then at some ungodly hour this morning my dad got up to watch the FA Cup final and it just magically turned on as if nothing had even happened. Clearly it wasn’t in my destiny to watch An Education last night.
Nine I have a shorthand mock test tomorrow. Cry cry cry cry cry. I hate mock tests. They’re the most stupid, annoying, dumb invention ever. How the am I ever supposed to motivate myself to study for a mock test? I have enough trouble summoning the willpower to study for a real test.
Ten So. Much. To. Do.
So. Little. Willpower.

Here we go again…

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New month, new start. Yes, once again (despite half-failing at #photoadayapril) I am attempting to take one photo every day that corresponds with FatMumSlims’s super cool #photoadaymay list. Why would I attempt this again after failing so badly last time? Because it’s fun to take photos. Also, I like the way the the challenge makes you look closer at the objects you encounter throughout your day to day activities. With a key phrase in mind, i.e. ‘peace’ for tomorrow, I’ll be seeking out peaceful objects and places that I wouldn’t normally seek out, or I’ll be recognising the peacefulness of things I encounter every day but never really acknowledge.

However, I’ll say right now that I don’t expect to be able to take a photo every day. I’m aiming for 20/31 days. Yes, I know that doesn’t sound like I’m aiming very high. But you know what? Sometimes it’s good to keep your expectations low. Despite what S-Club 7 would have you believe.

So, just like last time I’ll be posting my photos on twitter and then hopefully on here at the end of the week. Oh and no I won’t be using Instagram like I alluded to yesterday because stupid Vodafone won’t let me change to that $25 plan until I’ve finished my dumb old TXT5000! So it’ll just be twitter for now, but I might start going on Instagram on the 11th of May (that’s when my plan expires.)

Anyway, hope you had a fantastic start to the week! Oh and in exciting news, I’m going to bed at a record time of 10.19 tonight. I haven’t gone to bed this early in yonks.

Goodnight! Rachel x

Stuff that happened to me this week ordered from most to least cool

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  1. I discovered Texts from Dog. It’s a tumblr by this person who, while they’re out during the day, chronicles the texts their bulldog sends them while he’s stuck at home. You really need to have a look.
  2. I finished my Media Comm essay. It was a complete nightmare (see below), but it was finished on time. And nothing rivals the feeling of dropping a completed assignment into the assignment box and knowing you never have to look at it again. Ever. Except when you get it handed back to you. But by that point I’ve blocked any assignment-associated memories from my mind and it’s all a bit less painful than before.
  3. Oh this next one actually happened last week but I forgot to tell you about it– I entered the Auckland Half Marathon again! This is really exciting but only gets to go at number four because it came at a cost of $106. Ouch. But worth it (kind of. Try telling me that at kilometre 18 and see what kind of reaction you get.)
  4. My media comm essay that I referred to at no. 2 – the only reason that finishing it ranked so high was because the completing of it was so, so awful. It took me way longer than I thought it would, the question was phrased stupidly and the readings I had to use were torturous – one sentence had almost 60 words. 60 words. Ridic.
  5. This week has gone really slow.
  6. I have no social life anymore.
  7. I procrastinated a lot this week (hence the discovery of number 1)
  8. And finally I know, I know, I KNOW okay I did NO #photoadayaprils on my twitter this week. I’m a terrible, terrible failure but I might start again in May if I get my act together! No but in all seriousness I’m switching to that $25 plan this month which means I get data on my phone which means I can upload photos STRAIGHT to twitter and ooh ooh I also might download Instagram for android just because I can. And then I can put cool filters on my photos and #photoadaymay will be even more fun (and less of a non-event) than #photoadayapril.

Hope you all have a lovely, lovely week this week! Stay happy and warm!

Xo Rachel