July 2022 - Page 2 of 2 - PLAYWORKEATREPEAT

Ten Winter Essentials

My Ten Winter Essentials! This week has been so cold, rainy, and windy! It was raining so hard the other day when I got home, I had to put up my big umbrella just to get out of the car and go inside the house. I was trying to save my hair from getting wet and frizzy because you know…….#priorities. Well, I kid you not when I say that I nearly got blown away!! It was actually funny and I couldn’t stop laughing, I was holding on for dear life, getting blown here there, and everywhere. I must have looked like a nut!! Aussie Winters I know that compared to many other countries. Australian winters are actually quite mild. Recently I saw a news article about a TickToker who thought it was hilarious seeing Aussies wearing The North Face jackets and woolen coats when it was 16C and sunny. Well, I was one of those ones wearing a wooly coat and gloves! I wasn’t laughing, I was freezing!! The thing about Australian winters is that it’s just three long months of being cold and this year very wet, thanks to La Niña. We also don’t have a fun festive season to look forward to either like they do in the Northern Hemisphere. I mean we sometimes celebrate Christmas in July but it’s just not the same. So I’m not a big fan of winter and I much prefer summer. I also haven’t yet found my love for “all things fall” or Autumn as we call it. Give me warm spring or even better, hot summer temperatures all year long! My husband thinks I’m crazy, he can’t stand the heat. Winter Essentials To Beat The Cold This year I am working on being more positive about winter even though this past week has been extra challenging because the weather is just so miserable. Plus, according to the bureau of meteorology, we have ten more days of solid rain coming up. Sigh! Anyway, enough whinging! I am trying really hard to focus on the nice things about winter because there are many. This year I am determined that winter is going to be all about being cozy and not just about being cold!! So I have put together a list of my ten winter essentials. These ten winter essentials are actually helping me to enjoy the winter months this year. And I thought that if you are anything like me and struggle with the cold weather. Then you might hopefully find this list helpful. 1. Nice Steamy Hot Drinks Find a mug you love. This year I am using a cute pink mug that my cousin gave me and it makes me so happy. I love the size, the chunkiness of it, and how I can wrap my hands around it to warm them up when I am drinking something hot. Yes, I really am having a love affair with my special mug this winter. Once you have found a mug that you really love then all your winter drinks will taste so much more satisfying. Trust me! Another thing that I have been doing is enjoying some of my favourite go-to hot drinks like Herbal Teas Camomile- for calmness and relaxation Ginger and Tumeric- The ginger adds an element of spice and mild heat. While the lemon tea is full of delicious citrus zing. Recently I was fighting off a cold and these teas were so soothing. Chai- Chai tea is my favourite winter tea. It’s so comforting to drink a delicious steamy cup of chai tea on a cold day. I really love the gorgeous aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and cardamom. Mmmmmm!!! Hot Chocolate Winter is a perfect time to enjoy hot chocolate! I usually just use the Jarrah sachets but I recently discovered Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate sachets and oh my word. They are just divine!! Coffee I prefer tea but some mornings I like a cup of Moconna coffee with a splash of milk. If I feel like adding some sweetener to my coffee then I will add a dash of hazelnut syrup. I also really like these Moconna cappuccino sachets. They are creamy and velvety with just the right amount of froth. 2. Invest In Warm Clothes For years I shivered through playground duty in the coldest playground ever! I layered up but only ever wore a short thin hooded jacket over the top. And it just wasn’t enough. This year I was determined to find a more appropriate jacket. I thought about buying a down jacket from Uniqlo but I wasn’t too keen on the style or the price. Luckily I managed to find a really nice long Calvin Klein jacket this year. It has a nice shape as it inches slightly at the waist. But aside from how cute I think it looks, this jacket has quite literally changed my life. It is just so warm!!! Playground duty doesn’t make me want to cry this year. Because when I wear my jacket I feel like I’m wearing a quilt! 3. Enjoy Comfort Food I love cooking up delicious comfort food like beef stews, chicken casseroles, cottage pies, roasts with creamy mashed potatoes, veggies, and lots of gravy. Soups are also great for lunch or dinner, especially pumpkin soup! I truly think that probably the best thing about winter is all the delicious comfort food you can cook up and enjoy!! 4. Light Candles Lighting candles just cheers me up! So candles are one of the most important winter essentials for me. I love a scented candle, tea lights, or even just a plain old white candle. It starts to get dark outside at around 5 pm so that’s usually the time when I start lighting some candles. A couple of years ago I bought some candles from Pottery Barn and these clever battery-operated candles have a timer. I have set them so they automatically turn on every afternoon at 4.30 pm. 5. Read

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First Monday Of The Winter Holidays

6 Comments / Hello Monday

Hi friends! So good to welcome back Monday for this week. Especially as it’s my first Monday of the winter holidays!!! I’ve got a few things to share with you on this dreary, rainy Monday. First of all Happy 4th Of July to all my lovely friends and family in the USA. Hope you are having a wonderful long weekend. Getting My Steps Up! Indeed I have been doing a lot of walking last week and I have even closed my rings a couple of times or gotten really close! Go me!! But first I have to admit that the reason why I have been doing more walking is that we only have one car at the moment. Poor Steve was coming home from work in the early hours of the morning last weekend. There were two cats in the middle of the road and he swerved to avoid running them over. But then he hit a low brick wall. He was fine, the cats were fine but the car wasn’t and neither was the wall. So now we are waiting for our insurance company to deal with everything and Steve is using my car. Luckily I am within walking distance of my preschool. Friday Family Dinner We got together for our usual first Friday of the month family dinner and although not everyone could make it. We still had a blast and ate some yummy food too! Cold Feet I have been binge-watching this very funny British show over the weekend and I am loving it!! When it first aired back in the late ’90s or early 2000’s I think that I started watching from season five. So I kind of know what happens but it’s been great to start from the first episode. I’m into season two and I started late on Friday night. Oh, the joys of school holidays. Binge-watching guilt-free !!!! Tea!! I have been having endless cups of tea to keep warm. I usually have my hot drinks from a mug. But on Saturday I was so sick of all the rain and cold weather, so I cheered myself up by having my tea in this fancy tea cup and saucer. Bunnings I could use the car in the morning before Steve needed it in the afternoon to get to work. So I made a quick trip to Bunnings to get some paint and a few other things. I really want to get stuck into painting my bedroom. It’s the prep work that doesn’t excite me though! I also bought a new toilet seat that I am going to try and install soon because the old one is broken. This toilet seat has got weird bolts etc that I know I am going to have to wrangle with. Dinner With Friends Even though it’s blowing a gale and raining so heavily. I am still going out tonight for our monthly catch-up with friends at our local club. We always have a fun time eating, chatting, and drinking some really nice bubbly. But first I am going to try and get that new toilet seat on!! So I’m going to sign off quickly today. I hope you all have a wonderful week! Happy Monday!

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End Of Term

7 Comments / Friday Favourites

Happy Friday friends! It’s the end of term and when 3.40 pm hit today I was officially off on winter break for the next two weeks. Yay!!!! Oh my goodness I am so looking forward to staying up late, sleeping in, and not having to stick to a schedule! I have a couple of favourites for this week’s Friday favourites post that I am excited to share with you. Thanks so much for stopping by to have a read and let’s jump into my first favourite for this week! Elvis I went to see the movie ‘Elvis’. Now I have to tell you that I was not a huge Elvis fan. I didn’t grow up listening to his music and I only ever heard his name for the first time when I was seven years old. We were at a birthday party and my friend’s mum started crying as she must have just heard that Elvis had died. I had no clue who Elvis was and so I remember thinking that she must clearly have been very closely related to this Elvis because she was just so distressed! Mixed Reviews I read a couple of mixed reviews for ‘Elvis’ and then when I found out that the movie went on for about three hours! I was NOT excited to see it AT ALL. Steve and I went with another couple of friends on Tuesday night (his only night off from work) Our lovely friends who we went with had invited us over for dinner after the movie and the only session that suited us was the 4.15 pm session. Any later than that and we would be having dinner at midnight. So I finished work at 3.40 then raced home and had a super-fast shower. Because I always feel a bit icky after work. We made it to the cinema just in time. I planned to have a snooze during the movie because I was so sure that I wouldn’t like it. Then I thought that I would be all refreshed and ready to have fun at our friend’s place when we went there for dinner after the movie. I Loved The Movie! Well, I was SO wrong about the movie! It was fantastic and I loved every minute of it. I did NOT nap as I had intended to. And now I can honestly say that I really appreciate Elvis’s great talent. I was even teary at the end of the movie because I was really sad to learn so much about how Elvis was basically used and mismanaged by a very greedy man and his hangers-on. So if you haven’t seen it, please do. You will really love it. Trust me, because this is coming from someone who was so sure that the movie was going to be awful! Dinner Dinner after the movie was so delicious and fun. My friend had lamb shanks all ready for us in her slow cooker when we got to her place. It was a cold night and there’s nothing better than a hearty meal on a cold night. With wine of course!! We all talked about the movie and how great it was. Then we got onto topics like “Where were you and what were you doing?” when Elvis died, September Eleven happened, and when Princess Diana was killed? We all had our stories to share and it was such an interesting night full of reminiscing. But it was so hard to get up for work on Wednesday morning!! The Grounds Of The City On Monday I shared with you about my fun trip with my friend to see the beautiful digital installation ‘Walking through a Songline’ at The Museum of Sydney. After the museum, we were both hungry so we decided to try a cafe called ‘The Grounds’. A while ago we both went to ‘The Grounds of Alexandria’ but we had never tried out this one in the heart of the city. The cafe looked quite small from the outside but we were surprised by how much bigger it was on the inside. It had a really cosy vibe with fun old-style decor. As well as music playing from the 1940s (I think). I was starving so I ordered the burger which came with a lot of fries! My lovely friend had the (much smaller) eggplant and hummus. I did share my fries with her though! Family Dinner We have our monthly family dinner tonight which I am so excited about and this is probably this week’s favourite! My cousin is hosting it at her place, and it’s sure to be a fun night. I really hope that you have the best weekend! Happy Friday! Linking up with Andrea and Erika.

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