Home

Hi friends! Is it just me, or does the year seem to be racing by? I’m excited about all the fun end-of-year activities and social events that will soon kick off. But at the same time, I’m feeling a little bit terrified. Yikes–so much to do! I haven’t even started thinking about Christmas, and is it really Halloween next week? Okay, I’d better stop hyperventilating and get down to sharing three favourites for this week. Thank you so much for stopping by. (Hopefully) Comfy Sneakers I’ve been on the hunt for a new pair of comfy sneakers for our upcoming trip. With all the walking we’ll be doing, I’m aiming for maximum comfort. I’ve spent ages googling reviews, tried on countless pairs in stores, and—like a stalker—even asked random people about how comfy their kicks are! Some articles and reviews recommended the New Balance 327, promising ultimate comfort without needing to break them in. Others completely disagreed, and wrote negative reviews like ‘NEVER buy these, they’re the worst…blah, blah, blah.’ But honestly, I liked them because they looked so nice with a bit of a retro style. I could see myself wearing them with almost anything–shorts, tights, jeans and even dresses. I was finally convinced that they would be a good pick when I saw one of our preschool parents wearing the same model in a different colour. She said they were extremely comfortable and such a great buy. Yes, I’ve been surveying preschool parents too! So, I went ahead and ordered a pair online, and here’s the best part: I got them for free! Our health insurance provider, Medibank Private, has this great perk—if you download their app, you can link your Apple Watch to track your activity. By hitting your daily step goals, you earn rewards in the form of gift vouchers that can be redeemed for things like, you guessed it, sneakers. Isn’t that great? I’m going to test them out this weekend, and hopefully, my feet will love them–fingers crossed. Half-Priced Grocery Items I don’t know if the supermarkets were feeling extra sympathetic about the cost of living this week. But I managed to get a few items that are usually not on special, like Musashi Protein powder. Sam does Olympic weightlifting (though I kind of wish he did swimming instead–I can’t look when he lifts those massive weights over his head, shudder). One of these tubs normally costs $65, but I never pay the full price. Instead, I bounce around different online stores and usually get it for around $45. But we got lucky this week, and they were half-price at Woolworths. So I bought two! Protein powder isn’t exactly essential (unless you’re Sam), but I was excited at the big savings. Other grocery items that I bought at a discount included cereal, milk jam, turkey mince, toothpaste, and a few cleaning products. In the end, my receipt said I saved $95.50–I’ll take that! Keeping Up Appearances Last night, Keeping Up Appearances came on TV, and I stopped to watch it. I love this hilarious show, and it has a special place in my heart because I used to watch it with my mum. We would both crack up at the ‘lady of the house speaking’ with all her crazy antics as she tried desperately to be posh. I miss those days with my mum, and even though I laughed while watching it, my heart hurt at the same time. That wraps up three favourites for the week. I don’t have anything planned for the weekend other than doing another module for my diploma course…hmph. No fun, but it’ll be worth it. I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and I look forward to being back on Monday. See ya! Linking up with Andrea and Erika

Hi friends! Friday’s back and it’s time to share some favourites from the week. It feels so good to be here again after a couple of good but ‘out of my comfort zone’ weeks with work placement. I’ve really enjoyed getting back to my regular, ordinary routine—sometimes a little shake-up is all you need to remind you how nice ‘ordinary’ really is. Let’s start with my first favourite—coming home just after four on Monday. Yay!! I love my usual work routine of finishing early enough to actually enjoy some of the afternoon. I can knock off a few chores, get dinner started, and spend a bit of time blogging. Sometimes, I even squeeze in a bit of diploma coursework. It was such a change working at the long daycare centre where I’d finish at five and a couple of times, even at six. The evenings felt so short! My fun work friend went overseas during the school holidays. She kindly brought me back some mango dipped in chocolate—two of my favourite things! I’ve deliberately held off from opening it because I wanted to save it for a Friday night treat. Tonight’s the night! This is not a favourite but I had a bumpy Wednesday afternoon, blah! Doing my diploma course online has its advantages but also some frustrating downsides. I’m going through the RPL (recognition of prior learning) path, so instead of traditional assignments, I submit evidence of my existing skills and experience. It sounds straightforward, but it can get a bit tricky. I’ve had to figure out the college portal, which took some getting used to… grrrr. The real challenge comes when I have questions. I need to email the course facilitator and then wait for a response. Unfortunately, she only works three days a week from 9 to 2. A while back, she was on leave for weeks, and a simple question ended up taking two weeks to get answered! With online study, you just don’t get that face-to-face interaction where you can ask things and get immediate answers. But then again, if I had to go to college in person, I probably wouldn’t have enrolled in this course! So there’s that. On Wednesday afternoon, I really needed to speak to her. We’d exchanged a couple of emails, but her responses felt hurried. I just needed a simple answer about my work so I could keep moving forward. When I called the college, she had already left for the day, and it seemed like I wouldn’t be able to get help until the following Monday. I hung up feeling down. That evening, Luke and his fiancée were coming over for dinner to celebrate his birthday, so I pushed aside my diploma issues and went home to prepare. We ended up having a lovely evening, eating way too much and then watching a movie. I love that Luke always comes over for his birthday. So, even though Wednesday afternoon wasn’t great, the evening was definitely a favourite! For the cake, we had Luke’s favourite–a pavlova. The next day, I finally got some help from another facilitator. She sent me some very positive feedback about my work, and now I feel a whole lot more confident. I’m so relieved to know I’m on the right track and happy that my question was resolved. Hooray! Remember the old Casio watches? My uncle gave me one when I was a teenager, and I treasured it for years. Well, it seems they’re back again as a retro trend. Luke gave his younger brother Sam one as a birthday gift since Sam just turned 20 a little over a week ago. Luke even bought one for himself, so they’re twinning now. I had to laugh because the younger generation is going retro while I’m all about technology with my Apple Watch. Haha! That about wraps up my week of mostly favourites! This weekend, I don’t have any plans other than an appointment with the optometrist. I’m considering getting some contacts for my long-distance vision. I can see distance, but not very well, and as I get older, my world is getting blurrier. Yikes! Hmmm, I’ll see how I go. After that, I want to get stuck into finishing some more course modules because I want to get it done and dusted! I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Happy Friday! Linking up with Andrea and Erika

Hi friends! I’m excited to pop in and share one big favourite for the week, and that is–I finished my placement at this cute long daycare centre!! Wooohooo!! Although I had a wonderful experience and met some passionate, energetic and friendly educators. As well as some gorgeous children who stole my heart. I feel totally wiped out! There’s a good reason why we call daycare centres ‘long daycare centres’ over here: the days are definitely LONG! I’m used to preschool, where we run sessions, and the kids can only attend two or three days a week. The days are much shorter, too, as they can arrive from 8:20 and need to be out of the centre by 3:40. But at long daycare centres, the hours are from 7:30 to 6:00. Some kids are there for full days, five days a week. When I said goodbye today, I felt sad but also relieved and happy that I’ve finished this part of my course. So many mixed emotions. Walking home to start the weekend has never felt better than it did this afternoon! I know all my preschool colleagues are probably groaning because it’s the last weekend before preschool opens after the term break. But I’m excited and can’t wait to get back to my old routine and see all the familiar faces. I’m keeping it short today. I’m excited to be hosting Cousin Connect tomorrow night. So there are a few things I need to get on top of before I can veg out in front of the TV. As Julia Roberts says in Pretty Woman, I want to “be still like vegetables. Lay like broccoli.” Yep, that sounds good to me! Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Linking up with Andrea and Erika 

Hi friends, and happy Friday! I’m excited to be back today to share some unexpected favourites. Honestly, I had no high hopes for this week—working over our preschool break and doing my work placement for my studies didn’t exactly scream ‘fun!’ But this week has surprised me in the best way, and I’m so happy to share some favourites from what I thought would be a not-so-favourite week! After working at the same preschool for 27 years, I felt nervous about going to a new centre. New faces, new routines, new environment—yikes! Luckily, I didn’t have to travel far, as it’s only a ten-minute walk from my house. Even closer than my current workplace—what a bonus! When I arrived, the director was so warm and welcoming. She showed me around the centre, explained the routine, and introduced me to the staff. There was so much information to take in that my slow-processing brain couldn’t quite keep up! This week was all about working with 0-2-year-olds, and after spending so many years with 3-5-year-olds. I had forgotten how much I loved working with babies! Oh, my goodness, they are so cute! Sticky, snotty and sometimes a bit smelly but so incredibly adorable! The educators in the nursery were great, too. Once we got past the initial awkwardness of me being a stranger in their room, we had fun conversations and started to click. And by the end of today, we were laughing about a bunch of random things that happened during the day. One of the things that really struck me is how incredibly young the educators are! In fact, all of them are young enough to be my kids! And I couldn’t help feeling like a bit of a dinosaur! Haha! For instance, today, one of the oldest educators in the centre—the 28-year-old—was reminiscing about her childhood and saying how old she felt. The 21-year-old educator asked her if she had a black-and-white TV back then. I burst out laughing and said, ‘Uhm, no, that would be me!’ Then, when I told them I existed before the internet, you should have seen their eyes nearly pop out of their heads! They were like, ‘What did you do back then?’ I replied, ‘Oh, I just watched the grass grow! we all burst out laughing, but I could tell they thought I was so old that I probably had one foot in the grave! It was so funny! I loved my first week, and the sweet classroom leader said she was sad that next week, I would be moving to the other room to work with the 2 to 3-year-olds. I’m sad, too, as I’ve had such a great time getting to know the babies and the educators. I even felt extra sad thinking about next Friday when I’ll be saying goodbye to the whole centre for good. I never expected to feel this way—not in a million years! After such a surprisingly fantastic week, here’s a list of unexpected favourites Working with babies meant spending most of the day sitting on the floor. I’m so excited that I can still get up off the floor—phew! The daycare centre is beautifully decorated, and now I’m feeling inspired about how I can share some of these ideas with my colleagues I got to cuddle babies! I learned some new songs, and now I have a whole playlist looping around in my head. It was good, but not so helpful when I was trying to fall asleep! I loved seeing the energy and passion of the young educators—it was contagious in the best way! It’s inspired me to bring back my own zing, which has been a bit zapped after all these years working with kids. I got to see how a privately owned long daycare centre operates. Having only ever worked in a non-profit centre, I’ve heard some not-so-great stories about facilities that focus on profit. However, I have nothing but high praise for the quality of care from this centre. The educators truly love the children they care for, and I loved seeing them not only meet their physical needs but also genuinely shower the kids with so much affection! It was so good to get out of my comfort zone in such a big way. I’ve always appreciated my shorter working hours, three paid term breaks a year, as well as annual leave. But this week really reminded me how lucky I am, especially knowing that educators in long daycare centres don’t have these benefits. I finally took my husband up on his offer to cook—I can be such a goose, always wanting to do everything myself! When I got home Wednesday afternoon, Steve had a lovely glass of wine as well as cheese and crackers waiting for me. He also made roast pork with vegetables and gravy for dinner. To top it off, he whipped up some sweet treats! What a champ! Vanilla slice Butter cookies An extra big one just for me! I think he expected me to be feeling down about having to work over the break, and he knows that food always makes me happy! I’ve had an amazing week, but I’m feeling pretty tired, which makes me even more excited that it’s the October long weekend—yay! Working with babies and getting to know the young educators has been fantastic. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually looking forward to next week in the 2 to 3-year-olds’ room—ha! Who would have guessed? Not me, that’s for sure! Thank you so much for being here, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Linking up with Andrea and Erika