An entry in melbournemaniac put me in the mood to post these. It's so hard to get good photos of Lucy (my dog) because she never looks at the camera, she always turns her back or goes all silly rolling around. Here are a few pics anyway.



With my sister's dog Marley (she's a bit bigger and older now)


Am I close enough?


Enjoying the new bed I bought her in Bright


Playing with the purse the lady I bought the bed off gave me. Now she's a real lady lol


These are my sister's dogs. Couldn't help but post some pics of them too.

This is Dusty as a pup. She's a couple of years old now so a lot bigger. Just as cute and naughty though lol I've got plenty of recent photos of her, but they're all on my phone.
 

Dusty's older sister, Maggie. She loves her hugs and tennis balls. Although she's developed a strange habit of eating dirt lately. :S 


And finally this is my other sister's dog, Mali. I think this was taken a while ago, so she's grown up a bit since then (physically not mentally hehe) Nah, she's adorable and so loving.

My sister's wedding was last week. After a week of miserable weather, the sun was out and it turned out to be a beautiful day! They got married on a property called Cammeray Waters just out of Woodend, which was lovely. The ceremony was in a gazebo overlooking a lake and then later on we all went into the marquee nearby and partied the night away! I've put some photos behind the cut:
( Pics! )</div>
I'm on holidays from work too, which I was desperately looking forward to! Especially since the first weekend I'd planned to go away with Steph and Sam. We drove down to Port Fairy Friday night and then stayed until Monday. Port Fairy is such a relaxed, quiet little town, it was so nice to get away. We had a great weekend, exploring the town and going for walks along the beach and around this little island that's connected to the mainland. Our accommodation was fantastic too, a very cute little weatherboard cottage which was perfect for us! 

What do you do when you're bored, but you have no energy to do anything? Meh....

As promised here's a few photos of my nephew Archie. He's soooo cute! lol

( Archie is this way! )
I can't believe he's aleady a month old. How fast it goes!

I thought I should probably post, although most of you probably know that I'm alive since I've either seen you or I've been lurking and commenting a little bit.

Happy Australia Day to you all! Hope you had a great day celebrating. I went to a BBQ at my sister, Andrea's place which was nice. Very chilled. I wasn't really in the mood to do anything, but am glad that I ended up going. It was nice to do something, especially since I go back to work tomorrow. Ugh! These holidays have gone far too quick for my liking. I've been busy, though, which was good because I got to catch up with everyone.

I guess my biggest news is that my sister Bern gave birth to a baby boy, Archie William, on New Years Eve. He's absolutely adorable and I just love him to bits. It's been an interesting experience for me, at least, since I've really had no experience with babies in the past, Archie being the first neph (no nieces) in the fam. I'll see if I can upload a photo later on!

Just a couple of yummy salad recipes someone requested, so thought I'd post them here......
Enjoy :)

I've just done some baking that I wanted to share! One of the most amazing things I had overseas was the Portuguese Custard Tart which I ate about two or three of every day! lol I found a Portuguese cookbook today which included a recipe for the custard tarts and decided to try to make them.

The results.....



Hmmm I want another one! lol

I just wanted to let you all know about a book competition that's been run on livejournal by fashion_piranha to win a historical fiction book. There are 5 books up for grabs at the moment, but the more people who enter the more items there are to win. It's open to anyone who wants to enter, no matter where you're from so give it a go!

Find out more at http://fashion-piranha.livejournal.com/35092.html

I've just posted a  smallish mixed batch over in my icon community.

[4] Emma Roberts
[4] Wild Child
[8] Keira Knightley
[2] Audrey Hepburn
[20] text only and misc

Preview:


The rest are here

I thought I'd make some 'guilty pleasure' icons for you guys and I've made a few examples here that you can take, but I'll also be taking requests for TV shows or anything you view as your guilty pleasure :) Also let me know what colour you'd like.

Examples:

1.   2.   3.

See the others and request your icons here

This is just a test post so please ignore :)

( icons ) </div> </div></center></div>

I just wanted to let you guys know that I've made a new icon community. I figured it would be best to keep all my icons in the same community, rather than post them in random places. 

The community is summersun_icons  and I've just posted my first batch of icons, including some of  Steph's requests! How exciting :) 

Preview:

I've made a few icons about reading that you can find here

Preview:


Enjoy!

My last Photoshop session was tonight, so I've been playing around with a couple of simple icons. I'm a bit nervous about doing ones with people, so I've mainly made up some quote ones. I found these at the Baby Gap website and thought they were kind of cute. I also played around with a picture of Hayden Panettiere. It's just a small batch for now, but I'll keep playing around and posting more as I go. It's fun so far :)


Of course feel free to take any icons.
Credit would be great, thanks.

I saw 'Wanted' with Diana last night. I usually tend to go for the lighter, rom com movies or comedies, so this was a bit different for me. But I loved it! Great action, gorey but not over the top and some very clever use of close ups/slow motion. It has some great actors in it too, Angelina Jolie who was as sexy as ever, Morgan Freeman who was great in his role (maybe a bit different for him?) and James McAvoy was hot, and great as well (although at first he made me think about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Mr Tumnus which was odd lol) Definitely recommended if you're after a bit of action and something fast paced.

Another book for the 60 book challenge too. The review's under the cut:

Staff retreat day for work was on Friday which I actually really enjoyed. I expected the talk in the morning to be a chance to catch up on some sleep, as they'd organised for a Jesuit priest to talk to us about the portrayal of Jesus/God in films. But it was actually really interesting... he was very funny and a great speaker. I'm still unsure what I believe in, but he did make a lot of interesting points.
After lunch we had a couple of hours where we could go for coffee or to the zoo, so Natalie and I decided we'd have the best of both worlds. We went to the zoo with Alan and Rachel. It wasn't enough time to see everything but we ended up seeing everything we really wanted to. And then after collecting our certificates we went shopping! We ended up walking along Rathdown and then Lygon, shopping and had coffee and cake at Brunetti's and then walked into the city for dinner. It was really nice having someone to hang out with outside of work, so hopefully we do it again.

Saturday I had a catch up with Sam and Steph which was lovely. We met up in the city and had a long lunch in Federation Square and then did a bit shopping.

It was nice to have a couple of days relaxing like that, since I had a pretty bad week at work, especially Tuesday. In front of my colleagues my boss decided that she'd go through my desk (I do admit it was a little messy) and ask me what every single thing was there for. She told me that I was unorganised and then because I was being defensive (how else did she expect me to act when she was embarrassing me like that and talking in her usual smart ass tone?) that I had a bad attitude. She went through the stuff on one side of the computer and then said 'I won't go through that side coz it'll just embarress you. It really upset me, I had to go and shelf books afterwards because I was pretty much in tears....it took a lot of self control to not cry.

I've also been continuing with my 60 book challenge so here are some new reviews that I've written.





Here's the full list. I'm still deciding what I'm going to read next but I think it will be 'The Secrets of the Black Canons' by Iris Collier.

I took the day off to get my hair cut today. I'm awful I know....but meh! lol I now have a new haircut with fringe (full fringe not my usual side fringe) and a new pair of cons! I think that beats work any day! I love going to my hairdressers. They're always full of lattes and gossip!

My boss is pissing me off again. I know I always go on about her but I've got to vent somewhere don't I?! We subscribe to library/literary magazines which get passed around the office. Last week though she put a brochure for a PD in my in-tray to be passed around. I was a bit confused and asked her whether it was just to read or could I apply for it? She said to go ahead and apply for it if I wanted to. I did, not expecting it to get accepted by the lady in charge of PD's at work as I'd already been on a PD earlier this year. Anyway the next day the PD lady came into the library and said 'you've been approved to do the PD there's an email waiting for you in your inbox to let you know what you have to do next' she then went into the library to let my colleague know she'd been accepted too, and I guess to let the boss know. I don't know what was said exactly, but apparently she was told off by my boss who said that PD lady should have come to her first and who would look after the library if both myself and my colleague were away?' This makes sense BUT a. why did she tell me to apply for it in the first place if she wasn't going to let me go anyway and b. last year I went on a PD with another colleague and the library survived that day. Gah! How long til September holidays again?