Just some things I'm really proud of...

This week I have been thinking about the things I'm proud of and I came to the conclusion that I don't just have one thing, so here's my round up of things I'm proud of...

In no particular order -

1. Proposing to Daniel my darling fiance and husband to be. And reaching our 5 year anniversary is another thing I'm proud of too! It's the longest relationship either of us have had and we have both grown a lot in the past 5 years. I'm really proud of what Dan has achieved with work, travel (for work and with me) and just being together.

The ring is engraved and says "Will you marry me?"

He said Yes!

Here we are with our flatmate Loren - photographed by Gareth from Duo Photography -

2. Making a future for myself and sticking with study, even through the tough times, illness and failures. Everything has helped build me up to be the woman I am today. 

In under six months I'll be all done with study and exams... And in less than a year I'll be walking across the stage at Graduation!

3. My nails - just having long nails and going to see my nail lady Serenity every month - has filled me with pride. I used to be a chronic nail biter from anxiety.  

 

4. Furthering my skills through online courses and courses from the university - just creating a better future for myself. To be doing what I love and learning lots every chance I get is amazing.
Recently I completed a few courses over the break from uni with Shaw Academy for Blogging and Content Marketing; learning how to be a Celebrity Fashion Stylist and Event Planning courses through Skill Success.
These cheaply found courses online have helped me to develop skills I didn't know I had to make me a more employable person. I've decided that Fashion Styling isn't for me, but the skills I've gained in learning how to tape shoes and such skills I've learned from these courses may be beneficial in future.

5. Working through my Anxiety and Depression and finding an awesome counsellor and doctor who helped me work through and learn techniques to help me control my panic attacks and keep calmer in exams. I must be doing a great job of it because I sat two exams recently without fear and without having any panicky feelings. So I'm really proud of myself for pushing through the tough times and persevering! I'm also really thankful and grateful for Daniel sticking by me throughout all these times, the good and the bad.

6. Having friends, family and flatmates who are there for me when I need them, and when they need me. They know who they are.

Until next week,
xo, Lisa.

A check in and some new things in the works!

Back on January 4th 2016 I wrote this post and highlighted these goals - 

1. To finish my final 5 papers for my final year of study at VUW. I'm enrolled in a paper for summer which starts tomorrow - I'm excited and nervous to get these final 5 papers done. - I don't know what 2017 will bring - uni will be done and I'll be working!?

2. To lose weight, and this isn't a generic "I'll lose weight because it's New Years" thing, I'm serious.

3. To actually push myself creatively - writing blog posts, photographing for my Instagram, making YouTube videos? Actually doing things regularly to get my creative juices flowing.

And the usual New Years Goals:

• have fun, 
• keep growing my nails out, (2015 and prior every year it was hard to stop biting nails, counseling helped on this one!)
• exploring more of the city,
• learning new skills,
• and learning new things.

Well, now for an update - 

1. I've just done both the exams for my first two papers and I'm waiting patiently on the results from those and my course overall.
Oh! And I talked to my course advisor who has said I only need to do 4 papers this year, so the compulsory English 201 paper, then one from English 300-399, one from English 300-329 and another Religion paper... and then I can have a double major for my BA in English Literature and Religious Studies!
And in my exams, yes there were two! I didn't have any anxiety problems, no panic attacks or fear during the exam. I kept calm and got it done. (Go me!)

2. I haven't been doing much actively towards this goal, because of having a possible Morton's Neuroma in my toes diagnosed. I'll write a longer blog post about that later.

3. I've currently got 3 weeks off between exams ending and term 2 starting, so I've signed up to THREE online courses and I hope to upskill myself by doing those. They are in -
- Fashion stylist
-Blogging
-Event Planner

My nails still look awesome, although no photo as the polish needs replacing, my appointment is in a week, so I'll do a post about them later too.

I haven't been exploring more of the city recently at all. I really should do it more.

As for learning - see above with the online courses.

I feel like this post is more of an update kind of one, but that's okay. Sometimes we just need to check in and see how things are going.

Until next week,
XO, Lisa.

Update for the year and the future is coming

It is insane how fast this year has flown by, it's already the middle of May and that means that I have only mere months before I'm all done with study.

Come mid November after my final two exams are done, I'm a free woman - from university life at least - entering the big wide world of full time employment. I have a few ideas up my sleeve from working for myself as an ESOL Teacher, to finding full time work in a local tutoring service or school... or heading out overseas into the ESOL role I was offered in South Korea. There's plenty of options and I'm sure more will come knocking this year.

In the meantime I have to keep studying and reading - two more novels this week, and two essays by the end of the month... before two exams in June. I really hope I have managed to learn some relaxation techniques for my exam anxiety. I just want to pass the two classes and be done with school.

Then the excitement and madness of the Engagement Party in July with our families back in New Plymouth...            Before it all starts again for the second term of uni study!

(A dated selfie at Te Papa).

Daniel just celebrated making 5 years at his job at CricHQ which is quite impressive. He started at CricHQ when we hadn't started dating yet. I've certainly never worked that amount of time in one job!

I am also considering blogging more often in 2017, like a few times each week instead of just one post per week, but Daniel suggested I find a bit more of a niche market to write to, write about and share things from. Truth be told I don't really know what my overall theme or topic is, because I just write about my life - maybe I'm a lifestyle blogger? I do like a variety of themes though - I decided against cooking as an overall topic just because I find it hard to write a lot about cooking and baking... so while I enjoy doing it I won't be writing about it... I also like interior design type things but I also like to read about what others are doing in that realm!
It's hard to nail down to one or two topics.

If anyone has help or advice about how to nail down a blog topic - I'd love to hear it.
You can contact me on facebook - here, or on twitter here or leave me a comment below!

Until next Monday,
xo Lisa.

Photography and photo shoots

So this past week has been awesome, with preparing a bunch of stuff for our engagement party...
The past two weekends we have been getting photo shoots under way. Daniel was in charge of booking a photographer to take our engagement portraits and stuff... and we just got everything organised with that and waiting on the venue... and then I get a phone call saying I had won a free photo shoot and three complimentary 5x7" photos (from the Wellington Women's Expo we had gone to earlier in the year/late last year). So of course we couldn't say no to a free $249 photo shoot! Fast forward - we get the free shoot done of us as a couple, and had a number of extras taken of us with Loren and Thomas, our flatmates. Such a fun time!

Here are some behind the scene's shots that I took on my phone, so please excuse the quality.

You can see the mobile studio backdrop, lighting gear and such too.
We moved all the lounge furniture and positioned everything.
With the studio lights and professional camera the light from the window isn't seen.

Hero pose.

Dan modelling for Hallensteins? hehe.

Behind the scenes setting up the camera and stuff

Dan with his Bug-assault rifle - getting directions from Gareth.

Dan sniping bugs.

Gareth snapping away and Dan being a model...

The photographer for this shoot was Gareth from Duo Photography.
He was really fun to work with and put us all at ease being in front of the camera.

At the end of the shoot we booked a time for Gareth to come back and show us the photos, so on Monday evening at 7:30pm we sat with Loren and looked through all the photos in a huge slide show. Duo are pretty neat in that they create a video slide show - we didn't purchase this as we just wanted a number of digital files of our photos. We ended up getting a deal from Gareth - 18 for the price of 10 plus the 3 free prints and he threw in a few extras; since we couldn't whittle down the choices much more!

These following images are some throw back images - Dan and I on the waterfront with my Asahi Pentax K1000 film camera...

Our second photo shoot was with David from Von Photography - this was the engagement shoot package for $99 it's for an hour shooting, and has a set of 20 digital images at the end.

We hired the Dome at BATS Theatre as the venue - I volunteer as an Usher there so it made sense to come and play around on the stage area! The Dome is a large space, with a matte black floor, amazing white columns on the walls,
We had plenty of fun playing with shadows from the lights that David bought with him, and the Dome, then a few sneaky stairs shots.

I really enjoyed this photo-shoot because David made us totally relaxed in front of the camera - we even got a few public displays of affection shots - kissing and holding hands!

My favourite shot so far - us on the stairs, with our D and L letters on the windowsill.

David was lovely and took this on my new Polaroid camera (from Dick Smith for $77.40).

More shots from the day...

Us holding hands.

Oh do you see that? Hot damn gurl! my manicure from Serenity at Absolute Therapy looks amazing!

Until next week, 

xo, Lisa.

That's a billionaires dream and we're not billionaires...

The past few weeks I've been going slowly more crazy with the workloads of uni life piling up and just feeling overwhelmed by literally everything going on.

On top of two English papers, which have many hours of reading novels, plays and poetry between them, as well as worksheets for the tutorials (both classes), and studying towards assignments (both classes seem to have essays due at the same times), ... Life is just a bit hectic.

One paper (201) has a large novel (600 pages),
three small novels,
a huge number of poems
and a Shakespeare play.

The other paper (312) has a larger novel (860 pages),
two smaller novels,
and a large number of poems.

My desk right now is covered in piles of books...

Along side all of the university study and work I've been doing this year - I am also trying hard to keep my sanity and find information about, research and plan out things for our engagement party, and future planning researching for our wedding.

So far I know the wedding will be in New Plymouth, sometime in 2018.

No - I don't know who is on the guest list.
No -  I don't know if you can bring a plus one.
No - I don't even know if you're invited yet!
Yes - there are limits in place, and yes some friends and family??? may simply not be invited.

I am not saying these things to be bitchy, I'm trying to be honest.

Wedding planning is not easy.
I'm finding it hard to do this from afar. We currently live 4-5 hours away and thinking about all the details does my head in at times. Both of our families are based in New Plymouth which is why we are going to have it there. While I have had a few years of pinterest and learning about etiquette and things, Daniel is totally new to all of this. So we are learning together.

If budget allowed we would bring them all to Wellington, or to another destination; but that's a billionaires dream and we're not billionaires.

Marriage, engagement life so far is about doing things as a team. We're not doing this all alone. It's a team effort. It's not up to one of us to make all the choices, even though it has kind of been like that so far. I've done a lot of legwork to get things sorted (like the invites for the engagement)... But then some is also legwork for Dan to do (like organising the photographer for our photo-shoot before our engagement party).

I'm also having to learn lessons about wedding/marriage/engagement etiquette and how to deal with the people who think they can invite themselves, or change things, or add things, or do things when it isn't their place to do so. Unless the couple actually asks you to do something, please don't just assume you can go ahead and do that thing. We are not about to start paying for things we didn't ask for!

Also if you don't get an invite don't be put off, it may be for a number of reasons that simply you don't know about. We have limits on our budget, our venue has maximum attendee limits due to health and safety, fire safety etcetera etcetera, plus we are choosing carefully who we are inviting (or not inviting) and have our own reasons to do so. Life is complicated. It's not a simple act of making a list and inviting every single person we know. We have many limits.

To put it simply - we cannot afford to have a huge lavish affair with every single person we know (or coupled up person we know for that matter!)

If you're asked not to do something by someone - please just don't do it!

It's all simple common sense, which doesn't seem to be common now.

Next week it's volunteers week and I'm thinking about all the volunteering I do and I am going to do a post about what gets me excited about volunteering...

Until next week,
xo, Lisa.