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Archive for November, 2009

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Aussie Thinking

Monday, November 30th, 2009

I was invited to take part in a competition from Aussie, hair care miracle workers. The brief was:

“We have set you a challenge based on your passion for the good things in life. We want to see you get creative and come up with where some Aussie thinking would be best applied, with the best one from each category bagging the winner an awesome prize.

We’d love to see your community getting involved too, so invite them to post their own entries and the best one will receive a fantastic prize!”

The closing date is today (oops!), but if you want to join in you can just post a comment with your applied Aussie Thinking.

Here’s my shot at some Aussie Thinking:

I have to agree with Hayley from Ceriselle.org – this is a really hard task. After all, what exactly is “Aussie Thinking”? I read the Aussie Story to give me a better idea, and figured out that maybe it’s just making things happy, whether it’s dried up & frazzled hair, or people.

With Christmas around the corner, I think it is a great example of what could benefit from this type of Aussie Thinking. Christmas is becoming more & more “what I want” and less “how can I make my loved ones happy”. You see wish lists posted online, people picking out gifts for themselves instead of putting their effort into thinking what gifts would people love – whether they’re physical or not.

This Christmas I’ve worked really hard to get my husband a present that I know he will love. It’s expensive, so I did some extra work to help cover the cost. He’s been really good this year at not spending too much money and so I wanted to make him happy as a sort of reward, and give him something that he’d never buy himself. He’d never ask for it either, because of the cost, and I’d like to think that buying him that present is Aussie Thinking.

Christmas could definitely do with a bit more of this; a bit more consideration for others & some thoughtful generosity. Spend some time picking out presents or writing cards to people, and really think about them & what they would like to get from you.

Instead of just asking people what gifts they want, get to know them a bit more. If you know what kind of music they love, you could buy them a CD of an artist they haven’t tried before. Or if they love a certain author, then help them discover another they might like because of their tastes. You get the idea.

You don’t even have to buy people something to give them happiness for Christmas. If you live with someone & you have certain chores you each do, then give the gift of “a week off the washing up” or the promise to do all their tidying up for a month. You could even do some handmade ‘promise’ vouchers with different things in; a voucher for each promise; such as cooking dinner, vacuuming the house, or even taking the bins out.

Another way to give happiness this Christmas is to include them in your day. If you have a relative that lives alone nearby, then offer to pay them a visit on Christmas day to say hello & share some mince pies… or even invite them to eat Christmas dinner with you. Just being remembered and included will be enough to make some people happy during the holidays.

Spend a little time this Christmas doing some Aussie Thinking. Give some happiness, not just token presents ticked off a list.

Tags: aussie
Posted in Journal | 4 Comments »

Children in Need

Friday, November 20th, 2009

It’s that time again! I love Children in Need, it is a fabulous night of entertainment for a great cause!

I’ve donned my Pudsey T-shirt, grabbed a blanket, donated online, pre-ordered the AMAZING Peter Kay charity single on iTunes, and got my digital bandana.. it’s time to settle down on the sofa and enjoy the show!

Pudsey Digital Bandana

Even if you’re not watching this evening, please donate! Children in Need support so many kids across the UK & they do great work – they need every penny they can get!

Plus, John Barrowman just danced onto the stage wearing Pudsey boxer shorts. What’s not to love?

Posted in Journal | No Comments »

Write or Die

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

I’m a little bit bored this evening, so I have been playing on my laptop organising my ebooks using Calibre. Although this pleases my OCD tendencies, it can get a little mind numbing looking up isbn numbers and formatting ebooks to work on my iPhone (I use Stanza to read in bed so James can have the lights off).

Anyway, as I was a little bit bored, I got quite interested when I saw Hayley’s blog post about a Write or Die challenge she got from her friend on facebook – to write 1000 words in 15 minutes. Write or Die is basically a site that counts down time for you as you type, and counts your words. It actually deletes words if you stop too long to think.. EVIL.

Here is my effort, in all it’s unedited, copy & pasted glory:

Well, here we go. I’m mostly doing this because I want to see if I can beat Hayley… the idea is that you have to write 1000 words in 15 minutes. I’m not sure I can do it, frankly, but I thought I’d give it a go. James just looked over my shoulder to see why I suddenly started typing frantically and suggested that I write short words, but I reckon I would just end up writing a load of jibberish if I tried that. Not that I’m going to anyway.

At the moment, we’re watching the Children in Need concert that Gary Barlow organised. I can’t help but draw the following observations from this:
1. Gary Barlow has weird eyebrows
2. Paul McCartney’s face is melting
3. Leona still has a massive nose, but at least she has big boobs to go with it now
4. Snow Patrol are incredibly depressing

Oh dear. It has been entertaining, honest! Cheryl Cole was really good, at least! I love the dancing. Lily Allen was very enjoyable too.

So, lately, I’ve become a bit addicited to reading historical novels. I blame my mum, she gave me a carrier bag of Julia Quinn novels – so I started reading those, and now I’ve read all of Julia’s books & moved on to Eloisa James instead. I dunno what I’ll move on to once I’m done with those!

I don’t think I’m going to make this target you know, because so far I’ve only written 243 words and I still have 10 minutes to go. By now, you’d hope that I’d have reached 500, surely. Simply maths. Anyone could tell you that.

I still haven’t blogged about Ireland, but I can’t be bothered to do that as part of this, because I have to spell the place names right, and I certainly can’t do that without referring to google maps. Last weekend my sister came to visit us, maybe I should talk about that instead. She came down on Saturday, and we went over to Ruth’s house to let the dogs out and play with the puppies. My sister took a really cute photo of one of them playing with a leaf, I must try and rob it off her to give to Ruth. After we were done with the dogs, we came back to the house & gave Jennie the grand tour of the house (actually, we did that before we left to go to Ruths)… Hmm, what else happened? Oh yes, they looked at our wedding album, and critiqued it for us – lovely, my sister telling me what needs to be done to ‘fix’ my £500 wedding album that I love, thank you very much. But I shouldn’t be too sarcastic, because I’m planning to put this on my blog. We stopped by co-op to buy some food on the way back from Ruth’s, and Jennie and Andrew bought us a Toffee Pavlova for pudding, so she is totally forgiven anyway. I cooked a very nice roast chicken, even if I do say so myself! It was very tasty. I do a good roast, even if I can’t do other things. For example, my cakes are shockingly bad. They often resemble biscuits rather than cakes. No air, you see. God knows why!

Right now, the dog is trying to get my attention, which is a little distracting actually! Bad dog. She’s a good dog really, even if she does eat anything we leave around by accident. Recently she’s taken to waiting for me by the bottom of the stairs at 5 o’clock, very cute – she spends most the day sleeping on our bed, I think. That’s a funny story actually, before we moved house (when we lived in the flat), Homily never used to be able to climb onto our bed without the aid of a box we left at the foot of the bed for her. And then we moved and, although it was the same bed.. she could suddenly jump on with no fussing whatsoever! Oh dear. Strange, stupid dog. Much easier for us though, no inconvenient box laying around at the bottom of the bed.

Hmm, I don’t think I’m going to bee tHayley at this somehow. 700 words with only 1 and a half minites left, and the typos are starting to flood in with abandon. That didn’t really make much sense really. Oh well, I don’t think it really needs to.

So, who’s looking forward to Christmas? i know I am, hehe. I’m a big big Christmas fan. Hey, that’s an idea. What if I just emphasise how big of a fan I am. A big ig big big big big big big big Christmas fan. Nope, still not going to work, 5 seconds left and I’m failing.

So, there you go – 791 words. Failed miserably. Not surprising though, as I can’t type at 66 wpm.. I usually average about 55 to 60, but that’s when I actually know what I’m typing! Making it up on the spot reduced this to about 53, which isn’t too bad.

Oh well, even if I didn’t beat Hayley, at least I beat her mate Tim.

Posted in Journal, Memes | 2 Comments »

Holidays Are Coming!

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Everybody knows that you can officially start getting excited about Christmas the first time you see the Coca Cola ‘Holidays Are Coming’ ad.. and did you spot it on Saturday night during X Factor?! Oh yes, the time has come for unashamed, unhidden, Christmas excitement.

I’m a big Christmas fan. I’ve been sneakily listening to Christmas music for a few weeks now.

Here is the 2009 ad in all it’s glory…

And because I’m so nice, here is the mp3 of the wonderful Coca Cola song..

AND the iPhone ringtone I made (zip file).

I know, you love me.

Posted in Journal | No Comments »

From the airport: Ireland

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Right now, James & I are sitting in Knock Airport waiting for our flight. We’ve had a fantastic long weekend here in Ireland – it is so beautiful here! It’s been mixed luck with the weather, we had a lovely sunny day on Sunday though, so we went exploring in our hire car – great fun!

Right now I’m looking forward to going home & seeing Homily who is being spoilt by an old neighbour for the weekend! It’s a bit mad how much I missed her while we were out walking and things – it’s always so much more fun with a dog bouncing around in front. We weren’t completely devoid of Norwich Terriers though, James’s dad Anthony has one -cute & cuddly Trex! I’ll blog some more about the trip once we’re back home :-)

Posted in Journal | No Comments »

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  • About Me

    I am 25 & a self confessed geek. I am a recently married self employed web designer, with a 9-5 desk job to help pay the bills. I love reading, puzzles, my iPhone (and everything else mac!), web design & blogging. I have a very sweet Norwich Terrier called Homily.

    View my amazon wishlist, email me, or find me on all my networks at me.zoecorkhill.co.uk.
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