Ten tips for a beautiful day

I just got this in an email from my friend Gavin. I thought it was really nice so wanted to share it with you all.

10 Tips for a Beautiful day

1. Only for today, I will seek to live the livelong day positively without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once

2. Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in my behaviour; I will not criticize anyone; I will not claim to improve or to discipline anyone except myself.

3. Only for today, I will be happy on the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also this one.

4. Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.

5. Only for today, I will devote myself to 10 minutes of good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul

6. Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it

7. Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing; and if my feelings are hurt, I will make sure no one notices

8. Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it to the letter, but I will make it. And I will guard against two evils: Hastiness and Indecision

9. Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances that the good Providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in the world

10. Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed, for 12hours, I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were I to believe I had to do it all my life

Our vege garden moves along

Our vege garden is moving a few steps closer. Over the past couple of weekends I have been staining the sleepers that will border the 3 garden beds. I've attached a few photos of the process.

A rough layout of the vege patch. Trying to see where all the boards go & whether the area is large enough. Looks like Paul will be doing a little more digging on the left side.
The design is for 3 beds with 2 narrow paths between them. The boards will mostly sit above the ground around the beds and the path end boards will be sunk down.

We have nasty ants in our lawn that really got stuck into me. That's why my posture isn't the best.

So that's the first lot of boards stained. Now I have to do the second set! It takes ages to do them as each side requires 2 coats. And you need to leave each side to dry overnight. So that's 3 days per board!! Guess what I'll be doing this weekend :-)

We have a videographer

Yay - we have someone to video the wedding for us. My little cousin Cameron (well - he's 17 /18 now so not so little anymore) is going to do it for us :-) Yay!! Paul and I are buying ourselves a new toy when we come to NZ next week - so Cameron will use that.

At this stage we're looking at buying a little JVC Everio GZ-M330. It's a hybrid digital video camera with a 30GB hard drive but can also save to a micro SD card. And it only weighs 360g!!! It uses MPEG2 compression and is very small and stylish. Yay! I'm very excited!!!

A review for it can ben seen here: http://www.techradar.com/products/cameras-and-camcorders/camcorders/camcorders/jvc-gz-mg330-258987/review?artc_pg=1

Book Club

Ok so I finally got around to doing something "social" to meet people in Brissy (apart from WYD stuff). A while ago I found this northern suburbs book club on the internet, so after I got back from WYD I emailed the group about joining. The group meets on the last Tuesday of every month at a restaurant in the northern suburbs area. Each month a person in the group is assigned with picking the book and the restaurant for the next month. However in July I ended up being off work sick on the day of the meeting and I also hadn't read the book as my hold hadn't become available at the library. So I didn't go to the July meeting. So in the end last night was my first meeting.

The book for the month was quite interesting. Definitely not something any of us would have picked up in the bookshop ourselves. However, once I got used to the writing style (no speech punctuation, often short paragraps etc) I really enjoyed the book and am very glad I read it. It was one of those books where you're not sure at the start, but by the end of the book you're really glad you stuck it through. It's definitely one to be read slowly! Reading the last page won't make you understand the point of the book - the "journey" of reading the full story is the "reward".

It is called "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. A plot summary can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road - but it does spoil the plot so only read it if you're not interested in the book. I definitely recommend it :-) If you do I would love to know what you thought of it too :-) So feel free to email me your "review" :-)

Next months book is The Lovely Bones which of course Peter Jackson is making into a movie. So I am very excited to read it. You'll have to wait for my summary on it though.

Happy 35th Birthday Becky

Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Becky.......... *breathe*
Happy birthday to you!!

Winter's out and Spring is in ...

Well the weekend definitely proved to us that Winter has gone and Spring is here. Both days were lovely and sunny although Saturday was a little windy for my liking - think Wellington summer. Sunday though was a stunner - just enough breeze to make sure it wasn't too hot! Our themometer showed the outside temp got up to 26.7 degrees! Yes that's right - 26.7 degrees even though it is still officially winter for another week :-) *sigh* gotta love Brissy from Autumn through Spring.

I am starting to wonder about poor old mum coming to stay in December though if it's getting to 26.7 already. Let's hope for her sake that we have a repeat of last year - spring was really hot but then summer seemed to lose it's mojo - phew!! I'm guessing she'll be stuck inside with the fans and/or air con on :-) Although she has said she's wants to just relax while she's in Brissy so maybe she won't have any option. Te he :-)

Right - back to work. Lots to do before I come to NZ next week. Plus Paul is off wiht the flu at the moment so that's not good :-( Fingers crossed I don't pick it up before our NZ trip as I so don't want to be sick for my hens party!!!

and then we found them

Yay - so you see, my prayers to St Anthony worked again :-) He isn't the patron saint of lost things for nothing!!

So Paul found my sunnies down the side of the arm chair. Whoops! They're a little bent but they still do the job.

But even better was Paul finding his own glasses! They were down the side of the drivers seat in the car. I'd checked down the side of the passenger seat but not the drivers seat. I'd forgotten that Paul drove from the supermarket to the bbq - I drove from home to the supy and from the bbq home.

Paul really has to stop putting things in his pockets! He always buys clothes with crappy pockets and then insists on putting things in them - only to lose them all the time!! But at least this time we have found the sunnies - and therefore saved ourselves approx $500! Phew!!