We’ve Moved!

I’ve Moved Blogs!

I’ve packed up my blogging things and moved to a new blog!

This was when I was packing for Australia. Charlie wanted to come too!

Please go visit my new blog, Life’s Little Vignettes! located at http://mylifeslittlevignettes.wordpress.com. So if you’re a follower over on this blog, please take a moment to go over to the new blog and follow there. I have all of my posts from Small Town 20 Something, and all of your lovely comments on my posts already over at the new place! I even have a new post over there too, so go visit and check it out!

What I’ve Been Doing for the Past Month…

So I didn’t plan to take a month long break from blogging. It just kind of happened. Things have been so busy here lately that the time I usually spend writing, planning, and scheduling posts (mostly the weekends) has been filled with other things.

The weekend after I posted my last post, I went to a wedding for a friend of mine, Bonnie, who I had met through being a bridesmaid at our friend Ruth’s wedding last summer. People were at the reception and dancing for hours, so I really didn’t get home until a lot later than I intended!

The following week we were cleaning, organizing, and de-cluttering the kitchen, since we were expecting work on our kitchen to start that week.

Before.

It ended up not happening till the following week but since my mom was at camp, and my dad was out of town, I was kind of holding down the fort.

After. New Window, Floor, Countertops, & Trim-work

We rented a camp up in Belgrade Lakes, which we had last summer too, and I did end up going up there twice. Mostly I was home though. I went up there the 21st and 22nd of July, and mostly hung out with my cousins kids, fishing, swimming, and boating. I went back up on the 25th and did some watercolor painting.

B got really upset I kayaked so far away from camp. But then he felt better after posing for a picture!

I put together a little package of goodies for Eileen, Kyle & their pets, and sent that out.

I went up to Burlington the 28th and the 29th, to hang out with some friends.

This lighter was like stuck in the concrete of the sidewalk in Burlington. Tasha, KT and I seriously enjoyed this too much.

I ended up signing up for Content is King and Media Kits that Will Make You Money as my free Alt Summit classes for July. That happened at the beginning of last week. They were both really good. And definitely gave me a lot to think about as far as this blog goes. Look out for me to re-brand… including a new name! I’m very excited about it.

Charlie says: “Get ready for this awesomeness!”

Then last weekend I babysat, went blueberry picking with my family, and out to lunch for my Aunt Belinda’s birthday. I went to my Aunt’s camp that she rents for a week every August.. (I’ll probably spend some time there again this weekend.) But I promise I will be posting again soon! 🙂

Altitude Design Summit – Alt Online Classes

Picture from http://www.altitudesummit.com

I’m sure you guys have heard me talk a lot about wanting to go to a blogging conference. I’m sure Alt Summit has come up in those conversations.

But they also have online classes. I’ve looked them up before, and there have been a few that have peaked my interest. Well guess what?

Thanks to Bing.com, you can earn up to 4!!! Free online classes from Alt. They are regularly $15 each (which still isn’t a bad price) but for a broke girl like me, free sounds pretty darn good.

So, #thanksbing. I think I’m going to start out by signing up for Bringing Home the Bacon When Your Blog Isn’t Huge by Melanie Blodgett and Content is King by Melanie Blodgett.

Get more info at the Alt Design Summit blog, and come join me in an online class!!

10 Things (Around the Web) on Tuesday: 7

Here’s another installment of my Tuesday series!

1. I love this post about blogging tips. Isn’t Kitty’s blog adorable? I love her cats and the fact that she is from Sydney! And here are some great advertising blog tips!
2. Tami makes these adorable sloths! I want one.
3. I’m getting into the spirit of the Olympic games! I love this necklace (that I want to make for myself) and I love these coloring sheets (I’d love to take into work and use with “my” kids.)
4. Speaking of my kids I work with… I love these Popsicle bookmarks! One of our local banks has a summer reading program where kids can earn money by reading a certain number of books, and we are located very close to the library. I think it would be great to get the kids into reading with a combination of all of those things! I also bet this book would be great for use with the kids. It seems like a great book about crafting with kids!
5. I’m pretty sure that Charlie would be happy as a clam in mud if I made him these tuna frozen cat treats. It’s been humid here lately. I will have to make him some ASAP!
6. Oh, going back to the kids I work with… (yeah, I love my kids, that are not really mine, but whatever) I love these 4th of July pops! We actually cook/make healthy food with them for snack once a week, and I’m betting these would be a huge hit!
7. Oh, I also want to make a bunch of these shoe tie practice boards for them since we have a whole bunch that don’t know how to tie their shoes.
8. I’m not sure about Potato Chip Brownies but they do kinda look good! They could be a totally unhealthy desert after a delicious and more healthy blueberry pizza! And a Lemon Shake Up for a beverage!
9. I also want to make these awesome things. Cute embroidered bobby pins and some cute bracelets! (Just a heads up, the bracelet tutorial is in Dutch.)
10. Eventually sometime when I’m not broke, I want to go to a blog conference. (I know I talk about this a lot.) I’m super jealous of the people that were just at Haven! Chelsea did her first vlog and talked about Haven.. Super jealous!

Goodbye June!

Let’s check out how I did with my June goals!

• Blog 25 times in June. {20 posts. Which is almost there. I’d say out of all my goals, this has been one of the most successful.}
• Read 3 Books. {I recently started reading The Atlas of Love by Laurie Frankel. I’m about halfway done. Didn’t do well on this goal at all. I need to get audio books I can listen to while driving to work (since I spend about 10 hours a week in my car on average).}
• Plan an epic party or two. {I wanted to help if my sister had a grad party and host a surprise party for a few friends, but neither party ended up happening, so no party planning over here.}
• Do dinner/lunch/coffee with friends at least once a week. {Yes! Totally done well with this! I’ve been very busy! I actually did a lunch/coffee date with a few of my girlfriends from high school yesterday, and we were at Tim Hortons for like 3 hours!}
• Complete at least two of the DIY/Craft projects on my to-make list. {Haven’t done this either.}
• Organize my room and desk space so I can better utilize it! {Got started on this right after I decided to make it one of my monthly goals! I’m hoping to make some more headway on this goal soon!}

I blame the fact that I didn’t do as well as I had hoped on the fact that after school got out, I got more hours at work. And I had 4 nights of training where I didn’t get home until 7-8PM. Hopefully July will be better!

Trip Favorites

Note: This concludes my month long series on Sydney! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Some of my favorites from my trip!

Favorite Monument : Manly Beach Freshwater World Surfing Reserve

Manly Beach Surf Reserve.

Favorite Airport : Detroit

Favorite Lunch : French Onion Soup at the Opera House Cafe

The greatest French Onion Soup known to man.

Favorite Dinner : Salmon and couscous from Pony on 1st Night of Vivid Sydney

Hard Rock is a close second!

Favorite Local Craftspeople : Guritno and Lisa Reniore

Favorite Breakfast : Chocolate croissant from Pie Face

Mom got many coffees here a day, and always got me a chocolate croissant in the morning.

Favorite New Stores : Typo and Kikki K.

Favorite Snack : Cheezels

So good!

Favorite Zoo/Animal Park : Toronga, though Featherdale was a close second!

Favorite Vivid Sydney Light Sculpture : Pack Intelligence & Palette of Urban Green

Pack Intelligence Light Sculpture during the day.

Australia – May 28th to 30th

Note: This is the second to last post in a series about my vacation to Sydney. Thanks for sticking with me, and I hope you enjoyed this series and might give you some ideas if you’re ever traveling to Australia!

One of our friends at the concierge advised us not to go to Watsons Bay like we had originally planned after I told him how full our Monday was planned.

This guy kept cheesing for the camera.

Check out the whiskers on that guy.

It worked out since we woke up Monday, got ready, and headed out to the Toronga Zoo, which was huge and awesome, with great views of the city.

Baby elephant!

I saw quite a few Emus on this trip.

They had a wide variety of animals, including some seals.

Yes indeed, this seal is doing a shark impression.

These guys are Binturongs. They are kind of like a bear/cat.

We got back to Circular Quay later than originally planned so we nixed going back to the beach (another thing originally planned for Monday).

Why, hello there!

We went back to Darling Harbor and did dinner at the Hard Rock again. We packed up to leave the hotel bright and early.

We left Sydney on May 29^th at 10AM, and got to LAX on May 29^th at 6AM, even though there was a 13 hour flight in between there. After a few more good flights, and one night in Atlanta later we arrived home on Wednesday night!

There’s no place like home!

10 Things (Around the Web) on Tuesday: 6

Here’s another edition of 10 Things on Tuesday! Would anyone be interested if I wanted to turn this into a link up?

1. I’m not moving {at least in the near future} but I think these packing printables would be great for organizing boxes and bins of stuff in the basement! [which is on my summer to-do list]
2. This cat is very adorable, but this also seems like something my cat would do, so this picture has caused many many laughs this week!
3. I love this idea on how to recycle your old birchboxes!
4. So I’m polling my facebook friends, but I’ll ask ya’ll for your advice as well. My current rain boots are in pretty bad shape, and I’m trying to figure out which pair I should buy from Zappos to replace them. Which one of these three should I get? They’re all on sale, so they are pretty much the same price. I love the yellow polka-dots but I’m worried about it matching things. I think the solid teal would match the best, and the plaid are just fun.
   Thoughts? Which ones do you like the best?
5. Lauren always has awesome DIY’s. This chain and pearl bracelet? Adorable!
6. My nearest IKEA is almost 3 hours away in the next state over. I have friends in the area I hope to visit this summer, which I’m hoping means a trip to IKEA! I might have to use some of these IKEA Hackers ideas. 🙂
7. Salted caramel sugar cookies? Sounds delicious!
8. I love these cookbook markers!
9. This red, white, and blue wrap bracelet is very patriotic for the 4th of July!
10. If I had a little girl, I’d so make her a million of these adorable leggings!

And for some exciting things I liked that happened offline… I watched the kids I nanny for on Saturday night so their parents could go out… and I was able to get my 2-year-old buddy S changed, teeth brushed, story read, kissed and hugged and down for bed in less than a half hour, including the five or so minutes he cried before going to bed! And A, who is like 5 months old eventually did fall asleep after 2 small bottles and crying for a good 5 minutes! And Miss L, who is 15 months old and attends the center where I work with the school age kids, normally cries when she gets her diaper changed, and cried when I changed it last week, didn’t cry this week when I changed her!

Australia – May 27th

Note: This is probably my most picture heavy post ever. You’ve been warned!

Sunday was an early morning as we geared up to go to the Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains. This particular area is called the Three Sisters.

They’re a little bit outside of Sydney and we had to take a little 22 passenger bus to get there.

Michael was our driver/tour guide! He was great, and very friendly!

It was awesome.

Gorgeous waterfall!

The mountains and forest floor were stunning.

Looking up at the mountains and tree tops.

There was a cable car you took to get down, and a railway up, which was awful since it was so steep.

Can you tell I’m afraid of heights?

We stopped on our way back at Featherdale Wildlife Park where we fed kangaroos out of our hands and got to pet koala bears again.

I might have made a couple of new friends…

Hello there!

Wallabys.

Wallaby! I love this picture, between the food on his nose and the sun glare in the background.

Dingo!

I loved the beautiful pink color of this bird!

Sleepy red fox!

We didn’t get a ton of time there, since we then had to catch a ferry back to Circular Quay!

Fun family time. Thanks to our tour guide Michael for taking the picture for us!

Dad taking a picture of Michelle in front of the Blue Mountains.

What a lovely day, and a lovely view.

We had another steak special for dinner at the hotel restaurant. Their garlic bread is still the best in the world, though unfortunately, the hot tub was still a cold tub.

Australia – May 26th

Saturday we headed back to the Market to see our friend who had been to Maine, who was selling some cool plates and cups with awesome Sydney artwork, so that we could buy a few items. She wasn’t there, but her business partner was. We got some food to snack on and share, and I bought an awesome scrapbook after being extremely indecisive about it.

We walked to Darling Harbor, where we went to the aquarium!

The whale and background are made entirely of legos.

They had a lot of Dory and Nemo fish, and some penguins.

A fish that looks like Dory from “Finding Nemo”.

A clownfish that looked like Nemo from “Finding Nemo”.

They had a great shark exhibit that you actually walked underneath of.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a shark above your head!

After that, Michelle and mom went to the Chinese Garden of Friendship while dad and I went to the National Maritime Museum.

At the National Maratime Museum in front of a naval ship called the Vampire!

They had a Titanic exhibit going on to commemorate the 100 year anniversary since it sank. They also had an exhibit on Australia’s surfing history. We met up and went to the Hard Rock Café for dinner. The food was amazing although the restaurant was very loud.