by Kristine | May 26, 2016 | Goals
It’s nearly half way through the year & I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a funk. Passed my 6 month probation at work but the pressure is beginning to build & I’m feeling it big time. Feeling a bit lost but am garnering some effort to pen down some practical goals for myself for self care & to ensure I don’t burn out.
One thing I want to achieve by the end of the year is to clear out first my room, followed by my house once my parents move out & Matt moves in. There’s just way too much clutter around & I just feel a bit locked in. I also want to kit out the house properly as I never quite got the chance to do so. I got a new couch & dining table 4 years ago & that’s the extent of my decoration touch in my house. There’s a lot of things that need to change. Part of this change also means decluttering & organising car boot sales to get rid of stuff. I think once that’s done, there will be more room to add my own flair to my house.
Another thing I want to accomplish is to also launch my side business, with a view & eventual goal of turning it into my livelihood. Work pays extremely well & being a government servant definitely has its perks. But it also has its downsides of being stressful & some days the stress is just overwhelming. I am confident in my abilities but mentally I’m tired at times. I need that creative outlet to let me be me again.
It has been a difficult week with being unwell with a cold & coming back to lots of stuff to do at work. I know I will climb out of this but at the moment it is tough going & I feel like I need a break from things. I just have to keep reminding myself that things can only get better from here ?
by Kristine | May 24, 2016 | Wedding
Another month down, another month closer to becoming a Mrs! So far we’ve got 90% of vendors locked in, with only a few more to go. The few things left to do are:
- Book accommodation for the night before & upgrading to the suite
- Organise wedding cake
- Make bouquets. I’ve decided to go fake flowers as real were going to cost around $400 to $500 versus around $150 for fake
- Confirming makeup artist for myself and bridesmaids if required
- Make/buy wedding favours
- Get remainder of jewelry – wedding rings & other accessories. Already sourced some earrings
- Get the remainder of documents to the celebrant for the Notice of Intended Marriage
- Confirm guest list
- Send out save the dates
- Send out invitations
- Get sized for wedding dress, alter dress
- Get possible cheongsam/qipao for tea ceremony
I’m sure there a few things I’ve left out such as the kitchen tea/bridal shower & hen’s night but those are not as pressing at the moment. I’m wanting to get the big ticket items & important things out of the way as early as I can so that we can start populating our calendars with meetings for the run up to the wedding.
The wedding planning has died down a little lately, which is great. We’re hoping to get most of the planning sorted by July this year, so we’ll have the rest of the year to focus on ourselves. We’re also looking at moving in together pretty soon, so that will be quite an effort in itself too. Count down is on! Just over a year to the wedding & we’re looking to be in relatively good shape. Now to work on our wedding bodies 😉
by Kristine | Apr 26, 2016 | Wedding
It has been just under 4 months since we’ve gotten engaged & only about 2 months since we started really planning and thinking about the wedding. It actually has been a pretty painless and fun process to be quite honest. To date, we’ve done the following:
- Picked a date
- Picked a venue for the ceremony and reception
- Put a deposit for the venue
- Picked my bridesmaids & maid of honour
- Met a celebrant and put a deposit for services
- Tried on a dress, liked it & put a deposit for it
- Met a photographer/videographer, liked them & getting ready to decide payment options
- Arranged meetings for a decorator and DJ
- Sourced a potential florist
- Tentatively arranged accommodation for the night before and night of the wedding
- Spoke to a makeup artist to source quotes
- Sourced potential bridesmaids and traditional attire online
- Sources potential custom made rings
I think we’ve done pretty well to have done so many things in such a short amount of time and with relatively little stress. I’m more just so excited about things and wanting it all to happen right now! The best part for all the services I’ve spoken to & organised is that we are getting discounts for every single thing for the wedding! Am hoping that this will continue & we can come under budget for the wedding. So far we are doing pretty good & am watching my spending really closely so that we will make it as close under budget as possible. Winter weddings are most definitely a good way to save some money! I picked out my wedding dress over the weekend, but that is a story for another day! I got the most gorgeous gown for half price & I cannot wait to be a princess on the day!
by Kristine | Apr 18, 2016 | Challenges, Wedding
The wedding date has been locked in & is slowly creeping up on us. One of the biggest things when planning a wedding is the all important budget. We’ve picked an amount that is reasonably small, but big enough for us to have the important things to us. I’ve employed quite a few money saving strategies for the wedding, which is a story for another post. I think, if we hadn’t organised for a winter wedding, the cost would have been easily almost another $2000. Which isn’t a laughing matter at all when you are just starting life out together, every cent and dollar counts!
Given that we haven’t quite reached our target savings as of yet, I’ve been employing quite a severe regime to save. One of the things that I will be trying to do is to have a ‘no spend’ challenge. At this point, I’m aiming to try it for at least a month & for as long as I can go in an effort to make everything stretch that little bit further. One of my bridesmaids inspired this as she is doing a ‘no spend’ year. She has been unemployed & they’ve just bought a house & are renovating it, so things are a little tight on their end. The rules of the challenge are that you are allowed to buy groceries and food items, replace things like deodorant, shower gel, make up, undies and essentials, but you are not allowed to buy new things. For example, if I want to go to a party, I have to reuse the clothes I have in my wardrobe & am not allowed to buy anything new.
I’ve done a bit of a recon of the items in my room and I feel like I’ve got enough cosmetics to last me a lifetime, face creams, body lotions, clothes and stationery to last me till my grandchildren and heaps of accessories that I can reuse to jazz things up. I will be allowed to buy things like petrol, pay bills (duh!), get foodstuff for home. I will not be allowed to buy new clothes, eat out unless I don’t have a choice and random impulse buys when I visit the shop. And cause we are planning the wedding, we will be allowed to spend for wedding related purposes. It will be interesting to see the results after a month of trying this out. Wish me luck! 🙂
by Kristine | Apr 12, 2016 | Wedding
It has been just over 3 months since Matt popped the question & I haven’t blogged about it yet. Work & life has just gotten in the way again. Ironically enough, the wedding planning has also taken up most of my time & weekends are usually spent over at Matt’s place, which doesn’t leave very much time at all to pen thoughts down. I do want to immortalise the moment, so that I can read it in the future & recall the great memories and emotions associated with this 🙂
It was a bright, hot sunny Saturday morning on the 9th of January. It wasn’t very much of a special day, all I knew that Matt was going to take us on a drive to somewhere but didn’t say where. I was quite happy to just sit in the car, feeling pretty excited by it all. I must say, it was incredibly hot that day, what a day to pick! Matt drove us up the Kwinana Freeway, I had no idea where we were heading to still but when we got to the CBD & pulled off at the Mounts Bay exit, I instantly knew where we were going. I had an inkling that he was going to pop the question, but I had absolutely no idea where.
We then pulled into Fraser’s Avenue & into King’s Park. King’s Park is a bit of a special place to us, it is literally where we first met & had our first kiss. We parked & walked to our special spot, where we had our first kiss. It was quite a bit of a trek and we were both trying to work out where the spot was, we worked up quite a bit of a sweat doing this! Matt kept keeping me on one side of him, as he had the ring in one pocket & he didn’t want me to realise haha! When we got nearer to our special spot, Matt then had a bit of a stomach ache & had to go searching for a toilet (sorry honey!). I ended up waiting on the side of the road & watched while a wedding was being set up nearby. The vendors even asked if we were there for the wedding. Haha, no but we would’ve gone if we were invited!
Off we went after that to find the particular bench we had our first kiss on. We had to take a picture to commemorate the moment, just over 4 years after we first met. I still have the picture of when we literally first met each other. I really cherish those memories!
We reminisced a bit about all the memories & things we’ve been through together. It was great just being able to enjoy nature & be in the company of your loved one.
Matt then went down on one knee, gave a bit of a speech & popped the question. I of course said yes! Don’t tell anyone, but I did have a bit of a teary moment when he popped the question. The ribbon on the ring box got a bit stuck, but we got it open in the end & I got to wear the ring to be future Mrs-I-Wear-Odd-Sockz!
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