Style

What is this madness? 2 posts in one day. Jeez, you guys are spoilt.

Lately I've been obsessed with the new T.Swift album, I'm not even ashamed to say it. Favourite tune has to be "Style", loving that beat and for some reason it just reminds me of summer night cruises. Seriously, I'm not a summer person but I wouldn't mind being near a beach right about now. The sun is shining outside & I'm feeling extra grateful to be alive.

You may have heard on the news what occurred in Sydney yesterday, but if you haven't go here > Martin Place Siege.

Now, I'm from Melbourne which is about a 10 hour drive or a 1 hour flight out of Sydney but what occurred yesterday still hits way to close to home. So today, I've just been focusing on reflection & appreciation. Appreciating the life that I have, grateful that the people that I care about are safe & healthy and most importantly, within arms reach. Two innocent people lost their lives early this morning & they leave behind family, siblings, children, pets, friends .. I can't even begin to understand what kind of heartbreak their loved ones are feeling. My heart goes out to those directly effected and indirectly effected by a crazed monster's actions.

I haven't been doing much lately, I've been a bit of a hermit due to the fact that Sara and I only have a couple months to save up a lot of cash prior to us moving in together. I'm both excited & scared, but it's a good kind of scared. I'm just eager to see what our future holds & the bonus of this all, is knowing that I'll be able to wake up next to her every morning & seeing that she's safe, makes me feel more at ease when I think about how dangerous the world can really be.

Here are some snaps from the past couple weeks.

By the way, have you told your loved ones that you love them today? If not, go do it now.

Liebster Award

So, I was recently awarded with the Liebster Award via the beautiful Tokki .. be sure to check out her blog if you haven't already. She's heaps cute!

THE OFFICIAL RULES OF THE LIEBSTER AWARD

o1. Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog.
o2. Display the award on your blog
o3. Answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
o4. Provide 11 random facts about yourself.
o5. Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers. 
o6. Create a new list of 11 questions for the blogger to answer.

11 FACTS ABOUT YOURS TRULY

o1. I'm a sucker for Australian hip-hop (Bliss & Eso being my absolute favourite) I think it doesn't get enough praise and believe that it's probably because the hip-hop scene in America is much larger.
o2. I love painting and Jackson Pollock is the artist whom I hold the most love for.
o3. I'm scared of the dark.
o4. I have a slight allergy to pineapples.
o5. I know how to sing, but only ever sing in the shower or when I'm by myself, I find that it's a good outlet when I'm feeling emotional.
o6. I have a massive collection of anime series and I've watched all of them at least 3 times each.
o7. I was a smoker for about 13 years, but have quit in the last couple months. I only ever have a smoke when I'm drunk. Oops.
o8. I only came out to my parents when I was 24 years old, I'm now 26.
o9. I have one tattoo on my left thigh of a fox wearing a jesters hat & I plan on getting my right thigh done in January, it will be a wolf wearing an American Indian head piece. My mother knows nothing.
1o. I'm really lazy, typical Taurus I guess.
11. I have an older brother who is the head chef at The Carlton Club/Restaurant in Melbourne city.

TOKKI'S QUESTIONS

o1. What languages do you speak? English, but my girlfriend is trying to teach me Spanish.
o2. Do you want to have kids in the future? I would love to have kids in the future, but I only want boys. Unfortunately I don't think I could handle a teenage daughter, especially if she's anything like me.
o3. Do you own any pets? Yes, I own 2 cats. A Ragdoll named Humphrey and a mix breed named Maasai. We also have a family dog called Foxie, but he mainly belongs to my grandfather.
o4. What is your favourite guilty pleasure food? Polabok (It's a Filipino dish) but omg it's so good, especially if you love seafood.
o5. What's your current favourite T.V show? I don't really have a current favourite T.V show because I'm always watching different things, but one that I recently finished & thoroughly enjoyed was the Real Housewives of Melbourne.
o6. What is the purpose of your blog? To be honest, it's nothing more than a place where I can store my memories so that when I'm old & grey, I have something to look back on and/or show my children.
o7. What websites do you visit all the time? YouTube, BuzzFeed and Tumblr.
o8. Who do you find inspiration from? I'm not actually sure to be honest.
o9. What country would you love to visit? Japan, South Korea and all of Europe.
1o. What is your plans for Christmas? I'm spending the 24th with my girlfriend in the city, most likely eating & taking cheesy photos with Christmas decorations, then I've got a family dinner that night too. On the 25th we don't really do anything other than eat & enjoy each others company.
11. Who is your favourite YouTuber? I'm finding it so hard to pick! I would probably have to say the Fung Bros as well as The Ugly Face of Beauty (massive girl crush).

BLOG NOMINATIONS

o1. Kimberley - The Lens Affair
o2. Kaity - Little Laughter Lines
o3. Nani - Nani Blog
o4. Julia - Sea of Sound
That's all for now, I'm only recently getting back into blogging so I don't follow a lot of blogs just yet!

MY QUESTIONS

o1. If you had to live on an island for a year & could only take 3 things, what would they be?
o2. Favourite animal & why?
o3. What is your ideal country to live in?
o4. Would you ever go on Big Brother?
o5. Are you a winter person or a summer person?
o6. What's your absolute favourite movie?
o7. Do you have any siblings?
o8. You've just won a $1,000 voucher to go shopping online, but the catch is that you can only visit one site - which site would it be?
o9. What are you most passionate about?
1o. Do you collect anything?
11. What makes you angry?

Problem

I've been thinking about my blog a lot lately - I've been thinking about it's purpose, what it does for me, what it does for the people who want to read it, what I should change/not change as well as whether or not I can handle blogging as well as doing "life".

I struggle to find time for myself to do things that I want to actually do, between work & spending time with my loved ones, I don't really know when I can squeeze in some "me" time because a lot of my days are spent trying to keep up with the hustle and bustle of my work/social life. So really, it shouldn't be surprising that I can't even keep up when it comes to routine blog posts. Don't get me wrong - I love my life, I love my friends & even though it drains my life - I do love my job (mainly the social aspect of it though) but trying to balance everything can be a little bit hard. I think that might be something that I'll work on in the new year - prioritize EVERYTHING in my life.

One change I've decided on is that I'm going to blog separate adventures. I love photography, I love taking pictures of things and I've noticed that I tend to get trigger happy & throw everything into one big blog post because I'm so excited but it doesn't really give my readers much information on what I actually did nor how I felt while it was happening. As a reader of blogs myself, I tend to gravitate towards lifestyle blogs where the writer has explained what they've done as well as how they've felt. It makes sense in my head to move away from throwing all my photos into one big post that doesn't have any depth & moving towards blogging about a certain day or weekend instead.

So this is the last time you'll see all my photos thrown into the one post! Going to start doing more separate, meaningful posts that I hope my readers will enjoy reading and one day, when I'm old & grey I can come back & remember everything I did when I was younger.

Anyway, check the photos.

SUMMARY - Sara and I tend to explore a lot, we recently went around the city just venturing down the lane ways. I've had a lot of food, so far it's mostly plant based but I have also had chicken, still working on cutting out ALL meat. I visited the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria with a good friend of mine. My mum came back from the Philippines so she brought me some goodies. A friend of ours recently left to move back to Mexico, so we threw him a surprise going away party - it was messy (yes, that's my girlfriend in the bathtub).