Bigger is better

Costume jewellery is one of my weaknesses. I have posted my vintage jewellery collection on the blog before and thought I would show another part of my collection today. It is not very often you will find me not wearing rings; they are probably my favourite piece of jewellery. I am of the persuasion that bigger is better and am usually donning a ginormous ring on one of my fingers. After you get use to the general feeling of lopsidedness your ready for action. What piece of jewellery do you not leave the house without?


P.S I am currently in the process of updating my blogroll if you would like to check it out there is lots of great blogs on there. 

Chai affair

For the last six months, since I discovered my obsession with chai lattes, I have been on the search for a delicious at home alternative to the delicious ones my coffee shop sells. After months of disappointment – too sweet, too artificial, too expensive I may have finely found what I have been looking for. At a friend’s house a couple of weeks ago she served me the most delicious made at home chai and I immediately went out and bought some. The brand is Arkadia and comes in vanilla and spicy flavours. I have only tried the vanilla but will give the spicy one a try next time. It is about $6 a pop at Woolies but is worth it. The box recommends using 2-3 teaspoons; I recommend going for the whole three otherwise it can taste a little watery. What is your go to tea? My cupboard is bursting with tea at the moment but I can never help buying something new to try.

Bring it on winter

Winter in Canberra always gives me the blues. I hate being cold, I hate short days and the loss of motivation that characterises the season. This year I am attempting a positive attitude and embracing the positives of winter; wood fires, snuggling under layers of doonas and catching up on movies and lots of soup. 

One of the main reasons I am so cold in Winter is I don't layer up enough. I always look out the window and think it cant be that bad. After making this mistake several times over my 23 years of life I decided it was time to invest in a good coat, some thick woolies and no longer doubt winters potential coldness. The photos above show off my new coat, I questioned whether or not to buy a coat with a hood but decided it would be good on cold days when you cant feel your ears any more.

A few people have commented lately that my hair looks really shiny. Assuming this is a good thing I will let you in on my secret. I have recently started shampooing my hair twice when I wash it on the advice of my hairdresser. Apparently the first shampoo just gets rid of the dirt but the second cleans the actual hair, something along those lines but I do see an improvement in how healthy my hair looks.

I also use a shampoo for blonde hair, this however is because I bought two litres of it a couple of days before dying my hair back to brown from blonde and I am just too stingy to buy more until I have used it up. I wish I could tell you this is a well thought out beauty trick but unfortunately it has more to do with the tightness of my purse strings :-p

Explorer for a day

It's days like this I wish I had a good camera, or maybe its not the camera but the person using it? I went on a bush walk with some friends from work. We walked up a mountain, which took about one and a half hours, to a point called Square Rock and the view was just amazing. We literally had a picnic sitting on the side of a cliff wall.
It really was a perfect Autumn day for bush walking, not too hot but sitting on the rock with the midday sun overhead was just perfection. I can not believe I have lived in Canberra for over five years and not realised the amazing walking tracks that are around. I took lots of brochures from the visitors centre and am ready for lots more exploring in the future.
Whilst my photos do not do the day justice, here is a few of my favourites.

I also made a bush walking video but I just watched it and it made me feel nauseous so I wont be putting you through that :-)  I am exhausted now and planning on having a big sleep in tomorrow. I hope you are having lots of adventures this weekend!

Working class

Just a little outfit post of my usual work attire, pretty conservative but I try to jazz it up with accessories - cue huge rings, pretty headbands or bulky necklaces. I wish we didn’t have a dress code at work sometimes I just want to wear jeans and a jumper. This skirt reminds me of a similar one my Nan would wear when she would take me to church when I was little. My Nan would sing so loudly in church that I use try and hide behind the pews, it seems like such a silly thing to have done now, but the skirt is a nice little reminder of her when I wear it.

Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday and then were back to the weekend. Work has been good this week but it is so exhausting, like everyone by the end of the week you are just ready to relax.I got to work today and my lunch had spilt all through my gym bag and I had to go to the gym covered in avocado, I am not sure if anyone noticed or they were just too polite to say anything. It was a beautiful Autumn day today and I got to eat my lunch in the park, winter isn’t too far away and I am dreading being stuck indoors.

Is blogger misbehaving for you? It hasnt been letting me comment on other peoples blogs, very frustrating, hopefully it will all be sorted soon.

Have a fabulous Friday!

P.S I guest posted on the wonderful Meghan's blog, The Perfect Compilation Tape, if you have time I would love you to visit.

Food coach: 3 month update & giveaway winner

This year is going so quickly, I can’t believe I have actually been seeing my food coach for three months. I thought it would be a good idea to do a three month update on my food coach as a lot of people have shown an interest in it. To read the first post just click here.

I am still extremely happy that I made the decision to start seeing a food coach, it really has been beneficial for me in achieving the goals I set for myself at the start of the year. Basically we meet once a week for half an hour and have a look through my food journal, identify any issues and then weigh in we then have a general chit chat about anything else I may want to talk about.

I have lost approx 5kg and about 20cms. This doesn’t seem like a huge amount in 3 months but I have really used the program to suit my lifestyle. As I have said before I am all about moderation and giving up all the naughty stuff and exercising every day was never going to work for me. So slow but definite progress. I am at the stage now where a few pieces of clothing are starting to fit again and a few other pieces are less snug. I am now two and a half kilos off my first goal weight so if I can get there I think I will have to buy myself a little treat.

I think one of the hardest things about losing weight is that it takes around 3 months to really start seeing results and sometimes it can be hard to stick with it for that long. Especially during the weeks when you put on weight or don’t lose anything – it can be really frustrating. This has definitely been a problem for me in the past. Having stuck with it this time and being able to wear a skirt that hasn’t fit for the last 12 months is definitely giving me the motivation to keep going.

I have also been taking a B12 and a fibre vitamin and that has increased my energy levels. I have been trying to exercise four times a week and generally just do whatever I feel like on the day.

There is only six weeks until my package runs out and I am going to try and put in a big effort to see some big results before the end. It does worry me though that I will slack off once I am finished the program and don’t have anyone to be accountable too, but hopefully I can stay strong and this won’t happen.

In other news, the lovely Jennifer was the winner of my give away, congrats Jennifer and thanks to everyone who entered, I really appreciate it.

Photos of late

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Autumn in Canberra

Vintage dresses

Typical Canberra morning, gloves and coffee = essential

Toussle me softly hair (my lazy go to hair)

New pyjamas

Last week at Katy Perry

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Have you got Instagram? I am just getting into it. My username is timeaftertea, please leave your username in the comments so I can add you.

A perfect Sunday

Today for me was a pretty fantastic Sunday, no where to be, no rushing around just being able to enjoy the day. We had a really long sleep in, I nearly made the 12 hour mark but was an hour off. Brendan and I then went out for breakfast and discussed our plans of living overseas in 2013. I then convinced him to visit this amazing new vintage clothing store that just opened up in our area. There are a number of dresses I cannot stop thinking about and might possibly have to go back for. We then did the groceries, and bought our weekly scratchie (still not winners) and I managed to get myself to the gym in the afternoon.

dress: Valleygirl - jacket and shoes: Kmart - hat: Cotton on - bag: Thrifted

This is one of my favourite dresses, I bought it from Valley girl for $30 two years and have more then got its share of wear out of it. I like it with this jacket as it makes it a little less girly. I still get excited when I pull this handbag out and remember it only cost me $2 from a church fete. It gets comments everytime I wear it and is so convinent for the weekend.

Were off to our friends for dinner who is an amazing cook so it shall be fabulous.

Hope you have had an amazing weekend and please dont forget to enter my fresh look giveaway here.

Streamlining your online life

Image Source

The other day at work it struck me how much information is available about me on the internet. It really is quite scary when you put together my blog, twitter and facebook etc how much a stranger could piece together about my life. The other factor is with all these different social networking sites it can sometimes be overwhelming to go on the internet and make sure eveything is up to date. Here are a few little handy tricks that I have found useful.

Facebook: lets be honest, there are people on fb who are most likely your friends because their sticky beaks and want to know whats going on in your life. Do we really want every acquaintance we have ever meet knowing all about us? The rule I apply is - if this person saw me on the street would they stop and talk to me? If not then I don't add them as a friend. Sometimes the answer is yes they would and I still dont add them. Why? Because sometimes its nice to run into people and hear how their life is going without having to say oh I already know all that because I read it on facebook. I definitely recommend having a look at who your friends with on facebook and deciding whether or not you want them to be able to access your profile anymore or whether you look forward to catching up with them one day when you see them again.

Another good idea is to set some time aside to look at the photos your tagged in as sometimes photos go up without you even realising. Generally I untag myself in anything I wouldn't want my boss or my Grandma to see. With employers being super savy these days it pays to take extra precautions.

Email: I realised today I have five emails! Who needs five email addresses? I certainly don't but unfortunately I have got myself into the predicament that they all are used to access different online accounts so cutting down is going to take time and energy. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to try and cut down to three emails. This means less accounts that have have the ability to be hacked and more efficent use of time when checking emails.

Did you know that research has found that checking your emails can be one of the most stressful parts of the day? Try to set aside set periods of time to check your email rather then constantly checking it through out the day. Deal with each email as it comes in - have tabs such as urgent, bills, blog, social, Need no reply and move emails straight from your inbox into the relevant tab. You can then come back when you have time and deal with each tab one at a time. This means next time you open your email you wont feel overwhelmed by everything thats in there.

Another "clean out" I am in the process of is unsubsribing to certain websites. I obviously went through a phase where I signed up to every website I visited and now I wake up every morning to alot of "junk mail" so I am slowly unsubsribing as they come to my inbox. This will also help with reducing that feeling of overwhelment when you first open your inbox.

Blog: at the moment this is my biggest concern. I have felt as though my blog is all over the place and I haven't been able to keep up with all the blogs I like to read. The little blog makeover has definitely re-inspired me a little bit but there is a few other things I am implementing to keep things more under control.

Firstly I am trying to reduce the amount of tags I use. For every new post I pretty much start a new tag so over the next week or so I am retagging everything so that it will fit into one of the new categories to the right. I also think these tags will help give me direction and inspiration for future posts.

I am also reducing my ever expanding google reader. I love commenting on other people's blogs but just opening my reader and seeing the scary "You have over 1000 unread posts" often results in me closing the page and hiding under the blankets. Today I had a cull of blogs I don't  read anymore and am now following 100 blogs (down from 150ish) which means all the posts in my reader are from blogs I am genuinely interested in.

Twitter: twitter is probably (in my opinion) the easiest social networking site to keep track of. My main tip is to keep checking who is following you and block anyone who looks dodgey or is spammy.

Fresh look and a giveaway

I am going to get a little honest here, lately the urge to blog has nearly all but disappeared.

This makes me sad as I love blogging but I seem to have lost any inspiration I once had and am embarassed to admit that this has shown through in some of my recent posts.

I wanted to turn this around so I gave Time After Tea a little make over and sat down and figured out how I want to get back into blogging.

I even considered starting from scratch but couldn't turn my back on this little place, so am instead hoping for a fresh start.

To celebrate a fresh start I have a giveaway from one of my good friends Alyssa. This gorgeous bow necklace from her etsy store Itsolive.

To enter you just need to be a follower and leave a comment saying hi. For an extra entry (leave in a seperate comment) tell me what you would like to see on the blog in the future. I am trying to figure out what I enjoy posting most and would love a little hand on the way. The giveaway will end on Wednesday at 5pm and is open internationally.

Sending lots of sparkles to everyone and looking forward to catching up on everyones blog this weekend!

How do you manage conflict?

source.

As part of my job I get to do some pretty interesting training, today we learnt how to manage conflict. Not just at work but in our personal lives. The training was based on a program developed by Dr. Elias H. Porter and basically states that there are three main ways people react when their in conflict. One group of people fight for survival, they approach the conflict with a must win attitude these people are characterised by the colour red. Other people (Green people) step back from the conflict, analyse the dilemma and then make decisions on how to approach the situation. The last group of people, the blue group, avoid conflict and give in to the other party in the hope of keeping the peace. The theory is much more complicated then the basics I have outlined and you can learn more about it here.

I have found the method you employ or the colour you are can depend on the situation and the person you are in conflict with. For exaple in a professional capacity I am characterised as a Green, I try and look at the problem rationally before taking my stance on the issue. However in my personal life or something I am passionate about I feel like like I move into the red area alot more quickly.

For me understanding how you react in a conflict situation can be so beneficial not just so you can control your reactions but so you can choose how to approach the situation more wisely and come out with a more beneficial outcome. Taking it a step further and analysing how other people around you react to conflict can help you diffuse situations and give you a deeper understanding of how the people around you work and feel.

I find all of this stuff so interesting and am looking forward to applying it to my everyday life. How do you manage conflict? Do you hide away or tackle it head on?

Bedroom makeover

Brendan and I got a new bed frame a few weeks ago, unfortunately it has now made me want to completely redo the whole bedroom. I am usually attracted to floral prints, pinks and purples when it comes to bedspreads and the like however this time round I have to take Brendan's preference for nothing too feminine into the equation.
I have come up with the above two options, left being pretty modern and the right being a little more homey and light.

This is the bed frame, which as you can see is pretty modern so I am jusy not sure if a patchwork quilt will really work. What are your thoughts? The first thing I will be investing in though is a new electric blanket it is so cold here aleady, not sure how I am going to cope this winter. It sounds absolutely ridiculous but I forget how cold it actually gets in Winter - Summer lures me into a false sense of security.

I will also be sharing my office makeover soon that I mentioned a few weeks ago.

Sources: patchwork quilt; white lamp; mirror; laundry basket; candles; bedside table; laundry basket; brown lamp.

Trip planning

Our Las Vegas accomodation. Too old to be excited about staying in a fake palace?

Our trip is coming along so fabulously, I do feel extremely lucky to be going on this adventure with two of my best friends. Did I mention that they hadn't met before Saturday? Risky business but luckily they get along and I have no worries that the trip won't go smoothly.

Our itinery is all mapped out which is pretty exciting, we are spending three nights in Las Vegas, three nights in San Francisco, six nights in New York and two nights in Los Angeles. Only a quick trip but I am so excited for my very first taste of America.

Right now I am scouring all my favourite blogs from the US to figure out where to go, what to see and what to buy. Is it crazy that I already have a shopping list started?

We have our international flight booked, flying air New Zealand and that was probably one of the most stressful things we will have to do. They are always advertising $1000 flights to LA but apparently they never have many seats for that price so our flights were a little more then expected but it will definitely be worth it. Most of our accomodation is booked. I am so shocked at how cheap the accomodation is in Las Vegas luckily I am not a big gambler and won't be saving on accomodation and losing it at the tables.
Our to do list now isn't even that long now, and we still have five months to go (which I am pretty sure is going to fly by).



In other news I am writing this post on my new Sony E series laptop. My poor Dell kicked the bucket on Saturday but luckily Harvey Norman was having a laptop sale and I wasn't out of action for long. My old computer had been on its way out for the last six months so it is so nice to be using something that works properly.