First week back!

Hi everyone! :) It's been a while since my last blog post. It's cos the lull and relaxation of holidays is OVER :O School is a pretty time-consuming activity.

On Monday we had our study skills day at school. It was actually super helpful, and I feel energised to study more consistently this term (a concept foreign to a study crammer/procrastinator like me).
The funny thing was that after the study skills bbq thing, the prefects had scheduled a meeting for the Anzac Day Ceremony on the Tuesday and we were in our meeting room, discussing, when our Year Advisor Mr S comes in and says "Hey guys..I actually booked another speaker for everyone in the afternoon but I forgot to tell you guys so most of the people outside have gone home..."
So we ended up having a secluded/private session with the speaker (who was teaching us about pencil grips or something).

On Tuesday in the afternoon we had our Anzac Day Ceremony! Ran smoothly, although all of us were pretty stiff after standing at ease/attention on the stage for about half and hour lol. TJ says he nearly fainted which is pretty scary stuff! :(
On Wednesday we had our public holiday cos it was Anzac Day and all the Prefects, which is kind of a traditional thing, went to Arthur Whitling Park in Castle Hill to attend the Dawn Service. Lol AM had slept over at my house on the Tuesday night so my dad could drive us both to the Service and when our alarms rang at 5am, it was still pitch black outside, and AM was like "It's not Dawn Service..it's midnight service." Lol. Regardless we got there on time and wactehd the sun rise as we paid our respects to those brave soldiers :)

JJ's photography. So many people turned up at the park that next year they actually have to move the venue to somewhere bigger

Then we got free breakfast at Castle Hill RSL :) After the breakfast it was still only 8something in the morning but since we had got up so early, it felt odd, like it was already 3 in the afternoon.

Wednesday night was JP'S birthday! I had to get there from maths tutor at Castle Hill and I was trying to research how to walk to the restaurant from Parramatta Station by using googlemaps and HAHA I'm so silly cos I had supposedly reached the restaurant address (as googlemaps had indicated) but the picture was a bunch of work buildings and I was so confused, trying to zoom into the buildings to see if the restaurant to see if it was hiding behind there and going all the way up and down the street again to see if I'd missed it (because by now I was convinced that googlemaps was utterly untrustworthy) when about an hour later I realised it was right across the street from the work buildings. Lol I'm a genius

A polaroid of me and JP at her party

On Thursday my sister made a cake for her friend's birthday! I ehlped a little (by being the professional taste tester)

Drizzling chocolate over the berries on top of the cake :) Inside, the cake is two layers with rasberry cream in the middle

:)

Strawberries!



Long post today! Anyway, better crawl back to bed and recuperate as unfortunately I got sick from the Dawn Service (it was suepr cold in the morning and our school blazers are pretty thin)

Love: Michelle

P.S. We gave Biscuit a new toy this week-FISH :) SO cute! Haha when Biscuit has her fish in her mouth we call her a fisherdog, cos it looks like she was down at the lake and is bringing back her winnings...

DIY: Peter pan style lace collar

Hey everyone! Here is the DIY I promised :) I was lazy so I couldn't be bothered to do the cutting twice as much fabric, sewing together, turn inside out type thing so it's an easy project to do even without a sewing machine :)

I cut out a rough template for one side of the collar

Pin it down onto the fabric type of your choice (mine was some white silky fabric scrap in my mum's scrap bin that I scavenge around) and cut around it

You get a shape like this

Pin it down onto some more fabric and then cut out the second bit of the collar

This is both pieces together (not sewn yet) with the stencil above

I want clean edges (You'll later see why I didn't pin and sew down the round edges bit as well) so I pinned the seam allowance bit I gave myself to sew

The edge will now look neat and won't fray

Get some ribbon (this is what you will tie around your neck) I chose white

Now sew a piece of white ribbon on the edge of the half-moon shape. Do these same steps for the other half-moon shape

The pieces together (not sewn together yet) after you have sewed down the top and the ribbon (one piece of my ribbon was 40cm I think? I kinda measured it out roughly on how long a piece I think I would need)

I wanted to sew lace on the curvy bit so I snuffed around for some lace (my mum has so many types)

I chose this type :3

A close-up of the lace type

Cut out a piece of lace, pin it to the curved bit and sew down. Cut off the excess

After. Do the same for the other half-moon piece and put both pieces together

Overlap them slightly in the middle, then sew down

I rifled through my buttons box for a button to attach in the middle of the two pieces. Find a button you liked and hand sew it on :)

The first button I chose, then I decided to cut it off and sew another one on

The real finished product. Tada!



Very fun project to do :) And the ribbon means you can wear it higher up your neck, or lower depending on what you like :)

Sorry this project is a bit late, it's cos I was watching 'The Voice' :D Such a good show! My FAVOURITE so far is Lakyn Heperi. He sang one of my favourite songs too at his audition: MGMT-Kids.

Love: Michelle

P.S. I'm in Huger Games fever atm! Watched the movie today with my sis at Castle Towers :) So faithful to the book!! I was nearly in tears when Cato died :( He (and Clove) were my favourtie characters in the first book. The only thing I did not like about the movie was the portrayal of teh Cornucopia! In the book it's golden and horn-shaped, in the movie it looked like a grey porygon (for non-Pokemon fans, this is a porygon).

This was the Cornucopia in the movie

This is what an actual cornucopia looks like (and what I was expecting it to look like from the description in the book)

Lol but that was a really small complaint :) I can't wait to read Mockingjay which AM is so kindly lending me tomorrow :)

P.P.S. These are some stuff my sis and I made yesterday from broken necklaces. I think I will put a DIY on these projects too so here is a sneak peek!

A chain collar necklace-only tool needed is pliers :) And several broken/old necklaces

Some delicate chain rings of several sizes (old/broken necklaces needed but also a sewing pin and thread)

L's!

Wow. Today I finally got my L's.



Hehe :) My license photo is such a derpy one lol. The woman in charge of me kept telling me to push my fringe up higher so they could see my eyebrows. I saw DB coincidentally at Castle Hill RTA when I was there filling out my form. The test was pretty easy :) I finished pretty wuickly (about 5 minutes?) and I was trying to get the attention of my helper but I was scared that if I did too big movements she would suspect me of cheating and then I wouldn't be able to do the test for another 6 weeks lol.

It was pretty fun studying for the test, now I feel so much more informed about road rules! Like all the rules about high beams lights and freeways etc which I was pretty clueless about before haha.

After the test my mum took me to get my hair cut and I treated her to lunch :)

It looks pretty much the same...a bit shorter (maybe 5cm?) and the ends are straighter

I wore my bright geometric skirt today, which I find nice and cheering-up for gloomy rainy days like today



When my mum and I got home today we saw this huge pile of cardboard boxes outside of my house.

My first thought was that formspring question that went like "What would you do if there was an unmarked cardboard box outside you house?". Upon closer inspection they were actually the Starlight Foundation products that Starlight had sent my sister (who is a volunteer for Starlight day in our area) to sell lol.

Phew! Lol Chandos Street sounds like Nandos and Churros. That must be where Starlight is based.



Writing this post after finishing the peter pan collar necklace-accessory type thing I just made :) Project time: 1 hour?

I will have a DIY tutorial for the collar up very soon!

Edit: Okay my sister just came home and said that the collar I made looks like a bib. *cry* Haha so I took out the pearly button from above and replaced it with a bigger gold one in the hopes that it won't be mistaken for a bib...in my defence my mum is a WEDDING dress maker and wedding dresses are made from WHITE fabric and therefore all her scraps of fabric are white...so yeah...

If I end up wearing this in public...please don't call me a baby LOL. I mean my 8 year old nephew already calls me a baby...

 

Love: Michelle

Relaxation

Zzz so sleepy after lack of sleep from a sleepover (or affectionally 'study-over' although no real studying was done...Sorry Binomial theorem! You're not very interesting) I had yesterday! We must have gone to sleep at 3am? Quite hard to get up this morning, especially cos of the heavy rain outside as well. Does rain make any of you guys feel like snuggling into your blankets and daydreaming? Biscuit's been hiding in her kennel all day and hasn't surfaced. She's actually in disgrace at the moment.

We played Monopoly Junior lol. Major flashback to childhood. Hehe I won.

Thank you to SS aka BITTER (haha I won't forget anymore, from Butter :D) for the very yummy looking strawberry roll cake that I have yet to try. Dessert tonight? Yum :)

Found this maxi-dress in my back of my dress-closet and decided to wear it. It feel so soft and comfy!

Learnt how to fishtail braid! I think I still like the look of the traditional three-strand braid better though :)

Contemplating whether or not to eat Fred and Samantha...They're so cute though :3

Hope you guys are enjoying your holidays!

Love: Michelle

P.S. I still breathe a sigh of relief when I check of my Facebook and see that I haven't been forced into timeline yet lol.

Kiama!

On Tuesday we took our Hong Kong relatives for a drive down to KIAMA! Woo! I have so many fond memories of Kiama throughout the years cos my family friend IW owns an AWESOME holiday house down there that is HUGE so we always went down there in the summer, walking down to the beach and chilling. One time we wrote our names in the sand (the beach close to their house is small and very deserted mostly) and when we walked back to the house on the balcony we could see the imprints of our names :)

In fact my family friend said she could lend it to me to have a schoolies trip down there haha. If any organising gets properly done quickly then maybe we could use it :))) Otherwise, my aunt lends it out throughout the year to holiday-goers so if organisation is not swift I think she will lend it out to other people.

We stopped a little at Wollongong to take a few scenic pictures :) The wind was CRAZY it took effort to WALK back to the car and all of our hair was like a bird's nest haha and the baby started crying :( So we drove a bit more but the view from some mountain-side esque thing was awesome (if you could keep your eyes open long enough to appreciate it lol).

After driving for a bit we went to see all the padlocks tourists had left chained on the posts over the years.

11.12.1948 Together Forever :) So romantic. I hope they're still alive today, and if so, I wonder where they are now :)

4 padlocks all on one pole

I loved this heart shaped padlock

Haha seeing all the padlocks made us wish we had some to write on and contribute to the graveyard of tourist memories as well :')

The view of  the beach from the balcony. Sah nice!

The view from my downstairs bedroom

Another view from another bedroom

 Balcony view including table

Frangipani art deco on the wall

I love how the nautical-themed deco adds to the feel of holiday-ness

I love this home-y ish photo frame with 3D models inside

Welcome Aboard :)

Ah a walk-in-wardrobe!! :O

When the sun was rising I took this photo of the blinds with the palm tree shadow in the background

Beautiful flower centrepiece on our table :) Fake so they will last forever haha

Air hockey and table tennis in the basement for fun times :) Haha my dad is so bad at air hockey

Chop-chop-chopping for Louisianna Chicken Pasta!

One of the polaroids I took of my cousin RN and his girlfriend WL posing by the air hockey table haha

A polaroid of me and my cousin CC

The sky was really nice still when we were driving home

I had so much time to take nice photos cos on the second day we were all at Kiama, I woke up with a fever so instead of going to the Blow-hole, which I've seen before many times, and Jambaroo, I stayed home and took pills and played with the baby and FaceTimed a friend so it was all nice and relaxing and I got to enjoy all the fresh ocean air hehe :)

Love: Michelle

P.S. All my relatives are leaving tomorrow morning at 6:50am! That's early! :'( I will really really miss them. Hopefully the next time I see them is not far off, it will probably be after my HSC-sometime early next year? I've been sleeping on an air mattress all week and it will be odd to return to my bed and have such a quiet house after the week of having 11 people in my house at one time. And the 2nd week of my holidays, I bet, will be filled with studying that I didn't do this week. :(