I am such an awesome fiance. This weekend, Jase is off with one of his groomsmen and another friend for a long weekend boys trip to Amsterdam. I was invited too, but declined because - well, it's a boy thing. We've both been to Amsterdam together previously, and I'll be visiting later this year too - so he's off roaming free with his friends. And besides, I've already had my solo vacation where I ditched Jase and headed to Sydney for a girls trip, so it's only fair that he gets a turn. We're a good couple like that.

So in the midst of all the partying and utter Amsterdam-ness that I'm sure is going on, he still manages to be the sweetest thing on the planet. I sent him a text this morning to make sure he was still alive after his first night there, and he replied with 'Currently in a diamond shop'. To that, I immediately wrote back saying something along the lines of 'Woohoo! What a great present, thanks!' - joking, of course. And what did he write back? 'Looking for wedding bands.' (He's a man of few text-words.)

So, I'm on this quest to be healthy, to lose weight and you know, get fertile.. eventually. And as well forcing myself to visit the gym a whole lot more, I've decided to learn to cook. I bought a few cookbooks I'd read good things about - and I picked a few of the first recipes in the book, and off I went. The first recipe? Fish.

I should preface this by saying I hate seafood. Seafood including fish. The only time I'll eat fish is if it's battered and with chips, in the traditional English pub fashion. Other than that? Nope. Never. Yick. The thought of it makes me gag. The boy always makes fun of me but seriously, the thought of eating fish freaks me right out. Even just the smell of seafood. And don't even get me started on the bones inside, because that just creeps me out.

Anyway, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a go - because apparently fish is healthy (aren't most awful tasting things?) and I can't have the tastebuds of a seven year old for the rest of my life, can I? (Probably. But that's a whole other blog post. You can make fun of me later.)

So, here's a quick picture recap of my first adventure into cooking - Smoked Haddock parcels with Coconut Rice.

As much as I dislike most vegetables, I love how they look chopped up. Colourful!

Fish buried in vegetables. And lime for flavour.

Today is my lovely fiance's birthday. I've been teasing him about how OLD he is getting for the past few days now. In truth, he's hardly old, and it's hardly something to tease him about but hey, I'll take what I can get!

As well as presenting the boy with a few token presents of a new electric shaver and some clothes, I got up early to make him breakfast this morning before he headed off to work. I also wrote out little mini cards in envelopes and scattered them around our apartment and he'll have to find them all when he gets home this evening. Unfortunately I started hiding them yesterday and he managed to discover half of them already - so I spent this morning giving them all new homes. The little scavenger hunt consists of twenty eight different reasons why he is awesome. (He really is, you know. Awesome.)

If he finds them all, he'll get a secret gift - another little present bundle that he doesn't know about yet. As well as that, I'm cooking him a nice dinner, complete with a soup starter and main course. Today also saw me putting on my baking hat and making a huge mess in our kitchen as I attempted to bake red velvet cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Unfortunately, my red velvet cupcakes turned out kind of peach-coloured. As for the cream cheese frosting? I stirred it with a spoon with red food colouring left on it, so it changed colour - and since it had already started changing, I decided to make it red too. Except, you guessed it, it didn't turn red. It turned pink. Like, super pink. He'll be getting some pretty er, manly, cupcakes with candles on top.

Sigh. Well, at least I'm trying, right? And as long as they taste good...

I love birthdays! Even when they're not my own. And especially when they are celebrating someone as kind and sweet as my boy. I can't top the present Jase organised for me last year - the surprise birthday/engagement trip to Prague - but I can do my best to try and put a smile on his face.

So, happy 28th birthday old man, and may this next year bring you so much joy.

I can't believe that it's Friday - my first week as a lady of leisure and it's over already. I've already made some progress with my goals, and since my gym membership got renewed on Wednesday, I'm at 3 from 3 visits. Go me! I'm thinking I need to make my own little star chart, just like the motivated and super-awesome Britt.

Being back at the gym is eerily strange. The same people are there, and once again, I'm the biggest person there working out. The whole self conscious thing will fade after a few weeks, it always does - but ugh, I really hate feeling this way. I know, I know, nobody cares, it's a gym. And losing weight is why I'm there, right? 

And so, I walk. I walk it out and I get into a zone, and that's what works for me. Every time I visit, my goal is to walk for at least 20-30 minutes at the beginning of my routine, before I switch to what suits me that day. I'm trying to switch up my days with arm weights & leg weights, and I plan to hunt down some classes that suit me too - but that takes a little bit of time for me to get comfortable with too. Once I get my fitness levels back up, I intend on braving spin classes again and I'm really keen to try out this Zumba phase that seems to be all the rage right now. I really wish that I had a buddy I could drag along with me.. ah well, bygones.

I don't just walk, though. I boogie. I boogie-walk. You know when you're walking and you hear a song with a decent beat, and you change your walk to match that beat? That's what I do. And if that means I sashay while I walk, so be it. It gets me pumped. I like to imagine that I'm strutting down a runway, America's Next Top Model style. Except that I'm wearing joggers. And I'm sweating. And huffing. A lot. I can only imagine seeing me from behind (although I think that I'm being discreet.. of course) - and I certainly don't want to know. All I know is that I like to boogie-walk.

Do you have any quirks that get you through your workouts?

For this post to make any sense at all, you'll need to hop off your feed reader and mosey on down to my actual site so you can see my lovely new design in all of its magnificent glory and hope and wonder.

The next venue was one I've been to before, as it was actually the location for my high school formal/prom. It is another older house and has some very pretty gardens - but it was very basic. I was hoping to be shown a few different room options in the venue, however was a bit disappointed that the room they decided would be 'right' for our numbers was exactly the same room where we'd held our formal!

It was a pretty basic room in the daytime, though we were shown photographs of the room set up at night and it's amazing what a difference a few fairy lights can make! This was the cheapest venue option by a long shot, so I kept it on our maybe list just in case.

I'm going to throw in an extra shout-out here to my partners in crime, my Mum and the lovely Miss Kirby, who found themselves dragged along to view nearly all of the options with me. Look, aren't they wonderful?

Our next drive was a little terrifying, being that the venue was an inner city hotel and we had one panicking driver on our hands. It didn't help that our GPS Navigator tends to be a little delayed in the city, so it ended up having us drive over the Harbour Bridge twice! Let me just say, as nice as our famous bridge looks from afar, it's actually an express-way and it's really, really difficult to navigate its million changing lanes and tolls.

That venue ended up being a stuffy boardroom with a view of.. get this.. an air conditioning unit out the back, so I refused to take any pictures. It was that bad.

We then headed out into the Ku-ring-gai Chase region, which is a beautiful area north of the city. It's very green and really lush, and I had high hopes for our next visit. We drove into a big old underground car park and caught the lift up to the main reception entrance and I was blown away - it was modern, spacious and had beautiful gardens.. looking good.

Unfortunately, things went downhill from there - the first room we were shown was tiny and had a massive pylon in the middle which cut the room in half, and the second room was a HUGE empty ballroom with no windows and all artificial lighting. Was a shame too, as it could potentially have been a very nice venue. They did have beautiful floral arrangements, though!

Taking a break from the contemporary designs, I had chosen another heritage house to visit - and it was beautiful. It had a much more laidback feel to it, and everything was family run which was lovely. I loved this venue as you weren't just getting one room - our guests would have access to the entire lower level of the house, including a separate dancing room, bar, and formal lounge as well as the traditional dining room.

The flaw with this one? The owner wasn't a very pleasant person. I'm sure he runs events well, but the idea of having him as my sole wedding co-ordinator was a little iffy. It was close to the church that I loved though, so we kept this on our potentials too.

I'll interrupt my flowing commentary to throw in a little bit of trivia for you - most of these venues I had found through either recommendations from friends or through searches online. It wasn't all ME ME ME though, as everytime I would find a new potential, I'd show Jason and he would very kindly pretend to be interested in it.

There were a few he wasn't keen on which we ruled out, but for the most part, they were my choices. In one random Bridezilla moment though, I threw a bit of a tantrum that went something along the lines of 'Why is just ME doing all of this.. Wah Wah Wah - YOU try finding a venue that fits out budget, this isn't easy you know, Wah Wah Wah.' Imagine, if you will, a real stomp at the end, just for effect.

And so the boy begrudgingly did a search of his own and came across a clubhouse in a lovely golf course, and deemed his job done. Of course, I promised to view it as a potential while I was home. And so we did.

While the grounds of the course were lovely, unfortunately the clubhouse was just that - a clubhouse. It had horrible beige carpets, and just wasn't.. wedding-y enough. Sorry Jason!

And so the search continued...

If you've followed me over since my old blog, you'll probably notice that I don't tend to refer to that blog by name anymore. It's actually incredibly hard not to use it/type it here - I used it for years, after all - and every time I log into my main email, or my Facebook account, or any of the online groups I'm a member of, I'm reminded of it. The whole point of moving everything to an anonymous blog was to avoid popping up in Google searches and to have a little bit more freedom to blog; something I just wasn't able to do before.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I had imaged a massive following of stalkers or anything; it's just that there are people out there that I didn't particularly like having access to my inner most thoughts. I could have made my blog private, but what's the point in that? I'm a firm believer of a blog being public for a reason - because what is blogging without the interaction of fellow bloggers relating and commenting?

And so, for a while I avoided blogging about the personal stuff and things flowed along fine. But one day I stopped and realised that hey! I do want to write about personal things. I want to write about the awesome things that are happening in my life. I want to write about the mundane things too. And the not-so-good things. And I want to stop writing things in a 'stalker-proof' way, to avoid those few people finding me and having access to my rantings. Unfortunately to make sure I remained anonymous throughout the transition, I think I lost a lot of readers along the way... but I'm hoping that they'll find me again at some point - I miss them!

So now, here I am, with my first personal blog since the move.

I've been putting off writing this post until things were a little more concrete and until I was completely removed from my work environment - again, just on the off chance that people are cleverer than I'd anticipated and had found this new blog home. Yes, as of today, I've finished up at work. My days working in an office are over, and I'm feeling a whole lot of relief at the thought of not having to go back to ten hour work days for a little while. I don't have a new job, and I don't have any grand plans. I'm finishing up because I have another focus right now.

When I was back home in Sydney, I'd made it a mission to go and have a medical check-up, as I knew that things weren't right with me and wanted to visit our family doctor. I'd visited a few GP's in the UK and no real testing had been done, so I was adamant that I wanted to be checked out. To sum things up, here's a rough idea of my medical history crammed into a few giant sentences:

Unbearable pain and cramping with periods since they started when I was 12; weeks of heavy bleeding followed by months of nothing; put on birth control pills at 14 to manage odd cycle; pain, oh lots of pain. Went off birth control two years ago; periods MIA for five months at a time; pain, oh lots of pain, negative pregnancy tests taken in fits of panic when my period was missing YET AGAIN; break-outs worse than the teenage years; crazy weight gain that was impossible to get off; hair growth on chin (CHIN!) and subsequent embarrassment... and the list could go on and on.

I'm sure anyone reading those symptoms would have a rough idea that something wasn't right - but all I was told to do was to keep tracking everything and give my body time to adjust to being off the pill again. Ha. I think nearly two years is MORE than enough time. Apparently not. In the short two weeks that I was home, my doctor took blood, looked at the notes I'd made on myself for the last few years and ordered several ultrasounds to check out everything internally, and lo and behold, there was a problem.

I have Poly cystic Ovarian Syndrome. My hormones are completely out of whack and I have dozens of visible cysts on each ovary; dozens! I've been put in Metformin tablets initially to try and manage my insulin resistance and to attempt to restore a more regular cycle - but as for eventually trying to fall pregnant, well, that's another story.

It's a bit of a shock to the system when you find out that you're more than likely going to struggle having children naturally. It's even more difficult to take in when you're not even ready to consider children yet - when we're not financially, emotionally or heck, even in the right country to be prepared for the responsibilities involved in falling pregnant and having a baby. Our general plan was always to get a little more stable with our lives back home, and obviously focus on the wedding first, and then look at where we stood in terms of a baby - but now that 'plan' may not be as smooth as we'd hoped.

I'm sure there are plenty of women out there with PCOS who conceive naturally. And since we haven't started trying yet, and won't be for a little while, I'm trying not to jump to conclusions and declare myself infertile. To be honest, I don't know enough about this whole thing to make judgements. I just know that it's scary and worrying and I'm glad I have an actual diagnosis now, to prove that I know my body and I know when something isn't right.

My doctor informed me that losing weight can also help to kick-start cycles into gear so using the drugs as a boost, I'm taking this time to get healthy and to get fit. It will be more difficult than usual, thanks to the insulin & hormonal problems, but I'm determined. I want to have children. I want to be healthy! And thanks to my hardworking fiance and my own little pocket of savings, now is as good a time as any to take some ME time and get this sorted. Lord knows we'll have a whole stack on our plate when we return home, so it has to be now. And now it is!

So there you have it - I think this qualifies as a ripper of a personal blog.

Do you have any experiences or information about Poly cystic Ovarian Syndrome that you'd like to share? I'd welcome your thoughts!

It's supposedly Spring right now - though from walking around in Central London, you wouldn't know it. It has been COLD lately. And you know it's cold when I say that, because I tend to walk around in my own little temperate bubble. But just when I thought it was safe to put away the bigger coats and bring out the skirts, the weather snapped. Unpredictable, yes. That's what I love about living in the UK: you get the most random weather imaginable.

I'm having a battle at the moment - it's a battle with tights.

I hate them. Really, hate them. I get why they're necessary - because the thought of spending the entire winter wearing pants (I'm sorry, trousers - you'd think I'd have learned to say that by now...) is a little bit depressing. I just can't warm to tights. (Ha! Warm to them. I am so funny sometimes.)

Maybe it's my shape and size? I certainly don't have stick thin legs or a nice flat torso, so maybe that's why they're so uncomfortable? I've tried going up a size, but they still annoy me. I find I'm constantly hitching at them and noticing them all the time. And if they're thinner and more like stockings, they're either scratched or stretched after a few wears. And the thicker tights just feel like pants - and then I feel stupid wearing pants under a skirt or dress. I can't win.

I think it's because I don't buy in to the whole tunic top phase that's going around at the moment. If I pick something off the rack and can't clearly distinguish if it's meant to be a top or an insanely short dress, I can't do it. And don't even get me started on the whole 'jegging' craze that's hit the high street here. Kudos to you if you can pull it off, but I'm going to stick with my grandma persona and enjoy wearing my bootcuts, thanks.

Considering I'm not a fan of the warmer months, I'm going to enjoy this last batch of cooler weather. I guarantee you in about four weeks I'll be moaning about living in London in the summer, where air conditioning is in short supply and when public transport gets just that little bit more horrendous. So, enough from me; I'm off to enjoy walking around Chancery Lane/Fleet Street in my lunch break - IN MY PANTS.

(I still wish I could rock the tights though.)

I flew into Sydney on Friday night and after visiting my Nan and eventually getting home, I fell straight asleep - only to wake up bright and early to head off to very first 10am appointment! The first was a heritage listed house in the western suburbs.

It had been restored beautifully and had lovely gardens, but the inside was fairly small. There were two rooms available; but the room that fit our numbers wasn't what I was looking for - and little things I noticed inside had me worried.

For one, the room was set up for a wedding when we arrived... and it wasn't set up well. The linens looked creased, the chair covers were really mismatched, the curtains were a garish pink shade that would have clashed with our colours, and the little details just weren't done fully - the kind of details that I would have been mortified to see on my wedding day. For lack of a better description, it just seemed a bit half-arsed. We went to see a few churches around the area and I wasn't blown away either, so that venue was ruled out fairly quickly.

As for our afternoon visit, well, you might remember a little blog I wrote having a rant and rave about our second venue in The Rocks; where we drove all the way into Sydney on a busy Saturday, paid for parking, road tolls and stress (on mum's part, anyway; she was such a trouper driving where she wasn't comfortable) only to be told we had no appointment and couldn't view the venue that day. Not impressed!

We did eventually go back and see the inside of the venue on a later day but you know, it wasn't all that special. Let's face it - the room had a spectacular view. But the staff weren't helpful, I didn't trust the co-ordinator after bungling up our original viewing, so I just wasn't sold on the venue as a whole.

But really.. what an amazing view.

A few months ago, two of my favourite people went to a bridal expo held in Sydney. I wasn't there of course (well, only in spirit) so my Mum and Kirby, my Maid of Honour extraordinaire, spent the day checking things out on my behalf - and came back with quite a few eyebrow raising ideas, let me tell you. Turns out there was a second bridal expo in Darling Harbour the weekend I arrived, and I wanted to check it out for myself.

Well. I can't say it wasn't entertaining? We got a whole lot of junk mail and brochures, entered a whole lot of competitions (which I haven't heard back from... yet) and saw a whole lot of brides. And bridal parties. Too many women in one auditorium! Aaah! We also watched a fashion show which was probably the most amusing item on the day's agenda - and since when did 'bridal couture' become slang for 'bridal gowns now with extra fug and a few too many misplaced feathers'? My goodness. They lost me at the gown that resembled a peacock. I was done for. Finished.

I'd deliberately scheduled the first Monday home to be a very busy day. I'd had a feeling from my research that these would be my top picks - and wouldn't you know, my two favourite venues happened to be from that first day. I'm going to hold off on showing you the winning venue for now - just to keep you intrigued, of course! :) It's so amazing, I can't wait to share!

One of the hardest things for me to narrow down was an appropriate Catholic church for the wedding ceremony. Neither Jase or I have ever had a specific church in mind to be married in, and one of my stipulations for the wedding was that it be in a 'pretty' church. I know that sounds horrible, but you should see some of the churches around - they don' t look like churches! Maybe it's a result of living in the UK, where the churches are older and beautifully designed, but that's what I wanted for my wedding.

In my searches, I came across an old Catholic Monastery. It was a bit off the beaten track, but it was absolutely beautiful. The building was so big that I found it difficult to capture it, and the drive was covered in trees obscuring the view. The chapel was so peaceful, it really was. It was also very dark and formal looking though, which while traditional, isn't what I was looking for.

After our visit to the Monastery, we drove in to Pyrmont in the city to view our next venue. This was the most modern of all the venues I had picked, and I loved its contemporary design that was really unique. The venue was located on an old converted pier, and had an amazing view of the Harbour Bridge.

It was an interesting loft design - the lower floor was a bar and a dance floor, with scattered furniture throughout so people could relax if they wanted to. The second floor was the dining level, set up with long oval tables. Then there was another level, stairs leading up on either side of the dining level - so there were two mini rooms at the very top which could be cordoned off to act as a bridal storage room. It was a lot of space! This was my runner up venue because it was so original, but I ended up turning towards the more traditional of venues instead. (Plus, the stairs wouldn't have been great for our older family relatives.)

It was really hard to take pictures of, since it was so spread out. Even though this wasn't the one, I can still imagine the gorgeous photographs that could have been taken here - with Jase and I twirling around the dance floor below while our guests watched on from the upper level. Le sigh.

Stay tuned for the next batch of venues!

Edit:

Click here for Part II.
Click here for Part III.
And finally..
Click here for The Winner.

May is going to be fabulous, oh yes it is!

Now that our wedding date is set in stone, the rest of the planning is a little less daunting.

While I love, love, love the date we've settled on, it wasn't necessarily the one I would have chosen for myself.

For the longest time, I'd predicted that we'd be married in May next year. I spent some time looking at Saturday dates that occurred in 2011, and had decided that the 21st would be perfect. Why? Because in a kind of nerdy and more than a little ME sort of way, I liked the way the date looked. For background purposes: I'm the kind of person who, when bored, has a tendency to sign her name repeatedly on any paper object in from of me. I'm not a doodler. I'm a signer. It's what I do.

And so I signed.
And I sketched.
And I wrote out mock invitations on paper.
And I played the date over and over in my head.
And after all of that, it just looked.. right.

Slightly odd and obsessive-compulsive, I know.

During our venue visits, I threw that date out there to see what the general vibe was. Our May date was always available, which was great! I assumed it was because I'd gotten in early with my madly efficient planning skills, but after a few different visits I soon figured out why - turns out that most venues have off season discounts, that become available from June 1st. Yes, you read that right - June in the Southern Hemisphere is the start of the Winter months. We're having a Winter shindig, and I couldn't be happier.

There are loads of reasons why I love our chosen date in June.

· It writes well. It has a swirly letter 'J' - yes, that's important to me. I know. I love the date in its shortened format* and it also still looks lovely when written fully in script. Bonus!

· As I've said, our wedding became classified as an off-season event - which worked out perfectly for us, as our reception venue gave us 10% off our booking AND threw in a few additional extras as well.

· I am a warm-blooded creature, meaning that even in the middle of winter, you can find me in short sleeves and sandals. A cooler wedding month will be great, since I'll be wearing a heavy wedding dress and will likely have had pretty hair and makeup plastered on me... the less sweat, the better! And don't worry - since both the ceremony and the reception will be indoors, my guests won't be freezing. :)

· My parents wedding anniversary is in June, close to the same time, so that's nice.

· The 11th of June happens to fall on an Australian long weekend in 2011, as we celebrate the Queens Birthday on the second Monday of each June. That means that we'll be getting married on the Saturday and will have an extended weekend to bask in our newlywed glory. This works really well for us, as we don't know what our work lives will be like next year and may have to delay our official honeymoon - we'll see what happens there.

· Following on from our long weekend wedding date, that means that every year our anniversary will fall on, or very close to, a public holiday. That means that Jase will have no excuse to ever forget our anniversary (not that he would, of course!) and will work out nicely if we want to celebrate it by going away or doing something special.

It's perfect. I love it! Now the count-down begins.

So my wedded friends, how did you decide on your wedding date? And for everyone else, do you think you would keep a special date in mind?

*Have you noticed anything strange about the way I write our wedding date? In Australia, the shortened date format we go by is 'day-month-year' - so 11-6 is NOT November, it is actually the 11th of June. It definitely confused quite a few of my Northern Hemisphere friends, that's for sure!