I can't help it - I'm a followed AND it's been months since I v-logged. Here's the video: and here are the prompts that I discovered through the lovely Britt's blog - I wish I had as cute an accent as her Canadian one!

Also: WHY must my frozen screencaps in Vimeo always be so revoltingly unflattering? Ugh, it's terrifying.

Say these words: 
Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught

Now answer these questions:

-What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
-What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
-What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
-What do you call gym shoes?
-What do you say to address a group of people?
-What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
-What do you call your grandparents?
-What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
-What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
-What is the thing you change the TV channel with?

So after a few full days of cleaning and unpacking, as well as impromptu fit of chaos thanks to a faulty telephone line & random real estate inspections, we're finally settled. Oscar is back with us again {phew!}, we have our little laptops connected to the interwebs, and we're mostly all done here. Now we can relax, I hope!

Anyhoo, enough with the boring stuff. Onwards to the pictures! Let's start with the lounge/dining room. This is my favourite room of the house: it's big, lots bigger than our last place, and it's light, airy & just plain comfortable. Plus, the telly & the laptops live out here, so it's here we spent most of our time. There is also an air conditioning unit here too, which may be another reason why I'm always, always in here. Maybe. Probably. Definitely.

• Moving. Which you'd know if you're a friend of mine on Facebook or Twitter, because that's literally all I've talked about for the past week. Packing, unpacking. Cleaning, more cleaning. I'm on to my final project - sorting out the clothes & storage space in our main bedroom. After that, it's organising boring stuff like filing and paperwork. I promise I'll put some pictures up asap, I've been taking them as I finish each room, but I'm not quite there yet.
  
• Driving. Yes, I've quickly fallen in love with my new car. It came home with me on New Years Eve, and I've been driving as much as possible ever since. I'm not as terrible as I thought I was going to be after three years not being behind the wheel, but once again, I've discovered I cannot park. Really. I fail at parking.
  
• Friending. It's been SO good being home and spending time with the bff. She puts up with my crazy, lets me drive like a grandma without commenting, and doesn't judge me for being unemployed, stingy & on a major budgeting kick, with the house stuff & wedding stuff eating away at my dismal savings.
  
• Bridesmaid-dress-buying. You heard that right! After shopping with Miss K & picking out two top contenders, I managed to wrangle all of the girls together for an afternoon to a) meet each other, and b) try them on! I didn't really expect a decision to be made straight away, and I was totally open to letting them decide whether they wanted to pick their own unique dresses, or go the traditional 'matchy-matchy' route.
  
  They tried on a few and all decided that they liked the one style - which came in my ideal colour preference, slate grey, and that was that. They all looked smoking hot, the dresses were absolutely stunning on them, and we managed to keep it mostly on budget. I can't wait until three-four months goes by so I can see them all in the right shade, side by side. And the best part? Rather than just paying for a deposit of the dress, all three decided to pay up front to make it easier on everybody. I'm seriously the luckiest bride-to-be around, I really am. Couldn't ask for better bridesmaids!
  
• Internetting. Or at least I'm trying to - doing everything off wifi at the moment, thanks to the snafu of epic proportions involved with an apartment rented out with no phone line installed. Anywho, I'm still a little behind on my blogging, both here & at Weddingbee. I tend to blog a lot when I'm in the right frame of mind, and I haven't had a big spurt in a while. I'm pretty sure I'm due for one. Now, if only I had more interesting things to talk about, apart from our new apartment, the cat & the wedding. No, wait, that's my life right now.
  
• Blog-friend-meeting. I've had a pretty hectic start to my 2011 so far: in the first week of the new year, I was lucky enough to meet two lovely Sydney bloggers who I've been friends with online for some time now. The first, Jade, is currently living in London - and I'm sad she is headed back there so soon, as she was so lovely in person. The second, Carly, is super sweet & lives close to home, well, my 'old' home - and I hope we can hang out again soon. I love what blogging/tweeting can do!
  
• Operating healthy-ing. It wasn't a resolution of mine this year; to be honest, I never really made any. Instead, it's more of a continuation of last year's goals to keep on moving down into a healthy weight range. My last weigh-in, three months ago in October, saw me at 88kg. Since then, thanks to travelling & the holiday season, I've put on a few more kgs, so I'd say I'm back up near to 91kg? {We have no scales here, so I'm just guessing.} I feel frumpy, what a difference a few kilos can make, and I'm back on with a vengeance. When we shopped to fill our cupboards, we only bought healthy stuff & a few low calorie treats, and I've been doing well so far. It's nice to get back into the routine, you know? I'm looking forward to going for some walks around our new neighbourhood once things settle down a bit, because we can't afford a gym & that's all I've got to use at the moment. No excuse: it just means I have to get my butt out moving more. 

What have you been up to so far in 2011?

You know, I always thought I was a pro when it came to moving house.

Moving to the UK doesn't really count, since I left most belongings at home & focused on packing my humble little suitcase. The first real move that we went through was the switch from East London to West London, halfway through our time overseas. I loved packing our things and getting everything sorted and labelled. {Though I didn't love the cleaning that came along with it, I'll admit.} I loved being able to unpack at our leisure, to be able to choose where I wanted things to go: which drawer, which cupboard, where to put the furniture? Call me obsessive compulsive, but I loved it.

We packed up ready for our move back to Sydney too, of course - but I can't comment on that just yet, since our boxes are currently somewhere in a port waiting to be examined by quarantine: if we get them back sometime in the next year, I'll be happy.

Also, a brief side-note: I feel like I've paid more than my due's to the Australian quarantine sector, first the obscene amount of money needed to get the cat brought over, and now for our boxes - I'm just going to put it out there and say NO, we have not smuggled in any exotic birds, wood products or seeds, and I'd really, really like it if you sent our boxes to us soon because I'm tiring of wearing the same four summer outfits over and over again. Phew, epic sentence right there. Sorry about that.

Moving right along: this is the first time either Jase or myself have moved house here at home. I found the perfect rental apartment before the holidays, but the move-in date wasn't until Friday gone by - so we had plenty of time to prepare. After researching removal vans & nearly dying at the insane cost of hiring one for a few hours, my dad offered to drive a rented van for the day, and he, Jase & future-fil spent the day loading and unloading box after box.

We were lucky. Our flat came unfurnished, but we had hand-me-down furniture from both of our families, and we had lots of accumulated gifts {mostly kitchen related - like fry pans, kettles, cookware} that made it super easy to move. Add in a crazy trip to Ikea with Miss K a few weeks ago, where I picked up a trusty dining table, bookshelf and side table, and we ended up moving a lot of stuff.

The apartment is gorgeous. It's brand new, never been lived in before - done up in very neutral colours and has a lot of space. We even upgraded to two bedrooms, a good decision because of the amount of belongings we have now. I can't show you a picture yet, because it stills look a little like a war zone, but it's fabulous. The only downside is that it's upstairs: the boys were completely stuffed after hiking up and down carrying furniture and boxes. We couldn't have done it without them! There have been a few minor problems so far: we only got one key for the front door instead of two, our intercom doesn't seem to work, and it turns out there is no phone line connected in the place.. but they're things we can work with.

The hardest thing we're dealing with right now is keeping Oscar-cat a secret. We smuggled him in on our first night with no problems, but we have to keep him hidden for the whole time we are here. It doesn't help that for the last two nights, he's cried. all. night. I've hardly slept for fear that someone is going to knock on our door and complain, though I'm sure the walls are thicker than I'm imagining.

Pictures to come soon, but in the meantime - tell me what's the favourite room in your current place? Maybe it's because this room is the most 'finished', but I don't want to leave our new lounge/diner area. Like, ever.

I didn't wake up this morning thinking I was going to be writing a ground-breaking blog piece. In fact, I was feeling particularly rushed, since I have so many things that need doing before the big move (!!) into our new flat tomorrow, that I was planning on using bullet points. That was until now, when I realised I was sitting at 999 posts - making this one the big one thousand. That calls for something a trifle more reflective, yes?

This blog has documented a lot of things during it's 1000-post history, including:

• My first two years fresh out of university & learning on my feet as a beginning teacher
• A few name changes, most recently from 'Aly---bear' to 'Breathe Gently'
• Pets that we've lost in years gone by: Max, Lucy, Bella
• Pets that we've gained in years gone by: Bailey, Oscar-cat
• Moving overseas to London & our three years spent abroad
• Countless travel opportunities, to places near and far
• Mine & Jason's relationship, from dating, to long distance, to living abroad together, to engaged & finally planning our wedding - woo freaking hoo!
• Meet-ups with blog friends, all over the world. If you'd told me six years ago that I would've met strangers from the internet, I would've laughed at you. Now, I feel like such a lucky person to count those 'strangers' as 'friends'. They're just scattered, kind of long distance friends, is all!

The last time I attempted to do travel recaps, I got half-way through my American road trip & then got sidetracked, never to finish it again. It's a shame, really, because some of my favourite shots were taken in Washington & New York City. Maybe one day I'll go back and highlight some of my memories from that trip.

Instead, I'm going to go right ahead and catch up with my (somewhat-epic) travel recaps from the last few months. The first month was travelling with Miss K, rediscovering Europe in Autumn and very early Winter. I hope you'll enjoy my little adventures, or at least the pictures that go along with them.

Oh, how I love Paris. 

Really, I can't put how much I love Paris into words. I feel so lucky that I was able to visit this beautiful city on so many occasions - twice with Jason, once with my little brother, and twice with my best friend. It's so big and so vast that every time I visited, I got to see something new and different. I find it very easy to fit in there, despite being a very obvious snap-happy tourist: it's a city I could see myself living in one day.

This visit was only fleeting, but we crammed in lots of sightseeing, as would be expected. This time, I got to explore Les Invalides & Napoleon's Tomb, as well as Montmartre & Pigalle by night. Okay, enough with the talking: it's time to get on to the good stuff: the pictures!

It still feels like this past year has gone by in a blur.

To follow tradition, it's time to get busy re-capping, just like in years gone by: 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009.

So it's that time of year again - can you believe it!

Since Australia is a few time zones ahead, we'll shortly be off celebrating our last Christmas together as an engaged couple. It's pretty special to think that by this time next year, we'll be married. How bizarre is that, hey?

First up is a Christmas Eve traditional feast here at home at my parents place, followed by Christmas Day at Jason's parent's place. We'll be wrapping up the big day by relaxing with more family on Boxing Day, stuffed with leftovers and nursing full bellies. This is the first summer Christmas we've had in a while, having spent the last three winters in London town, and it feels strange but good at the same time. It'll be nice having our own place to celebrate though - maybe this time next year we'll be able to set up our own Christmas traditions.

I hope that wherever you are and whatever holiday you're celebrating, that you have a safe and fantastic time. Merry Christmas - and if you've been good this, maybe you'll be paid a visit by your very own Santa Claws!

And... there I go again, disappearing for random days and forgetting to blog.

It's been crazy around here. I'm still without a car and without a job, but on the bright side - we found an apartment! I researched like my fingers were about to fall off, I looked at a few places with some good company, and I put together a kick-ass application to rent and wham!

We have a place. It's pretty fantastic too: it's a brand new unit in a brand new complex, has air conditioning (double woo!) and wooden floors. It's also fairly close by to a train station (as in, across the road) so Jase can get to work in the city easily. We move in on January 7th, and I can't wait - we'll finally be back to our little family unit again.

Unfortunately though, there's been some bad news too. My nan, my gorgeous, sweet-tempered and completely beautiful nan, has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. She's coping remarkably well with it all so far, but we've all been a bit of a mess around here. The past week has been spent in all sorts of treatment rooms and diagnostic centres, to try and see how aggressive it is. It breaks my heart to have something like this happen to someone like her, but all I know is that I'll be there to support her no matter what happens.

Somehow there are only five days left until Christmas - and it still doesn't feel like it's that time of the year yet.  I hope the spirit will hit me by Saturday, because this is usually my all-time favourite holiday.

I never thought it would take me such a long time to touch base after we'd made the move back home. It's crazy to think that this time last week we were spending our last day on the beach in Hawaii - and now I'm here. You guys, it was such an awesome holiday, it really was. We went to so many different places, adapted to a billion different climates, met some awesome people & took way more photos than I'd care to admit.

But then, all too quickly, it was all over. Jase and I flew home together but then went off to our separate homes - which has been more than a little strange. We picked up Oscar-cat the following day and have been trying to see each other as much as possible since then - which is a bit tricky at the moment, since I still have to buy a car & because we live half an hour apart. Oy, I miss having our own little apartment to come home to.

The goals for the next few weeks are to a) find a car, b) find a rental property and c) make a decision about which house to build on our block. Add in me finding a job to the mix as well as, oh, you know, CHRISTMAS {what? It's December?} and it's going to just fly by. I feel like my head is all over the place, but I'm going to just keep swimming and see what happens. I'll do some travel recaps over the next few days {or weeks?} but I just wanted to say hello & see what I've been missing out on. How's everything with you?

I'll leave you with the view of Waikiki Beach we had from our hotel room - aaah, bliss. Take me back!