Day 11: Something Blue: Yes, we've done clouds already - but today's sky was such a gorgeous shade of blue, I just couldn't help myself. The beauty of having a balcony is that we have a great sky view. Isn't it lovely?

We had better clouds today than on the original day of the challenge. With the beautiful weather we've had in the last few days, I was hoping our house build would've had loads of progress - not much to report there, I'm afraid.

Day 10: Childhood Memory: I know I've shown you some of my boxsets before, but these recent additions are most definitely a blast from the past. I remember watching some of these old 90210 episodes when I was younger, and feeling like it was all so risqué. Now, it's fun to watch it for the fashion and the cheesy lines. Good times, good times.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm grabbing my leggings, slouch socks & scrunchies: I have some serious reminiscing to do.

Day 9: Someone You Love: Jason never lets me photograph him. He really hates having his photo taken, so having to pose with me for the pre-wedding and wedding day photos was a big step out of his comfort zone. {I'm going to treasure those pictures, because I don't think I'll get him in any more portrait sessions ever again, sadly.} I asked today if I could take some pictures, and he was surprisingly obliging.. for about three seconds. Luckily we have a cute prop in our reach that took some of the pressure off. These two: they're totally smitten with each other.

And because I love my handsome hubster, I've chosen the back of his mug for today's shot so he doesn't freak out.

Day 8: A Bad Habit: If you're new to these parts, you might not know this: we're building our first home. We're excited, we're lucky, we're looking forward to the whole thing being over and we're broke. This is our first time having a mortgage to call our very own, and it's a very strange feeling to owe someone a heck of a lot of money.

What's that got to do with my bad habit? Well you see, Jase and I are self proclaimed homebodies - and we're cool with that. We're both fine with nerding out on our respective computers and don't mind staying close to home to keep our spending down. But instead of putting all of my spare dollars towards the mortgage like I should be doing, I have one bad habit that I have a tendency to keep adding to: I buy television shows on DVD. I've gathered quite a collection now, though I tend to favour older shows rather than current ones, probably so that I can watch the entire series and move on from it with some closure. It's kind of ridiculous. I KNOW. That's just how I roll.

On the bright side, we've always got something to watch on a rainy day. The current show of choice is Lost. Huzzah!

Day 7: Fruit: I've been on a health revamp lately {and am beginning to love green smoothies, though only with spinach} so I had plenty of fruits to choose from for today. I thoroughly enjoyed geeking out and finding fun ways to position it all. Who doesn't want an excuse to be able to legitimately play with their food, right?

It was a tough choice, but for my chosen picture I just had to choose this one. A babuskha AND a strawberry? Win.

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Day 6: From a Low Angle: If you haven't already figured it out, I'm a crazy, crazy cat lady. It would be more believable if Jase would let me adopt more than one cat, but until then... Sir Oscar gets all of my attention. Trying to get him to stay still long enough for me to photograph him is a mission all in itself.

I'm sure you'll see Oscar featured in loads of this month's photos - he's such a handsome muse, what can I say?

For more information & to check out the other participants, click on the image below, or follow the Flickr stream.

The wedding is over, the recaps are done, life has gone on... and now I can catch you up on what else is going on around these parts. So what's been happening?

I've been working. Working so, so hard. I love the school that I work at (pink fluffy heart love it, in fact) and my Year 1/2 class are sweethearts. That being said, this has been the hardest term of my teaching career. When I came back from our honeymoon & the school holidays that almost immediately followed it, I was greeted into Term 3 with two new faces in two weeks. The first kidlet was an import from a local Catholic school, who supposedly had no behaviour problems, but was just a 'cheeky' child. Ha. He's a right little worm, actually. But he's manageable - unlike the second kidlet, who is just... off the scale.

He's a foster child with a history of abuse, and is completely and utterly emotionally unstable. The child was removed from two public schools because of his behaviour, but has no funding from any government agencies for support, as he has no diagnosed problems. Since the beginning of this term, he has changed foster homes no less than 10 times, has been removed from my classroom repeatedly, has done multiple 'runners' and has left the school grounds & tried to walk across the highway that is adjacent to us, has strangled animals at his carers' residences, has physically trashed school and office buildings. The kidlet is seven, and is able to physically and verbally intimidate other kids AND adults. It's a scary situation.

Then there's the whole baby thing - which has proven to be as completely irritating in reality as I'd always assumed it would be. Another joy that we've discovered in the past year is that as well as all the glamorous side effects of PCOS, I'm not ovulating. And as any fertility-savvy person would know, no ovulation = no baby. Well, that just sucks. In December, I visited my doctor to complain about things not working and to get some answers. I was told to continue taking my Metformin tablets and to 'give it some time'. In July, I visited my doctor again because I felt this waiting was pointless, as things still weren't working. I was told to increase my Metformin dosage and to 'wait for another six months, things will work themselves out'. 

By September I'd lost my shit, so I went back in with my cycles, BBT charts & OPK results, and told them I was tired of waiting. I've been on a wait-list to see a RE for a fertility appointment since then, and my first meeting is scheduled for mid-October. (I KNOW. WAITING. ALWAYS WAITING.)

I'm relieved to finally be doing something about this, even though the wait sucks. This journey is going to be long, frustrating & probably boring as heck, but I have everything crossed for some answers. In the meantime, I've started an offshoot blog for everything TTC-related, because I don't know how much or how little you guys want to read about the journey - especially when every second post I want to write is a whinging one. But if you're so inclined, you can visit it here.

Other than that, we're just plugging away at life together as newlyweds. I am pinteresting way too many potential furniture designs, craft ideas, and heck, even future animals, because it's all I can do at the moment. And then there is the random photography stuff I'm playing along with during October... and the (almost finished!) 365-project I've been working on over at my Tumblr blog. Busy, busy, busy.

Oh... and did I mention that our house is coming along nicely? Slowly, but nicely.

So tell me.... how have you been?

Day 5: From a High Angle: I began today's prompt out on my balcony, looking down below me to street level. Unfortunately, aside from a few garbage bins and some random work vans, there wasn't a great deal to photograph. Instead, I decided to stick closer to home and opted to find a prompt inside to use instead. These worked out great!

For more information & to check out the other participants, click on the image below, or follow the Flickr stream.

Day 4: Something Green: I'm a bit of a moron, and for some reason assumed that today was 'Something Pink' day {that's later in the month} - I had my pink pictures all ready and waiting to go live today! They'll have to wait, though. Because we're renting this flat, hardly anything is decorated either - so we live in a world of beige and grey.

There's nothing wrong with these colours; it's just hard to work with them. We also don't have a lot of greenery inside our unit, because Oscar tends to eat anything plant-based, so we've made do with a few artificial plants that live in the bedroom where he can't gnaw on them. I decided to use these to photograph today.

I used these glass bottles filled with carnations on our wedding guest book table. It's nice to use them again!


For more information & to check out the other participants, click on the image below, or follow the Flickr stream.

Day 3: Clouds: I actually took these pictures yesterday {the afternoon of October 3rd} because the weather here in Sydney was all kinds of random. Windy and stormy one second, overcast the next, then bright blue and sunny a few moments later. These were all taken from our apartment balcony in the late afternoon. Spring weather is weird.

I ended up really loving the random power line in the last cloudy shot, so it became my chosen image:

For more information & to check out the other participants, click on the image below, or follow the Flickr stream.