Happy Friday!

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What do you think?

Woohoo a blog award!

I’ve received the Beautiful Blogger Award from the ever gorgeous Jodie over at Mummy Mayhem!

Here are the rules:

1. thank the person who nominated me for this award

2. copy the award and place it on my blog

3. link to the person who nominated me for this award

4. share 7 interesting things about myself

5. nominate 7 other beautiful bloggers

I remember when Jodie first found my blog. She was like a breath of fresh air, who loved to comment, and what blogger doesn’t love getting comments!! Jodie also gives great advice, and I especially love reading her tales on Mummy Mayhem, from the soap opera that was her finding love to crazy things her kids do! If you haven’t been to Mummy Mayhem then you should. Off you go, go on!

OK, so now 7 interesting things about myself:

1. I was an Aunty before I was 3 years old!

2. My sister is 20 years olders than me, and there’s only 9 years between my mum and my sister. Don’t worry we have different mum’s!

3. My hubby and I knew each other for nearly a year before he asked me out. He thought I would think he was too old, and I thought he would think I was too young. (He’s 12 years older).

4. Our family dog growing up was called Tara and it contained all our initials: Tom, Anne, Raymond, Ami.

5. I hate exercising. I’ve begun to enjoy taking Jack for a walk but I would never willingly go to the gym out of enjoyment! Hence why the gym took all my money and I never used it!

6. I hate the white bit of eggs, especially if they’re a bit gooey. If I’m eating fried eggs I’ll cut it all off, or if it’s poached eggs, I’ll eat all the yolk out and leave the white. But the yolk has to be runny.

7. Like Jodie, I always just wanted to be a mum. I had a great time studying and then finding my feet in the big wide world of the workforce, but always knew that eventually that I just wanted to be a mum.

Now I’m definitely going to be doubling up here, but here’s my Beautiful Blogger list:

1. Jodie of course from Mummy Mayhem! I won’t continue to gush, she might get a big head!!

2. Thea over at Do I Really Wanna Blog. Thea’s posts are always so honest, and when she writes about her kids, it’s just gorgeous!

3. Megan at Writing Out Loud. Megan is one of those really easy writers, that you just love to read! There’s currently some especially cute pics of her bub on there at the moment! The clever little thing has also just launched another blog, You, Me & Georgie.

4. The ever inspiring Cate Bolt, is no doubt well on the way to changing the world. As well as running a charity in the hopes of building an orphanage in Indonesia, Cate is also about to shave her head for the World’s Greatest Shave. Please support Cate any way you can. Oh and when you visit Cate’s site, take some tissues. She writes the most beautiful hearfelt posts.

5. Bern over at So Now What? will seriously have you in stitches. Not only can this lady write, but it’s always so heartfelt, and if you’re eye’s aren’t welling up with emotion, you’ll be crying with laughter!

6. Belinda’s blog An Account of Social Commentary is one I can definitely relate to! She always has great posts ranging from babies, exercise (or my lack thereof), travels, and hair!

7. Last but certainly not least is Ellen over at The Spice Rack. A newbie to the blogging world, I of course especially enjoy Ellen’s posts about Grace the dog! Probably because on more than one occasion I can relate to the puppy shenanigans!

For a great review of the movie head over to Bern’s site HERE.

Um, which way?

I’m the first to admit that I’m not so crash hot at giving directions. Actually I’m not that good at direction in general. Sometimes I sit in the car and have to mentally figure out how to get somewhere before I leave the driveway. Yes, sad, I know.

Then I was driving around today running some errands, you know going to the pet shop to stock up on things for Jack, buying Season 5 of The Hills, the day it came out (a now not so secret obsession of mine!) and for the first time I started looking at street names.

I started thinking about my crap sense of direction, and then realised that when I do know where I’m going, it’s just that. I know where I’m going, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you most of the street names en route somewhere. If someone asks me for directions, I count sets of traffic lights, or say things like turn right at the 5th street, bugger me if I know what the 5th street is called I just know that it’s the 5th one!

Sometimes I wonder how I actually make it anywhere without getting seriously lost. And yes I am indeed one of those people who has to turn a map around so the roads are pointing in the direction we’re going. I’d rather read street names upside down than pretend I can be tricky and tell my husband to turn left when it looks like it should be right, but really is left, but only looks left when you turn the map around so it looks like it’s going in the same direction as you. Confused yet? Me too.

So the moral of this story is? Don’t ask me for directions, and can someone please buy me a GPS!

Mmmm Cheese Pizza!

1. Put too much cheese on pizzas.

2. Somehow find a way to screw up something I’m cooking!

3. Eat that little bit too much to feel that little bit too full.

4. Think about food way too much – see above!

5. Let our dog Jack get away with A LOT! The problem is he’s just too cute!

6. Wonder if I’ve turned off my hair straightener.

7. Wish I’d just done the washing up before going to bed.

8. Take A LOT of photos.

9. Forget to check pockets before doing the washing.

10. Write great blog posts in my head just before going to sleep then can never remember them the next morning!

And that’s just today! What do you always do…?

Ah the serenity.

So last week we spent the week up at Smiths Lake. A lovely place about 1 ½ hrs North of Newcastle. It was a great week with Hubby’s family, and one that included a couple of little progressions for me, so I thought I’d share them with you.

It all started on the Sunday morning when we took Jack (our pup) to the kennels. This would be his first trip to the kennels and I was a little emotional to say the least. He bounded off full of happy energy and I got back in the car and cried. Yes that’s right I cried. Why? Because I love my pooch to bits and I desperately wished that I could tell him it would only be for a week and we’d be back to get him. Apparently he had an absolute ball and all the staff fell in love with him. So why is any of this progress? Well, because I only cried for a little bit on the Sunday, even though I missed him terribly all week!

The progression continued on that Sunday when I was packing. I’m quite happy to be perfectly honest and say I’m a crap packer. I over pack, or think I’ve packed the wrong things. But this year I was determined to get it right! I packed ONE pair of shorts, ONE pair of cargo pants and a pair of trackies just in case. I even limited my tops, and, AND, I DIDN’T pack my hairdryer or straightener. That’s right people, you read it correctly, I DIDN’T pack my hairdryer or straightener. Do you need me to type it again? No, you got the gist?! Good stuff.

So, I did pack my make-up, BUT, I didn’t wear any. That’s right no make-up for the entire week. Why? Well frankly I don’t need make-up god damn it. No just kidding. Hanging out by the lake and on the boat didn’t really require any sprucing up of a morning so I was happy to go all natural thank you very much. And just to clarify I don’t actually usually wear a lot of make-up, but a light dust of powder of a morning always makes me feel a bit better.

So that was my week. No hair doing, no make-up, no pooch , just relaxing by the lake.

How was your week/weekend?

So there’ll be no Puff for a week, but it’s ok, I’m sure you’ll cope with plenty of other fabulous blogs out there to keep you entertained!

But before I go I want to mention the latest amazing thing that Cate Bolt is up to. If you don’t know about Cate, you can visit her site here: www.catherinebolt.com.

Well Cate has just registered for the Leukemia’s Worlds Greatest Shave. I’ve said before that shaving my head is just one thing I could never do, as selfish as it is, I just couldn’t give up my hair. But Cate is far braver than I am, and is doing just that and giving up her hair!

If you can, please donate anything you can to this very worthy cause.

Link to donate: http://bit.ly/cpBNOA

Good luck Cate! You never cease to amaze me!

Have a great weekend / week everyone!

Sometimes I blog just to get things off my chest. Sometimes I blog in the hope other’s will offer advice. And sometimes I blog to get other people’s opinions. I read many blogs myself – see my list under Community on the right hand side. Sometimes I comment and sometimes I don’t.

If I don’t have a strong opinion on something, I’ll often just comment Great Post. I think it’s nice to acknowledge that you read the person’s post. Often I’m sitting on the lounge reading posts on my phone and find it too frustrating to comment from my phone. Other times I feel a bit apprehensive about commenting for fear of starting an argument, or being disagreed with in a not very nice way.

I have to say that the latter really only applies to big sites like www.mamamia.com.au. I have had one bad experience on there, and since then it was enough to make me only want to participate in things like Best/Worst and other light-hearted posts. Besides Twitter and the good old email, commenting is a great way to have a chat with your ‘online friends’! Usually everyone who comments on my posts, I’ve never met before in real life. But their collective wisdom and thoughts are beyond helpful and give me insights that I don’t necessarily get from non online friends.

As always, (yes I’m asking for comments!) what do you think about commenting? Do you comment all the time on people’s blogs or do you prefer just to read posts and other people’s comments? Do you rely on comments from your blog posts to help you with certain things?

Go on, leave a comment!!

How much TV do you watch?

Turn the clock back about 12-14 years and I was a teenager who was quite obsessed with TV. In the school holidays I was allowed to watch Neighbours AND Home and Away, but come term time at the start of each year, I had to pick just one. Most years I stuck with Home and Away.

I loved The Nanny on early Sunday night, Mum and I would often watch The Bill together, and I remember way back when loving the show Birds of a Feather! If you were looking for me after school at about 4.30pm you’d find me on the couch having a date with Ridge and Brooke. Yes, I became slightly obsessed with The Bold and the Beautiful.

You could easily say that I loved my TV, and I always had my shows. If I was ever going to miss one of my shows I set a tape and make sure I caught up on all the action before the next episode.

Then today when I received the updated TV programming from the local stations (for media buying), I realised that I’d missed something that I wanted to watch last night. I also realised I’d missed the first week too. Then I remembered what happened last Tuesday night: After sitting on the couch watching NCIS for a good half hour, I got bored went to bed, flicked on the TV luckily on Prime (Channel 7) to see Grey’s Anatomy, one of my ALL time favourite shows and I had FORGOTTEN it was on. How the hell did this happen.

So after pondering all of this for a little while I thought, you know what? TV, maybe I’m just not that into you anymore. I don’t get totally devastated when I miss one of my shows, I just get a little upset. Which for some reason I’m finding a little bit weird. Thankfully I’ve still managed to catch all the Brothers and Sisters shows so far.

What are your TV viewing habits like? Do you have your FAVOURITE shows that you manage not to miss? Or, are you really just not that into TV?