It's a Wonderful Life

After a time blogging elsewhere (archives yet to be added), I have decided to return to blogging at alyshajane.com.

A lot has happened in my life over the last few months, the most wonderful event being my marriage to my darling husband. We were married on October 4th, 2008 in the Blue Mountains. It was a beautiful day filled with love, joy, family and friends. There are a few photos from our day on our photographers blog, as well as some more photos taken by some lovely friends. More to be added here, soon!

Our Wedding Day

No, Hubby isn’t doing anything rude! He’s helping me remove petals (our confetti) from my corset! I adore him!

Another change is that I have decided to pursue a different career path and have applied for a place in a Library/Information Services course. When I first left high school, my dream career role was a librarian. Visits to libraries are like visits to sweet shops for me! I’m tired of freelance web design; while I may do an occasional job, I really want to find chase new horizons.

Animal Crossing in My Soup

My yummy man has introduced me to all kinds of good things since he came into my life. Television shows like Blake’s 7 (currently watching season 3 – no spoilers please!) and The Goodies, books such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series and many fab games such as Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights.

Another game is Animal Crossing on the Nintendo DS which we love to play together, either by visiting each others towns or playing side by side and laughing at all the funny things the characters say. An example of this was Sally who lives in my town of Blossom and, like the other resident Squirrels, comes out with some classic lines. The latest was “Nothing makes you feel young at heart like a bug in your pants!“. hehe

I’ve been steadily working on having my town one of Squirrels and Kitties. So far I have six Squirrels, one Kitty and a Zebra. I found a neat site where you can record the price of Turnips in your town plus make a picture of all your residents. Mine is below:



Blossom


Hopefully, Nintendo will soon announce Animal Crossing for the Wii! Does anyone reading this also play Animal Crossing (DS or GameCube)?

It’s About Time I Posted Something

Yes, I’m still here. I’ve just been extremely lazy when it comes to updating my blog.

We just had a lovely weekend in the Blue Mountains where we found the perfect place to order our Wedding cake (and we got to sample yummy chocolate cake mmm) and then on our way home we received a call that our Wedding outfits are ready, yay!

No posting of clues or photos of what we will both be wearing. Let’s just say that we are going for a very different theme to what people will be expecting and we want to keep our outfits secret until the big day.

We’re getting there with the Wedding planning. We have the ceremony and reception venues booked, we have a celebrant and a photographer. We have our outfits organised and now our cake. Need to work on the invitations now and get them sent out later this month. Busy, busy, busy. Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy! :heartbeat:

City Lights

After some frantic weeks of searching, himself and I have found somewhere lovely to live. We now live on the North Shore of Sydney and have not only a water view, but a view of the city which looks exceptionally beautiful at night. Another bonus is that we often get wonderful views of storms and all from either the lounge room or all cosied up in bed! The photos below were taken a week or so ago when a storm was raging and the two of us were perched on the end of the bed, using the bed rails as makeshift camera tripods!

Stormy Lights
Now that we are more or less settled in to our new home, regular posts will now resume! :)

We Wii Together

For Christmas my wonderful man bought me a Wii! We still get a giggle out of telling people who’ve never heard of them, that we love to wii in the lounge room together. We’ve got some very strange looks out of that little gem! hehe

We Wii Together

Game wise we have Wii Play and Wii Sports which came with the console, Rayman Raving Rabbids 1 & 2 (Bwahhhh!), Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 and The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. We also have a copy of Animal Crossing for the GameCube because the DS version is one of our favourites. I hope the Wii version of Animal Crossing comes out soon!

On our want list is Endless Ocean and Link’s Crossbow Training. I’m also curious about Kororinpa, has anyone played that? It looks very cute and I am a sucker for cute!

We’re getting Married!!

We Are Engaged!!

On the 1st of September, my beloved asked me to marry him and I said yes! He is the man I completely love and adore, the one I want to spend the rest of my life with; my answer could only have been yes! He chose sunset at Sublime Point road in Leura to propose and it was so beautiful, romantic and a moment I will always treasure. I’ll never forget the way I felt when he asked me to be his wife; it was the most magical, breathtaking moment of my life.

The first photo was taken on the balcony of our room on Hamilton Island a few weeks ago. The second is my beautiful engagement ring (and our hands entwined) and the third was taken not long after my wonderful Fiancé proposed. Another couple had walked down to the lookout and offered to take our photo together which was lovely timing.

Squeeee! x 5 trillion zillion and into infinity. I’m engaged to the most wonderful, handsome, intelligent, amazing and talented man in the universe and I absolutely love and adore him!! :cupid: :heartbeat:

We're all going on a Autumn (Summer) Holiday

I forgot to mention where we are going on the interstate flight – Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays!

I’ve managed to calm down about flying for the first time and that is largely due to my wonderful man who has patiently listened to all my worrying and answered my silly questions. And gently told me off when I read web sites that I really shouldn’t when about to go on my first plane flight. :blush:

I’m getting all excited and bouncy now and looking forward to my first flight on a plane not to mention the first time I’ve been to another state! And kinda overseas in a way, as himself suggested. I’ve never had a ‘proper’ cocktail before either, so I am rather looking forward to those as well!

Ah, walks on the beach hand in hand with my beloved. I can’t wait! :wub:

How long has it been since the plane was disinfected?

Soon I will be going on a plane flight for the very first time. Yes, I have never been on a plane before. As the date grows closer, I’m getting a wee bit nervous…umm, make that more than a wee bit nervous! It’s an interstate flight so will only be about two hours long. But it’s still a plane flight!

I have this nasty suspicion that I am going to be like Mr. Monk in the episode when he went on a plane (Mr. Monk and the Airplane). I already share a lot of characteristics with Monk, and like him, I don’t like the idea of being in a confined space where other people may cough and sneeze and generally spread germs around willy nilly. And it is also a confined space that is unnaturally high in the air. Eeee!

*deep breaths* *deep breaths*

This video clip from Monk (trailer on the left) shows what I’m worried I’ll be like on the plane, especially the whole holding on to my beloved tightly and having to be pried off the seat thing. And the germ thing. That too.

Any of you seasoned travelers have some tips for a first time flyer?

Random Tidbits

Exceedingly Good Taste

I’ve only just come across Taste.com.au, but I can already see that it will be a much visited site. It has oodles of yummy recipes as well as articles to provide food for the mind.

Some delish recipes:
Baci ice-cream – Mmmm, Baci chocolates with ice-cream!
Champagne Risotto.
Cheese in a Box – with crusty bread, fresh asparagus and champagne? Food heaven!
Asparagus salad with pan-fried gnocchi.
Beef fillet with wild mushroom vinaigrette.
Bok choy with sticky Asian dressing.
Mushroom & bok choy risotto.
Chocolate crepe cake.

A few articles:
Food Matchmaking.
Got Bilk?
Food focused profile of Illawarra and Kangaroo Valley.
Iron Chef Downunder; an interview with Iron Chef French Hiroyuki Sakai.

Life is Good

I am still alive and well, even though I haven’t updated for a long time. My life has changed in many ways over the last few months and in particular, the last two weeks. I did move to Sydney, but not to where I thought. Originally, I was going to stay with a relative or friend of the family while I looked for work. But things changed, as they have a habit of doing. You see, I was asked to live somewhere much, much better. Better, because it’s with the someone who I’ve given my whole heart to; my love and I now live together and life is wonderful! As I type this, he’s sitting less than an arms length away, awww. The photo below was taken when we were at Port Stephens. Mmmm, my handsome one. ;)

My Love and I
Another way my life has changed is through a change of careers. Not finding much in IT/Design, I applied for a wider range of jobs. I was fortunate to get an interview with one business, then a trial day and then, I got the job! I now work in the Sydney cbd, a short distance away from this famous tower. I’m not entirely sure whether I am allowed to mention where I work on my weblog, so for now I’ll just say that it is a retail position. A very steep learning curve as I have never worked in retail before, but I’m getting the hang of things and haven’t made any really silly mistakes…I hope!