and tonight I have Oranges

Monday is SES night, the night that I trundle to Group and learn things. Tonight though we were on storm call out from the storms that hit yesterday. When I got to Group, I was quickly given a pair of Oranges (the old jump suit not the new two piece) and a pair of boots. Then it was out to The Gap where street by street we door knocked and assessed the problems so teams could come back in the light tomorrow and do what repairs they can do. I was so excited! It looks like I might get a call out tomorrow night as well, so I am off to get some sleep!

and here is a photo!
Helen has Oranges

a missed chance

Mum and I went to The Farm today and just before Mum started cooking tea, my phone rang. “Hi Helen, it’s Leanne from SES, are you free tonight?” It broke my heart so much to say that I was up north so I couldn’t go out tonight. I so dearly wanted to say yes as it would have been my first activation and it would have been a storm activation at that and I would have gotten my oranges.

sigh. We have had one hell of a storm this evening though. We left Brisbane round 1545 ish and as we drove the view out the rear just got progressively darker. A while after we got to The Farm, it started blowing a gale and then it got darker again and the rain started. It rained, and it rained and it rained.

As we drove home there were branches down all over the place and traffic lights and street lights out all over the place as well. I thought about giving them a ring to see if it was too late to come down and join a crew but then I thought that I am fairly exhausted from a big weekend moving and I have 38 Navy kids enlisting at 0700 or 0730 in the morning, I need sleep!

I am now sitting in my room at Auchenflower and the rain stopped probably 10 minutes ago. The only sound now is the trains as they zip past and the various bug noises.

Oh well I have SES tomorrow night and I am sure I will hear all about what I missed out on (clearing gutters I bet)

Auchenflower Style

Yesterday and today I have moved into a gorgeous house in Auchenflower for the summer, the room is furnished with the most gorgeous 1920’s furniture with even more gorgeous 12ft ceilings. The kitchen has gas and it is just round the corner from the Auchenflower train station which is one zone closer to work on the train. Another great thing is that it is also close to the bike path which means I can and will ride/walk to work πŸ™‚

Auchenflower

Bathroom Light

Lush in a Row (by HelenPalsson)
Why is is that Bathrooms with windows always seem to have such nice light? I just love seeing the sun light stream through in the morning!

I took the day off work today to pack up and start moving as tomorrow I move into a gorgeous house in Auchenflower where I will be living for the next couple of months. I have realised that I basically all I own is clothes, camera gear and cooking paraphernalia (food, books, utensils, magazines etc). I was going to take some photos of my new room but when I got to the house I realised my camera battery was dead so today you will just have to have a photo of some my Lush goodies sitting in a row.

A new baby

Tonight, my favourite store in Brisbane had it’s once yearly 20% off sale for newsletter subscribers. Since Taste open a few years ago, I have often popped in when driving past for a quick browse.

I arrived shortly before 1730 and managed to pop into the shop for about a minute before the closed the doors, myself and another lady had just enough time to confirm what colour KitchenAids were in stock and how many they had (seven and only one of each colour). When we were back outside we quickly formed a little posse at the door with two other ladies who were also in the KitchenAid quest. They were number 1 and 2 in the line, I was number 3 and the other lady was number 4. We started discussing colours and it turned out that lady number 1 and I both wanted Apple Green and number 2 and number 4 both wanted the Imperial Gray. Very democratically I decided that I would get the Ice Blue as that was my 2nd colour pref from what they had in stock (I had wanted Gloss Cinnamon, Tangerine or Yellow but there was none in stock). Number 4 decided she would get Empire Red. Once that was settled we then roped into our posse two other ladies, one who had bought her KitchenAid (Almond) a few months ago and the other who was also in the quest, her first preference was the Empire Red but she quickly settled on the Willow Blue as that would match her Le Creuset.

When they opened the doors, the five of us quickly made our way over to the table where the holy grail was and grabbed our new babies. We then made our way over to the counter where Jodie (the lovely owner) commented on how it was great to see that we had worked as a little team to get what we wanted. As we were walking through the shop some of the other Taste employees made comments as well about our little team forming to get our common goal.

The 20% off made the price very attractive! Taste retails them at $699 and you can get them from the online site round the $630 mark. The 20% off took it to just under $560.

Here is my baby (well my second baby as my first baby is my 5D)
My new baby

My other purchase was a Le Creuset Multifunction Set in Cobalt Blue. I remember the first time I saw the multifunction mentioned on a blog, I thought “that is a very cool idea” over the last year or so I have danced my fingers over them as I have seen them at various places. Tonight I picked up my own πŸ™‚ I had been tossing up between getting a 20cm Le Creuset French Oven as there are times when I find my 24cm too big but since the multifunction set is about the same size and it gives me a saucepan and frypan that works as a lid, I decided that this year that was a better buy. ‘

I’m so excited! I can’t wait to use my new kitchen goodies.

Lush

Some of you will know that over the last couple of months I have become a bit of a fan of Lush, in fact just about everything I use in the skin/shower line is Lush. My face is the clearest it has ever been thanks to Herbalism, my hair is a lot more controllable thanks to Godiva and Jungle. I have even found a moisturiser that doesn’t leave my skin feeling really gluggy thanks to Enzymion.

Tonight the stores launched the Christmas goodies with a VIP night so I popped along to the Brisbane store on the mall for my first ever Lush VIP night. We were all given cute little sample bags when we walked in filled with assorted samples and then I won a Marzibain bubble bar and a piece of Snowcake soap. I also picked up some goodies I had been wanting, chatted to a few people, had a good laugh and am very much looking forward to going to another VIP night.