One Fine Day

 The Antipodean Man took a day off work on Thursday to go to a Hospital appointment (he has sleep apnea) and I was expecting another boring day at home filled with moaning how bored he was and him hogging the TV and laptop whilst I ran around trying to clean around him. You can imagine my surprise at 10am when we were waiting for the bus to take us home when I suggested that we take a visit to have a look at our flat-building site-showhome to bug the sales people about prices again and with only a little bit of effort required, he agreed!

We got to the bus stop near the development and decided to have a late cooked breakfast at one of our favourite cafes, Maggie's and then, over many cups of tea and coffee and a huge slap up breakfast with all of the trimmings, decided to run up to Tescos to do our grocery shop so we didn't have to worry about doing it on Saturday in the weekend crush. The shops were completely dead and after a fifteen minute leisurely walk around Tesco, we'd finished, paid and were waiting on a cab to take us home.

Once we got home, The Antipodean Sausage needed walking and instead of a quick run around the block, the three of us walked down to the park and spent a leisurely hour and a bit in the spring sunshine, reading magazines, Instagramming and throwing the ball. One happy and tired pup and two happy dog owners later, we walked back home and spent the afternoon lazing around drinking tea and watching Downton Abbey (well I did, The Antipodean Man watched sci-fi and had an afternoon sleep, the lazy git.)

I forgot to mention this before, but this post is my addition to Glow's fabulous Flog yo' Blog Friday linky. You should go and check it out because a) Glow is an awesome blogger and b) There's lots of other awesome posts there you can read!

I'm not in Kansas anymore

 

Picture sourced from PastonPaper at Etsy.com

 I have lived in London for almost five years now and there are still things that surprise me because they are so different to Australia. You know, like trains that come every two minutes, distances measured in miles instead of kilometers, £2 coins being bigger than £1 coins, winter being so incredibly cold. I could list more but you'd be reading forever!

At times, I hate the differences. Mostly though, they are reminders of the incredible journey that The Antipodean Man and I have taken. But there are many things that are the same too and I'm happy to make sure that I always keep a little bit of Australiana in my home and in my heart, like this great vintage map that I found on Etsy this morning.

There have been times lately whilst I have not been working and not had a lot to do at home or money to spend on going out that I have felt down about being here in the UK and have wanted desperately to go home back to Australia but the more I think about it, the more I realize that my home has become London. 

The Antipodean Man and I, we have family here, we have friends here, we (almost) own a house here. It was a huge decision to cut those ties, pack those bags and leave that family in the first place, almost six years ago, when we made our decision to plan to move to the UK, I wonder to myself, is it something that I really want to do again, when I'm not even finished discovering this wonderful place I call home?

Layout Resources

I am so excited to finally have this blog up and running! For a while there, I had been thinking about it and planning it in my head but I felt like I didn't have anything to say. With the future looking rather busy and bright for The Antipodean Man and I, I thought there was no time like the present to start a new blog and get cracking with sharing some of my stories from my life as an Australian Expat!

One thing I always love doing online is collecting resources related to Web Design and when I designed the first version of this blog, I decided that I'd make sure I kept all of my resources pinned on my Blogging Board at Pinterest so I could remember where I got certain graphic elements, which fonts I used and other tutorials I used to customize this Blogger template.

Fonts:
Body - Georgia
Header - Bebas & Raleway
Post Headers & Navigation - Raleway
Sidebar Headers - Ribbon

Graphics:
Header Squiggle - IROCKSOWHAT
Social Media Buttons - August Empress

Tutorials:
Webfonts & Typekit by Puglypixel

I'm also working on a launching a little side project, helping people to customize their Blogger blogs, totally free of charge, but only time will tell if I will be able to keep up with that. However, if this is something you might be interested in, please do drop me a comment with your email address and I'll see what I can do for you.