The Christmas Chronicles

Merry Christmas!!
I know I'm a few days late but we all know it takes a bit to get over the hype. And the food. Oh the food!

I have been very spoilt this year, like most years - I always feel incredibly blessed with the gifts that I am given. This year I was gifted my first proper designer piece.

I was given the gift of Chanel.

Thanks to my incredibly generous Mum and Dad and their trip to Hong Kong in November, my Mum wanted to spoil my sister and I and give us a Chanel wallet each as a super special present. She was armed with a great friend in HK who knows the designer stores well so getting there was no problem.

I was sooooo surprised when I unwrapped the little black carry bag with the letters CHANEL on them. I was even more surprised when I realised it was a classic black wallet, complete with authenticity card and the yummy leathery smell (this is not a fake peeps!).

Dead Lord I am a lucky girl.

I was also gifted some new towels for the house, a Mimco phone case in one of my favourite colours, some new Nike joggers, a new Pandora bracelet, a gold bangle, a BBQ for my apartment patio (I can't wait to BBQ when I get home!!) and lots of other goodies.

If you follow me on instagram, you would have seen a few more snaps of the big day! How did you all fare in the Christmas haul?

The only thing that I am sad about this Christmas is how overwhelmed and stressed my family felt. I'm being honest when I say this Christmas didn't fly by in a sea of joy and happiness. There's the food prep, the cooking, the cleaning, the setting of the table, the organising and the chaos of a bunch of family all hoping to get a long, with the clash of personalities at least once since deep down we are all very much the same.

I'm sure it is similar in some people's households, but if you are one of those family's that get a long like a house on fire and there are no tears or tantrums, then I salute you.

I only wish that at our next Christmas we can all remain calm and remember what the day is about. Because for me it is about family spending time together, eating and laughing and being happy to be in each others presence. Of course I'm a realist and there will always be a little tiff, but I hope the stress of the 'big day' doesn't take away from how special all of us being together really is.

(My Christmas tree in Sydney)

This year having our family together is especially important. My Grandfather is in the early stages of battling lung cancer and his treatment has begun over the Christmas break so having him here with us, and still healthy is a true gift.

I hope wherever you spent your Christmas, and whatever gifts you were given, you realised how lucky and blessed you are to be with people that you love.

(Our family Christmas tree at my parents home in our home town)

Now it's time to look toward the new year celebrations. Oh boy, another year is on the door step. Is anybody else a little freaked at how quickly 2013 has gone?

2014 is shaping up to be another cracker of a year for me. I am planning, but only a little, because in my experience every year has thrown me so many curve balls and changes that I can never plan too much! But, this is exciting! Not knowing sometimes is a great thing!

I've decided that I am going to do a 'reflection' post on all of the amazing things that have happened and that I have accomplished in 2013 rather then a post about new year resolutions because mostly every year they are the same for me!

More to come soon.

Happy holidays! x

Bellabox trial

Have you heard of Bellabox?

If you haven't, I'm hear to tell you all about it ... well, from my experience anyway.

Bellabox (according to the gals who created the service) is '...the beauty sampling concept to revolutionize the way Australian's discover, trial and purchase beauty and lifestyle products.' 

The system works in a way that gals who love their beauty products and don't want to commit to purchasing 'the newest, best, fan-dangle' products on the market without really knowing whether they'll suit them or not, can trial them!

There is a price, however. ('Aint nothing comes for free in this day and age, am I right??)

It will cost you a neat $15 a month to subscribe to the service and each month you will receive a cutely packaged sample parcel in your post box with the latest and greatest products on the market in cute sample sizes.

A look at the November box design

I first heard of Bellabox through a lady I work with. She was super excited one day when the office editorial assistant brought her mail to her desk and with that mail was a little turquoise 'Bellabox'.

She squealed with excitement as she ripped into the box to find out what goodies were in store this month. My reaction was a little like ... 'Your bella-what has arrived?"

And so she preceded to tell me about the amazing-ness of the service. I got sucked in and wanted a piece of this pie too. I signed up and keenly waited for my postie to drop off my Bellabox too!

Most of the samples from the November box

The good stuff: It kind of feels like your birthday every month when you receive a nicely packaged parcel full of about six or so beauty products that you may, or may not want to try.

The samples are the perfect size for your gym bag/handbag/travel bag, and can double as gifts to people if you're not into the products (hello stocking stuffers!)

The other stuff: I decided after two months that I didn't really need to be paying an extra $15 a month on sample beauty products when I am kind of already set on my beauty regime. I mean, yes it is nice to try new stuff, but I only recently forked out over $300 on an entire new skin care line and have finally found a foundation that doesn't feel too oily and covers up my blots nicely.

However, if you are a beauty lover and can't help yourself when it comes to reading about the newest products in the latest Elle and you just have to try them, then this service may be perfect for you!

And, if you happen to fall madly in love with one of the samples, you can pop online to the Bellabox site and purchase said product. Easy peesy.

Have you tried this service before? Are you already a subscriber and lover? Tell me all about it!

E, x

Feed Your Soul event wrap part 2

I am back into my normal work routine this week after my quick get-away to the Gold Coast for the Feed Your Soul event and I have had more time to process what we learnt.

After Ashy gave us an insight into her life and how she deals with struggles, bad moods and motivation, we got to hear Nicole Joy speak. I didn't know a lot about Nicole before the event. I knew she had an amazing new book out that she had been repping on her instagram account for a while, but I didn't know her 'story'.

Me (in front) and my sister snapped taking some notes during the event.
Image source: Harpa Design on Facebook here.

Nicole is a fully trained teacher with a university degree and all. After years of teaching and hating going to work, she realised it was time she stopped doing what she thought she had to do with her life and started to look for what she really truly loved and what made her happy.

Because she is part Italian she knew cooking was a passion of hers and realised that she could make a living out of it. She told us that she had the opportunity to write her book six months after she started working on her new found passion of writing recipes and cooking clean sweet treats.

It took only six months before her book was out! This blew my mind. To think that someone can have such a strong passion and pursue it so strongly that it becomes something amazing like having a book published in less than a year. Incredible.

Nicole explained that after years of failed job opportunities she knew in herself as soon as she started doing what she loved she was in the right place in her life. Sometimes I guess you just know.

She told us that there is no reason why we all have to be mediocre people. We can all be incredibly successful and bloody amazing if we just go after what we truly want. We need to stop doing things that we think we should be doing or think our families or our partners want us to do, and do more of what we love and more of what makes us happy.

This really resonated with me. We had to write down a list of things that we love doing, it didn't matter how small or insignificant they seemed, we just needed to jot them down. Once we did this, Nicole asked us how many of us do the things on our lists regularly. Most of us realised that what we had written down were things that we truly loved doing, and things that made us happy, but we rarely ever made time for them.

I really got thinking about the things that I love doing and why I don't do them more often. I find myself getting too caught up in the hustle and bustle of work life and push the things I love doing to the side, or say I don't have time to do them, when really, if we want something bad enough, we will make the time. I especially need to make time to do these things more often, because the more we do the things we love, the happier we will be.

A lot of what we learnt were such simple concepts to better our lives but sometimes it can take a while before the penny drops and you realise how much we can over complicate things.

Life is too short to be miserable in a job we don't love because we think we need to do it or need the money, or we think we don't have a choice.

I think we can all benefit from thinking about what we truly want out of life. We can design any kind of life for ourselves, we just have to be brave enough to go for it.

Nicole and Ashy, two inspirational ladies.
Image source: Harpa Design on Facebook here.

E, x

Feed Your Soul event wrap part 1

Hey lovelies,
Happy Tuesday, I hope your weekend was spent doing things that you love! I know I spent mine doing some amazing stuff!

This past weekend my sister and I flew to the Gold Coast for the Feed Your Soul event as mentioned in my post back here.

I promised to report back on the event and all I can say is, WOW. I have learnt so much from this event so I am going to write about the things that I learnt in two posts (so you guys don't have to read an essay! lol)

I was soooo excited for the event but even more stoked when the whole day exceeded my expectations. I had been following Ashy Bines and Nicole Joy on Instagram for some time now and had never thought I'd actually get a chance to chat to them about normal girl to girl stuff, but at this event we did!

As Ashy said in her speech in the morning, a lot of people see her on social media and judge her quite harshly and unfairly because they have preconceived ideas of what they think she is like because of her successes. She reminded everyone that she is only human (an amazing one at that!) and asked that we do not judge anybody during the course of the event.

I was blown away at how well Ashy spoke. She presented herself so nicely and was so approachable. When my sister and I were leaving the venue we even had a chance to chat to Ashy by ourselves and I seriously felt like we were talking to an old friend. She is just like us, she is only 25 (her birthday was yesterday!!!!) and has her struggles just like anybody else.

I found her story super inspiring and I told her I thought she should definitely write a book (which she said she hopes to work on sometime in the future when ever she gets a spare moment, which doesn't look to be anytime soon - this girl is one busy entrepreneur!)

We were treated to raw goodies for breakfast, lunch and snacks including muesli for breakfast and a yummy green smoothie after our boot camp session with the ABBBC trainers.

OMG the training session was great!! I had never done a proper big group session like this one before and it made me realise and understand why Ashy's bikini body challenges work so well. Training in a group makes the session soooo much more fun. My mind was preoccupied most of the time laughing with the girls I had just met or being silly in some of the exercises.

So many girls I met at this event were gorgeous people inside and out. We all seemed to get along together even though we were all strangers. I guess this is what happens when you put a bunch of like-minded girls together, we all want the same things - to feel healthier and work towards a better life for ourselves, so we all clicked!

I was so surprised at how much I took in from this event. I had never been to a 'motivational' talk as such before and I guess until you go to one, you won't really know how you will respond to the information.

From Ashy's story alone I learnt that believing something negative about yourself can change your whole life and influence the path you are heading down. Ashy truly believed she was too dumb to succeed at anything in life so she put off her aspirations of becoming a personal trainer for years. It wasn't until her life took a path where she had really hit rock bottom that she could muster the strength to apply herself to the personal training course and do what she really wanted to do.

Image source www.transformationcentre.com.au 

It seems so crazy now to think that Ashy thought she could never become a personal trainer! She is running an empire involved with helping women change their lives through fitness and health. Imagine if she had continued to believe that she was stupid and never chose to change her life and apply herself?

It's amazing to think about. I took a lot away from her story. Of course we heard a lot more about Ashy as well but I would be blogging a long time to tell you it all. This is why I believe she should write a book - she has so much to tell that a lot of people don't know about her and assume that success just landed in her lap. This is so not the case.

People need to work hard to achieve their dreams and goals and this event reconfirmed this for me. Sometimes it's easy to think that we are working hard towards out dreams when truly we are just hoping, waiting and wishing things would all come together on their own.

I plan to use this knowledge and work harder towards my goals for sure!

E, x