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Outsourcing, and not trying to do it all

in Get Your Shit Together

I don’t know if you can tell from this photo, but I’m really exhausted. I haven’t had a solid night’s sleep since 1949, or at least that’s what it feels like. I woke up with eyes so puffy that I think the bags and dark circles have just all combined. It’s a hot mess kind of look and I’m tying to work it. How am I doing? Being tired is not new, I’m not the first and I won’t be the last woman trying to do it all. A senior management day job, running a small business, volunteering for a professional body, raising two happy and healthy fur-kids and generally trying to keep my shit together. I’m not the first. I know. But christ some days it’s hard work! Repeat after me, it’s ok to admit that you can’t do EVERYTHING yourself! [Tweet this] Which brings me to the point of this post, trying to do all that and not go mental has meant that something had to give. The easiest place to start, for me, was to outsource a little bit of walking my dogs. I hit up my best friend google for some ideas and as eventually I
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The Artist in us all

in Get Your Shit Together

Last week I was having a pretty bad few days, I wasn’t sleeping, I was stressed about a complicated series of projects and I just couldn’t wait to run away to the hair salon and lose myself in the chair!  Yes, the dark circles under my eyes are real!  I got majorly stuck in traffic en route to the salon and ended up being 30 mins late – which I  hate.  I find it disrespectful to my stylist and I know it totally stuffs their day, but my colourist was great and as I put my head down to continue to catch up on emails she foiled like a demon and made up my lost time.  Note to self: NEVER try and travel through school traffic to ANYWHERE, that shit is serious!  When at last she was done, I sank into the chair and as the colour processed  scrolled through about 14 hours of my twitter feed.  When I saw there was a spare double pass for a movie that night I cursed myself for my shitty day and not checking earlier.  Like, about 5 hours earlier when it was posted!  I couldn’t believe that I actually got a response to my
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For bloggers: My iPhone Hipstamatic workflow

in Get Your Shit Together

If you are despairing about the new Terms of Service released by Instagram and want to find an alternative to this social sharing site then the combo I’ve used for years might just help. I originally went down the Hipstamatic photo app route as I wanted the retro vibe in my iPhone images but I didn’t want to be forced to share or post every shot to get them into my camera roll on my phone. I have my phone with me 24/7 and will often shoot and edit a couple of shots a day to stockpile for my Daily Challenge (see below) that I do and so that I always have something on hand. While I do love the filters and edits on Instagram (been on it a whole two weeks before the changes were announced) as they seem more candy/ lolly and lighter in tone they are a bit toooo automagical for my liking. I prefer having more control over minor details via the Photoshop app (see below). OCD control freak, who me? I’m excited as all get out for the release of twitter photo filters and reckon I might stick with the Hipsta + tumblr combo a
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I broke my blog

in Be a Fabulous Badass, Featured

I’ve always been a fiddler and tinkerer, and until recently it has served me very well. I could work out how to fix or make pretty much anything. A few months ago I finally worked out how to move my blog away from the free WordPress environment to a fully self-hosted one, allowing me much more freedom and possibility in terms of look, layout and functionality. It wasn’t all plain sailing, at all. I didn’t realise just how much the free WordPress version of the administrative back end was automagically done for you. Want an auto-post to your Facebook page? A customisable tweet on posting? Space for an SEO laden excerpt? Check, check and cha-check!! Switch to a fully hosted environment and not only do you need to find all those plug-ins yourself (assuming you know what they are called in the first place), you need to format and integrate them far more than you needed to before. I actually can’t get some of the social media auto publishing to work so I do it manually. On the most part I’m pleased I made the change. I had a theme that was a cool mix between images and words, I
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In my Mother’s kitchen

in Get Even More Foxy

My parents met at a dinner dance in Broken Hill, where my Dad grew up and my Mum took her first posting as a freshly trained primary school teacher, having put in for a place ‘west of the Great Dividing Ranges’ as a way to move up the list for preferential transfers to a more sought after location. Dad was a mechanical engineer and a popular athlete; regularly winning at Australian Rules Football, basketball as well as track and field. Not a wealthy man he had borrowed a car for the evening from a friend and offered Mum a lift home. Mum, also being on junior wages, readily accepted a free ride home. Perhaps the pinnacle of the night, the part that made them laugh and really bond, was that the steering in the car was shot and so every time he needed to turn a corner Dad had to get out and kick the tyres in the direction they needed to go! Lord knows how long that trip took but not long after they were married, choosing to honeymoon in Glenelg. This is my favourite photo my Dad took on their honeymoon. My brother arrived not long after and
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Refusing to fade

in Be a Fabulous Badass

Today is my 38th birthday.  Thank you, I’m having a nice low-stress day so far and much cupcakes have been had.  I just need a very cold beer at some point and some more doggie cuddles and I’ll be all good.  My vodka fuelled, ‘look at me’ podium days are long gone. I’ve lived on my own, by choice, for a very long time.  And I like it.  I mean, I really, REALLY, like it because I can walk around in my undies, eat cereal for dinner, never fight over the remote and spread all my pretty crap out as much as I want.  The only downsides would be that there is nobody to leave a light on for you, do the chores you hate or, like today, bring you a birthday present in bed.  But that’s ok, I can deal with the other 358 days of a year just fine.  Lately I’ve had more time on my hands and it has meant that I have more thinking time too.  The other day job/ senior management promotion I started in September is (surprisingly, and so far) much less hectic than I’ve known my professional life to be in about the last 15
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Daily Photo Challenge – April

in Be a Fabulous Badass

I enjoyed my Project 365 challenge SO much that I decided to not limit myself to any one particular year and make it a daily photo thing.  Seventy five days in and so far so good, I still enjoy it just as much!  These projects are not new, and I’m certainly not the only photographer doing it.  Some shoot on instagram or other camera apps but I prefer Hipstamatic for that groovy 70′s faded photo, bad exposure kind of feeling!  So I’m going to only post Hipsta shots for a whole year. I first saw posts on the idea of a photo challenge via photos posted by @DanniMinogue on twitter and developed by the gorgeous Fat Mum Slim, Chantelle.  Check out all the entries from her FebPhotoADay.  Note, this is not a blind copy of Chantelle’s idea and I emailed her first before I went ahead with this (so hold off flaming me!!). So, here goes… My birthday is in April and I’m issuing a challenge to you to take one photo on a suggested them each day (see the list below).  My goal is to have 60 people participate from all corners of the world.  Follow me on twitter
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