WEDDING -The Dream Dress.....

I havent written about my wedding dress yet.

Which is crazy seeing as i've been dreaming of my wedding dress

since i could dream

In fact my sister reminded of how during church when we were little

i used to sit with a little notebook and just repeatedly 

draw wedding dresses.

My Big Sis designed my dress.

i described to her what i wanted.

The main inspiration was Grace Kelly.

I was totally miffed when Kate Middleton

did the whole Grace Kelly inspired thing....

as i knew people would compare me to her

instead of Grace.

It nearly put me off the idea...

so much so that Tim who had always heard me go on about

Grace Kelly's dress was quite surprised on the 

wedding day when i HAD gone for it!

I sent my sister a few inspiration pictures.

A Grace Kelly Top

A bit of a train with a bow on the back

A soft chiffon skirt,

that lay on the floor all over

(this caused great difficulty in me walking down the aisle!)

A couple of montages she made up

and the designs she drew.

 I was so glad that she understood my vision.

Grace Kelly blowing in the wind.

(with a little bit of Marilyn!)

Boat Life....Cranky....

The hardest part about boat life for me is,

well being on the boat...ALL THE TIME

(apart from sailing...

which i guess is the hardest part about sailing)

Living where you work can suck...

equally worse,

living with your colleagues sucks even more.

Getting 'me time'

or even

'us time'

is far and few inbetween.

Everything is a communal decision.

Every conversation is overheard.

All your private moments are public moments.

Everything is in your face all the time!

There are two couples on the boat,

myself and Tim 

and another married couple.
in a rather confined space
(well a 72ft yacht)

This week the other girl and i have
been butting heads...
mainly in the kitchen.
the saying 'too many cooks spoils the broth'
could never be more true.

In the normal world, if your colleague
annoys you , you go home, complain a bit,
unwind, relax, stop thinking about it for a while
and gear yourself up for the next day.
All i can do here is move a metre away and keep on simmering away...
or occasionally boil over.

It works with spouses too,
at one point Tim and i were butting heads,
being with each other 24/7 can have its toll on you.,
(i think he prefers that i'm butting heads with
co-workers rather than him now!)

Dont get me wrong i have a good life.
A very good life.
i currently have also have a very easy life....
but sometimes it would be nice if that life were my life,
not everybody else's too.

I'm going to put it down to a good learning curve.
i've never been a good sharer and now i'm practically a communist.

On the other hand,
i'm off to London for the weekend.
Leaving my husband behind....
this will be the first time we have spent any time apart since we were married.

I mean that quite literally,
the most time we have spent apart from each other
was when i spent the night in the hospital,
i think it was less than 12 hours....

i think i'll miss him!

Wedding - Flowers

PHOTO

When we got engaged i knew exactly which wedding flowers we 

would be having.

I would carry Sunflowers.

and my bridesmaids Dried Lavender

Sunflowers -

because they are my favourite flower.

they are so bright and cheerful

but not just that,

they are the only flowers Tim has ever bought me.

Early on in our relationship i mentioned they

were my favourite and he picked right up on it.

For our first anniversary of dating he bought me a sunflower

in a pot...

We named it Sonic.

We planted it in his garden.

One night he called me after having a BBQ with his friends.

'i think they all think i'm a bit strange'

he said.

'why' 

i asked.

'Well after the BBQ we headed indoors

but i kept running outside with my head torch on

to attack the slugs that have been eating Sonic..

They told me to just leave it alone,

and they didnt understand when i tried to tell

then its my girlfriends favourite flower.'

Sonic didnt survive the slugs,

but i knew he was a keeper.

Lavender -

Captain Tim is obsessed with lavender.

He thinks it cures all diseases....

everything!

He reminds me of the dad in

My Big Fat Greek Wedding who thinks

Windex cures everything.

Oz! A snapshot round up

I never got round to really posting much about our time in Australia.

I thought i'd just put a couple of post with some snapshots.

This post includes pictures of our trip to

Summer Bay 

(all British who watched tv in the 90's will know that one!)

Featherdale Animal Park

Swimming with turtles at Byron Bay

and surfing at the Beach where we stayed.

(cant help but still sneak in the occasional ballet pose)

Valentines

So i realised i never put up the awesome pictures from when we got engaged...

(click on them to make them bigger...

i really need to change this blog so you can see pictures better,

but i dont know how)

you can read

our engagement story here

The View

The Proposal

The Engaged

Happy Valentines!

Wedding - Pirates and Princesses

So i totally have way more wedding posts to write,

even though the wedding was 5 months ago

(i'm still waiting on some piccys)

in fact last week husband got all

excited about celebrating our 6month 

wedding anniversary,

only to be told by one of the crew that we are way too eager

and its only our 5month anniversary.

Oh well, he still took me out for a fancy steak dinner.

Anyhows,

here are our wedding photoboth pictures

(which i thought i had blogged ages ago but dont think i did)

It was a pirates and princess theme.

Cambodia- Food!

One of the fun things we did in Cambodia 

was go to a Cambodian cooking class

with Le Tigre de Papier restaurant in Siem Reap.

There was another couple on their honeymoon in the class

and 4 women college professors 

who had taken the night off from their student tour group 

in the class with us.

Each of us picked whichever Cambodian starter and main course

from the restaurant menu that we wanted and we

cooked up a feast.

It was great to learn new ingredients to cook with,

and before we left i popped into the supermarket

and bought a few spices for my cupboard.

I've had a go at cooking Amok since i've been back

and i'm going to try me some Beef Loc lac this week.

Cambodian food was delicious,

we enjoyed nearly every meal that we had

and it was great to learn how to imitate it

(i wont profess to be an expert!)

One night in Siem Reap we went to 

the Cambodian Grill on Pub Street.

Here they put a little grill on your table and 

you pick a variety of meats and cook them up yourself

(my husband kept asking why we 

were going to restaurants to cook our own dinners!)

We grilled ourselves some

crocodile, 

kanagroo,

snake,

ostrich

 

Cambodia - Phnom Penh

Our last stop on out trip was to the capital city Phnom Penh..

We cut our time there pretty short after deciding to spend longer on the island (it was so worth it)

in fact we only had one morning in the city,

but we did manage to see all the tourist sights that we wanted to in that amount of time.

A tuk-tuk driver scouted us out when we got of the night bus the evening before

and made a pretty reasonable deal to drive us around for the day.

Phnom Phenh itself was a big dirty city,
in fact it reminded me a bit of Cairo,
although to be fair pretty much all we saw of it
was from the back of a tuk-tuk,

Our stops in Phnon Pnem

were the Royal Palace 

S-21 prison area

and 

The Killing Fields

We weren't too impressed by the Royal Palace,
i think we expected more.

But both the prison area and the Killing Fields were

well worth a visit.

The audio tour at the Killing Fields was excellent,

i really felt i learned a lot

about the Cambodians plight during

the Khmer Rouge era
and i think it was done with a poignant sensitivity.

 i think its important for tourists to

go these places to bring a better awareness 

to what exactly went on.

We also managed to squeeze in a trip to
the Seeing hands Massage
before our 2pm flight.

The Seeing Hands Massage
trains blind people to be masseuses.
It was an excellent massage
that i would highly recommend.
There are a few of them in the different cities in Cambodia.

Cambodia- Beyond Siem Reap

On our third day after ditching our guide we hired a driver for the day and went to

Preah Kahn

Beng Mealea

Koh Ker

I would definitely recommend anyone going to

Siem Reap to take the time to

get out of the Angkor Wat complex and see some of the temples

further away

(it was about a 3 hour drive to koh ker, and 2 hours between each destination)

We loved the fact that here we had the temples

all to ourselves.

The atmosphere was completely different,

i felt more connected with the temples and nature

and it felt more historic and not like

tourist-mania.

Beng Mealea was by far Tim's favourite

the guides show where you can climb all over the ruins,

he felt just like Indiana Jones. 

(my pictures werent actually fuzzy,

i think my crappy internet connection has just 

uploaded them that way...

boo!)