Hi all!
I’ve noticed I’m still getting a lot of traffic on this site, so I’m just posting a little reminder that I will no longer be posting here. The new site is www.shesgonelala.com! I thought I would keep this WordPress site running incase anyone wants to look back at older posts which haven’t been transferred over as I started afresh 🙂 you can subscribe on my new site to follow along!!
Thanks friends! See you soon!
E x
Our beyond perfect wedding video has finally gone live. Only six months late… Yes, that’s right Shawn and I have been married for six months, hooray! Officially on Wednesday, however we celebrated this weekend with a trip to the Blue Mountains. Our wedding day was beyond incredible, and while I do occasionally catch myself day dreaming about it, it’s nothing compared to our new lives together as a whole.
We were blessed with another free night away thanks to the rail works by our apartment, so we decided to head up to the mountains to relax and explore. I’ve been extremely sick in bed the last couple of days so we took it very slow, but it was such a nice chance to spend quality time together and be thankful for our marriage. Here are some photos to show you what we got up to.
And of course, you can VIEW OUR WEDDING VIDEO HERE! Shawn’s vows will probably (definitely) make you cry so grab your tissues ladies.
Today is a cosy, rainy day to be spent indoors. My lovely little sister is over for the afternoon so I took advantage of having a female subject for once and did a little photo sesh in our kitchen nook. Here’s what came of it! Hope everyone is having a great weekend, whatever the weather may be. The rain often inspires my creativity a lot, anyone feel the same? What do you enjoy doing on a rainy day?
P.S. click on any of the below photos to see them large. Also, apologies for the dodgy edits, I was feeling lazy & edited on my phone.
Love! x
Today I am reflecting on both a rough week at work and also the joy of Easter. Somehow I hope they will combine nicely into one post. Let’s see how we go.
This last week of work has stretched me to say the least. Do you ever get to the point where you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, to feel angry or ashamed? In a nutshell, that was me this week. The worst of the days would have been Tuesday; one of those days where it actually feels like everything on the earth is pointing it’s finger at you saying “you’re useless!” and “there’s no way you can do this, just give up”. A horrible feeling, which we all experience from time to time. Just to up the anti a little (or a lot), I was also extremely hormonal and a lot of people in the office were stressed. Stress is one of those things that when it’s near you, it has a way of creeping in to your mind and taking hold of your thoughts. I couldn’t believe all the things that seemed to be going wrong for me, the stupid little mistakes that I had been making all week long. I think I spoke to God consistently on Tuesday, begging and pleading that He would pick me up and carry me out of there, or at least just give me the strength to go on, and for the life of me to just stop screwing up.
I decided it was time to just get up and take a quick walk outside, fresh air really does wonders. I’m lucky enough to work in a place in Sydney called The Rocks, which is right by the harbour. I walked briskly, not wanting to take up too much time of my busy day, down to the waters edge. I sat and began to cry, the tears flowed and I didn’t have the strength to hold them back. The wind blew through my hair as I sat and called out to God.
Have you ever been there, begging the Lord with all your might, tears streaming down your face, asking that He would deliver? If you have, you need to know that He was there alongside you, feeling hurt and broken right there with you. He literally feels the exact pain that you feel.
I started to calm down, my breathing was returning to it’s usual pace, and I wiped the tears from my cheeks. I sighed and looked up to the sky, thanking Him for being ever available to me, to all of us. Just as I was beginning to feel a little hope creep back into my heart, my phone vibrated. It was my boss asking me to come to one of the meeting rooms. I pulled myself together as best I could and began walking quickly back to the office. Light rain began to fall and it felt good. As I arrived at the meeting room, my heart sunk as I looked in to see a group of people having an important meeting that I desperately needed to be a part of. Fifteen minutes late, I slipped in and took my seat, feeling like I might break out in tears again.
“Idiot!” I told myself, “You just had to pick this time to go out of the office didn’t you?”
The rest of the day involved many other hiccups and silly mistakes made by me. By late afternoon, when my boss found something else I had missed, I almost laughed, then realised how inappropriate that would have been. But then I almost cried, so I took a quick bathroom break just incase. I just honestly couldn’t believe that something else could possibly have gone wrong.
And that was just one of my days this week. You could say I am extremely glad for it to be the weekend. And not just any weekend, it’s the Easter weekend. This makes me ridiculously happy for two reasons.
1. We get four days off (honestly, praise the Lord).
2. We get to be apart of the biggest celebration of the year – Easter!
Every year I find myself falling more and more in love with the Easter story. It’s the best because it’s as true today as it was 2 thousand years ago. I’ve found myself crying out to God all week, and He has answered me in many ways, and pulled me through. This wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Him sending his Son down to die for us. We now get to communicate directly with God, just as He intended it. This week I have been so incredibly grateful for that. Being blessed with an intimate relationship with him, has been the only reason I’ve been able to get out of bed each day and face the new challenges I’m presented with at work.
I want to share with you this promise that I hold extremely close to my heart. It’s from Romans 8:38-39.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
How great is that? It is 100% impossible for anything, absolutely anything in this universe to come between us and God, because of what He did that day on the cross. Let that sink in for a minute, because once it hits you, it hits you hard. And this is a promise that will last for ever and ever. It has no expiration date. God’s love is immeasurable, its infinite, and its ours if we choose to take it.
I’ll finish up by letting you know that my week had a happy ending. Yesterday I did my first presentation of my own work to a client, and they loved it! My boss and business manager were so impressed they were telling a lot of people in the office about it. I was overwhelmed with encouragement. I feel so confident that God has placed me right where I am for a reason, and that it’s only going to get better from here. He has reminded me that the world will deal you a terrible hand every now and then, but He can and will always turn that into a positive. Through the mistakes I made this week, I was able to portray my determination and persistence. I didn’t curl up into a ball (which I was very tempted to do) and shut the world out, but rather kept standing back up, dusting off the dirt and taking another step. That’s all God ever expects from us, just keep going.
Falling down will always be a possibility, but true character is birthed when you get back up. I honestly thank God for my challenges this week, as I know I’ve learnt from them and will be able to do a much better job because of them.
Here is one last verse which I love! It’s from Romans 8:28
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
I encourage you to seek out God’s purpose for your life this weekend, and to be forever thankful that we have full access to his love and mercy through the miraculous and beautiful exchange that Jesus made on that cross.
Love you all, have the best weekend!!
E x
I don’t do this kind of post very often, but I wanted to share a bit about the brand JETS Swimwear. As you might be aware, if you follow me on Instagram, I took some of their garments with me to QLD in February.
I’ll start with my favourite, the plunge one-piece from the REFINE range. I love the pattern on this one, and it was definitely the most comfortable of the three. I find one-pieces to be so flattering, and this one has that sexy feel to it yet still sophisticated. I loved the sherbet colour and how it really popped against the blue water of the reef. It was a lot of fun to film with due to the vibrant colour too. Super comfy, stylish and hardy material (I’m yet to see any signs of wear or tear, or colour fading) = a keeper! I’d recommend this suit any day. You can purchase it here.
Next is the two-piece strapless (but also comes with a halter neck tie) from the BOTANICA range. This one was my favourite print for sure! So perfectly tropical, I just love it. The colours are so pretty! This one was still quite comfortable, however I obviously lack in the chest region (ha!) and I found this suit didn’t help me that much. But apart from that, I had no problems with this one. It didn’t come off in the water, and again the colours didn’t fade and the material is still in perfect condition. Love it! You can find the top here and the bottoms here.
Lastly is a slightly unusual two-piece from the ELABORATE range. This one I thought looked quite interesting, as I hadn’t seen the continuous underwire bikini top done before so I wanted to give it a try. I’ll be honest here and say for me it wasn’t super comfortable. I wasn’t in pain or anything, but I just don’t think the style was suited to my body. The top also ended up with some white, chalk looking marks on it after our trip, I’m not sure if it was a reaction to the water but it hasn’t come out unfortunately 😦 this definitely could have been something I did wrong, and I’m not blaming JETS. I do love the bottoms of this one however. Fun vibrant colours and I love the side ties. Also very comfy! You can get the top here and the bottoms here.
So I must send a big thank you out to JETS, they have a great range and I love supporting Australian brands so it’s a win win 🙂 I’d encourage everyone to go check out their range online.
*Please note, these garments were given as complimentary, BUT all thoughts and opinions on here are 100% my own. I also wasn’t asked to write this, but wanted to share! 🙂
P.S. What are some of your favourite swimwear brands? Being an ocean lover, I’m always keen to find out about new ones!
E x
Hello lovely people! I’m so sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been so swamped with my new job that I haven’t found the time to sit down and write.
I’m finally going to start breaking down our recent trip to North QLD. I wanted to begin with my favourite experience we were blessed with; scuba diving. Shawn and I had never dived before, and I have to admit I was pretty nervous.
“So, how long will we be down there for?” I asked the diving instructor as he strapped on the last of my equipment.
“A normal introductory dive is around 20 minutes, but I’ll keep you guys down for a bit longer” he said with a grin.
I took a deep breath, reminding myself that all I had to do was breathe continuously. After we tested out our breathing using the tanks, and had a good laugh about how the sound resembled Darth Vader to a tee, we let the air out of our jackets and began sinking down.
After 5 minutes of being under water, I forgot all about worrying to breathe, as it happened so naturally. I became mesmerised with all that I was experiencing; weightlessness, fish of all kinds, turtles, giant clams, lobsters, coral, eternal clear blue water and the list goes on. It was incredible, and before we knew it, we were back above the surface.
“Wow!” was about all I could get out right away. As I looked to Shawn, the same amount of amazement filled his face. We were immediately hooked. “How long were we under for?” I asked.
“Ahhh…. 49 minutes” our coach replied looking at his watch.
I couldn’t believe I’d just experienced almost an hour under water! We were able to go diving many more times while staying on a live aboard boat a couple of days later, which was a fantastic experience. It was Shawn’s favourite part of our trip by far, and would have been mine as well if I didn’t suffer from sea sickness… But regardless of that it was well worth it. Basically they turn a boat into a mini hotel and it stays out on the reef all the time, with new passengers boarding and disembarking via a smaller boat each day. We were in the water for every session of the day, mostly diving. You simply walked to the back deck, and jumped off into the perfect turquoise water. We even went of a night dive and swam with loads of sharks, it was completely unreal! I honestly can’t believe how blessed we were to be able to encounter such incredible marine life while we were there, I think we’ll be signing up for an introductory diving course one of these days 😉 also Shawn has become quite fond of underwater film and photography which is exciting for me as that means lots of time spent in the ocean – yay!
For whoever is wondering about our final video for the Paradise Through Your Lens Competition, it has been submitted, and I will post a link as soon as it goes live in April! Send out some prayers for us, it would completely change our lives if we won! Here are some underwater snaps taken with our GoPro Hero 4 Black – a great camera! Massive improvement from the Hero 3 which we used on our honeymoon. We also bought an LCD screen so that we could actually frame shots, another huge improvement!
If you are yet to experience scuba diving, get on that! It’s officially my favourite thing in the whole darn world.
E x
As many of you know due to my copious amount of Instagram posts (apologies), Shawn and I have spent the last week up here in TNQ (Tropical North Queensland) filming for the Paradise Through Your Lens competition/campaign. I just wanted to pop a quick post up while I have some down time before we fly back to Sydney this afternoon to give a very quick overview of the trip. Obviously I’ll be posting more to showcase all the great snaps we managed to get and to fill everyone in on the jaw-dropping experience we were so blessed to be a part of.
So, here’s a little recap of the week so everyone knows what’s up!
Sunday 22nd:
– Flew from Sydney – Cairns.
– We enjoyed a delish brekky thanks to Qantas in the Qantas Lounge at the Sydney Airport. – – – Once in Cairns we were greeted by some lovely ladies associated with TTNQ who gave us the brief and the things we would need (money, itinerary, taxi vouchers etc.)
– Picked up our camera and underwater housing unit that was kindly hired out to us from the tourism team. We also brought a GoPro Hero 4 Black and GH4 with us for filming, and our Canon 6D for photos.
– Stayed our first night at the luxurious Alamanda Resort in Palm Cove.
Monday 23rd:
– Woke up early to catch the sunrise through the Palm trees – magic!
– Spent the day exploring the Frankland Islands out on the reef.
– We were given the opportunity to go on our first ever SCUBA DIVE. Ah-mazing.
– Back at the resort, we had dinner with The Today Show’s Stevie Jacobs, two women involved with Queensland and TNQ Tourism as well as one of the other contestants.
– Stayed another night at the Alamanda.
Tuesday 24th:
– Woke up early for sunrise
– We were given the fantastic opportunity to be involved in a segment of The Today Show. Stevie Jacobs did a quick talk about the competition and who we were etc. If you were watching, you would have seen us fake-filming in the background, then later taking off in the helicopter!
– After filming for the show, we were flown in the chopper over to a sand cay in the GBR to get some footage.
– We were then taken over to Reef Encounter’s Live Aboard boat. Best experience! We went snorkeling/diving 4 times on this day. Including a NIGHT DIVE. Swam with loads of sharks and other creatures.
– Definitely our biggest day of the trip – I’ll be doing an individual post with more info soon.
Wednesday 25th:
– More diving and snorkeling off the live aboard boat before getting a smaller boat back to the mainland that afternoon.
– I found out that I scored a new full time job at Community Manager for an advertising agency! But more on that later.
– Did an interview with the Cairns Post. Had a laugh taking a bunch of cheesy couple shots to accompany the article.
– Stayed the night at the Shangri-La Hotel, Cairns.
Thursday 26th:
– Traveled out to Green Island, about a 50 minute journey. Located on the inner reef.
– Swam with turtles, got some amazing close up footage and photos and just generally had the most magical experience of my life.
– Enjoyed a beautiful sunset picnic thanks to the Green Island Resort Restaurant.
– Stayed the night at the resort.
Friday 27th:
– Up early to catch the sunrise.
– Watched as many many turtle heads popped up at the surface to take a breath of air after a long nights sleep! Swam with sharks, sting rays and turtles as the sun rose above us.
– Swam, relaxed and enjoyed the island the rest of the day.
– Got some beautiful sunset footage before enjoying a gorgeous dinner at the restaurant.
– Stayed the night at the Green Island Resort.
Saturday 28th:
– Up early for sunrise (duh)
– Climbed on all the drift wood around the back of the island and got some cool shots.
– Swam until it was time for lunch.
– Got a boat back to cairns.
– Stayed the night at the Shangri-La.
Sunday 1st (today!):
– No sunrise today, sleep in!
– We catch our plane home this afternoon, but not before stopping back in at the Qantas Lounge – yum yum!
This week has been out-of-this-world incredible. I could never have anticipated this much adventure and royalty treatment coming our way so early in the year. I feel so immensely blessed by it, and have to hand all the glory to God, of course! We know without a doubt we wouldn’t be here without him. Keep your eyes peeled for more posts and photos, and send a little prayer our way if you feel like it to help us take out the comp! If we win, we will be able to spend 20K on gear for Shawn and I, it will really set us up and allow us to do a better job at what we love. But even if we don’t, I feel like we’ve already won after this week – not many people get these kinds of opportunities and I definitely am not taking any of it for granted!
E x
Well with only six days to go before Shawn and I jet off to TNQ to film a short video as a part of the Paradise Through Your Lens competition, I have been feeling more motivated that ever to look and feel fit and healthy. We have a huge week ahead of us, for which I will be in a bikini most of the time, and I want to have the energy to power through it (By the way if you are interested in seeing our competition entry video visit here). So over the last week or so I’ve been dragging myself out of bed earlier than usual, dusting off my running shoes and hitting the pavement. The results are so liberating, I have to say! I’ve only been running for a week and already I feel the difference in my energy levels and stamina.
I really wanted to encourage everyone to find a morning routine that works for you, because I am very quickly coming to learn that how you start your day effects the rest of it. So here is a list of things, that I don’t always do everyday, but I am working towards, that I believe give you the best kickstart.
So they are my top three for each morning! They might not all work for you, or you might have your own routine which is a different mix of things. If you do, let me know, I’m always keen to hear of more ways to keep up my energy and give myself a better attitude! Have a happy Tuesday friends (or whatever day it is in your part of the world)! Here is my little post-run nook this morning. Brekky today was a strawberry smoothie made with almond milk – delish!
E x
I can’t believe how quickly time is ticking along, valentines day just around the corner already? What! I don’t like to get too caught up in this holiday, as a lot of people are out to get your money by seducing you into thinking you have to follow a set of rules to successfully achieve a romantic holiday with your special someone.
Twelve long stem red roses… tick!
A giant teddy bear…tick!
A corny Hallmark card…tick!
A candlelit dinner amongst 100 other couples trying to achieve the same goal as you…tick.
And there you have it, you feel as though you’ve done it right. You are officially loved.
Well, personally these things seem to scream “tacky” to me. And a huge waste of money. Why do so many of us succumb to this “easy way out” options? Sure, it’s become a money-making holiday in which business’ seek out ways to make you feel as though you should spend more to impress your girl or your guy. But I’d love to see more people making an effort to change that. I am a huge fan of setting a whole day aside to go above and beyond for your other half, but it doesn’t mean we have to follow the ways of the world to get there. You know the person you’re with, do what you know makes them happy.
Last year, as some of you may remember, Shawn and I did V Day on a major budget. He cooked me dinner at home, which is just about the most romantic thing a guy can do, am I right ladies? On top of that he had handcrafted twelve roses out of paper, and they were beyond perfect, as well as making me a wire photo hanger which he attached some of my favourite polaroids of us, love notes, and chocolates! The whole lot would have cost him less that $40 and was such a special gift. Knowing that all this would have taken him hours to accomplish, and each part of it was made with love with his own hands, was the most wonderful thing. Later that night we drove back to my place where I had set up a blanket fort in my bedroom, complete with fairy lights and a mattress and piles of pillows. We watched a movie together and ate some yummy deserts I’d whipped up during the day. See the photo at the top of this post for reference!
The best thing about this night together was that it was just us. No one else. We were completely alone, enjoying each others company. And being able to do something special for each other was amazing. We were both able to take part and contribute and make the other feel so loved. This is what Valentines Day should be. I definitely understand that their are a lot of people out there who thoroughly enjoy the fine dining experience, or receiving the teddy with chocolates, and that’s so great! If that’s what you know your partner would love more than anything, do it. It’s the greatest feeling to have someone who knows you so well.
This year I challenge you to think harder, think more creatively and personally about your other half. What makes them smile? What have they commented on lately that they’d love to do with you? What is something that will completely take them off guard, something they would never expect from you? Do that. You don’t have to succumb to the pressures and cheesiness of V Day, but you can still go out of your way to make your special someone feel special.
If you or your girl/guy are anything like Shawn and I, (love the outdoors, the simple things, handmade stuff, picnics etc.) you might be able to snag a few of these ideas!
FIVE SUGGESTIONS FOR VALENTINES DAY THAT WON’T EMPTY YOUR BANK ACCOUNT (AND WILL MEAN A WHOLE LOT):
And lastly, here’s a few extra ideas for you to play around with:
Ultimately I think V Day should be about investing time and energy into one another. Life often gets so busy and complicated that we tend to not leave any time for the one we love. The 14th February should be a reminder to us that it’s important to spoil one another, to share more love, more of ourselves, and more of God together. Finish the day in prayer, be thankful, truly thankful for whoever God has placed right there next to you. And remember to make an effort for one another every single day, because everyday should be a ‘Love Day’!
E x
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