Author: annapoppins

What was the worst dish you’ve ever eaten?

In terms of disgusting…it would be a breakfast. I had a an eggs Benedict at a cafe by the beach. The eggs were poached and placed on muffins with bacon on the side.

The eggs had been poached in too much vinegar. The bacon came out rubbery. And the hollandaise sauce was sooooooo thick it almost jellified onto of the eggs. The bacon tasted like cardboard. Lesson learned…when your friend recommends a place for breakfast, stay with the safer options.

Although the above dish was pretty feral, I think the worst dish you could eat is not the most disgusting tasting. It can be the one that leaves you unsatisfied…wanting more but not necessarily more of that dish.

I went to a super fancy restaurant with some friends a while back. The decor was amazing. The food looked flashy and ready to eaten. I was served some blue cod and salsa. That was it.

It tasted pretty awesome, but what I was left with was a feeling of dissatisfaction. Like ‘yeah that was good, but…’. I had that thought. The thought that ends with a ‘but’

Just because something tastes amazing, doesn’t make it amazing. A temporary satisfaction doesn’t leave everlasting jubilation if that makes sense.

Thought for the day…before you go an ‘enjoy’ something whether that be an experience, a person, a job etc, be sure to sum up the fruitfulness of that decision or experience. It might taste good at the time, but may leave you a little unsatisfied.

xxAn

What can happen in a second..like really?

I can think of a few things…

You can blink in a second
You can imagine a new thought
You can change your mind
You can breathe a new breath
Flick a fly off the wall
Press Ctrl Alt Delete
Say yes to something you were going to say No to
Someone says the words ‘hi’ to you while you wait to order coffee

Well, that is what happened to me in a second. Some guy did say hi.

I am the coffee girl at my work. Mind you, I don’t drink coffee myself. I was just in my own little world waiting in line at the cafe that I do my usual coffee run at when a bloke turned around to say ‘hi’.
Now I had shared a lift with this guy. And he works at my work but we never come into contact with one another cos I have no need to. But he has an awesome laugh. All of my colleagues agree it just makes you smile when you hear it.
So I had my trusty post it note with everyone’s orders on it doing my own thing when Jack* (lets call him that) turns around and introduces himself. I didn’t know his name and found out he was scottish and worked in the number crunching business. He seemed nice and it was cool to get to know another face. I will find out more about Jack, but for now, it was an introduction.

That’s what can happen in a second. You can meet someone you never thought you would ever meet. Who knows, it could turn out to be the most amazing person you could have in your life or it could just be the chance encounter that inspires a wonderful day.

Don’t discount the seconds. Seconds become minutes too.

Love An x

I learnt something new this week…I learnt what a weasel word was. Supposedly it is a word used in order to avoid being clear or direct.

If you are still not sure of an example of a weasel word, look at any job description on the internet and you are bound to find one.

‘But why am I being told this’  you ask?

Because I had a mini revelation of my own weasel words and thought it might be of help to you.

I consider myself to be a wordy type person and strongly believe in the power of words. So much so, that when I went to Manly beach a few months back, I didn’t want to eat dinner on the sand because I was convinced (and verbally articulated) that a seagull would poop on my head. 

Low and behold, it happened just as I said! You could call it a coincidence but I just call it getting what you asked for lol. Along with the series of sisterly taunts I received for that confession, I learnt a powerful lesson that day…let me explain.

The ‘Anna definition’ of a weasel word is any word or series of words that weasel you out of living the way you should or the way God intended you to live (to be frank)…e.g. the word ‘can’t’. Infamous for it power but so lacks lustre in the momentum department.

The word can’t has never got me into a better position than I was in…only out of one I didn’t want to be in. It has taken many years of practice to get out of the habit of saying stuff that is fruitless and unproductive.

Can you imagine if God said “Let there be universe” instead of “Let there be light”. God was specific. Albeit that He is God, He got for He asked for.

At the beginning of each year, most of us reel off things that we want to see, do, or experience for the year. Half of the things we hope for are last year’s left overs. The other half of our hopes are usually distant thoughts that we merely  consider at the time of great encouragement  and forget about when the clock hits five. I sound super pessimistic in the last sentence. But I am actually quite hopeful that the truth that I lived last year, where not much got done, will be of some encouragement to you guys as you head into what I know will actually be a life changing year for you.

I think sometimes we need to stop the merry go round of excusing ourselves out of our dreams and hopes and why they don’t happen. Yes, sometimes circumstances get in the way of us pursuing and achieving. But often I have experienced that it’s us that get in the way.

But rather than focus on the debbie downer of it all, how can we move on dot com as my friend would say?

Well, take a sip of willingness and a dash of choice and you have change in the making.

Aka, be kind to yourself, get back on the horse and shutta thy mouth until you have an action that has no gear for reverse. 

Unfortunately, or fortunately (depending upon how you see things), our tongue doesn’t have a rewind button. But it does have blinkers. We can indicate our next action by doing the exact same thing that caused us to go left, to make us turn right.

Give it a go. Use Valentine’s day as the perfect playground.

Tell that girl she looks beautiful, not just invite her to coffee.

Tell that guy that you you are keen to hang out more not just ‘I hope we do this again sometime’. Be specific. Get rid of your weasel words for 2014. YOU MIGHT JUST GET WHAT YOU ASKED FOR

Lots of Love from me

An x

Happy belated Valentines Day to anyone who is reading this. I hope you felt loved by whomever was in your world…boyfriend/girlfriend or otherwise.

I had a thought about those ‘celebratory days’ that come around every year and wondered what the aftermath of those days hold for different people. For instance, Independence Day in the US – what people feel (if they feel anything) after the day of remembering such a significant time in their history. Do we just go on celebrating a day once in a year, or do some of us go on to take that celebration into other parts of the year? I dont think there is a right or wrong answer to that question. But I love hearing stories of where a special day, has become someones special week or even a special moment of a lifetime.E.g. Like Valentines Day.

Being a girl, we get all lovey dovey on this day, for no other reason than we like the idea of feeling loved. I love hearing about the marriage proposals on the news that tend to happen on Valentines Day and get pumped for all the couples out there who will now never forget the day when…

If you said that sentence to yourself: ‘I never forget the day when…’, how would you finish it? Would your ‘never forget moment’ be the day you got married, the day of your 40th birthday surprise, the day of your daughter or sons birth or even the day something tragic may have happened in your world?

Its amazing to me how some days seem to just pass us by and other are forever ingrained in our minds and hearts for eternity.

Getting back to this Valentines, I didn’t receive any surprise proposals or roses for that matter. But I love giving choccies and roses out so I felt like I was amongst all of the love on the day. It was awesome to see all the men herding around the card counter at the card shop re-reading over the contents of the card then looking at their watches to make sure that they had enough time to buy roses for their loved one.

Even though I don’t know the exact significance of Valentines Day, I love it how to the rest of the world, there is a reminder in our calendar to LOVE PEOPLE. Which is essentially what it means to me.

I remember the day I received my first Valentine gift. I was in highschool and someone had paid someone else to sing part of a love song anonymously to me and gave me a rose. It was so cute. And to this day, I still have no idea who sent it to me, but I love it that I now have a memory stuck in my brain of a gesture of love and have experienced the excitement of spontaneity that comes with a gift.

I have had another moment where someone gave me quite a significant gift which was so generous, that it has impacted my life forever. So much so, that one day, I hope to be able to give that same gift back to someone else. And the person who gave it to me, doesnt even know how much it meant to me at the time and it was over 15 years ago!

So what am I saying after all this…?

Really, I’m just reminding you that you are loved, that without sounding too mushy, you are a gift to someone else and that you never know what affect of what you say or do can have  on someone else.

Your gift of generosity, or action one day, much just become the next day in a calendar that a nation may celebrate in 100 years time. And if not a nation, someone in the corner of the earth will remember you and never forget you ever.

Rather than just celebrate a special or significant day, take the time so make that day last a life time, if not for you, then for someone else.

You just never know what love can do…

xx

An

Dear 2013, 

I’m glad you have come into my world. 2012 has been great to me, but it was time to move on.

As it is the early stages of our friendship, I won’t put too many expectations on you just yet but compared to my relationship with 2012, you might be required to up the anti a bit so I am sorry…actually, no I am not sorry.

2013, I am planning, hoping and praying you and I have a blast together. 

I am PLANNING to be the best version of me with you that I can be

I am HOPING that as a result of my planning and the people in my world that new things will come into my world that will not only bring joy to others, but me as well.

And I am PRAYING that the work we do together will be fruitful, fun and full of all the goodies that comes with taking one step at a time but on purpose.

One thing I ask of you 2013, is that you don’t give up on me. When life gets a little difficult, don’t slack off on me ok? I give you permission to give me wake up calls when you  need to, but I wouldn’t mind a few good surprises either.

When I feel like procrastinating, do you mind being my annoying friend and reminding me not to give in. And when I am having a ME MOMENT, feel free to poke me in the ribs.

Your friend 2012 has given me a heads up about you. Supposedly you are supposed to be the best…like seriously THE BEST. 

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about you, but I guess we will have to wait and see how our friendship pans out.

In the mean time, you and I are in it to win it. No flakey business, no hissy fits, no last minute random catastrophes and no repeats of 2012. I already have my remix of 2012 best hits and am looking forward to pre-ordering the best hits of the time we will have this year together…No.1 on iTunes baby! Yeah!

Keep up the good work 2013…four days in, and you are doing marvellously.

Talk to you soon, 

Annapoppins

So I live in a house and have a hills hoist aka a clothes line in my back yard. I’m proud to say that it was an aussie invention but Im not proud of how I have been treating the poor thing. Let me explain…

I live with two other people and our hills hoist (which I will call Mr.H) gets a work out because we are all females and wash lots of clothes. As a result, there needs to be lots of pegs to keep all those clothes on the line.

One day when I was doing the washing I noticed that I hadnt even gotten through half of my washing and there wasnt enough pegs to fix the clothes to the line. On previous attempts there had been enough but for some reason this time round, there wasnt enough pegs.

A month went by and I realised that those extra pegs werent surfacing anywhere so I decided when I was next out at the shops, I would buy some for the house hold. So thats what I did. But to my amazement, I didnt realise how many varieties of pegs there were to choose from. There were wooden pegs, plastic pegs, short pegs, pegs with extra large springs, colourful pegs, bland pegs…the list goes on.

Being the one focused person I can sometimes be, my mission was simple: Get lots of pegs so we wont run out for a long while because everyone knows that pegs just dont disappear. So thats what I did. I bought a huge bag of pegs at a reasonable but cheaper price, paid for them and brought them home.

The house hold was happy because we didnt have to strategically think about how large our washing loads could be and there was ample supply of it all.

But as per usual, there is a BUT in this story and its self inflicted lol.

Over the past month, I have been doing lots of washing. And there is still lots of pegs from the time I bought months ago. However, most of the pegs are now unusable because they snap when you go to grip them for use. Well, surely thats a manufacturing issue not my problem. It could be. But what I had failed to do was think about the durability and strength of the pegs instead of their function.

Sounds deep for a story about plastic pegs for goodness sake I hear you saying. Well yeah, but Im a simple girl and learn from simple things.

Often we go into life with our own agenda thinking ‘ this is my mission. This is going to happen. I need get/do this, this and this to make it happen’. But sometimes we forget about the tools it takes to support that mission and how we need to look after those tools. E.g. the pegs I bought served a function and served it well. They met a need and satisfied a mission of getting clothes dry.

But when buying the pegs, I never thought that the hot sun would dry out out the plastic and decrease the durability of the pegs ( I mean who thinks of that) and that maybe buying less of the pegs and stronger pegs would have been a better option.Tick.

There are always going to be things you learn as a result of doing it first and making a mistake. But if you take time to make a decision rather than rushing that decision to fill a need, it usually works better in the long run.

Like not taking a job because the pay packet is more than sufficient to pay a debt, or booking a random flight because its cheap and not checking how much annual leave you will have by the time you fly. Common sense I know, but we all do it.

Cheap pegs are exactly that. Cheap. 

Cheap decisions reap cheap results.They bring change with an expiry date.

Next time you buy pegs, go designer so to say. And when you go to make a decision, take a moment, just sit right there and tell me how you going to become the Price of Bel-Air…no wrong song.

Just take a moment before rushing to the counter

Thats all 🙂

Luv as always

An xx

So this is the second blog inspired from the book 642 Things to Write About. The Book asked me to write my Facebook Status Updates for the year 2017.

Well let me first start by saying, I hope that the world has moved on from Facebook by 2017. But if it hasn’t here are some random, crazy or possibly true status updates that I think could be somewhat remotely possible in that year which is only 5 years away.

1. Happy Birthday Twin!!! (purely predictable)

2. I can’t believe they picked me…

3. Guess what, someone might be adding to the population…(purely reliant on the future husband for this one but am in no rush)

4. Just came back from an awesome trip, LOVED IT (an overseas business class holiday which was     random)

5. Cancer cured…THANK GOD! Literally

6. World Peace…I miss you (we can pray for this one in advance)

9. Congrats Babe…YOU DID IT!!! ( the launch of my sisters future fashion line)

10. Just bought the new Apple_________. To think the iPad is out of date already…who would have thought.

11. Just bought a house in ______. Loving it!

Its scary when you think of 5 years away. Ive actually never thought that far in advance. But ironically I have read my journal which is over 5 years old and found that a lot of the stuff I wrote about or predicted has actually come to pass. 

A little lesson I guess you could learn from this exercise is that there is power in the tongue. Im not going to say ‘Beware what you wish for’ because I am one of those people that hope you get totally freaked out by the amazing things that can happen in your world if you dare to believe it. But what I will say is that if you aren’t thinking about your future while you are still living for today, maybe you should do something about that. You could be missing out on celebrating so many moments all because you couldn’t be bothered planning before hand.

Of course there are some things that you can’t predict, plan or even dream of that far in advance but do what you can do today, plan for what you can plan for and work for what you can work for in preparation for tomorrow. If you are anything like me, you are absolutely bound to stuff up, get lazy, procrastinate or just get stopped in your tracks by circumstance or sometimes pure selfishness. But as I am constantly reminded, everyday is a new beginning. Start afresh.

Don’t wait for Facebook to inform you about the world you live in or ‘Like’ where you are at in life to make you feel good. You be the walking Face of the book that maybe one day will be written about you which you hope will list the status that says “She/He was a winner. I want be just like Her/Him”.

Preaching to myself but sharing the love with you.

Love An xx

A couple of weeks ago, I found a book called 642 Things to write about. Out of all the books I have stumbled across, I just found it to be so simple yet profoundly amazing. I will let you find out how the book came together but I thought I would use it as a basis for my blog. I will attempt to work through all the suggestions that the authors have made in the book but use it as a basis for writing something that is remotely interesting.

So the first suggestion: What can happen in a second?

When I thought about this question, it really made me think. What CAN happen in a second? What HAS happened in a second.

Off the top of my head I can think of some unfortunate things that have happened to me in a second like when I was in the middle of a musical production and my computer just shut down half way through. Or I was standing at a traffic light and all of a sudden, in a second my ankle dropped out from underneath me and I fell flat on my face. That was interesting lol.

But then I thought about the good things. In a second, just before I left for holidays I found out I was accepted into a course which was hard to get into when I received an email. In a second I found a two dollar coin along the side of the road.

In a second I received a text message saying my friend was pregnant.

When I thought about this more, I wondered how many other ‘one seconds’ it took to make that one second in my life come to pass…probably many. But it got me thinking.

As cliche as it sounds, seconds seem quite important. Like that saying, “ever second counts”…well it really does when you think about it. A second may change your life, but what if you are sharing that same second with someone else. That may change their life too!

But notice I have mentioned what HAS happened in a second NOT what CAN happen in a second. It almost prompts you to  create a list of things you wish would happen in a second. Like:

– Be given a million dollars (or two)

– Find the man of your dreams

– Unlock your car door after youve been locked out

– Take back the last thing you just said before you realised you should have said it.

The list could go on when you think about it. But rather than blab on, Ill leave the question with you, what do you hope would happen in a second. Then write the answer down and rather than wait for it to happen, start working on the other seconds that havent been used yet to make that happen

Luv. Anna

I went to a party last night.

Im not usually the party type but I was having a conversation with one of my friends and we discussed how its quite a rare thing now to meet new people. People have it said to me a lot that ‘it takes a lot of effort’ . And I would have to agree…well at least some times.

Usually Im the girl who tries to find people I know and then see if they know anyone and get to know new people that way but I thought this time round I would have stab in the dark and just talk to whoever.

It wasn’t easy  but once I made my mind up I just went for it…

Its surprising what can happen when you don’t put expectations on people to be something for you rather you be something for them…or better yet. YOU JUST BE YOU!

There is nothing better than meeting a person who knows who they are, sticks to their guns and just smiles. 

Thats what happened last night.

While I looked like a loner in parts, I was enthralled by some peoples stories. All I had to do was genuinely listen and ask questions and people were quite happy to just to chat. I met one girl who had been through some horrific health problems and has come out the other side happier and looking like she could walk down a runway in Paris.

I had another girl tell me of her adventures working for Disney…that is is really Magic!

Some people shy away from meeting new people because they think they have nothing to offer. If I was to be blunt, its an excuse really. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE has something to offer! And by offer, I don’t mean use yourself as a bargaining tool. Just give and see what happens….not expecting anything in return.

You never know who you will meet or how your life might change just because you said hi.

Thats as simple as it is really…saying Hi.

And if for those who are saying ‘I don’t get invited to parties’.Thats ok. You don’t need a party to meet new people. Get creative. Have a morning tea. Invite someone to just exercise with you in the mornings.

I hope sometime this week you will meet someone new…someone who surprises you and makes you smile. People need people.

Simple.

Look forward to meeting some of you

An xx