Time Consuming

I kinda failed at the whole BEDD (Blog Every Day of December) thing so I think I'm just gonna post when I feel the need, or am just bored. See, I think I anticipated on doing like nothing because I was on holiday but things (mostly good) have been consuming my time. That sounds bad, but yeah I haven't actually felt 'bored' per say per se because I've actually found things to do.haha.

Things 'consuming' my time lately:

1) Laura.lol. Nah, jokes. It's been good actually hanging out with people these past few weeks (mhmm actually just her haha). I like the fact that I have friends who can come to my house at 8am, while I am still asleep and then just casually walk into my room, lie down and fall asleep too. I like that we spent 4 hours! yep making those Christmas shortbread cookies for youth (which were like the first to go haha), they were yummy! Thanks Laura :) I also like that I won in Monopoly (Phase 10 shall not be mentioned.lol)

On a side note, I feel really bad for not hanging out with other people. I mean, I made plans to hang out with other people and our plans fell through because of me both times. The first was when I was supposed to go to a prizegiving but had to go into school :O I know, in the holidays! and then the other was today when I was supposed to hang out with a friend and didn't cos' I forgot I was going to Rose's prizegiving. Yeah, so I feel kind of stink since I always make plans to hang out with heaps of people and then it never happens cos' I make too many plans.lol. Maybe I should just have a 'Hang out with Olivia' day with all of those people who I wanna hang out with these holidays.haha. Sounds like party time!! Yeah right.lol. Okay, so now I really don't know where this is going and I'm just gonna stop. Yep. Okay. Thanks. And sorry if you are reading this and I have 'snobbed' you- but I really haven't. Yeah, sorry. (I like that this 'side note' is longer than what I wrote for number 1)

2) Cleaning? I would like to say cleaning but as I type this, my room is a mess, there is laundry I need to do and well yeah I think I may need to just clear out my whole room ie. de-clutter. My plan for the holidays was that I would de-clutter the mess in my room and just sort it all out into an organised looking room. To be honest, I'm not that organised, though I wish I was. So yeah, maybe that's something I'll try to tackle tomorrow... or Thursday.

Hm, I've noticed that I like to blog when I should be doing other things ie. cleaning.lol. I guess I'm just the queen of procrastination. Not a good thing. MUST GET RID OF THAT TITLE.haha.

3) Sleep/laziness.haha. Yep, I've finally caught up on all the missed sleep throughout the year (though I don't think it works that way) and yeah sleeping in til early hours of the afternoon is just great. Though I probably should add that I've become slightly addicted to Youtube-ing. Maybe not addicted- but I do like Taylor Swift and Boyce Avenue songs. Yep. They're pretty awesome and there are other random things on Youtube too. I think sometimes, I can just sit there with nothing to do and just watch random videos all day.haha.

And I suppose I should share about the whole actsofkindness thing. Yeah, that hasn't really worked much either, considering I've been pretty lazy lately. But, wait there is one thing. Well, talking again about those Christmas cookies which I blogged about here, yeah me and Laura made them for youth tonight. And it was a very time consuming task. Like 4 hours as I said before to make and decorate those amazing cookies which I have no photos of :( Yeah sorry. So that counts, right? Oh and the other day an old PI man crashed into Dad's van (not badly) and I pretty much convinced/told Dad it was alright and let the guy off. There was minimal damage to our car and I just felt sorry for the guy. He reminded me of my grandparents.lol. Yeah so that was a quick update on that one anyway.

So yeah, I'm sorry for not following the whole BEDD thing. Really though, I kinda don't think anyone cares. So now, it's time to say goodbye. Bye. Fa. Okay time to sleep (or youtube). K bye.

Festive cookies.

So I don't really have anything interesting to blog about, so I've decided to share one of my new favourite recipes. I think it's more because they are shaped cool and I get to use my cookie cutters but yeah, you can decide why you think I like them.lol.

SHORTBREAD RECIPE

Ingredients

Serves: 36

250g (2 cups) plain flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

250g butter

125g (1/2 cup) caster sugar

Method:

Prep: 25 minutes

Cook: 15 minutes

1. Preheat oven to 160 C.

2. Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the sifted dry ingredients and mix until combined together. Chill until dough is easy to handle, about 10 minutes.

3. On a lightly floured surface roll dough out to 5mm thick. Cut into desired shapes and place on ungreased baking sheets.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

So yeah, it's a pretty easy recipe with lots of butter (luckily it was on special at New World!) and it's fun to make :)

ICING

Ingredients

Icing sugar

Hot water

Food colouring

Method:

1. Fill a bowl with icing sugar.

2. Carefully add drops of hot water and mix slowly. (Not too much or it will be too runny).

3. Separate icing into separate bowls.

4. Add food colouring to each bowl.

Yeah, I made this up myself.haha.

Kiwi ingenuity - use roll from
gladwrap as rolling pin.lol. 

Awesome Christmas cookie cutters!

Posing with the cookies before they go in.
I didn't let Rose make any though.

Before they go in. Yep.

Mmm.. they look good.

Lots of icing, lots of colours :)

My personalised 'O' shaped cookie.

Rose did this one. I was mad.lol.

Angels.

The best one.

'Fallen angels' - Yep Laura broke them.haha.
Nah we accidently broke one each when pulling
them out of the tray.

Didn't get a close up of the trees but
they were the best. I like these cookies :)

The stars. And a black circle?

Laura's 'L' and my 'O' and a random
'l' letter to spell out 'LOL'.

What a mess.

At least I cleaned it up.lol.

Yeah, so if you are keen to bake, these are really easy. Just beware they can break easily if you don't pick them up carefully. These cookies are fun to make (when you're not extremely tired) and they taste good too. (As long as you haven't just had a giant chocolate chip cookie.lol)

BEDD Day 9: Complete.

I don't want to blog.

So tonight I feel tired. I do not want to blog, I just want to sleep and I know this goes against the whole Blog Every Day of December thing - given that it is supposed to be fun, exciting and interesting posts but right now, I'm not in the mood to type about something others may actually care about.

I'm sorry to set a negative tone, I'm just tired which is probably since I slept at 3am this morning and woke up at like 12pm. Yeah, it's a reasonable amount of time to sleep but I have bad sleeping patterns. Whatever, I don't why I'm tired, okay? I just am.lol.

On a more positive note, Laura was at my house over these past two days and I really liked that. Probably cos I like her. Yep, she's awesome :) but yeah we baked a lot.lol, played Phase 10 (2 too many times) and slept a lot.haha. Yeah, she hasn't sent me our photos so this post is a bit boring (I'm sorry.) but here are some on this post of hers --> This one. Yep, we had fun. And I have a new favourite song. I think.lol. Well it's awesome none the less.

Yep, I like this song. It's cute :) BEDD Day 8 complete. Goodnight x

When I was a kid..

When I was a kid, I loved everything about my Nana's house. It's where I grew up and is the place that reminds me of my childhood. It was the house right behind our own house (yep, my parents bought a house in front of Mum's parents house) and so I was pretty much always there.

I remember sleeping over at my Nana's house with all of the cousins and if I forgot my pajamas, Nana would just give me one of her shirts and it became my nightie. I miss those days. Yep, and I also remember staying up til like 10pm (and thinking it was super cool) and playing Crash Bandicoot and Tekken on our PlayStation and leaving it on the whole night because we didn't have a memory card.

I also remember making 'tents' in the lounge by tying sheets to the couches and chairs and pretty much whatever would hold it. Grandad would get so mad by all the mess we made but Nana would help us clean it up when we were finish- like 3 hours later. I wanna do that with my kids one day.

My favourite memory from that house though, had to be when me, Taneya and Luke? I think made a 'house' in the backyard. See, the thing was that Grandad had like a million old bricks in the backyard all piled up by the dog house. We always wanted to do something with them so obviously we decided to make our own house, yeah cos that's what we do. Anyway, I think we were like 8 or 9 years old or whatever so decided to 'glue' the bricks together with our own homemade glue (which was made from flour and water- yeah that annoyed Nana lol) and yeah ended up with a quite impressive 2m-ish by 2m-ish sized 'house'. I'm sure we even left space for windows and then put a tarpaulin on the top as a roof. That was all fun until Grandad got home from work, saw what we had done and pretty much yelled at us til we cried. From what I remember Nana helped us clean that up to.haha.

Yeah, I miss that house. My grandparents have since moved out from there and it is still hard sometimes to think I can't just rock up there at anytime I want. That house was my childhood but now I guess it is time to grow up :( Anyway, I'm glad I have those memories. Goodbye. (Sorry, bad way to end that post).

BEDD: Day 7 complete :) First week is over!lol. 

Free to worship for such a time as this.

Tonight, before youth I really wasn't in the mood to go to church, to worship God or do anything so when Dad told us to find our own way to youth, I was like 'hm, yeah I just won't go', unless Rose could find us a ride- it was like 7.15pm already by that stage. But then she found one, yeah her friends mum picked us up and so I was like okay I have to go now, right? Yep, so I went and when I got there I was sore and tired and still not in the mood to socialise with people. Sad right?

Anyway, my whole mood changed as soon as worship started. Worship does that. Well, God anyway. Cos' I realised that despite my circumstances, I was still gonna jump around like a crazy person, clap my hands and just be free in His presence. Yeah, I dunno, there are days when I can jump around and praise Him forever and then other times where I just take those opportunities for granted. So yeah, it was just good for me to put everything aside and just worship Him.

Anyway, then Paul was sharing about 'the cause' and it just so happened I was wearing my 'Created for His cause' camp shirt. Coincidence? Well, probably but yeah whatever. Yeah so he was just talking about stepping up for His (God's) cause and also not fighting alone. But to 'tag' God when we need Him, which is like all the time. (This is not how I planned to write this post but yeah whatever lol).

The best thing about it was that at the end we had a time of worship and all got prayed for. I got a cool prophecy about a garden with orange flowers, which was strange to me but yeah I guess God will reveal more about that and the person praying for me was saying that over summer there will be things I plant (ie. the flowers) that will attract people to the garden/kingdom so yeah pretty cool huh? And, it's all God :)

The other really cool thing was the dog tags which Karen and Paul gave us. They have the verse from Esther which says we have been called to this time, for this cause. Well, not exactly those words but that's how I read it and yeah it's cool cos' this has been a verse which I've stood by and used in all of my tough situations, and in the good times too. So yeah pretty much, God is the man. And you, yep you, have been called to where you are for a reason.

Esther 4:14

New International Version (NIV)

¹⁴ For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”


BEDD: Day 6 complete.

Setting up the Tree!

Yay! It's nearly Christmas time :) And so December means putting up the tree and all the decorations and just enjoying the holidays (well for those of us on holiday now anyway) so yeah I thought it would be cool to blog about our Christmas and the traditions we have.

Yep, so if you know me and my family you'll know that we've had our old Christmas tree since before Aimee was born. That's like 20 years! So finally Mum and Dad decided to buy a new one, and of course Rose picked it and it's so tall (like 7ft) that it nearly touches the ceiling. Anyway, I love it. I mean, it's Christmas! Who couldn't love this time of year?

New Christmas tree!

Yep, so last night when Mum and Dad brought it home, me and Rose set up the decorations ready to go on the tree. It's kind of a tradition, I guess to put them in colour co-ordinated piles. Yep, weird I know but ever since we were kids and Christmas time came around, Mum would make us put all of the decorations into colour piles and then she would put them on the tree so that there wouldn't be clumps of one red here, then clumps of gold there or whatever.haha.

Colour co-ordinated decorations.

And yep so below are some of my favourite decorations. They are photo frames which Mum bought a few years ago and put pics of all the grandchildren into them. I think it was cos' we were low on decorations and needed some new ones.lol. Yeah, I have other favourites too but they wouldn't upload properly :(

Cool photo decorations Mum
made a few years back.

Yep, and I think the next photo is a tree which we got from someone else and Mum decided to make it a Pasifika tree with the angels made out of the tapa cloth stuff and had only gold and green decorations. It's pretty cute actually. I like it.

Our 'island' tree.

And, finally there is no Christmas without the nativity set. Of course, the whole reason for Christmas is because of Jesus' birth so yeah I like this set. And it's from Jerusalem.. I think.haha. Anyway, yeah it's pretty awesome!

Our nativity set from Jerusalem :)

And yeah so this is like my 3rd post about Christmas already and it's only the 5th of December. Hm, well guess I just need to go out more this week, month etc. Ok, well bye for now.

:)

Fear.

FEAR: 

noun a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil,pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. Synonyms: foreboding,apprehension, consternation, dismay, dread, terror, fright,panic, horror, trepidation, qualm. Antonyms: courage,security, calm, intrepidity.

Fear. It grips us and stops us from doing the things we wanna do. It could be a fear of spiders that stops you from showering, or it may be a fear of small spaces that won't let you go in an elevator, or it may be something worse like a fear of failure which just stops you from doing anything cos' you don't wanna fail at it. Yep, fears are horrible things. They are often caused by past experiences and make you afraid to do something.

But, if you look at the definition of fear, then see the antonyms of fear, you'll see the words COURAGE, SECURITY, CALM and INTREPIDITY. These are the kind of words that remind me of God. Yep because God says in his word that we have been given all of these things through Him!

2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

1 John 4:4 (NKJV)

You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Yep, so pretty much God has given me everything I need to overcome my fears and now I am fearless through Him! Greater is He that is in me than he who is in the world so nothing can stop me from doing anything now. Thanks God :)

Day four of BEDD complete.

Proud to be Me.

I like being who I am. I have many flaws but I'm still happy with who God made me to be. Sure there are times when I hate the fact that I can't do certain things (or that I do certain things) but for the majority of the time I'm happy to be who I am. I like the fact that I have an amazing family and that they love me very much. I know of a lot of people who don't have a family as close as mine but I'm glad that I have them because they are part of who I am. I like that I am Samoan and that even though only a quarter, I like that I know some of the traditions and that I grew up pretty much with my nana teaching me songs and recipes and stuff. Yeah, I don't like that I can't speak Samoan but maybe one day I'll learn it. I like that I go to AGGS and that I've been blessed with heaps of amazing friends there. Only one year left in high school :O oh gosh. I also like the fact that I am a Christian and that I go to MNL. Yep, cos of I wasn't a Christian I really don't know where the heck I would be. I would not have the amazing friends I do have and most of all, wouldn't have an awesome relationship with my God. It's pretty much been through Christ that I've been able to accept who I am, flaws and all and appreciate all the things I've been given. Sounds cheesy or cliche-ish but whatever, I love you God. Thank you for making me, well me. I love you :)

Day Three of BEDD done.

Tribute to Ms Anisi

Shouldn't I be on holiday? Well apparently no.

Last night I got home from the BE.LOVED event and pretty much went straight to bed. That was at like 10pm. I mean, what 17 year old girl goes to bed that early after just finishing exams and is now supposedly on holiday. Well, me and that was because I was planning on going to Steffi's end of year assembly. Seriously, when your 8 year old cousin personally asks you to come, you have to, right? And so I was all set to go at 8am until I woke up and saw a text from my dean asking to come into school for a farewell for Ms Anisi (Samoan teacher at AGGS) so I was pretty much torn between which one to go to. Cousin's assembly or teacher's farewell?

I love my cousin but I decided to go into school especially given that I've just been named a prefect for 2012 and Ms Anisi probably played a big part in that. So yeah if you don't know her, she's pretty much an awesome as teacher. She is the kind of teacher that most students fear or try to avoid unless you're in her good books (which was me) or you just get to know her. Until this year, she was just that for me. A scary teacher who yelled at us when we didn't sing the school song loud enough or if we had incorrect uniform. But this year, I got to know her better. She started up the Pasifika initiatives at AGGS and has supported Pasifika students at AGGS ever since she started teaching at the school, and from what I understand, she started teaching at AGGS as a BT(beginning teacher) and has been there ever since. Now she's joining the likes of Ms Hayes (one of my favourite teachers who left last year- also mentioned in this post.) and Ms Todd at MAGS :( So to you Ms Anisi, we say good bye but as the saying goes 'Once an AGGS girl, always an AGGS girl!' We love you miss. Thanks for everything you have done for AGGS, especially to our PI girls. You will be missed!

So yeah I guess I'm not really on holiday yet, but today was a good day, and even though I missed Steffi's assembly it was still great to hear that she got an honours award. Whoo! Go Steffi!! :) So a good day all round.

Day Two of BEDD complete. No official 'act' that I can think of that I've done today but hm maybe that'll come later in the day. Ok goodbye for now.

It's December!!!!!!!!!!

So yeah, if you can't tell I'm pretty much loving the fact that it's December. Because December means Christmas is just around the corner and also summer is (hopefully) coming. I should be cleaning my room but I got distracted. As usual.haha. I never learn do I?

Well, I saw on Laura's blog that she's doing this thing called Blog Every Day of December (BEDD) and since I'm not doing anything this month, well, I thought I'd join her. I may not be the most committed but I'll try, and now realising that I will be away on the 17th, 18th and 19th I feel this may not work, but hey, I'll figure something out, okay? Okay. Cool.

And yeah since December is a month of giving (well, really just Christmas but yeah whatever) I thought I'd also try to do one nice thing for someone in each day of December. (And because I'm cool I wanna name it- so it'll be called my actsofkindness) I love hearing about how people are so blessed by just little things people do for them, and to be honest, I love receiving stuff myself, so yeah why not, right? Well, I'm not too sure exactly how this is going to work but I'm thinking it'll be like me doing small things like baking for someone, or babysitting for free, or just doing stuff that they will benefit from. Yeah so my plan is to do things that will bless other people without spending all of my money (because I have none!) and yeah I hope this works. First of all, I am putting up our Christmas tree! but Rose wanted to put the star on the top so maybe I'll let her do that and yeah I guess helping at the women's BE.LOVED event tonight counts, right? So I wrote this earlier today then went to put up the tree- FAIL. Not all the parts were there so no tree up yet :( but I did help at the women's event so I guess that counts.lol. (Except for leaving slightly early before clean-up, yeah sorry people. Hey, I'm not perfect haha)

HAPPY DECEMBER!!!

(Please don't take offence or think I am trying to make myself look good by doing this act of kindness thing, but please rather take this as an opportunity to do something cool too. And in saying that, I want to make this kind of anonymous but that may change slightly on what exactly the 'act' is. If it's something I feel to share to encourage you to do the same, or whatever, please take it just as that- encouragement cos' it's something that I just thought would be cool to do in the month of giving, yeah sweet as. Thanks!)