who she is

Hi there!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. I hope you'll say hello and maybe let me know where your blog/site/whatever is so I can check it out too.

I'm a mid-twenties Australian girl trying to sort through the intricacies of being recently engaged but not really intending to get married until November 10, 2012. I'm the only one of my friends to be engaged at the moment. 

Nic and I having hiked to the top of "Hollow Mountain" in the Grampians NP, Victoria, Australia

I'm a bit of an obsessive planner and I thrive on planning things, hence the long-sighted view to this future wedding, with some traveling inbetween. Nic (FH) and I love traveling, and even though we've only been together a (relatively) short while, we've managed to check out a bit of far north QLD, a lot of Victoria, and embark on an epic 6 week trip to North America in November 2010. 

Nic on the road to Whistler, BC, Canada. (GORGEOUS)

At 'The Basin' while in North America, near Franconia, NH, USA

I began this blog as a place to store wedding inspiration, but being as that's so far away, I decided I'd like to document our travels, adventures, highs and lows, challenges, highlights, thoughts, feelings and ideas not just related to the wedding, but also for our little family. There's Nic and I, Mallei (Australian shepherd) and Mia (tortoiseshell cat). 

At the 'Ada Tree'- a huge tree east of Melbourne, with Mallei

 You will never again think cats & dogs can't get along after you've heard about ours.

Caught in the act.

 

Mia helps me blog.

 

I recently jokingly suggested that for our future trips we put some locations in a hat and hope for the best. Our plans involve another trip to Townsville in Far North Queensland to visit my Dad, a trip to Tasmania with hiking involved, and over to NZ, to drive, hike and marvel in the scenery. Longer-term plans? Mongolia, India, South America, back to Europe (honeymoon?), and eventually a move to Canada.

Looking out over the fields, outside Bendigo somewhere, Vic, Australia

But not yet. At the moment I'm studying a Masters of Teaching, and will be a qualified teacher (hopefully) by October 2011. In the meantime, we're renting a little place about 40 mins outside of Melbourne city and dream of owning our own house so we can grow fruit trees and have a fully epic veggie garden. And chickens. We just don't know where this hypothetical future house will be or when we'll be able to afford it, but we do know we want to be near or amongst mountains. Mountains are our centre, and where we feel most at home (which is interesting for me, because it's not like I grew up in, or anywhere near mountains, just that we visited them as kids).

And that's about it, I think. I'll try and remember to update this page as things change. I so often find old profiles of myself saying: "I'm a 19 year old arts student with a 4 year old dog..." because I forgot about it... I try to be a little less specific now! 

If you'd like to send me a personal message for some reason, please do! My email is em.mallei at gmail

Happy engaged girl... at least, before we crashed my car. Ouch.

And that's all she wrote.