Aussie Adventure - Intro

I've had some pretty awesome and extensive vacations in my life thus far, and feel very blessed to be able to say that.  But none of them compare to the amount of anticipation, planning, and preparation that went into my most recent trip to Australia.  I first developed this itinerary circa 2008 in anticipation of going in 2009.  Things fell through - mostly, my travel partner.  I re-upped it for 2010, and again, flakiness pushed it off.  2011 didn't happen.  Neither did 2012.  Years passed and I began to feel more anxious about it.  Finally, in 2016, I decided that 2017 would be the year, come hell or high water.  Not too long after, my company announced it was moving our headquarters across the country, and Jaiman and I had a tough decision to make about our lives, let alone my much anticipated Australia trip.  As you probably know if you know me or have read my other blog posts, we took the relo package and moved, but I did not want that to postpone my Australia trip.  Moving from Arizona to Connecticut meant traveling farther to Australia, and it was a little challenging to justify given that we have so much we can do and explore around our new home on the East Coast, but I was determined. 

With the decision to move settled in early December, I suggested to Jaiman that we needed to minimize our physical belongings and that maybe Christmas presents should focus on experiences rather than things.  We had already begun a list of things we wanted to do in Arizona before we moved away, so that gave us some direction.  But also knowing that I wanted to scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef, Jaiman gave me an awesome gift of scuba diving lessons and certification.  Unfortunately, we were both a little sick when we had initially scheduled the class, and again for the makeup class, and so although we attempted to get through it, we ended up not completing the certification.  We discussed the possibility of trying again once in CT, but ultimately decided to simply snorkel the Great Barrier Reef instead. 

Actually, that ended up working out better than I expected, and our snorkeling trip was absolutely amazing.  The only thing I would have done differently was bring our own snorkels because we had the ones that close up when you go under water, making it easier to do short dives as desired.  We had opted not to bring our own equipment in the spirit of packing as lightly as possible, given how much traveling we'd be doing and wanting to minimize our luggage and the exposure to losing things, but just bringing snorkels wouldn't have been too much of a stretch in hindsight. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's go back to the plan.  My initial itinerary, almost a decade before, had us hiking across the Outback for 3 days from Alice Springs to Ayer's Rock as the second thing to do; the first thing was a tour Kangaroo Island leaving from Adelaide.  My thought process was put something easy as the first thing, since we'd be tired from the initial trip over, and then put the hardest thing next so we knock it out early in our vacation and can coast the rest of the way.  Then we'd head to Melbourne and Cairns and finish with Sydney.  The two primary objectives were from my Life List, to snorkel/scuba the Great Barrier Reef and see a show at Sydney Opera House (#53 and #132, respectively).  As I started to finalize the details of the trip for 2017, I decided that it seemed to complex to deal with suitcases if we were trying to hike from Alice Springs to Ayer's Rock, and that I also probably wasn't going to be in shape to hike for three days straight, nor did that seem like a great use of vacation time.  So I ended up modifying that plan to simply visit Ayer's Rock - a great decision in hindsight!  The only other changes I considered were to add Nullarbor Links - a 100+ mile golf course that is also on my Life List, but determined to take several days - and a stop in Brisbane because of our MOS Burger obsession from Japan and theme parks.  In the end, we decided that those two stops could wait for another trip.  So we'd go to Adelaide, Ayer's Rock, Melbourne, Cairns and Sydney - hitting all but one state of Australia, and certainly a good mix of activities with some of the best highlights of the country. 

You know how sometimes the universe seems to be working either against a certain cause of yours or for it?  Well, despite the move across the country, I had some pretty funny little signs pushing me towards Australia as the trip neared.  First, my manager had hired a new teammate that was from Melbourne.  She was awesome, and I loved her instantly.  Her accent alone was mesmerizing - like, I could honestly listen to her all day.  It quickly came up that we'd be going to Australia soon, and before I even knew her a week, she had invited us to a housewarming party at her apartment in NYC.  There, we got to try our first tastes of some Australian staples like meat pies and sausage rolls, and met a number of her friends who were also from Australia.  All indications were that we'd love Australia.  A couple weeks later, I was actually in the middle of a book that was primarily about a woman with mental illness, but seemingly at random there was a whole chapter dedicated to a trip to Australia that had me laughing so hard I cried and again made me even more excited to go.  I learned from that book that certain parts of Australia outlaw holding koalas, but that they were stinky nasty creatures anyways.  Not that that was a big deal to me either way, I just wanted to see kangaroos and koalas, really, that was my biggest concern regarding the unique land animals of Australia.  Little did I know, I do much more than that! 

I'd been subscribed to the Sydney Opera House's events email for the decade I'd been planning a trip to Australia.  Honestly - it seems a bit crazy now, but that's how long this trip has been on mental burden on me.  So I knew from plenty of experience that shows didn't really get announced a year ahead of time, so it was hard in 2016 to plan what show we'd be going to.  I continued waiting and checking to see if anything good came up, and in the spring of 2017, a show did pop up that I thought was great and that Jaiman would really enjoy.  So I decided, again minimizing physical things as gifts, to give the tickets to Jaiman as an anniversary present.  We'd be going to see Postmodern Jukebox at the Sydney Opera House! 

With that date set, I was finally able to work out the rest of the itinerary around it, and I started booking hotels.  Since some of the excursions would pick up from certain hotels, I made sure to book the hotels based on those excursion pick ups - most of the hotels I booked were through Travelocity and had free cancellation, so I knew I could change plans with no problem if needed.  The one exception was Ayer's Rock - where the hotel I wanted wasn’t on Travelocity.  Here's a travel tip from me to you - I like booking on Travelocity for a number of reasons.  First, I've had great luck working with them if something happens and I have to cancel or change my bookings (even when its within the window; ref moving to CT and having my flight get cancelled and therefore I had to change my rental car and cancel my hotel the day of - Travelocity was great).  Second, I can pay with PayPal credit which is awesome for three reasons - PayPal credit doesn't show up on a credit report so it doesn't look like you have high balances of debt; you get 6 months no interest on all purchases over $50 which hotels obviously fall into, and I get my passive income through PayPal, so I can literally pay off my hotel expenditures with my passive income over time with no interest (…and since I don't include my passive income in my budget, this feels like I'm traveling for free!)  The other big reason I like Travelocity is because of the free cancellation policy on so many hotels, and I know from experience the cancellation is really easy to do online.  Also, when I've done comparative shopping, I've found that Travelocity almost always has the best price, and it's nice to have all or most of my bookings in one place.  Granted, I usually send my itineraries to TripIt and organize everything there as well, but it's nice to be able to double check in Travelocity, because TripIt doesn't update automatically when plans change. 

The main excursion for Adelaide was going to be the tour to Kangaroo Island.  But given that it was on the first leg of the trip, I decided to hold off on actually booking it until I was confident we'd actually get there on the right date.  So what I did was put the info in my TripIt itinerary, cleared labeled as NOT BOOKED so that I would remember to book it once we were well on our way and/or actually there.  This worked out just fine for us.  I did book the snorkeling excursion leaving from Cairns, since I figured there was no way I wouldn't make it to that.  I booked through Silverswift, advertising that it had one of the faster boats and therefore could get us out to see more of the GBR in a single day trip.  Many websites advise that you do overnight stays on boats to see the most of GBR.  That may be fine for another trip, but I really wanted to get out there and back.  At Ayer's Rock, I booked a camel tour, which seemed much more exotic in the description than what it ended up being, but it was still pretty fun.  To be fair, it was actually way less brutal than I anticipated, and although a bit gimicky, was a really pleasant way to see Ayer's Rock.  My only real complaint is that we didn't get very close to Ayer's Rock, so we still felt obligated to go out to rock afterwards on a different and pricier tour.  Had I known that, I may not have booked the camel tour at all, but in the end, I'm glad I did.  For Sydney, I tried to book a kayak tour through the harbor, but they didn't have tours on the dates that we were there.  We thought about doing the Bridge Climb, but postponed the decision.  In Melbourne, I had looked into a brewery tour, and but we also postponed booking until we were there.  For all the tentative plans, I simply put them into our itineraries as NOT BOOKED so that I knew what I was thinking but that we'd need to book them. 

As is often the case, I had opened up the invitation to others to come with us to Australia, and while there was some reluctant interest, no commitments happened, so it was just Jaiman and I along for this adventure again, but I was perfectly happy with that.  I sought advice about the best way to get to the airport from one of my other new teammates who had been local much longer, and she said the best way by far was to take an Uber.  Neither Jaiman or I had used Uber before, but were open to the idea.  If this trip did nothing else, it certainly converted me to the likes of Uber!  Honestly, all our Uber drivers and their nice cars blew away my preconceived assumptions and expectations of the service.  The only little hitch we had was, well, a failure on our part to think through everything to be honest.  I hadn't researched what visas were needed to get to Australia, and I guess I assumed someone would have told us if we needed such a thing.  So when we went to check in to our flight at the airport, we got this "Do not Board" message and the people at the counter couldn't tell us why, simply that something was wrong with our tickets and we'd have to wait until 9 am to sort it out, at which time our first flight would be well on its way to LA.  Frustrated, we sat down to the side and tried to figure it out.  After about 15 minutes of nothing useful, the manager came out and said he had figured out what was wrong - our tickets were fine but we needed what's called an ETA, which is Australia's visa system.  He said it would take 15 minutes to a few hours to get, but that's what was holding up our check in.  We quickly looked up ETA and started the application processes on each of our phones, and were able to get approval in minutes thankfully.  When we were certain we were clear, we got up and attempted to check in again and it worked.  Whew!  We barely managed to get our luggage checked in an hour before the flight, got through security with no issues and got on our plane.  

We were off for the trip of a lifetime!  First stop: Adelaide!

Personalized Home Sweet Home Gift Hack

I wanted to share this great DIY craft that I made for my Mom this year.  Don't worry, we celebrated Christmas early, so she has already received her present, no surprises will be spoiled here.  The great thing about this gift is that it takes a little bit of work, but can be done in a pinch and requires very little creative ability. 

First, find a picture frame with a matte that you want to use.  Note the size of the picture that will fit inside this frame.  Most of the rest of the steps will be done with a computer. 

Then, we need a picture of the front of the house.  It would be preferable to have a high-quality picture from a decent camera taken when you are there.  In a pinch, however, you can use StreetView on Google Maps to get it.  There are many ways to do it, but I would recommend putting your browser into Full Screen view and using the Print Screen button on your keyboard to capture the image.  Capture more than you will need, because we'll crop the image later. 

Next, clean up the picture using PhotoShop or a similar program.  I removed the mailbox, the electric box and the shadow from the neighbor's house with PhotoShop Elements.  

Copy the cleaned-up picture into PowerPoint.  Right click on the image and choose Format Picture.  In the Picture Color section, adjust the Color Saturation and Color Tone as you see fit.  I ended up leaving the Color Tone alone but bumping up the Color Saturation to 240%.  Check out the difference!  

Under Artistic Effects (still in the Format Picture settings), select the Paint Brush setting, and adjust the Brush Size to your liking.  I used a Brush Size 6. 

Use the Insert function to create a rectangle on the same slide.  Right click on the rectangle and click Format Shape.  In the Size section, change the height and width to 8" and 10", respectively (or use the dimensions of the picture frame you got, if different).  Make the Line Color black or something else pretty visible, and change the Fill to No fill.  Use this frame to center the image to show the best parts of the house.  Once satisfied, you can crop the image to the same size as the rectangle, and then delete the rectangle. 

Zoom out in the slide view, and then grab the corner of the graphic to stretch it proportionately to a much larger size; this will improve the quality of the print later on. 

Because my family has moved quite a bit, I thought it would be fun to show the coordinates of all our recent homes.  I've changed them for this blog, but you get the idea.  If you don't want to show multiple coordinates, you can just show the current one.  What you probably need to know is how to get these coordinates.  I found this handy website that converts the address to latitude and longitude in decimals: http://www.latlong.net/convert-address-to-lat-long.html,  and then a tab on that same website converts those to degrees, minutes and seconds with directions: http://www.latlong.net/lat-long-dms.html.  

Note, sometimes it can be hard to remember all the old addresses.  In two cases in my experience, I couldn't remember the address but I remembered the street name and city, so I looked for it on Google Maps, and then used StreetView to go up and down the street until I found the house that looked like mine.  Google Maps will then give you the address of the house you are virtually looking at, and you can go from there. 

Create a text box centered over the image in your PowerPoint file, and put these coordinates in there.  Adjust the fonts to your liking, but I would recommend sticking to a simpler font for a bolder statement. 

You can use different tag lines for this gift.  If you had multiple coordinates, you can use the same tag line I did, "Wherever we live, it’s HOME SWEET HOME with you!"  Here are some other ideas for multiple coordinates:

Wherever you go, there you are!
Oh, the places we will go! 
Home is Where You Are

If you went with just one set of coordinates, consider one of these tag lines or similar:

Home Sweet Home
Home is Where the Heart Is

Make sure to center your text and adjust the spacing to fit in the image without blocking the main features of the house.  We're going for a big, bold effect, so make the font bigger than you think it should be, details will be lost in the overall picture. 

Once satisfied with the finished graphic, copy both the image and the text box(es) and paste them into Microsoft Paint, PhotoShop or similar.  Save the graphic as a jpg.  

Finally, use your favorite photo printing service, like SnapFish, or go to the Walgreens or Walmart websites or similar, and upload your picture for print.  Select the size print to fit in your frame, and have it printed.  I haven't used photo printing a lot, but I know Walgreens is usually pretty fast, so in a pinch, that's where I would look to print.  You can usually pick up your order in a few hours.  Once you have the print, just slide that puppy into the frame and put a bow on it or wrap it completely.  Bam! 



Want more great hacks and crafts? Check out my book on Amazon Kindle! 

Design Hacks for Disney Themed Rooms

DIY: Cinch Bags

Cinch bags are super easy-to-make accessories that are surprisingly handy.  I keep my small beauty care items, like chapstick, tweezers, and hair bands, in my cinch bag so they don't get lost in my purse.  Cinch bags can be made for gifts with a personal touch, or for easy fundraisers that also develop sewing skills.  I like to make my cinch bags with different but complementary fabric patterns.  You can make them with as much personality, or as simple, as you want. 
 
  
Materials needed:
Four (4) 8" x 8" pieces of fabric
1 1/2' parachute string or thin ropes
Pins, thread, scissors and general sewing supplies


1.  Start with four pieces of fabric cut to 8" x 8".  Test swatches from Spoonflower are great for this purpose.  You can also pick up small cuts of fabrics at your local craft or sewing supply store. 

2.  Decide which pieces you want to go on the outside and which you want to go on the inside.  Put one inside fabric and one outside fabric back to back and line them up. 

3.  Pin the two fabrics together.   

4.  Start sewing the first edge starting about 1 1/2" down from the top.  Sew the complete bottom edge, and the back up the other side up to the same point (about 1 1/2" from the top).  


5.  Sew two lines across the top, leaving about 1/2" in between and some room on the top.  This is where the string or rope will go through later, and the fabric on top will be the ruffles.  

6.  Repeat steps 2 - 5 with your other pair of fabrics.  

7.  Now, pair up the fabrics so that the patterns you want on the outside are on the inside and vice-versa.  You will sew the bag inside out and then flip it so that the seams are on the inside.  

8.  Sew around the two sides and the bottom, but not the top.  Then turn the bag inside out.  

9.  Tape the end of the string to the end of a pencil, and use it to thread the string through the channels you made at the top.  You'll want one string to connect on each side.  

10.  When both strings are through both sides of the bag, tie the loose ends together.  Pull the knots in opposite directions, and check out your work!  






Here are some combinations of fabrics to inspire you!  

Pumpkin carving 



Thanksgiving and football

Technically Speaking
My circuit patterns are very popular, with lots of sizes and colors to choose from!

Jurassic Patterns











Check out my other fabric patterns for even more!

Want more neat crafts and easy hacks? Check out my book on Amazon Kindle! 

Design Hacks for Disney Themed Rooms

 

TechShop Comes to Chandler, Arizona!

The East Valley is already home to entrepreneurial powerhouse Gangplank and maker heaven HeatSync.  A couple weeks ago, one of the most fascinating companies I've watched over the last several years opened its newest location right here in the Phoenix area.  I had even gone to San Fran to see if it was as amazing as I thought it would be, and it was and so much more.  I wrote about my account here: http://easilythrilled.blogspot.com/2013/02/my-techshop-experience.html

Around the same time, I was so hyped up (and at the time there were no publicly announced plans to come to Arizona), that I started formulating a business case to present to the good people at TechShop in hopes of influencing them to set up shop here.  As part of my research, I issued a survey, but remember that this was long before I understood marketing or social media utilization, so my survey didn't get enough responses to be worthwhile.  However, I am still amazed and excited about the possibilities TechShop brings with it, so I thought I'd spill out some of the benefits I saw back then:

I believe TechShop appeals to several markets in the Phoenix area:
- student organizations can take classes and get hands-on experience with things like injection-molding and prototyping
- professional societies can hold events there to explore fields that the individuals may not otherwise have exposure to
- entrepreneurs and the organizations that support them can utilize the facility for prototyping and low-volume fabrication
- car and motorcycle enthusiasts can design and fabricate custom parts and work on their vehicles with the equipment available
- manufacturing companies can utilize the facility to turn a part quickly instead of having to send it back if something was wrong
- individuals can expand their knowledge base with classes and practice
- engineering courses can utilize the equipment for better fabrication of their projects
- crafters, sewers and quilters will love the quality of sewing and quilting machines available
- architecture courses can utilize the large workspaces to build their projects

The benefits to Phoenix would be:
- entrepreneurs are enabled to start companies and create jobs
- more dreamers can become entrepreneurs
- individuals can enhance their skills and be better prepared for their next job interview
- TechShop provides a unique venue to host company parties and organization events

Now that TechShop is here, I thought I'd add some tidbits and ideas to get you as excited as I am.  

Ideas to get you going

• Getting married?  Consider using the laser cutter to etch a design into champagne glasses instead of paying for the same customization.
• Expecting a grandchild or nephew or niece?  The CNC quilting and sewing machines make it easy to embroider beautiful designs.
• Play board games?  You could actually design and print unique game pieces using the MakerBot II.  
• Need to advertise something in a really BIG way?  TechShop has a huge printer.  Depending on what you need, it may be worthwhile to print your own instead of going to an office store. 

Did you know?

• Almost all of the signage, wall hardware and decorations of TechShop were made at TechShop.
• TechShop has Dream Consultants to help the less-than-mechanically-savvy inventor make what it is they drew on their napkins.
• TechShop tradition is for the most recently opened facility to train the staff of the next facility to open.  So, our Chandler employees were trained in Pittsburgh, and they will soon be training the DC employees.  
• Many of the products coming out of the classes are gear-shaped, to remind you of the TechShop logo.