Talia Carbis

How To Spend More Time Together

Luke and I spoke last night about what we could do to spend more time together. We decided that we don’t really have ‘group’ activities in our house. We have computers, which you can only really do seperate, even if you are staring at each other. There’s TV, but that gets old after a while, there’s reading- very solitary, and there’s cooking- also solitary, but my vodcast idea gives us some together time…

So we decided that we need to MAKE things we can do together. Things we both enjoy, and will look forward to. Here’s what we came up with (and some more I just thought of) :

Go out for coffee at least once a week
Go out on more ‘dates’ (movies, dinner)
Go out to play pool
Play Boggle
Invite more friends over/ go out with friends together
Do a podcast/ vodcast together

Does anyone else have any other suggestions??

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Smile for Saturday (3)

I have NO idea why I actually bother to call this ’smile for SATURDAY’, as I have NEVER, in the three times that I’ve now done this, actually posted on a Saturday (Monday first, Wednesday second time). At least I’m getting closer…

It’s actually been TWO WEEKS since I last did this as well. Slack.  I will therefore just pick 7 hightlights.

Saturday the 5th was a friend, Grace’s 21st. We all dressed up. LOTS of fun.

Thursday the 10th was Rhys’s blah. It was to celebrate his birthday, and a bit of a going away thing ’cause he left for Israel on Friday night.

Sunday the 6th Luke and I led kids church. It was a little disastrous, but overall was quite good. I felt grown up, which made me smile.

Last night we had a goodbye party get together for my beautiful friend Katie. I nearly cry just thinking about her going all the way to Emerald, but I know she’s going to have a blast, and that it’s a great adventure for her and Alex. So I’m happy. The thing that made me smile was the party. LOTS of fun, and Uni get-to-gethers always are!!

Yesterday Luke and I whimsically went to IKEA, and bought some new furniture. We then popped in to visit  Luke’s Nonna on the Gold Coast, and ended up staying the night! It was great to see her. She is so smart and wonderful and loving.

Today I found out that Carmen has started her own blog!!!  Not only that, I am the inspiration!!  I was so stoked, and Luke was even more excited, as he is always into bloggingness :-).

Rhys and I got to spend some time together filming his poems. It was fun, and we got to be in the drama room of our old school !

Things I really liked about our wedding

1. The table settings. They were perfect. Exactly how I wanted them.

2. My Dress.

3. Our location.

4. Having our photos done before hand.

5. Our cake.

6. General ambiance

7. Our vows.

You may know that Luke and I, plus my family, and Luke’s mum went down to the Gold Coast to see Luke’s rellies because they couldn’t be at our wedding. We looked through all the photos and watched the DVD again, and it made me think “What a beautiful wedding!” I was really happy with it.

So if you’re looking for a wedding planner, I’m your girl!

I’d love it if people shared their favourite things about their weddings, or weddings they’ve been to. :-

Reflective Series

Thought I would give everyone the heads up that in the next few days I will be starting a series that involves 7 issues I’ve dealt with as a newlywed, and also 7 reasons I’m better off now that I’m married.

I’m hoping that I will start this Sunday or Monday, the first issue is ‘money’. At the moment I’m off the help my fiend Carmen set up a pantry tea and hens night for a dear friend of ours, Rachel.

Also, coming up is a post about the marvelous, wonderful, talented, creative Hayden Gibson Rodgers. This will be a double post to celebrate his birthday the other week, and also him becoming DUX of year 11 last Wednesday night! Needless to say I am very proud of him!!

Tips For Bloggers

I am the author of three blogs, and I by no means claim to be an expert, but I think I know a few little things about it. I’ve put together a bit of a list of some things that I like to do in my blogs that I think work.

1. I like to keep a certain amount of my life private. A mistake I’ve made, which I’m sure many others have as well, is that I’ve made really personal blogs. I have talked about people and situations and really just bitched my heart out and cried online and all sorts of terrible things. So my resolve with all of my blogs now is to remain a little distant- not to name other people, and not to talk about what I did that day. As you may have noticed, my personal blog is about things that INTEREST me, not necessarily things that I’ve done.

If you want to talk about a certain someone you might consider using a fake name, or just going lightly on what you say.

With all of that, in Teaching Talia you will still hear me talk about kids and teacher aides and teachers and lecturers… I just make sure that what I say is professional, and that I wouldn’t mind them reading it.

2. I reference. Something I’ve learnt from years of highschool and Uni is that referencing is necessary. I find that referencing, or linking as it is called in the blogging world, is great even just for me when I read back on what I’ve done.

Linking is the basis of the whole internet really, and so we should all link to each other. I particularly like to link to people if I’ve read their blog and got an idea from it for my blog. That way we all feel more like a community as well. Links make the world go round, and your google rank go up…

3. Encourage Comments. I don’t think I do this well enough, but it’s been said enough times that I can say it as well. “Ask people to comment and tell you what they think”!

You could try ending your post with a question, or you could just beg for them at the end, whatever suits.

4. Find a niche. As my fiancé says, ‘there’s not many left’, but find one anyway and write about it. A topic, interest point, or maybe just… you!

5. Update regularly (but not to regularly!). I like to update my sites relatively frequently, but sometimes I think I might do it a little to much. If you’re anything like me then you’re subscribed to about 10 different blogs at any one time, so if they’re all updating every day, then it’s hard, and almost frustrating if they’re all updating every day. But do update about two or three times a week.

6. Don’t ramble on. One thing I’ve learnt is that short paragraphs, and a blog written to the point is the best. Small paragraphs are easy to read, and easy to skim. Don’t write a 500 word blog if it’s about nothing…

7. Photos are good. People like to see what’s going on, and mixing your blog up with a few photos is always a good thing. I upload my photos onto either Flickr or Myspace, that way they’re stored for free, and I can easily link to them. If you use Flickr then you can put slide shows etc on…

So that’s my deal with blogs and writing blogs!