hurray!!!!
 so a few hours ago I practically smashed my record of "longest blog post" with my last one coming in at 1000 words but dont worry, I'll have another one to break that record again with a mere 1620 words providing it gets the "tick of approval" and can pass as a blog post... I'm not too sure, its more of an essay but hey, they'll be five less pages to write of my autobiography! 
but thats not what I'm happy about, most defiantly not! I'm excited because I finally have something to blog that isn't about those boring old things we usually refer to as "words" no.. In this blog I will have some well awaited photos taken by my amazing new camera which I am still yet to name!

another thing I am yet to name is my beautiful kitchen aid mix master, the poor thing, as gorgeous as she is I just haven't had the time to use her. You'd think that I'd get at least one chance to whip up a cake over the holidays but they sneakily slipped though me!I must say though, I feel like I've had about two months off, too much of it was spent at home though, I missed spending Christmas Easter in Melbourne (see, I do feel like I've had two months off)  but I am defiantly glad that I got to go because it was defiantly looking like I wasn't going to be able too. anyway, to many words! so.. last night I thought I'd whip out my mix master and make a cake. I've felt like banana cake for about a week so what other reason do I need?? long story short, triple layered cake with cream cheese frosting = YUM!

 I found the recipe on some blog which I will find at a later time and oh my gosh am I glad that I found it! I took it up to my aunty's when they came back from there holiday and it was devoured in no time. I now have one piece left in my fridge and I am struggling to come to eat it because its just sooo good!

exhibitions are just around the corner :)

As first term exhibitions started to creep up I began to get that feeling that I know way to well , that feeling of not being quite organized enough to succeed, discovering all of these concerns about how the exhibition will go, and stress.. Defiantly stress. It’s almost as if stress has become my friend over the past year. As my stress builds up I tend to be able to achieve more things and almost get a clearer idea of how things are going to span out. So as I had anticipated I began to worry about my exhibition over the holiday as I had no idea how I was going to complete enough work to showcase and not only that but I wasn’t even sure what work I could try to complete. I was really struggling because for the whole term the main thing I did was try to get my head around the tqa courses but I Haven’t actually   done a great deal of work.

On the last day of the Easter holidays I was talking to my boss/mentor Nathan about my situation and as I was explaining it to him, I started to see a different aspect. Instead of talking about the work I’ve done, I will exhibit what work I plan to do. I will talk about my goals for year eleven and further on. The first thing I will address will be my tqa courses and how I have taken the time to geet my head around the work and how that will help me next term. I will explain how I went into great detail when trying to choose my subjects and also how each time I changed the selection I became more comfortable with how they can fit into my work. I will talk about the biggest change that I made which took place at my learning plan meeting where I dropped my food and nutrition course. At the time this was a tough decision for me as I really thought that I had to do it as it was exactly the same as my passion- cooking but as we were mapping it back to my work it just wasn’t fitting. As soon as I let myself remove the subject I very quickly started to get more involved in the courses and excited about the work I was going to do.

While on the path of tqa subjects I will briefly outline each subject I am doing and how I will achieve the course criteria. this will not only help my my guests understand the work I will be doing, but as I am putting together a slideshow or alike I will be able to get an even better understanding of how I will achieve them myself.  Once I have given a brief outline of the subjects I will slowly move into the work I will be doing that will focus more so on the big picture student requirements. Examples of this include the journal entries I am writing that will be put onto my blog which at the end of the year will become my 25 page biography. I will also talk about different advisory activities I have participated in and how I have/will demonstrate leadership within the school community. This will then lead onto my LTI requirements where I will talk about how I will conduct informational interviews during exhibition week and from there how I plan to do another two shadow days. I will then talk about my shadow day that I set up with ritual coffee and how I hope to develop this into my first LTI for 2012.

Through talking about ritual coffee I will be able to include my school based traineeship with full a beans into the presentation and how that will combine with my school work. Finally I would like to talk about the LTI I will be organizing for the end of second term with Adriano zumbo in Sydney and what an amazing opportunity it is. I will talk about what I have done so far and what more I will need to do such as how I will apply for funding from local politicians and councils and the planning that will be required to do before the trip. I will also explain what I hope to get out of the LTI and how it maps into my learning plan. One of the motivations behind this LTI with such a well-known pastry chef is the dream I have of being accepted  into William Angliss located in central Melbourne so I will briefly talk about this and what else I hope to do if my Sydney trip is successful.

I am very excited about my exhibition now, every time I think about it I become slightly more relieved as I keep getting different ideas as to what I can talk about and how I can go about doing so. I now know what I am doing for my invitations, I just need to purchase the equipment and put them together and in that I will include a short agenda so that I have the ability to leave one out of my panel pack of I become short of time. As for the other content of my panel pack, I am not too sure. I will put of the copy of the letter that we sent out for funding as that briefly explains the whole purpose of the trip (apart from the obvious) and  will also try to put together a costing sheet and itinerary. I will have copies of some journal entries in the pack also to demonstrate the development of my learning and try to explain what goes on in my head! It all depends on the time limits I have, after all there is only eight school days to go until its exhibition week and my exhibition... first up on Monday morning at nine o’clock! 

wish me luck! 

my holiday

It was the place of my first "true" family holiday. The excitement would build up for weeks before my flight but its not until I board the plane when I realize how truly amazing this experience will be. To have all of us in the one beautiful place, wow!
I land at my first destination, the place I consider home, but this is not where the holiday starts, not at all. there's still another journey to partake.
as we arrived at the true destination, I gasp at the site. I had been somewhere like this before, Id seen the palm trees way above my height and I had felt the sun warm my body but never had I experienced such serenity. once we had settled in I started to wonder. I wanted to see what the beautiful place had to offer. the relaxed layed back feeling was infectious, and then the people made it magical. It was as if the whole place had been taken over by us, Aunties, Uncles and Cousins everywhere, and all for the one lovely lady. our grandma!

i love my coffee

ahh.. 14 hours down, 5 to go.. of coffee making that is!
that's just under 20 hours of coffee in three days, man am I tired!

I've really been enjoying work. great people and a great job, how can I not! I feel like I've just made a massive leap and have shot right up from newby to full time coffee maker!  (I dont think I'm confident enough to call my self a "barista" yet.. give it a couple of weeks and we'll see!) since I've been on coffee quite a lot I've noticed I'm picking up on a lot more details such as slight over or under dosing and incorrect extraction times. I've then been drawing on the knowledge I've picked up from my previous training/experiences and research to try and solve the problem, sometimes its obvious like stale beans or overdosing which I can easily adjust but today.. all weekend actually, the coffee's been pretty messed up! its been taking a minimum of 8 seconds to start the extraction .. usually it should take 4 max, and then it lets out this overly dark -to the point of burnt- crema in a very thin and dense dripping stream. it was sooo hard to work with! i was taking out about half of the coffee grinds and barley touching it with the tamp. it was defiantly frustrating but then i felt a lot better about how i was coping while I was on my break watching Ellen trying to make coffee, she had defiantly had enough by the time i was back on!  

finding maths in every day life

such a cute photo, but wheres the maths??

• centre of gravity/balance 
• weight of the child, 
• height of the child, 
• how many bones/muscles does she have?
• age in months, weeks, days etc. 
• cost of raising the child
• cost of the top 
• how much material  is in the top? 
• how long did it take to make the to? 
• where was it made - how much did the workers get paid? 
• (past four questions apply for the Elmo toy)
• how big is the Elmo toy? 
• how many of the Elmo toys exist?
• how many different type of Elmo toys are there?
• how old is Elmo?
• how does the mechanics in the Elmo toy work?

and that's just the start....

informational interview #1

yesterday I had my first interview with Tim who owns a local coffee roasting business, Ritual Coffee. Tim supplies coffee to "Full a Beans" along with 60 odd other cafes in northern Tasmania. I had a great time there, first I asked a few questions about the business, then Tim shown me around, explained his plans for the training area, told me about the retail shop they are opening and explained a hand full of different brewing methods. then we talked about "cupping" and the conversation rolled into all of the steps that are taken from growing and harvesting to presenting the final product to customers and so much can go wrong!  there is a heap of trial and error that goes on especially in the first few steps, this includes roasting small batches of coffee sourced from the farms, playing with different extent of roasts, cupping the coffee to find any flavors that shouldn't be there, and then repeating that for every harvest.
I was probably there for 30-45min but I learn't sooo much! I have retained so much information and I can see masses of potential for  and LTI and how I can find in my school work.

what a wonderful weekend full of coffee coffee and more coffee! none of which I drank of course, but i did indeed enjoy it. I worked Friday Saturday and Sunday (and again today) and to my joy I was making coffee the entire time :D

when the new employees came in and the old ones left I very quickly gained more responsibility and this weekend I got a great chance to show it! on Friday I had a meeting with my trainee provider and we went over the two units that I had worked on and I received two more to complete over the next two weeks. I then closed the shop with one of the new staff members, shes great to work with and has picked up things really quickly. I then worked 8-2.3 Saturday and Sunday and wow, am i tired! from the moment we opened on Saturday we were flat out, in two hours all i got to do for my food make up was sanitize the bench and buy some bread (when usually it takes me 1-1.5 hours from start to finish). we were crazy busy all day and it wasn't until 1.30ish when it started to die down. sunday was a bit different to this, it was dead in the morning, i probably made 5 or so coffees during my food make up which was a bit of a relief after Saturday. it was funny because as soon as I had whiped down my benches we were flooded with orders again but this rush only lasted 1-2 hours.. then Nathan came in!  its funny, as soon as Nathan came in we were dead quiet and it stayed like that for the rest of the day. it was a good change from the day before and although there wasn't much to do i was surrounded with good company and quite enjoyed the day.
tonight however.. Mondays have been a bit of a struggle lately, I've been closing with another one of the new staff and he hasn't really got much pace yet. add that with me doing the till which I have only done a few times and we tend to get out late. its hard because I've generally got a lot to do myself but I constantly try to help him, then I need to finish 15min earlier to allow enough time for the till and we cut it very fine, all i can say, is wish me luck!

future map

so we've been back at school for a few weeks now and one of the tasks we've been set is to do a future map. this is a task that was done last year through the who am I project and we were asked to complete a second one so this said, I am making this my "second" future map. okay, so its more like an extension of my last one, okay, maybe its  just a post about how I shouldn't have to do another one but still..

when I think about my first future map I'd say I was pretty spot on! it had a kitchen aid mix master on it (tick!!) :D, lots of things to do with cakes and cafes (since which I have scored a part time job at a cafe so -"semi tick??"), and then it had things like planes to symbolize travel, my ideal house (located in Melbourne of course), and various other things. all i can think of that I would want to add is William Angliss and maybe an LTI or two on the mainland! I feel really lucky that I know what I want to do in my future and i think it is a great advantage especially being at a big picture school.. I'm going to be unstoppable! 

Did I tell you??

Did I??
I dont think so.....
well here goes....... I got my camera!!! YAY!!
im so happy, I've had it for about one and a half months now and it was worth every cent!
Its sooooo much fun, only thing is .. I can no longer do anything remotely cool without documenting it in multiple photos! so without and further adue (although they've been on FB for ages!) here are some of my first pictures taken with my baby :)

i love playing around with the depth of field, light exposure and photo subjects. I have already found that my niche is in close up and I am very excited to eventually find some time to watch the cannon tutorial videos with my camera in hand :)