Shocking fact alert…

I have never dressed up for Halloween before!

This isn’t because of any religious or cultural objections. It’s just because Halloween isn’t really "done" here in New Zealand. Some shops have a bit of stuff, and when I was younger I remember getting a few (less than ten) trick or treaters each year, but it’s nowhere near as popular here as it is in the US. I think "Go to the US for Halloween at least once" needs to be on my Bucket List.

I think this is pretty sad, and last week I realised that this year Halloween falls on a Monday night. AKA quiz night. Excellent. An ideal opportunity for my inner (dress up loving!) child to emerge, and to actually make some kind of effort to organise a costume and dress up!

Photos will most likely to be forthcoming tomorrow (it’s the 31st here today), but in the meantime, here is a picture of some extremely epic witches from a show that opened EIGHT YEARS AGO! And yes, of course one of them is Stephanie J. Block. How could I post about Wicked without a photo of her!?

What are you dressing up as?

Eight months ago, Cashel Mall, in the middle of Christchurch, looked like this…

Photos courtesy of Ross Becker Photography and the Brisbane Times.

182 people died in the earthquake in February, four of them in this mall.

Since then, almost every building has been demolished, rubble has been cleared, and as of yesterday, Cashel Mall now looks like this…

We now have a "container mall"!

Initially I thought it might have been a bit strange seeing the city I’ve spent my whole life in looking like somewhere completely different. Looking at photos of the mall after demolition I was surprised by how hard it was to remember what used to be there, even though, before the earthquake, I was in town several times a week!

When I went though, I was surprised that while it was definitely a bit weird thinking that places I used to go all the time (favourite shops, cafes etc) are gone forever, I wasn’t sad. I think the earthquake itself was so long ago now that I’m kind of "over" the sad part. No doubt I would feel differently if I’d been IN this mall when the quake happened, if I’d lost my home, or if people close to me had been killed, but fortunately none of these have been my experience.

According to the news last night, 10,000 people came here yesterday, which is huge! I went at about 4:30pm, so it wasn’t nearly as crowded by then, though it was still very busy, all the shops who have set up there were absolutely packed!

Conclusion, I really like this container mall, I’ll definitely be coming back, and it’s nice that Christchurch feels a bit normal again.

I hope this post doesn’t come across like an ad, ‘cos it’s totally not supposed to, but last night I discovered a very cool iPod app. This is NOT a sponsored post.

I am not very motivated. I often think I SHOULD do things, and WANT to do them, but I never seem to be able to make myself actually bother to ACT on it.

On Sunday I downloaded this to my iPod and discovered that it’s pretty darn awesome. I was initially looking for some kind of timer to track how long it took me to walk up and down the relatively steep hill I live on, but ended up getting this instead, and becoming rather inspired by it.

Health Habits encourages you to either make good habits, or break unhealthy ones. It’s divided into four sections, with a list of suggestions for each, though you can also add your own habits if you want to.

Sooo…the first "habit" I’m trying to establish is walking up and down my hill every day, which takes me about half an hour.

I know to some of you super active, gym-going, sport-playing bloggers, this might not sound like a lot, but it is for me, since I usually hardly do any!

Right now I’m not setting myself the goal of losing heaps of weight or anything, but we shall see what happens once I manage to get into the routine of doing this frequently.

How do you motivate yourself to exercise?

EDIT: I won this awesome bag on Megan‘s blog from Cindymars7 recently!

I don’t have any photos of me using it yet, since it only arrived in my mailbox this afternoon, but I really like it. Mayka, who owns this Etsy shop, has obviously not cut any corners when creating this very well-made bag. It’s a pretty decent sized bag, with a lot of pockets on the inside for stuff like phones and iPods etc. Definitely something I will be getting a lo of use out of!

Seriously. I would recommend this shop for anyone who likes bags!!

I didn’t mean for this post to turn into a review or an ad, but I just had to comment on how much I like this bag, and how excited I was to actually win something!