the french say au revoir...

Away! Tomorrow morning at very very early o'clock.  I will be on my way. A huge three month adventure with my favourite adventure partner! We are so so lucky! We have so many exciting things to look forward to & enjoy in the moment! Eyes opened, hand in hand, we will lap up a whole new world - together!
I have some scheduled posts set to roll in, and I will be updating here with my adventures when I can.
But for now: Goodbye blog friends... Hello: Hong Kong, England, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa!!

super-calisthenics-expealadocious

Today at work a physical culture, or in other parts of the country calisthenics, competition is happening. Now please forgive me if you like it or partake in it. But I just don't get it. From an outsiders point of view I see it as demeaning and pointless. If you want your child to have poise send her to gymnastics or yoga. If you want her to be cultured take her to art galleries, theatre shows and films. Putting her in a leotard, her hair up in a do that takes several hours and several gallons of hairspray and covering her 6 year old face in makeup, then blowing a whistle to start and stop her from ridiculous poses that are useless and futile to every day life, seems extremely uncultured and not particurly physical to me. In fact it looks almost exactly like a dog show. But it's children!! I am sitting at my lighting console right now and my jaw is dropped, horrified.
I didn't want to use this blog as a place to complain, but really, it's like the stepford wives all came into my venue today!

things to be thankful for

* My amazing man: he is my joy, he can always make me laugh, and his hugs are the best.
* Easy internet access. I have a feeling I am going to be missing you interwebs - though what the heck I'll be exploring the real world instead!
* My mumma. What a cool woman.
* I got to hold our friends beautiful baby the whole time I was visiting. So cute as he fell asleep in my arms.
* Strawberries. Gosh they are yummy! We ate one from our garden yesterday!
* Music. Dancing in the kitchen late at night is my new favourite thing.
* All the awesome people I know in England who I get to see NEXT WEEK!
* My dear friend Courtney, who is picking us up at 5.30am to take us to the airport on Tuesday!
* Our local coffee shop for giving us (my entire share house) caffeine to go this morning. Giving, as in, making a tray of what we usually have without asking and refusing money for it! *love them*
* Paracetamol. Thanks for being so easy to access, and not rolling your eyes at us when we need you because we make silly mistakes like not sleeping enough and drinking too much beer/wine....

{via}

5 senses friday

Hearing: The Stars. *love*
Seeing: endless possibilities. reddening tomatoes and strawberries, and a backpack waiting.
Smelling: dust (must vacuum), glowing tarmac
Feeling: sweet summer sun, floaty cotton, excited and in love.
Tasting: coffee and blueberry muffin.


Play along {via} lovely abbytryagain.

bare footed

I'm a bare feet kind of girl. I like feeling the earth under my toes. Or the floor. Even the unswept floor is prefereable to shoes. In summer I love walking around the streets with out them. I once suffered severe burns on my feet from walking without shoes in Adelaide. In summer it gets very hot...
So yesterday was a nightmare. I was wearing a pair of socks, one of which had lost the elastic in the ankle. One falling down sock is hell. It drove me crazy all day. Why did I choose a profession where it is so important to wear shoes??? I took it as an omen when I found an almost new pair of black (my favourite) Haviana flip flops on a bench. Yes, unshod I am meant to be. Roll on Africa!
{via}

My place & yours - My collection

I like this weeks subject. I love collecting! I collect vinatage dresses, postcards, ribbons, letters, buttons, teacups, shells,  music. When I was little I collected badges (buttons to a USA person), and sachets of sugar and salt and pepper....a bit random but there it is.

I have two boxes full of postcards. there is no rule to the collection. They are a mix of ones that have been sent to me, and ones I have bought as keep sakes and ones I have bought to send to others but never gotten round to it. Because I moved country when I was 10, postcards were an importnat way of communicating to my friends.

A smile is something special
A ribbon is something rare
So I'll be special and I'll be rare
With a smile and a ribbon in my hair
Patience & Prudence Lyrics! I love this song!
I have long long hair, so ribbons are a must. I have accumulated a lot over time, as my boy gives them to me as gifts and as I rescue them off wrappping paper!

Mmmmm tea cups. mmmmm Earl Grey tea. Lovelyness. A random collection that is slowly but surely growing (perhaps much to the husbands horror!) And conveniently also my button collection which is stored in this GIANT red with white polka dots cup.


Play along at Meet me at Mikes...

leftovers

Words in a jar. Pretty huh? These are the left over letters from book poems made.

wedding happiness

Ahh weddings. Aren't they just the loveliest? Our dear friends got married on Sunday. It was beautiful, sophisticated, and simple. A church ceremony, a high tea for everyone, then a small and fancy reception. My favourite details were the mens cufflinks. Old wooden scrabble letters of A (Adam) and C (Carly) on each mans cuffs. Also, beautiful chandeliers, amazing food, and I was sitting at a table of lovelies to chat to while my man ran about being MC. I didn't take many photos, coz I figure that's what the professional photographer is there for, but here are a couple...

Oh and don't we scrub up alright?

tour du paint part 4

 

The first painting my angel got from an op-shop! It hangs in our living room. I really like it for its vintage-ness.

The second bit of art work is also my angels. They are SO cute! I hung them in our bedroom from the same hook on pieces of twine of different lengths. He has some what of a collection of these little cuties.  The middle one got dropped and so has a chip at the bottom, poor darling. They are all crackly and lovely and old looking. The bottom couple looks like he and me (sort of) too.

The last picture my angel made for me (you see the theme in this installment yes?) He cut the stencil out of a piece of plastic and experimented spray painting it all over the place, but he liked this practice one on cardboard best. It is next to my side of the bed for me to see when he wakes me every morning. Lovely.

book poems

 

This is the wedding gift me and the boy made for the wedding we went to yesterday. I have to confess that the idea of making a poem out of a page of a book was one I stole from a real artist. I saw it at the MCA here in Sydney, but now I can't remember the artist's name. I saw it and thought - that is cool... I could do that. Tim "wrote" the poem for them. I cut it out and framed it. It actually takes aggggges to carefully cut out all the words you don't want. I've made a fair few of them recently, they make great gifts or pieces of art around your home... Yay for home made presents!

things to be thankful for

* My work place has air conditioning. How dare it be this hot already?!
* I have beautiful tomatos growing in my garden.
* The cars in front of me on my ride home yesterday didn't crash. (though it was a mighty close call)
* My house mates are DIVINE. I had an amazing omlette this morning, made by one of them.
* I have 6 more days left of work...(yesyesyesyesyesyes)
* My grandparents will have been married for 60 years come 23rd of December. Inspirational!
* Beautiful blogs everywhere! This one is my latest favourite.. Thankfulness anyone?!
* I can cycle pretty much everywhere I need to go in this city - great for the environment, great for my bum = winwin!
* Dear friends had a beautiful baby boy yesterday! I am SO excited and happy for them. Baby Luke Noah, what a treasure!
* Other dear friends are getting married tomorrow! So excited to be going to what is sure to be a deliciously fun and beautiful day. I *LOVE* weddings!
{via}

five-senses-friday

Thought I'd give playing along a go...

hearing:

This is my summer song for this year.

tasting: eclipse mints. I think I'm addicted..

seeing: white. The set for this show is white white white.

feeling: suprisingly cool. Thanks air conditioning.

smelling: anticipation, a slight hint of oranges, mint and recycled air.

(eep gone a bit post crazy today! Don't get used to it I won't be around for a while soon...)
{via}

My Place & Yours - Through the front door

My front door, with its happy pot plants, the hallway with its line of photos and newly added wild magic horses, as well as 5 coat hooks and a skate board. In close up we have the AMAZING rollar skates I found in the back alley (which I sort of fit into) and an odd little hole in the wall next to the front door, which we use to store these toy cars... Just because.

{via} Meet me at Mikes... Go here to play along...

love letters

We started packing up our room today. Which is exciting - because it's all part of getting ready for travel (we are letting our room out to cover some of our rent while we are gone.)
In the process of checking out what the contents of our suitcase collection was (to see if we could stow some stuff away in them) we got rather side tracked. Love notes, postcards, letters, important memories. I sighed. I have the best boyfriend ever. When he went over seas, while we were just dating, I received about 60 postcards in 4 months! Some lengthy, some just said three little words. All of them I awaited with great anticipation. It used to be that I couldn't walk in my front door without checking the letter box. Even on Sundays. Even when it was 1am.
Also found: a love letter from an 8 year old boy who I made great friends with when I was volunteering at an orphanage in South Africa. Despite the 10 year age gap, he was convinced he was going to marry me. It's funny to think that he's now a teenager and probably has a girlfriend! Aside from the one love letter a few weeks after I got home, I never heard from him again.
Letters from friends on very cool notepaper.. The orders of service to all the funerals I've ever been to(4) . Important memories, and a wonderful beginning to making new ones.

1. {via}
2. mine.

paper animation

How clever is this?! Aside from the amazing paper craft and editing, I would like you all to take note of the lighting in this video which is AWESOME! See all the shadow play and darkness and light. Just delicious.

{via} Lovely Melbourne Vintage

garland love

oh my life. I'm in love.

These garlands are by Sophie Cuvelier and she is french and THIS is her blog, and THIS is her shop called The Fabulous Garland. I personally am after these confetti style ones, but she has triangles and squares and stars and she does whole installations with them! Aren't they just beautiful?
Final photo is via the ever amazing designsponge* discovered through a sneak peek.

You know what this reminds me of? My wedding. My mumma sewed about 40 meters of silk bunting in beautiful rainbow colours. It wrapped around our entire house, and over archways and everywhere!
(here is a sneaky preview, because I love you)

tour du paint part 3.

 

The top painting is by one of my best friends, her name is Verity. It means a lot to me because she made it for me and gave it to me saying this is about you. There are little bits of writing in there: I'm in touch with your feminine side and lots of stuck on bits, like chocolate wrappers we shared... On top of the pastel in hot glue gun I love you is written, though you can't see it in this picture. It got a bit battered on the move from England to Australia, and so i got it framed. The framer was a bit baffled because of the sticky out piece of toy car on the side. He had to make it slightly boxed. It is now next to my bed.
The next painting is by a freind of ours called Sophie. My boy and her used to be housemates, (back in those dating days) and I always lusted after it when I came round to visit. Then she went overseas for a year and moved out of that house, so I said I could look after it and she said I could have it and I was very happy to oblige! It's of a friends kitchen shelf and it hangs on the entryway wall to our kitchen. I love the varying layers of solidness. I plan on buying more of her work down the line...
The third piece is called After The Fires and is by a man named Ivan. Ivan was homeless (I am told he has a home now) when he painted this. Hopestreet (mentioned here) runs an art space for homeless folks to use and this is one of his paintings. It's about a meter tall and 50ml wide, I'm not sure where it is meant to be, but Tim and I both loved it when we saw it and placed the highest bid for it in auction! It's win all round because all that money goes to him and we have a beautiful artwork added to our collection. Yay! Now it is the first thing i see when I open my bedroom door each morning. Aren't the colours beautiful?? (Oh yes more trees!!)

last night

Morning. Excited. A song, that everyone knows. We dance and dance in the kitchen, making eggs. Dancing for each other, until we are so breathless that we can't even laugh any more. Just dancing because the song is playing. And it is good. And we are looking in to one anothers laughing eyes, and smiling, and dancing, because we are happy, because we can, because we are.

Tonight. A moment.

We must remember this moment forever.

Dancing so slowly to our song. Our wedding anthem. Our love in lyrical, musical, poetical record. Slowly. Slowly. Turning. Pressed so tightly together. Breathing each other in. Feet on soft grass. In our back garden. By a single candles light.  Feasted, sated and breathing each other in.

And later as my pencil softly smudges paper, I watch him sleep. So beautiful. My angel.

I will remember this moment forever.

things to be thankful for

* I finished To Kill A Mockingbird. And whilst I am sure it was only me that hadn't read it, if you haven't then do! It's amazing. Wonderful characters, wonderful writing, gripping story line, whimsical, of an era, but poingant and relevant too. Perfect.
* My angel sifted out 3 buckets of beautiful soil from the compost. It's the most astounding stuff. From all our garden scraps and kitchen waste comes this incredible silky, sweet smelling rich dark soil. I know it sounds weird but it looks good enough to eat, and its actually soft and velvety to touch! Amazing!
* TWO weeks until I travel. I know you are all getting sick of the countdown every week but I havent travelled in so long and I am so excited. How marvelous to have a journey to be going on!
* The Charter For Compassion was unveiled this week. Possibly one of the most important and world altering charters to be made yet! Tell your friends and shout about it!
* I did gift wrapping today for a friends wedding present. I love gift wrapping. *sigh*
* I have love written on my arm. Check it out.
* Bek moved into the house this week, back from Paris! It is so lovely to have one of my besties back in the same country as me. She is cute as a button.
* Although I had a shitty week at work, each night I came home to either a) a lovely husband with arms ready for a big cuddle or b) lovely housemates & friends with the kettle on, happy to sit and eat ice cream straight out of the punnet with me.
* I mowed our little lawn this morning. It was fun and is one of my happiest smells. I am SO thankful to have a garden.
* I had cafe breakfast with my lover this morning and wore a floaty dress. Bliss.

anticipate-her

This morning I was thinking how much of my time I spend looking forward to things (or occasionally dreading them) or wading through my imaginary world, and how little time I spend revelling in the moment. I need some unlearning here, especially for our travels. I want to experience it, live it and soak it up, not be always waiting for whats next, whats next, whats next or lost in some bizarre story standing alone in my head. Hard lesson.
photo via...

umbrella love

The sad news is my beautiful black and white dotty umbrella died. The happy news is there are plenty of pretty ones all over the world! How cute is this picture from dotlife?! The Brolly silouette is so cute and lovely.

This beautiful photo is from a series by Various Inspiration. Check them out! Such a clever photographer!

Cuteness via.

Totally impracticle but so whimsical! Via...

beautiful things of a different kind 4.

TEAR is another organisation that we give to monthly. I love how community and people minded they are.  Did you know TEAR where the FIRST organisation to do the useful gift catalogue thing??!! You know where you buy a goat/tree/toilet/school for someone somewhere else and give it as a gift? They seem to look at people deeply and lovingly and then take a step back and look at the broad picture and make a difference in a really clever way. A bonus of being a donor to TEAR is the quartly magazine you get called Target.
As Christmas maddness starts to desend EVERYWHERE, it was CHALLANGEING and refreshing to read this article by Lyn Jackson:

Only 56 more shopping days till Christmas!
OK, I know it's only October, but time's money, the tinsel's already going up in some shops, and we've got to do our patriotic duty and spend our way out of the Recession We Didn't Quite Have. So unleash those credit cards, and let's go shopping.
Forgive my hysteria. Christmas often does that to me. I cannot understand how we've managed to turn the birthday of the one who said “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me” into an exercise in unmitigated indulgence and conspicuous consumption. Year after year, we Christians bemoan the commercialisation of Christmas, but we do nothing about it! We still spend more than we can afford on stuff that we don't need, creating mountains of waste, all – supposedly – in the name of a child born to a poor, unwed teenage mother under an oppressive regime in Palestine over 2000 years ago. It just doesn't make sense.
Erin Morash puts it in perspective on the “Buy Nothing” website:


“At Christmas, we celebrate Mary's courage and her willingness to be part of change, by buying hundreds (or thousands) of dollars worth of gifts. Most of those gifts will, likely, have been made in factories that employ guess what? Teenage girls in, say, Mexico, Burma or Vietnam, who work fifty to sixty hour weeks for $25 to $50 US. When they finish work at the end of the day, they likely go home to sleep in their family's dirt-floored shack, with no running water or electricity. If they've moved to the city to work, they might live in an overcrowded dormitory with hundreds of other girls and they're charged for their bed in the dormitory.”


We've got enormous purchasing power. That point has been rammed home to us over the last twelve months, by politicians, economists, retailers and social commentators. So this Christmas, let's use it!