Morning walks and afternoon tea parties..

How quickly the week has flown by and again I have seen the beauty of country Victoria. I had the opportunity to go to Horsham (north of Ballarat) on Thursday for a graduate teachers professional development. Had a lovely time meeting other teachers from the area and reflecting on what a wonderful year it has been. When I got home look what was waiting in the mailbox for me, a lovely little package that I got from Marmeeraft. I just love Marjorie's amazing work and just had to purchase these adorable owlet bookplates. And look at the sweet little postard and envelope she included, just beauitful.

My lovely bookplates

Lots of extra goodies!

We have had a lovely weekend, very busy as they all seem to be. I've been asked to accompany a group of year 9 and 10 students with another teacher Outdoor Education expedition camping, bush walking and canoeing for two days, this Thursday and Friday. I'm so excited and a little nervous as well, mainly of the 19kms I have to canoe! What I have enjoyed is buying all the bits and pieces I have to take with me. Ben and I have had a lovely time in the local camping stores. As I am not a regular camper we had to start from scratch so now I'm all set for our expedition.

I got some flash new hiking boots and so this morning we decided to go through a walk down at the local nature reserve King's Billabong to break them in. We had a wonderful time particularly because it had rained all day yesterday so there was plenty of wildlife about and plenty of mud to squelch around in. Here are some photos from our little adventure..

The trees are already in full blossom just in time for the start of spring

There is just something about the red gums and salt bushes that makes the Mallee so beautiful and haunting

Can you see the beautiful Kangaroo? Her little joey just jumped in for a ride

I just had to take a photo of these adorable print made by a joey. How cute are the little paw prints!

After our delightful walk I finished my shopping for my bestie Courtney and her little bub who is due to enter the world any time now. Been having so much fun buying sweet things for Lily and Courtney and something her gorgeous little boy Elijah too. Here it all is wrapped and ready for the mail.

Brown paper packages tied up with sting (and ribbon!)

And now for my favourite things this week:

Journaling my spiritual moments

Afternoon tea parties with lovely cups and vanilla cake

The beautiful work of Immortal Longings. As I am teaching Macbeth at the moment I am just loving all thing Shakespeare and the works of Elizabeth E. Schuch are just stunning. She embraces all the most exquisite moments of Shakespeare.

Beautiful Immortal Longings Romeo and Juliet journal


Much love to everyone, hope you have a fabulous week as I will be!
Three weeks of the term to go!

xxx

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Tournament of Minds, Travelling Days and Garden Update

What a big week! Sorry about my lack of blogging over the past few weeks, life has been wonderful, crazy and full of travelling!

I best start at the beginning of the week and my little adventure to Melbourne for the day to an inspiring professional development held at Melbourne Museum. I have never been to Melbourne by myself so it was a very wild, exciting and nerve racking day! I found my way around the city and even got to walk back to the train station and take in the beautiful old buildings and bare trees.

The beautiful Royal Exhibition Building next door to the Museum

The amazing larger than life rainforest in the Museum.
The architecture was just breathtaking.

And that was only Monday, throughout the week I have been madly working to prepare my Tournament of Minds teams to get ready for the regional finals in Bendigo. The week went so fast and every spare our was used in the art room supervising the creation of backdrops, masks and more!

Saturday quickly came around and two 5am mornings in one week have certainly taken it out of me. Thank goodness for Sundays! The Tournament of Minds experience was just amazing experience. Over eight hours on a bus to Bendigo
with 13 hyperactive, sugar filled enthusiastic students was certainly an experience I will not forget. I also had a wonderful opportunity to judge the spontaneous section of the competition and I can't wait to sign up for next year. What fun!

I just loved Bendigo, the architecture was stunning and I just love this fountain in the middle of town.

A very silly photo of me and part of the team. More photos to come!

And after a crazy week I had the a lovely little lazy Sunday, nice sleep in and normal people things like grocery shopping and getting ready for school this week. I also finished off the scarf I began a few weeks ago. As I was taking a photo of it I noticed some sweet things in the garden I wanted to share.

Cute little cotton scarf for Spring

After weeding the garden a few weeks ago, the magical garden fairies found some delightful daffodil bulbs and in only a few weeks we have our very first daffodil just in time for Daffodil Day.

With the beautiful rain we have been having our little pot of rocket is blossoming fast!

Our little book club has come together again after being swept away in the world of Twilight. We have decided to read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I can't wait, its been sitting on my 'to read' shelf since my birthday!


I will leave you tonight with my favourite artist at the moment, the delightful Jayme McGowan of Roadside Projects. Her artistry and innovation with paper is incredible and her beautiful images tell such beautiful stories.

Just beautiful work and totally inspiring!

Much love to everyone!

Have a lovely week
xxx

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A new dawn and a new dress!

I have finally lifted my head out of the world of Twilight in time to see a week fly by! Breaking Dawn the fourth book in the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyers was everything I expected and everything I had imagined would never happen! Although I think I was a little shocked when it all ended after letting it sink in for a few days and rereading some of my favourite bits from the series I am totally loving it! Now we start the wait for Midnight Sun...

Speaking of all things Twilight my very cute tote bag from Cafepress arrived and I just love it!

It's just so true!

So besides reading and marking essays i had a chance last night to start a crocheted cotton scarf, I'm really liking the colours as they seem to work much better for this than for a beret. And with spring on the way (soon I hope) I think some sweet little scarves will be fab!


I've also finally got around to adding some cute vintage buttons to the mustard beanie I made so it will be going up on Etsy in the next few days as well as the the secret garden beret from last post.

Mustard beanie with vintage buttons..

So this week I'm loving..

My new Louche dress that I've bought especially for my fab friend Tara's wedding in September. It's made from a beautiful jersey fabric and it just feels so lovely on. Now I can't wait to find some lovely colourful shoes and hit the dance floor!


I'm also loving the new Real Living magazine..

How hot are the roses!

And the beautiful and haunting artwork of Kareena Zerefos...

Another few big weeks ahead! I'm off to Melbourne on the 18th for a professional development seminar and then on the 23rd I'm taking my Tournament of the Minds team to Bendigo. I'm also really excited about being a judge at Tournament of Minds, will be a really amazing experience. Look out for cute hats in our shop this week!

Much love xxx

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Beauty in the garden...

What a lovely weekend it has been. It is the first time in months that it's been over 15 degrees during the day so we made the most of it and had a great weekend in the garden. I love a beautiful garden although my one flaw is that I am very impatient and want all the flowers to come out straight away. Failing that I often use inspiration from the garden in my creation as I have done with my latest beret.

First off I must show you the lovely strawberry plants we bought today. I was really inspired last week after seeing amazing strawberries growing at Pleasantrees. I felt I had to have some of my own. We bought a really lovely variety that have pretty pink flowers. Now I just have to wait patiently until spring.

I also spent some time working on extending my hat range to include berets with detachable fabric flowers. I have been wanting to try it for a while and after my gardening was very inspired to create a little secret garden beret. I like so much I want to keep it, but it will most likely go in the shop and find a lovely new home. There will be more to come and I would also like to work on some little headbands for Spring.

The wool is a beautiful rich pale green and reminds me of the colour of rose bush leaves.

As modeled by Molly it can be worn as a beanie or a beret.

Close up of the detachable fabric flower with vintage button

Other than gardening, crocheting and making cute flowers I have spent much of the week writing. I have just become involved with a local writers organisation Poetic Justice Publishing and we met on Saturday to talk all things writing and make journals of poetry and prose. It was a lovely afternoon and inspired me a great deal to put pen to paper. Can't wait for our meeting on Tuesday night where everyone reads their work. Just have to decide what to read. Speaking of all things writing, after a year of scribbling ideas down for a novel I have finally taken a leap of faith and dedicated a moleskine to my very exciting project.

Now that all my ideas have a home they seem to be flowing very freely and I am finally beginning to write my very first novel. Will keep you updated and may even post little sections every now and then. I am really beginning to like the characters and the tale of love, sisterhood and secrets is slowly coming together.

The rest of my ramblings find their way into my moleskine and it to is taking on a life of its own. Here are some of my most recent favourite pages...

A collage inspired by Florence Broadhurst and Amy Butler

I am really loving this mix of black and white for a bookshelf

One of my most loved pages.. I collect film quotes (often as I am watching the film) and this is my little collection.

So here are my favourite things for the week...

My new lovelinks bead I got with from my grandmother Mary for my birthday. Finally my bracelet has some colour!

The cupcakes I made this afternoon (gluten free orange and poppyseed) YUM!

I finally saw Paris Jet' Aime! It is one of the most beautiful films I have seen this year. A must!

And finally this little droplet of water I found when I was weeding the garden today. It reminded my to watch out for the beautiful little things in life.

I'm so excited about the release of Breaking Dawn tomorrow! If you need me this week, you will find me somewhere in Forks with Bella and Edward...

Happy Sunday and much love to everyone

xxx

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