Day 6 of the 30 Day Photo Challenge is Breakfast.  Here’s what I ate this morning – Vegemite toast and my first coffee of the day.

Dark chocolate espresso, you guys.  That’s the stuff.

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Source: Amanda from Wit & Whistle

You might remember me mentioning this cute DIY from Wit & Whistle last month.  I thought it would make a really cute Christmas present for a few of my friends, and so I quickly ordered a couple of colours of Porcelaine paints for myself!  I’ve been really excited to try them out.

Unfortunately I’ve had a bit of trouble finding mugs that will happily sit for 45 minutes in my oven.  The paint is set by baking, and I guess not many mugs are designed with that kind of treatment in mind.  I didn’t want to put too much time into a mug only to have it crack so I’ve been trying to find some plain mugs that are actually labeled as being oven safe.

I had liked the thought of finding a matching pair at an op shop but so far the planets haven’t aligned.  Off to the shops, I suppose!

In the meantime I’ve been practising drawing and writing with my little paints.  And since the theme of today’s 30 Day Photo Challenge is Your Handwriting I thought I’d share my latest scribble!

The pretty hand-dyed doilies in this photo arrived in the mail today from Melissa Goodsell.  I can’t decide whether they’ll end up in my Christmas wrapping or my art journals.

Probably both!

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Pro tip:  if you really must have a sick day, I highly recommend doing it the way that I did.  It’s essential that you stay in your PJs for three quarters of the day, and only change half an hour before your boyfriend is due home so that you can pretend that you’re all grown up.

Of course, this means that when the delivery guy shows up to your house in the middle of the day you’re not going to be wearing a bra.  He’s either going to feel incredibly embarrassed or extraordinarily fortunate, but you know what?  It’s too late to be worried about these things.  This is one of those times when it’s okay to ignore your mother’s advice about standing with your shoulders back though.

And anyway, there are bigger things to be thinking about at a time like this.  For example, “Why don’t I remember ordering something from a shop called Edible Blooms?” and, “oh shit, it’s not our anniversary, is it?”

(Relax.  It’s not your anniversary.)

This amazing (and unexpected!) gift was from two Twitter friends that we’ve never even met!  A couple of weeks ago we were almost resigned to the fact that our pretty old couches were heading for the footpath for hard rubbish collection.  We’d tried to re-home them a couple of times, but although some of our friends were interested in them the timing was wrong.  The charities didn’t want to take in any more couches either.

I was really sad about their fate, so I had a little whine about it on Twitter.

LUCKILY, @brethred was reading at the time and replied that she and her boy could give them a home!  We were really happy that somebody else could use them and that they’d been saved from becoming landfill.

So today’s little surprise was a completely unnecessary but lovely gesture.  We’re just happy to have helped somebody out, and to know that our couches live on!

Farewell, little couches!

Day 4 of the 30 Day Photo Challenge is The Sky.  This is a quick and dirty long exposure of the sky above my house at about 9.30pm tonight, since the daytime sky was completely grey and uninspiring.

I wish I’d had more time to make this photo as good as it could be, but I’m trying to not be a perfectionist while I tackle this project.  Enjoy the stars.

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Please enjoy these six tips for what to do when you are the sickest girl in all the world

(Even though you’re not, because I am!)

STEP 1:  Change into your most comfy t-shirt and wipe off all your makeup.  It wasn’t fooling anybody, lady.

STEP 2:  Tell your puppy that you’re sad.  Accept two (2) healing licks to the nose.

STEP 3:  Pour a hot mug of chamomile & peppermint tea.  Consume at your leisure.

STEP 4:  Pre-write your I’m not coming in today email to your boss.  Set alarm to send email at 7am so that it doesn’t look premeditated.

STEP 5:  Crawl under the covers with your unread Frankie magazine and enjoy the lovely mellowmix you made last night.

STEP 6:  (This one is important) – Try not to die too much.

Wish me luck with step 6, you guys.

Day 3:  What you’re reading
I don’t mean to brag, but this is the best magazine a sniffly girl could ever hope for.

30 Day Photo Challenge 

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José González – Heartbeats / La Mar (The Ocean) – The Beautiful Girls / Stuff and Nonsense – Missy Higgins / Girl with the Red Balloon – The Civil Wars / History’s Door – Husky / Darlin’ Won’t You Come? – Bob Evans / Biding My Time – Busby Marou / Falling Aeroplanes – Darren Hanlon / Give Me Tonight – Art of Fighting / Love Is All – The Tallest Man on Earth / Treehouse Song – Nina Nastasia / Trailed – Gossling

I made this cute little mix tape tonight, and thought I’d share it with everybody here!  It’s mostly mellow, acoustic tracks and there’s a bunch of great Australian singer/songwriters in the mix too.  It’s the sort of thing that you should listen to at night, I think.

Get comfy (hot chocolate is optional, but recommended) and enjoy the pretty tunes!

RSS buddies: if you don’t see a little flash player at the top of this post you might need to click through to my site to play it.

Day 2: Your Closet

Today’s photo for the 30 Day Challenge is a little collection of my favourite colourful dresses.

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A few days I spotted this 30 Day photo challenge by Gemma of Little Tiny Pieces, and I decided I’d like to play along!  My little camera has been a little neglected lately so I’m pleased to have such a great reason to bust it out each day.

The rules are simple – take a photo each day for 30 days, and you don’t need to wait until the start of a month.  You can come up with your own list of prompts or use the one that Gemma has created.  I think Gemma’s is great, so I plan to stick with hers!  However I may run into trouble with a couple of her prompts if they fall on a weekday, so we’ll see how that goes.

When you’ve posted your daily photo jump over to Little Tiny Pieces and let Gemma know that you’re playing along too!

The prompt for Day 1 is Where You Sleep.  I’m breaking the rules already by posting two photos, oops!

So who wants to join me?  Here’s Gemma’s prompts, for those who would like to play along!  It’s a little bit scary to think that by the time this challenge is over it will be close to Christmas… where has this year gone?

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About a hundred years ago I lived in a beautiful city in regional QLD called Toowoomba.  It was a pretty fantastic place to grow up when I was a kid, and I have a lot of awesome memories from those years.  One of the things I remember about it was the strong folk art and handmade culture that flourished there.

I came across Toowoomba artist Anna Bartlett by chance last month and had lots of fun poking around her shop, Shiny Happy Art.  I was immediately drawn to this sweet little robin fabric panel, and quickly added it to my cart despite having no idea what I was going to do with it!

It arrived after just a couple of days, beautifully packaged with a cute hand-drawn picture drawn on the envelope.  Adorable.  In fact, I had to convince the receptionist at work to part with it so that I could see what was inside!

There’s something extra special about receiving a package directly from the artist, especially when it’s personalised in this way!  Anna also  included a note with my order, suggesting that I might like to stitch around the robin to bring out his little feet.

A month later I still haven’t decided what my little birdy will become, but someday he’s probably going to be a cute little cushion or a bag.  For now I’m just admiring him from afar until inspiration strikes.

Did I mention that this little guy is only $12?

There’s plenty of other beautiful things to see at Shiny Happy Art.  These are my top picks.

Original art: Mid Century I and Antique I, $146

Robin Red Breast and Blue Wren hankies, $14

Robin Red Breast teatowel, $24

Blue Wren and Robin Red Breast parlour cushions, $35
(These are my favourites!)

I know sometimes it isn’t easy to be sure, so I thought I should mention that I wasn’t asked to write this post.

I’m just all about sharing the pretties with you guys!

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found via Tumblr – 3s7s
(please tell me if my source is incorrect!)

Oh, Friday.  You make me want to do a little dance!

This weekend we have very few plans, and that’s exactly what we need.  Our lovely old couches are being rehomed sometime tomorrow, and in the afternoon I have my next drawing class at MSA.

I love this creative little routine that I’ve gotten into lately!

Aside from that I think there’ll be a whole lot of resto relaxo happening in our household.  I have a massive sleep debt to work off before I can tackle another work week so that’s my top priority for the next 48 hours.

What are you up to this weekend?

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This incredible cinemagraph is from the always inspiring photo blog, From Me To You.  See other beautiful examples of this technique at Jamie Beck & Kevin Burg’s portfolio site, cinemagraphs.com 

This week Tim and I agreed to an experiment.

We got talking last weekend, and both of us realised that we throw around the phrase “I love you” a little too freely.  More often than not we were misusing those three little words through laziness, and I guess at some point it started to lose some of its sparkle.

It stopped feeling special to be on the receiving end, and that’s not right.

Run out of things to say?
Hey, I love you.

Already said, “I love you” twice in the past 5 minutes?”
Still love you!

Can’t think of an excuse for that thing you did?
But I love you! 

I guess it sounds like a strange thing to worry about.  Is there really any harm in saying something so sweet to each other several times a day?  In the end we decided that yes – there is harm if it’s replacing other words that really should be said sometimes.

I love you should never replace, I’m sorry.  Not completely, anyway.

I love you shouldn’t be said every time you walk through a room, if you have nothing else to say.

Most of all, saying I love you doesn’t mean that you don’t need to make the effort to show it.

So we’ve declared war on our lazy habits and we’re taking I love you back.  This week we’ve banned the phrase completely, and it’s forced us to go to a little more effort to show each other how we feel in some other way.  It’s been very revealing to discover how much we’ve relied on those words as a catch-all to punctuate our conversations, and how thoughtlessly we throw it around at times.

I’ve always believed that we should take time to examine our habits just to check that they’re still good for us.  In the grand scheme of things it isn’t a big deal to overuse such a happy phrase, but I know that we’re capable of better.  I’m glad we’ve decided to aim a little higher.

Better still, I don’t remember anything in the rulebook about typing – so Tim, if you read this…

I love you!  For real.
xxx

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We had the most incredible weather in Melbourne today, and for a while I forgot that I wasn’t in Queensland anymore.  It was the sort of humid, sticky weather that reminded me of my years growing up in Far North QLD.  Summer in Cairns meant angry skies, soupy air and the hope that it would pour with rain at the end of the day so that you could get some sleep.

The only thing missing was the sound of frogs croaking in the drain pipes!

All day today the weather reports said that there would be a huge storm this afternoon, but I almost didn’t believe it.  Right up until I left work the sky was beautifully blue with hardly a wisp of cloud in the sky.  But down on the horizon, just behind the skyline of the buildings, the sky was jet black.

And it moved quickly.

I caught some of it on my phone when I got home, and I’m so glad I bothered to do so.  It’s fun to watch the little birds hopping on and off the power lines, and seeing the clouds get pushed around in several directions at once.

Just before the storm hit I took some photos of the birds on my neighbours TV antenna.  I liked the original shots a lot, but I love the moodiness that these filters gave the photos.

I’m such a weather nerd.  Despite the heat and humidity it’s been fun to watch the sky change all day, and now I’m looking forward to sleeping to the sound of heavy rain on my roof.

Simple pleasures.  I’m all about those.

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The other day I discovered a new app for the iPhone called iTimeLapse Pro, and I decided to give it a spin today when I got home from work.  This cute little app automatically shoots a series of images at whatever interval you specify, and when you’re done it renders them into a video!  It has built-in sharing for YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook etc and you can add a soundtrack from any mp3 in your library.

You might have already seen my previous sunset videos (the best one is here) using the video function on the iPhone camera.  The effect is absolutely beautiful, but I was never able to shoot more than about 50 minutes of video before it reached the maximum filesize.

iTimeLapse compromises a little on smoothness because you’re compiling still images, but it allows you to capture a much longer period of time in your video.  The timelapse video above was shot over a period of about 3 hours, and if I had chosen a shorter song (or rather, a higher framerate) the effect would have been much smoother!

But how could I pass up such a beautiful song?  It’s by QLD singer Emma Louise, and it’s called 1000 Sundowns.  Perfect.

Here’s the same video with a higher framerate.  It’s a much better result!

My only complaint?  The app automatically focuses and exposes each shot, and there’s no way to override it.  I’d have liked to have exposed for the brightest part of the sky to eliminate the overblown white patches, but the machine took over.  It’s definitely something to consider when deciding how to best set up your project.

Definitely worth a play if you’re an iSlave like me!

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Portrait of the Artist Who Promised to Blog Every Day in November but Only Managed to Get Two Hours’ Sleep Last Night and Intends on Going Straight to Bed After Dinner (2011)

You may blame NaBloPoMo for this post!

Let’s try this again tomorrow.

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I spotted this video a couple of days ago and loved it instantly.  The original source of all this good advice came from paulzii on tumblr, who created the graphic below.

I was amused to see that “drink coffee” gets its own line – who knew that I was already such a naturally creative type!

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Today was Week 3 of this term’s Introduction to Drawing & Painting class at the Melbourne Studio of Art, and I think it was one of my favourite classes yet!  When I heard that we would be doing our first painting class I expected it to be a lot like the one we did last term.  In that class we painted a still life scene using black and white acrylic paint.

I remember being incredibly proud of this painting last term.  There was a distinct moment towards the end of the class when I figured out what I was doing with the medium, and I managed to get quite a lot of detail and blending done in the last 15 minutes.  Considering that this was my first time holding a paintbrush since I was 13 years old I was pretty pleased with myself.

This week our teacher Michael Gray told us that we’d be working with oil paints, and for a moment I was terrified.  Hadn’t I only just figured out what to do with acrylic paint, finally?  Isn’t oil painting for grown-ups?  I guess I had always assumed that oil painting was for the pros, and that you needed to know some sort of secret handshake to join the club.

It’s funny how we make up these arbitrary rules when it comes to creativity.  Before I moved to Melbourne I was a singing teacher at my local TAFE and it always amazed me how different my adult students were compared to the kids that I taught privately.  Children came to their lessons with no preconceptions of what they were capable of; for the most part, they assumed that they could until repeated experience proved otherwise.  It made for an incredibly powerful and trusting learning environment, and those kids progressed very quickly.

My adult TAFE students didn’t believe that they could sing, but they came to my class because they liked doing it anyway.  Most of them could recall a time early in their life where they used to sing all of the time, and most could remember in vivid detail the embarrassing story behind their decision to stop.  The first few weeks of those classes was always about breaking through their assumptions about what their voices could do.  From there, the transformations were incredible – and it all began in the mind.

So I had to laugh at myself a bit today for reacting as I did to the news that we’d be painting with oil paints.  Why had I decided that I didn’t deserve to be using them yet?  What about those classmates of mine who had never painted before – would Michael be cruel enough to throw them to the wolves?  He seems like such a nice guy!

Michael is a nice guy, and he also has a lot of faith in our capacity to learn new tricks.  I think that the entire class did an incredible job for their first painting class today – don’t they look amazing as a group?

So here’s my very first oil painting.

In some ways oil painting was very different to working with acrylics, and in other ways it was exactly the same.  I loved the way that paint could be pushed around easily once it was on the paper, and how easy it was to blend.  I found it to be much more forgiving, mistakes were more easily corrected.  I’d have loved to have kept working on this still life but we ran out of time!

I might be the newest member of the fan club.

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My little city really knows its stuff when it comes to sunsets.  I love living at the top of this little hill and being able to catch the light show from my kitchen window each afternoon; sometimes they’re really spectacular.

Meanwhile, I’m just really super duper glad that it’s Friday night.  My workplace is in a state of complete chaos right now and my brain only has enough space for pretty things.

Like sunsets.

I wrote my list for Santa today.  My mum (who seems to be some sort of intermediary for Santa?) said that it was “Very comprehensive”.  I guess I should work on shortlisting some names for when that bunny rabbit arrives!

I’m probably going to need some sort of fencing to keep it separated from my new pony.  Lots to think about over the next seven weeks.

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