Bon Voyage!

Our bags are almost packed and we are leaving... (sometime tonight when we are finished with last minute packing).

Thank you for all of your kind comments and well wishes. I will miss visiting you while I am away, but you never know I may have a chance to log on at some stage. If not I will try and take lots of photos to share when I get back!

Image via here

See you in a few weeks! xx

My Confession

I confess.....

I really struggle to keep plants alive. See this box hedge, he didn't last long.

I bought the urn at a garage sale and didn't do anything to it, just planted an English Box.

Now the urn holds tulips

I really like the tulips, we bought them at the supermarket.

We stopped in to get milk and beans and walked out with tulips.

Well Mothers Day is coming up and I did have a dead plant to replace.

I thought we should enjoy them now because past experience is that they will probably be dead soon!

On different note, I discovered 'Picnik'.

I know I am probably one of the last to find this fun new program but I enjoyed it and just in case you haven't played with it yet, you can.... just click here.

You can make your photos look better or if you are a really good photographer you probably don't need to make them look better but you can make them look different! Hope you all have a great Wednesday! xx

Our Office

My last post was about My Space and the little spot I created for me to sit and create or blog and visit all my new and wonderful friends!

Today I was going to show your my WH's space but then when I looked at the photos and thought about it a bit, I can't really say it is his space because he shares it with me.

I don't work in his office but most of the shelves, no... make that half of the shelves are filled with my things.

I have scrap booking and card making supplies in the black leather storage boxes.

Scraps of material, paint and paint brushes, pencils, charcoals, stamps, hole punches and stencils.

Boxes of photos, certificates, newspaper clippings and awards, waiting to be put into albums.

I think WH may have two or three magazine boxes for his magazines.

I have a few for mine.....

Before WH decided to start his own business and work from home, this was all part of our study and I had almost finished decorating it when we had to turn it into an office.

I was really into black and white and was really pleased with my labels and storage boxes and files.

I even covered my stool to match and labelled all of the draws.

I made a memo board using black and white ribbon.

A BIG memo board, for all of our bits and pieces, (I cleaned it up before I took the photo, so you could actually see a bit of the ribbon and the cute little pegs I added).

So when WH turned our study into his office and had to add shelves for more storage he was a good sport and agreed to use matching baskets to hide all of the messy cables and discs.

I can't show you his desk because it is never clean enough to take a photo of. Imagine two monitors at a minimum, keyboard, mouse, cables, power boards and usually two hard drives and a laptop or two sitting on top. Then all of the other stuff on the shelves underneath.

I am not complaining because all of the stuff sitting on the desk means WH has lots of work to keep him busy and that is a blessing!

Speaking of blessings we are off to New Zealand at the end of the week for a break, we will be motoring around the South Island and I would appreciate any advice on what we should see. It will be the three of us in a motor home so any tips or recommendations would be great!

My Space

I know that as a mother, I are meant to be giving and generous with my time and of myself but I must admit that I need some space and time for myself!

There I admitted it, I have confessed, I am a much better person if I have some time out!

Am I selfish, am I a mean person? No, I don't think so. I am just human and I need space! I need time to reflect, to plan, to prepare and to renew.

Life can be busy........., I am a wife, a mum, a Banker, a Board Member, a youth leader, a Sunday School teacher, a book keeper, a friend, a daughter, a sister.... just to name a few.

I love being me and I am grateful to have all these roles and to have so many people around me that I connect with in so many different ways!

But I also love to have some space to do what I need to do in order to keep being everything I can be! Sometimes you have to use what you can and make your space, even if your space may be in amongst everything else, it can still work!

This is my space, this is the space I created for me! I can sit here and be amongst the people I love and still have a spot where I can read, relax, create or work. My space!

Prizes, awards and games!

I was so excited to receive my prize in the mail this week! I just had to share it with you all!

I was fortunate enough to win one of the Cosies from Tina's and Anna's Double Lucky- Double Dip giveaway.

Both Tina from Rubies Place and Anna from Lona De Anna are the loveliest gals you will come across, not only are they encouraging with their comments they are also creative and talented if you haven't been to visit their blog please stop by and say 'Hi'.

I must confess that my Cosie was called a 'Takeaway Cosie' but I was so excited to show it off I ingeniously made it fit my mug and I think it works! Please take note of the lovely tag that came with my prize, I can't throw it away so I will have to find a home for it so I can admire Tina's creativity.

I also would like to send the very lovely Samantha from The Nest a big thank you for awarding me with the 'Sunshine Award'. I just love Samantha's blog and her creations are gorgeous. Samantha has just listed some new cushions for sale on her Etsy shop and I love them! Please stop by and have a look at her designs I am just trying to convince WH that I need another cushion cover wish me luck, Mothers Day is just around the corner!

I have covered the prize and the award and now I have the game left! I was tagged by Donatella from Donatella Style, Sonja from Tied with a Bouw and Abby from Two little Dicky Birds to post the sixth photo I ever showed on my blog. So without further ado......

I must admit I disappointed that it isn't a glamorous photo but oh well....... the photo above is from the real estate advertisement for our house. I am pleased to say that it doesn't look like that anymore! Now it looks like....

Oops, it used to look like that but now it looks like this.....

This photo makes me smile because we spent many, many, many hours in our backyard working, ripping up the deck and back filling and then paving. We are really pleased with the results but we know there is still so much left to do.

I will definitely be doing a 'two years later' post to show the progress and hopefully we will be finished by then, but are you actually ever finished? Thank you to Donna, Abby and Sonja for tagging me, if you haven't been to visit them, make sure you do, they are all the sweetest ladies and are amongst my favourite blogs to read.

I am meant to pass on the award and tag some others for the game so I will do that in my next post!

Thank you for stopping by and visiting me! xx

Birthday gifts

I have a group of girlfriends who I love to hang out with and we have known each other since high school. We try and get together every few weeks for afternoon tea and while we chat and laugh our kids have a great time playing together.

I am really blessed to have these friends who have been there for me over the years and I love that I have known their kids since they were babies. I love how we have little traditions that have evolved over time, like getting together at Christmas time and going out for lunch or coffee & cake to 'our' Tea House.

I like to give the children a birthday present each year and I am really trying to come up with something that doesn't cost a lot and is personal and useful.

A year ago (or there abouts) I found a website called http://www.wordle.net/ and I had a great time playing around with it. It is lots of fun and easy to use. You can enter in a list of words and the program randomly arranges them into a work of art. You can customise the colours and the text as well as the direction of the words and lots more! I highly recommend heading over to have a play. I bought some canvas sheets and printed my finished artwork directly onto the canvas then framed it. I created some great personalised art for our lounge room wall this way, for our bedroom and office as well, it was fun!

When a few of the kids birthdays came up I had an idea to create a personalised notebook for them, this is what I started with.

I designed a wordle for each child using their names and a list of words relating to them. Once I was happy with the design I printed it out onto paper and covered the notebooks. I added some embellishments and then covered the book with clear contact to provide some protection.

Personalised gifts that were fun to make!

I am linking up to My House of Giggles Tuesday Talent Show. Head on over and say Hi to Tracey as well as check out some of the amazing talented people who have linked up.

Have a great Tuesday! xx

Photography

Happy Monday, I hope you all had a lovely weekend! I had a busy weekend but a good one. I spent some time with Nicholas and his friends on Friday. We walked the dog, ran around in the park and played board games. In the afternoon I took Nicholas out for coffee and cake in order for us to have some mother/son time then we went shopping for new school supplies.

Saturday was a busy day for me with a full day course/training so I was inside all day, however the training was beneficial and the day was productive.

Sunday was lovely, after church we went to our FOOD Affair and wandered around the 40 odd stalls of local produce and wines. Sampled lots of yummy things and relaxed in the shade, on the picnic rug, finishing my glass of wine and reading the free Country Style magazine that they were handing out! Perfect afternoon!

I also spent some time playing with WH's camera. You see, he is the photographer in our house and he is very talented where as I just point and shoot and I don't know what any of the fancy buttons and dials do!

I received a bunch of flowers from work on Thursday and promptly dismantled the bunch and arranged them in my garage sale bottles/vases. Do you leave your bunch of flowers as they come or do you take them apart and arrange them as you like? I do both. WH usually buys me a bouquet of Oriental Lilies and the florist always arranges them beautifully so I put them straight into a big vase and enjoy them as they are! Once they start to die and I have less and less of them I transfer the remaining blooms into smaller vases/containers so that I can get as much mileage out of them as possible. I really love fresh flowers.

If I get a bunch of mixed flowers I will usually take the bouquet apart and rearrange them in smaller groups.

I was inspired to practice my photography skills after reading Kat's post over at Low Tide High Style. Kat is giving away an autographed copy of Scott Kelby's book - The Digital Photography Book. I am so impressed with Kat's photos and I would love to improve my skills so here's hoping I win. If you are interested head over and check it out. The giveaway closes tonight. You can click on the link here to visit.

In the mean time I will keep practicing and asking WH for his tips! Have a great week! xx

We have a winner!

Sorry for the late post tonight but it has been a long day ...............

.......any way, I am very excited to announce the winner of my Celebration Giveaway. I used a random number generator and it came up with number 30.

Congratulations Kerry!

Kerry's blog is A Tranquil Townhouse and if you haven't been to visit Kerry yet I recommend that you do. Kerry has a wonderful writing style that me smile if not a giggle as I read, ok, sometimes I laugh out loud and then everyone at work wonders what on earth is so funny about the financials I am analysing ; )

I will be sending Kerry a set of six cards featuring original photos from the Southern Highlands.

Thank you to everyone who entered my giveaway and to all of the encouraging comments you have left. It is really lovely to know what you think. xx

Carcoar NSW

Last night I managed to spend some time adding some more original photo cards to our Etsy Shop. The photos for this collection were taken in Carcoar NSW.

Carcoar is a historic village set in a dell by the oak-lined banks of the Belabula River With steep hills surrounding it. Carcoar is a village of untouched 19Th century charm, that feels like a traditional English village.

The Mid Western highway bypass overlooks the village but many people are drawn in to the delightful village which is the third oldest town west of the Blue Mountains. The first daylight bank hold-up in Australia was at the Commercial Bank in 1863.

The town has been classified by the National Trust due to the number of intact 19Th-century buildings which have only been preserved and restored - there has been no reconstruction or replication.

There are some fine Georgian buildings along the main street, St Paul's Anglican Church built in 1848 and designed by Edmund Blacket, the century old court house, the 1849 convict built stables of Stoke House is believed to be the oldest building in the village, and many more. (the above information on Carcoar is from here)

A few years ago I spent some much needed time out at the Shalom House of Prayer in Carcoar. It was before I met my husband Nick (ok, maybe it was more than a few years ago now) and I was a single mum and I needed some time, just me and God to renew and refresh. I loved it and I will always remember it. There was no TV, no mobile phone coverage and no crowds.

I hope you enjoy these new photos, thank you for stopping by and thank you for all of the support and encouragement for our Etsy Shop. I really do appreciate the feedback and love reading your comments.

Don't forget my giveaway closes tonight so if you would like a chance to win a set of gift cards click here for more details. Hope your Tuesday is going well! xx

I am linking up to Tuesday Talent Show at My House of Giggles