Monday Catchup

I am back home and back at work : ( It is so hard to get back to reality after spending time away relaxing but one good thing is I can catch up with all of my favourite bloggers and enjoy some really beautiful images and reading some very inspiring posts!

I have also found these wonderful giveaways from some really generous and lovely people!

Home and Harmony The beautiful Rie at Home and Harmony is having her first giveaway and the lucky winner will get to choose between two styles of glassware. To find out more about Rie's giveaway at Home and Harmony click here Low Tide High Style

Lovely Kat from Low Tide High Style is hosting a giveaway and up for grabs are these gorgeous sterling silver and blue pottery shard earrings. Tara designs and makes her own jewellery and you can visit her site Scarborough Shells by clicking here

To find out more about Kat's giveaway visit her at Low Tide High Style here.

My House of Giggles

The adorable Tracey from My House of Giggles is having a fabulous giveaway and offering her lucky readers the opportunity to win Atlanta Bartlett's 'At home with White'.

For more details on how to win this lovely book visit Tracey at My House of Giggles here.

I had a great time in Melbourne but unfortunately I did not take many photos as we forgot to take the camera most of the time. I will check what photos I have and see if they are worth sharing. In the mean time don't forget to enter my celebration giveaway here!

Hope you are all having a wonderful Monday! xx

Celebrating with a Giveaway

Just a quick 'Hello' from Melbourne. I am having a wonderful time. My WH is attending training and I am having some 'me' time throughout the days and we are both enjoying having some 'us' time in the evenings. It is great! I am relaxing, indulging and shopping!

I have just finished uploading our first lot of gift cards to our Etsy shop. We planned to get our Etsy shop started months ago but with Nick starting his own business, our studies and just life have kept us a bit busier than we expected. But with my few quiet days here I thought I would finally make a start and to celebrate I thought I would have another giveaway.

I am offering one set of six gift cards (just like the set I included in my last giveaway that the lovely Tina won) to one wonderful reader!

These are the six images that are on each of the gift cards. I will let the winner choose whether they would like one of each image, six of the same or any combination of the six different choices.

How to enter:

1. Leave a comment on this post
2. Become a follower and leave another comment letting me know that you are a follower
3. Blog about my giveaway or list it in your sidebar and leave me a comment letting me know that you have done so for another chance!

That is three chances to win this set of six cards featuring original photos. The competition closes Tuesday 13th April 2010 AEST. I will announce the winner on Wednesday the 14th April 2010.

To see more about these cards you can visit our Etsy store here.

Good luck in this competition and I would really love to hear what you think of the cards.

I am looking forward to catching up with everyone when I get back home. I wish you all a wonderful weekend! xx

100 posts & give away winner

It is finally here, my 100th post! I am not sure if anyone noticed that I even posted twice one day last week in a bid to get to 100 posts in time for the announcement of the winner of my first giveaway.

The winner will receive some wall stickers similar to the ones I used here......

some paper like the paper I used to cover these books

and a set of six gift cards with envelopes, each card has a different image from the Southern Highlands NSW, Australia.

I had my W.H help me with randomly drawing the winner from all of the comments and my followers. Congratulations to the lovely Tina from Rubies Place. Tina is a beautiful blogger who always leaves lovely comments and definitely brightens my day! If you haven't had the opportunity to meet Tina please go over and visit her here.

A really BIG thank you to everyone for entering and all of your lovely comments! I am really enjoying meeting you all and developing some really great friendships!

I am off to Melbourne for the rest of the week with my WH. Hopefully I will be able to find some great inspiration to share while I am away! xx

Happy Easter

I would like you wish you all a Happy Easter. We will be celebrating tomorrow with family and friends. Whatever way you spend the day tomorrow I pray that you have a lovely time.

From the movie Passion of the Christ

Just a reminder that my very first giveaway finishes tomorrow night, Sunday 4th April 2010, 8pm AEST. You can find the details here. I will announce the winner on Monday! Thank you again for stopping by and encouraging me with all of your lovely comments and visits! xx

Twice Lovely Giveaway

The wonderful ladies at Twice Lovely are having their very first giveaway to celebrate 100 followers. One lucky, lucky winner will receive a custom 8 x 10 water color painting made from the photograph of your choice! Can you believe it?!? Cara has just opened an Etsy Shop, called Aqua Babe Paintings, where she takes custom orders to transform your favorite photographs into original works of water-colored art! Here’s an example of what she does (these are her cherubish girly girls): Go on over and check out this great blog.

Autumn

As I was driving to work today I noticed that the trees are changing colour and I was reminded of how beautiful Autumn can be and what a wonderful creator we have, to have given us so much beauty in the world to enjoy!

I found some of my favourite Autumn photos.

This one was taken in April 2005 when Nicholas was only 5. That seems like such a long time ago. We had taken his bike (it used to fit in the back of the car) and drove to our soccer field where we have a path running alongside. The path was a great place for Nicholas to practice riding his bike without training wheels.

These next few photos were taken in our City's park in the centre of town. It is a beautiful park all year round. In summer the big trees provide lots of shade and it is always nice and cool in the park. In Autumn the park provides lots of fun for the young kids who love to play in the leaves!

We had these photos taken last year just before Mothers day to use as gifts for our mothers and Grandmothers.

This last photo is taken at the same time but we are in my favourite city block. I just love this block on this street because of the trees and the street's width. It is so close to the CBD and has lovely houses.

I hope you all enjoyed our colours of Autumn. What is your favourite season? I enjoy all of them for different reasons but I do not really like the cold so I find winter seems to drag on the longest!

Easter Gifts

Well I finally started working on our Easter gifts last night. I am purposefully trying to reduce the amount of chocolate that we get and give as I am one of five girls and WH is one of four children and we all get together at some stage over the Holidays and exchange gifts. This generally results in enough chocolate to last us through to Christmas (or close enough). The last couple of years I have tried to make my gifts smaller but more meaningful by making a part of the gift. This year I found a great template posted by Maddie at Li'l Magoolie, if you haven't ever visited I highly recommend it. Maddie has a really fun blog with great ideas. Anyway her gift to us was a down loadable template for these great baskets and I decided to take advantage of her generosity and use her template (with slight modifications) and get started on our Easter gifts for this year.

My supplies:

Scrapbook paper

Ribbon

Chocolate for the gifts and a little for me!

(it was a long day yesterday and I couldn't keep going last night without some help)

Scissors, tags, texta, ruler This is what the paper looks like after cutting the template out.

I managed to save some chocolate for gifting to others

Fold up the sides to create a square pyramid

Tie with a ribbon and add a gift tag. Voila! Easter gifts sorted

(OK I am less than half done but I will finish the rest tonight! Gifts, not chocolate!)

Hopefully the recipients will like them! I can vouch for the chocolate eggs, they're good!

Cocoa Chu Chu giveaway

I have discovered a lovely blog called Sweet as Candy. The gorgeous Frederica is having this lovely giveaway.... The creator of this gorgeous necklace is Fai from the online shop Cocoa Chu Chu. If you would like a chance to win this beautiful piece pop on over and visit Frederica at Sweet as Candy here. If you love this creation as much as I do go and check out Fai's shop here.

Easter decorating

As I have been visiting everyone's lovely blogs I have been so inspired by the fantastic decorating that is going on in preparation for Easter. I have definitely noticed that decorating for the holidays is not as big here in Australia for any celebrations other than Christmas!

As a child we decorated hard boiled eggs then it was part of Sunday morning breakfast to eat our decorated eggs. We would use food colouring and wax to create patterns.

When Nicholas was a toddler he hated getting messy hands so he used a paint brush to paint the food colouring onto his eggs and then together we would create gifts for our family including personalised baskets or bags to hold an assortment of chocolate goodies!

We haven't decorated our eggs yet this year but I found some great inspiration at the Better Homes and Gardens website. These are a few of my favourites.

How do you decorate for Easter? Do you have any special family traditions?

All images via BHG.com.au

Pretty Paper

I thought I would share with you all what I used my pretty paper for... the pretty paper I bought from this lovely shop in the Southern Highlands, One day last week I had to get new tyres (all 4) on my car so while I was waiting for them (in my lunch break) I went and looked for some interesting books that didn't have particularly nice covers but would make for an interesting coffee table/browse book. I found these at our local Salvation Army Store, which happens to be a block away from the tyre place. I used my pretty paper and my hot glue gun to cover the books,

they turned out like this.

For your chance to win some of this pretty paper stop here

xx