from nature

This is: my favourite thing from nature.

How do you select a favourite? I could easily have gone for broccoli, a delicious fruit, a humble plant, an elegant bird, or a graceful old tree... but this time I've chosen pure flamboyance!

Passionfruit flowers:


They're just so crazy.

I included a passionfruit flower that's native to this region in this painting of mine, along with a great quote: "People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us." I think that sums it up for me.

This week's topic from Cloth and Fodder.


I've been a bit quiet here this week. We've had a friend staying with us, so we've spent the week eating and swimming. It's been lovely. :)

on switch

This is: my favourite quote.

A lovely topic by Ashley from Strawberry Kisses this week. I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's, and feeling uplifted ready to start the new week.

My favourite quote at the moment is one I like to pull out when I start feeling meek and lowly. It's by Anais Nin:

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

Not only does it inspire, it also activates me; like the "on" switch to get up off my but and push a bit harder, reach a bit further, and stop worrying for gods sake. I like that it makes me feel like it's my own actions that have an impact on my own life. It's not out of my hands in an etherial way that some quotes tend to lean towards, instead it's saying that it's all up to me. I like that.

And while it's inspiring, it also hints at the fact that there's in-built breaks should you need it. Life shrinking to a comfortable manageable size when you need a rest and don't feel up to it. With the reassurance that it's ready and waiting to get exciting again when you've regained your energy.

It seems to work for me. Hope you like it too.

yikes! a recipe

Hold onto your hats people...

This is: a favourite recipe I'd like to share.

Okay, so while I have confessed to being totally shithouse in the kitchen, let me start by saying this dish is pretty fail safe... even for me!
I ate this at a cafe once, loved it so much I deconstructed the ingredients, and practiced making it over and over until it tasted the same as I remembered from the cafe.

So, this is my Warm Chick Pea Salad
Ingredients:
- 1/4 pumpkin
- 400g tin of chick peas
- Punet of cherry or grape tomatoes
- 1/2 bunch of flat leaf parsley
- Feta cheese (around 6-8 chunks per person)
- Dukkah
- Natural yogurt

Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180C
- Cut a few pumpkin chunks or slices (2-3 per person), lightly oil, and bake it the oven until yummy roasted consistency (usually takes about 30 mins)
- When there's only 5-10 minutes left for your pumpkin to cook start to prepare the salad
- Drain the tin of chick peas, and tip into a saucepan on the stove (medium to low heat). You want to warm them through, not cook them or make it too hot.
- Slice the cherry tomatoes in half and add them to the pot too
- Cut up a good bunch of flat leaf parsley and stir that into the pot next
- Add chunks of feta, stir through gently
- You want to do the rest quite quickly as you don't want the parsley or feta to go too soggy
- Take the pumpkin out of the oven, and serve up onto plates
- Serve the chick pea salad mix up on top of the pumpkin
- Sprinkle a good generous tablespoon or two of dukkah over the salad
- Top with a dollop of natural yogurt (a small tablespoon should do it)
- Eat!

It's quick, easy and healthy. Vegetarian too! Those measurements feed 2 people, and if you need to pad it out more, it goes really well with cous cous. I usually allow for 1/2 tin of chick peas per person.

We ate it last night and I forgot to take a photo. Sorry. It's yummy though, I promise, try it. :)

what i'm surprised that i like

This is: what I'm surprised I like.

Okay so it's been a little while now, but I really was surprised at how much I like being a cat owner. Beforehand I would have called myself a "dog person", I had never had a cat. In the lead up to adopting Tilli I was still asking Mr You the cliched anti-cat questions like; "Will it scratch the furniture?", "Will it know right from wrong?", "Will it walk on the table?", "Will it climb the curtains?"... And I'm ashamed to admit, but to be honest, I just didn't know cats had personalities like dogs do.

So now, as I hug and kiss Tilli 6 billion times a day, talk to her constantly, and dream about her almost every night, it still surprises me how much I love having her around.

Huh. Who knew? :)

favourite films

This is: a list of my favourite films.



I have a terrible memory for films I've seen. But these ones have stuck...
Best film this year: Persepolis
Fave film as a child: Mannequin
Fave film as a teenager: The Fisher King
Other Faves: The Life Aquatic, Amelie, Lost in Translation, When Night Is Falling.

Thanks to Hokey for this week's great topic.

reading backlog

This is: my current reading material.

Reading isn't my strong point. I enjoy it, I just don't do a whole lot of it (on paper that is...blogs are a whole other story). I was almost too ashamed to post this, I was pretty sure I posted "what I am reading" about 6 months ago, which most "tellingly", is the book I'm STILL reading. Oh dear.

Don't blame the book. It's great. It's not YOU book, it's ME.

in the kitchen

This is: my favourite kitchen tool.

I have a confession to make; the kitchen and I do not see eye to eye. We fight. Alot. Lets just say we have a longstanding mutual dislike for each other.

So while I don't indulge in cool and nifty kitchen tools, there are a couple of things I can't seem to get by without...



Ice bricks...

...To numb my regular kitchen burns (3 last week alone). At least my standby band-aids have been able to take a back seat in recent years, as there' much less of the cutting than there used to be. Still there is the burning. I told you we don't get on. And I'm not kidding.

I DO love this voluptuous little vixen though:



She stands up for me when things in the kitchen get vicious.

(She's a veggie peeler. I have others like her; an icecream scoop, a potato brush, salad servers. But she's the only one with a bellybutton and the moxie to stick up for me).

show off time

Katie from May the Cloth be with You has chosen the This Is topic this week, and for me it's super well timed as I have some new treasures I'm dying to show off!

This is: show off time.

I went right ahead and spoilt myself yesterday, check out my new loot!!!!


That's a handmade and painted mug, a tin mirror (to go above our bed), and a tiny turtle, who's shell lifts off so you can keep your rings inside him.

These goodies are all handmade in Mexico. While the Americans among you this may not seem so amazing, for us Australians let me tell you it IS. Mexico to me is so far off, and so exotic, and a complete fantasy. I would LOVE to go there one day. Finding real Mexican things here is not at all common, and in fact I have a friend from San Francisco who outright refuses to eat Mexican food here because he says it's far from how it's suppose to be.

I'm not sure if all this contributes to my fondness for all that is Mexican, but either way, when I stumbled into a tiny shop filled with things collected by the owner from overseas (mainly central america and Haiti) I was smitten. I had to go have a coffee and freshly baked scones over the road while I decided how I was going to spend my pocket-money. I would have bought 90% of the stuff in that shop if I could have, but what I came away with makes me very happy.

So where did I find all this stuff you ask? Well imagine a bustling marketplace in Mexico, THEN imagine the exact opposite of that...



This is where I found it. A very tiny, very country, riverside village (on the way back from visiting Mr You's brand new baby nephew in hospital), with a big old pub, a cafe, an art gallery, an antique shop and my new favourite place "THE shop". Now all I have to do is keep myself away before I adopt a poker-machine like addiction to the colours in that little shop and send myself well and truly broke. (I suspect I paid a hell of a lot more than I would have if I was actually in a bustling marketplace in Mexico, ahhh nevermind).



Kat Coyle sometimes reveals lovely Mexican things from her house, and when she shares pics of here Mum's house I very nearly froth at the mouth!

when I grow up

This is: what I want to be when I grow up.

First it was a medieval princess (with the tall cone hat of course),
Then it was a prima ballerina (but that was going to take too long),
My Boy George stage had me dying to be a make-up artist,
Then all I wanted for years and years was to be a hairdresser,
Eventually I decided I wanted to live in a mountain cottage and make paintings for the rest of my days...

This was all before I had my first job.

I'm not sure what I do now... or what I want to be next, I might start the cycle all over again...
Medieval is coming back in I hear ;)
(kidding)

this is a give-away

This is: what I do with a spare 10 minutes.

Oh Lordy how I have been pining for a spare 10 minutes this week! The mums among you out there will want to slap me till I'm all sorts of red when I say this, but I never knew how much time it takes when you're looking after someone. Since Mr You smashed his elbow this time last week, we've had a week of back and forth from the hospital, x-rays, catscans, hours and hours of waiting, surgery, recovery, and now all the homecare. His surgery didn't go to plan; I won't go into all the details, but a 1hr surgery turned into 5hrs all up. But he's safely back at home now, and all is well and slowly on the mend. He's still really dozy, and fragile, and being his right arm, he needs help with almost everything. I also feel compelled to keep the house as sterile as possible, so I've been doing more chores than I thought I was capable of. This elusive notion of a "spare 10 minutes" has become quite mythical this week.

In normal life, a spare 10 minutes would buy me a quiet cup of tea while flipping through the local paper, or catching up on news from my favourite fellow bloggers.

This week however, I've been dying to get a spare 10 minutes just so I could get to the computer to announce my give-away!

So here it is:


Paper Anniversary Give-Away

To celebrate our first year in our new town, I wanted to tip my hat a little to how much this new environment has inspired and fulfilled me. I developed a little set of paper tags, (that I've had in my mind for years now), for the August Pikapackage, and I've kept 5 sets for this give-away.

I won't tell too much about the cards themselves just yet, other than to say they're very small, there's 5 in each set, you give them away, they're require you to notice the beauty around you, and then reward it. They are a type of encouragement card and random act of kindness all rolled into one.

So, tell me what inspires you about the suburb/town where you live, what makes you feel good about being there.

All comments on this post will be included in a random draw, and I'll announce the 5 winners on Friday 19th Sept (this Friday).

my weekend

This is: how I like to spend my weekend.



This was my weekend. How I like to spend my weekend is probably a bit different... although we did have a nice weekend... add some friends, falafel, and a band and I'd be set! Actually this time next week we'll be in Sydney and will have just spent a weekend with good friends, so next weekend will be how I like to spend weekends :)

Hope yours was lovely.

flannel flowers in progress

This is: a work in progress.



This is my final painting (in various stages of progress) for the body of work I'll be sending to the exhibition at artstream gallery for September/October. I hope to finish painting this one by tonight. Next week is my final stretch before I ship all these works off to the grand old U.S. of A on Friday.

In the next few days I'll be documenting and mounting all of them, before wrapping them up with as many meters of bubble wrap that I can get my hands on, and packing them inside a giant flat screen TV box I picked up (sans giant TV) at a local electrical store... nice and sturdy. Then I'll be holding my breath and keeping my eyes shut tight until it all arrives safely in Rochester.

It's been a very busy couple of months working on this collection of paintings - the whole process has been a work in progress in itself. If I get all the fabric pieces finished next week, I will be sending 19 to 20 works in total. The best part has been feeling like a "real artist" drawing and painting every day, and working at a pace where I can't over-think things. Just go. Just do. It's been fun watching how one work leads to something new in the next. The most challenging part has just been the endurance it's taken. Knowing if I was going to get it all done I couldn't stop. Finishing one piece and having to start on the next one right away, without inbetween down-time. That was hard, especially in this last week.

But right now I'm on the home stretch and I'm so excited! I can't wait for the show to open! (I'm almost tempted to book a last minute flight to America just so I can be there!)

The show opens on the 5th September, but I'll mention it again when the time arrives, and I'll show the "sneak-peeks" in their entirety too. eeeeeeeep. I'm. So. Excited.


Thanks to Debbie from Kept in a Jar, for this week's topic.

trade secrets

This is: my trade secret.

Well it appears my trade secret is to do everything a day late these days... :) (not intentionally of course).

Gosh, I really don't think I have any trade secrets... here's a few facts:
1. I use a mechanical pencil to draw my illos. I say mechanical pencil, but it's actually a pacer pencil beloved since the late 80's.
2. I use watercolour paints from a tube, and then leave them to dry on my pallets so I can add water and recreate the same colours easily again later on.
3. I never stretch my watercolour paper before painting on it. I'm way too impatient. I spray the back of the paper with a fine mist of water after I've finished the painting, and then press in between layers of a bedsheet, under a very heavy board for 4 days. It works a treat! (Note this only works on good quality cotton-rag paper).

Oh, and a really great tip I picked up off someone else's blog a while back (sorry I can't remember who's tip it originally was), is to use the slim slivers of nearly used up soap bars as tailor's chalk. It gives super sharp lines, slides along a ruler beautifully, washes out, and makes your fabric smell lovely! Try it! I know you'll like it ;)
_ _ _ _ _


Sorry for the late, un-pretty post. I've had a bad day which required neurofen early on, climaxed with a full cup of tea having an intimate meeting with my computer keyboard, followed by all sorts of malfunction and hurried replacements to attempt to get all my work done in time. Then there was a mega head-bang on the freezer door (not the Metallica kind), followed by a lump, and more pills, a phone call from my mum to tell me she's decided not to come and visit after all, and tears of stress at how much stuff I have to get done in the little time that the next two weeks holds. Phew.

Tomorrow will be SO much better. Right?

this is what I'm learning

For the This is meme this week we were asked to choose our own topics. So I chose to show what I'm attempting to learn... violin/fiddle. (I've mentioned it briefly before).

Anyway, I still haven't had any lessons, I've been going by online video demonstrations, and a book and CD. Having NEVER been anywhere near music before, I'm having to also teach myself to read sheet music too. It's all a bit of an uphill battle still, but I've gotten over the nasty-ouchy part of building up callouses on the tips of my fingers, so now it's just practice practice practice. And honestly a few lessons pretty soon wouldn't go astray.

I've been so busy painting lately that I haven't been playing as much, plus I'm getting bored with Mary Had a Little Lamb. The ultimate goal is to be able to play something like this. But in the meantime, with a bit of help from Mr You, I’ve almost nailed playing the melody line that follows Bjork’s opening line “I live by the ocean” from The Anchor Song (this is really cute footage of the song accompanied by a super-serious organ player. :D We recently saw concert footage of it done by strings and it was pretty). But that’s all I can do so far. Mind you it's only been 2 months... I'm getting there slowly...

I love learning new things, but usually it's sewing something new, or making picture frames or something. This is by far the biggest challenge I've undertaken so far. Hopefully I'll be able to play a good ole foot stompin hoe down by my 40th birthday :D ......that's 8 years away, so I've still got time.


What's something new that you've learnt recently, or are learning right now?
Do tell! :)

happy making

This is: what makes me happy.

I'm late this week. I know. It's such a big question though isn't it? Like one of those universal truths.

I was holding off because I wanted to take a walk on the headland to get some beautiful photo's of the cyan mercury ocean... I've been feeling happy there... But sadly I haven't had time this week, so I'm going to keep it broad...

What makes me happy: good friends, colour, watching the ocean, feeling a sense of place, creativity in unexpected places, loved ones, fluffy loved ones, feeling healthy, elements of nature that amaze me, shrills of joy from children, cake, hot tea, beautiful art, playfulness, good music, learning new things, looking forward to all the things still to come in life, someone else doing the vacuuming for me, going to new places and comfy socks.


Thanks to One Little Acorn for this week's uplifting topic :D

brain scramble

This is: what scrambles my brain when I try to understand it.

I see people on the train wiz through these. Science claims it exercises your brain to keep your mind fit and active. Friends declare their love for it. And I have tried it... over and over again.

Do you think I've ever finished one? NO! I really want to, but no matter how I go about it I always get 75% of the way through before I realise I've stuffed it. I would love to be able to do this, but each time I come away with a well scrambled brain, feeling utterly inadequate.

I want to love it. I want it to love me back. But as it stands, I HATE SUDOKU!


Thanks to Flightless Boyds for the choice of topics this week... (even if it has left me with feelings of dumbness and defeat)

pinky's bum

This is:my most treasured childhood possession.

I have two comfort items I got as an infant that I still treasure, (they were actually both gifts from when I was first born). One is a yellow satin edged baby blanket, and one is a pink teddy. I won't call him a bear because no-one has ever been able to identify his species. Some say panda, some say pig, some say crazed bear. In any case his name is Pinky. He's shy. He's had a rough life and more surgery procedures than anyone I know, and it shows. But he and I are tight.

Mr You wanted me to show you his face, "C'mon, you've gotta let them see that thing!"
And I admit it's a sight to be seen; a face only a mother could love... So I'll spare you... and my own soft dirty-pink matted heart.

Thanks to Danielle from Teacups on Treetops for this beautiful topic.

op shop finds

This is: my best op shop find.

Apart from my recent finds; yellow skirt and citrus blanket, I have heaps of op shops finds in my house. I'd say 80% of my trinkets have been discovered at op shops or junk markets. My most treasured one mind you would have to be this amazing mirror. I've had it for years now. I don't know what it is about it that captures me so much, but I adore it.

Keeping it short and sweet this week because I'm late, and I have SOOO much money-earning-work to do this week... I've procrastinated enough.

Thanks to Lino Forest for a great 'this is' theme.

what I try to pass off as style

This is: my most favourite outfit that expresses my individual style.

This week's "this is" theme by " kitty, frightened me. A lot! Which is why I'm late...

Deep breath. Let's see... Well the fact of the matter is that even though I've always loved clothes, the truth is that if you were to pop-in unannounced for a cup of tea, you'd most likely find me like this...
In my pyjamas, or hiding under the bed trying NOT to be caught wearing this! (I work at home - which by my rules means no more alarm clocks or getting dressed until the afternoon). I must admit, that's one of the benefits of having moved a long way away from anyone we know; the danger of pop-ins whilst I'm wearing my PJ's at 2pm has decreased significantly.

Alright I'm not like this aaallll day, mostly I do manage to pull on some jeans. But if you were to give me a bit more notice and invite me out for coffee or lunch or something, at the moment I'd probably turn up looking like this...



Right now it's Winter and I'm loving:
- my new pleated yellow skirt I got for $7 at the Op Shop recently (it still had it's original store tags on it from Japan), and it fits me perfectly,
- my blue and white pin-striped jacket,
- & white tights.

my creative space

This is: the space in which I create.

Although it's rather pokey, I'm so happy to say that in this house I do have a creative space. In our last house I did what most of us do; commandeer the dining table. But in this house I have a whole room of my own. Like I said it's pretty small, so it's by no means grand or even ideal, but it's a start, and it really really helps to be able to have a space you can leave piles of organised chaos and not feel guilty.

Some days I call it my office, some days I call it my studio, and the rest of the time it's called the front room... it all depends what's going on in there at the time. My huge antique wardrobe houses mountains of fabric, craft and art supplies, and all my completed artworks. It's fantastic for it to be so big, hold so much stuff, and keep everything out of the way in the one place.

The rest of the room is taken up with a big table in front of the window... somewhere under the piles of "in progress" projects. And I do my computer work in my office part of the room, aka inside the cupboard! Seriously! I made a desk to fit inside the built-in cupboard, decorated, strung up some fairy lights, and now I have an office space that I can close away when I am sick of the computer, or just need to block away the distraction of the internet. It may seem a bit strange, but it means I can easily convert the room from work mode to art mode. It works quite well really.

So it's all squeezed into one small room. The photo's make it look bigger, but it's not. I still appreciate having it though.

(p.s. yes, that's me lurking in the shadows in that photo. Bet you thought you'd never see the day when I posted a pic of myself on this blog eh?)