Side By Side Week 118 - Sparkler Fun

Happy New Year, we said goodbye to 2011 and hello to 2012 in the mountains which was fantastic. Despite having a very quiet night I still managed to get the sparklers out to accompany glass of fizz. Here's to an awesome 2012. 

Check out my photos Side by Side with my buddy Ross at the side by side blog

A Little Letter for Little Letters.

One of my lovely Christmas gifts from my Mum was a very cute and very apt necklace from the fantastic Victoria Mason. I spotted this a while ago, I think at the Melbourne Finders Keepers market in Melbourne last year. I added it to my Christmas wishlist (essentially my grown up Santa List) and my wish came true! I was thrilled to open up the tiny little package and find a piece of tiny jewellery sculpture perfection. So cute, there is even a stamp on the other side of the pendant. Love it. Thank you Mum!

My Mum also mentioned that Victoria was great and her communication made it super easy for her to buy from the UK and get it sent to me here in Oz. She even popped in a little hand written note to say who it was from. I mention this, because we had a not so happy experience with another Melbourne jeweller who will remain nameless last year. This was the exact opposite, I I hope to buy again soon. So thank you Victoria.
Check out her website here and her blog here.

Happy New Year - 2012!!!

This year we decided to get away from things in Melbourne and clear our heads of Christmas fuzz and make a trip to the mountains to celebrate the arrival of the New Year  We made our way up to Falls Creek in North East Victoria, to our new fave summer getaway.

During the Winter months, we travel up to Falls regularly on the weekends to indulge in our favourite pass time of snowboarding. However, last year we discovered what the mountains have to offer in Summer and we are now almost as hooked on Summer as we are of Winter. We stayed at the rather lovely Quay West Resort & Spa which is in a fabulous location and rather lux. 

Our room had the most wonderful view (see above) which could be viewed from our balcony spa - I mean come on does it get better than this. 

What is there to do up there if you can't ski? Well, quite a bit. One of the main chair lifts runs on selected days for just sightseeing if you want to stay mellow and relax. Alternatively, from the top you can take one the numerous walking trails and explore the area on foot, or get a bit more extreme and navigate your way down the hill on a mountain bike. We went the extreme route and bashed our way down the hills on our bikes - although I was a little more nervous of 'breaking' myself so took things a little slower. We tried to go kayaking on the Rocky Valley lake but sadly it wasn't running and we missed out. Had we been interested there are a heap of other things we could have done, fishing, horse riding  but we decided to relax and enjoy the surroundings.

Welcome 2012...I think it's going to be a good one. Best wishes everyone for a happy a healthy year. 

All images by Leslie Clark (Little Letters)

Side By Side Week 117 - If I look cute, I won't get in trouble!

Little Missy 'found' a Christmas tree bauble and was enjoying some frantic fun with it. I appeared in the living room to investigate what the noise was and she dropped and rolled into the "if I act cute, I won't get in trouble" pose! Too funny, although glass baubles do not mix with wooden floors and cat entertainment! 

Check out my photos Side by Side with my buddy Ross at the side by side blog

Side By Side Week 116 - Joyeux Noel

As part of my rustic and homemade theme I made these little tags for the wall. I also decided to go a little European with the lovely french version of Merry Christmas. Joyeux Noel everybody! Check out more here. 

Check out my photos Side by Side with my buddy Ross at the side by side blog

I think Mr. Postman played football with my parcel!

My package from the lovely package exchange was the last in a frenzy of parcels from friends and family from all over before Christmas. This was The parcel was sitting at my front door and I picked it up with great excitement as I knew I was allowed to open this one before the 25th. When I picked it up I could hear some bells inside which were jingling as I walked inside. Hang on a moment....I can hear the bells tinkling but I can hear something else, I think its broken glass not so festive.

 Sadly, I opened up my package and the jar which Carmen had used for part of the packaging had shattered in the box. All was not lots I managed to salvage everything which she sent and it was ok. These things happen and I just felt bad for poor Carmen as she was nervous about sending her package (as I was). 

Anyway, she sent me some lovely handmade goodies, some Christmas tree decorations, crochet coasters, some cute bells (the ones that were jingling) and a one of her wonderful hand screen printed tea towels which I read about on her blog the other week. As a lover of screen printing myself this was perfect. She had printed using my fave coral colour and the subject was fab vending machines from Japan. Couldn't be better as I too was fascinated by them when I visited Japan last year. Thank you so much Carmen, I really do appreciate all your handmade goodies. 

The exchange was such a cool thing to do, I loved it. Plus I think I have found a new blogger friend who shares my interests. Just a shame she is in Sydney and I am in Melbourne. I hope we will keep in touch and who knows we can maybe try the exchange next year - without any misshaps! ;-) 

Neon and neutral package exchange

I wrote a few weeks ago about a package exchange I had signed up for via the Oh Hello Friend Blog. 

I had great plans and I think I actually managed to pull off my plans/ideas. For a while I have been seeing neon with neutrals and I love the look. I think Leslie Shewring showcased the neon/neutral look the best in her Tokyo and Neon post in August this year.

Photo: A Creative Mint

I found some great neon pink ribbon at Spotlight which was just what I was after - super vibrant and awesome. I decided I would use it with some brown kraft paper but it just wasn't quite enough, looked a little plain. After some messing around and trial and error I decided I wanted to add some interest to the paper. As a lover of all kinds of printing techniques, I decided I would carve out a snowflake motif and use that to stamp the kraft paper. It worked really well and just the pop that it needed.

 

I didn't manage to get a very good photo as it was late and there was no natural light. Still you get the idea. 

Carmen my swap buddy took a MUCH better photo, check out her super lovely post about my package and gifts.All packaged up inside was a cool print from Dawn Tan, some tags from super ace new packaging company Blank (I bought a tonne of stuff from them at the Melbourne Design Market earlier this month). Oh and also a little pack of postcards from the awesome Yellow Owl Workshop which I got from Notemaker a while ago. 

All in all my package was a hit Carmen LOVED it and I loved putting it together. I look forward to doing another one soon.