This Is… My Favourite Thing From Nature

This was an easy one for me! I am very grateful to be named after a plant that I actually like :) I love Fern leaves in all their various forms, and can’t go past a fabric shop without having a check to see if they have any fern leaf fabric to add to my collection, I have fern jewellery (which unfortunately rarely sees the light of day now due to my son being part magpie!) and even had ferns in my wedding bouquet.

I went through all of my photos trying to find a fern picture, I knew that any I had were still trapped on my broken laptop, but thought that my Mum was sure to have some hidden in her holiday snaps from New Zealand… apparently not! just under eight hundred photos from a month in the land of the silver fern and she managed to not get a single picture of one of them! I instead turned to flickr and found this beautiful picture of a sprouting frond, I love the curls and shapes formed here.

More “This is” at Three Buttons and a big thank you to Angela for all the work she’s done hosting :D

(Photo credit & thanks to Jaime Walsh)

November 19, 2008. Tags: , , , , . Interwebz. No Comments.

Save A Life Today

I could never imagine one of the boys having a fatal illness, and knowing that any given day could be their last, unfortunately that is what my friend Lisa is going through as her daughter searches for a kidney donor, made even more difficult by slow hospitals and redtape and due to the fact that as she’s received a previous organ transplant when she was younger making it even harder to find a matching donor. Reading her story over the past year or so has brought tears to my eyes on several occasions, and I would really like to see Lisa, her daughter and their family find a happy ending to it all.

If you are in the states please read Lisa’s post and think about taking the steps to get tested and see if you’re one of the few people that may be a match for Marielle. Not only could you save a young girl’s life, but you could pick up some serious karma points, this is like extreme pay it forward :) It’s not often that I use my blog as a soapbox, but I know if one of my children was in this situation I would want it published absolutely everywhere, just in case that one person to have the right match does find it, puts their name forward and in turn saves a child’s life. This is one place where the internet is an amazing tool.

November 13, 2008. Tags: , , , , . Interwebz. 3 Comments.

This Is… My Favourite Quote

Unpicking

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. - Scott Adams

I am self taught in all of my creative pursuits and although it took me a few years to get there, this is now the rule that I create by. It takes more unpicking, more fresh sheets of paper and more frogged pieces of crochet than doing everything perfectly first time would, but when something fab arrives by pure mistake, it makes all of that extra effort worth it :)

More “This is” at Three Buttons.

Helicopters have been buzzing around the house for about ten minutes now, Dan and I walked out to see what was going on and one of them flew by only a few foot above the roof. There’s been a fairly big accident about a hundred yards down the road, interestingly enough, the first one that I’ve seen since we moved in here, fairly impressive considering we live on a main road with six lanes of traffic outside our front door. There’s a mass migration of residents making their way down the road to go and gawk at what’s going on, desperately hoping to see some gore, the human species is very odd.

ETA: The crash made the news, apparently it was started by a “race brawl” at the local maccas that led to a police chase both passengers survived, but not much left of the car, article here.

November 10, 2008. Tags: , , , . General, Interwebz. 1 Comment.

Meme Time!

I have to answer 6 questions about myself. At the end of the post, I then tag 6 people and post their names, then go to their blogs and leave them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read my blog. Then, I must let the person who tagged me know when I’ve posted my answers.

6 Places I Have Lived

There’s a similar question to this on the immigration forms, “List every address you have lived at in the last ten years”… I had to add another sheet of paper to the form so I could complete my list!

  • Sydney, 2004-Present, I’ve lived in two suburbs in the west, a daggy little flat and our current villa.
  • Warminster, Wiltshire, UK, 2002-2004, I moved in with my Dad and lived with him whilst I attended college.
  • Glastonbury, Somerset, UK, 1999-2002, I went to my second high school here, everyone over here thinks that it’s awesome that I used to live in Glastonbury, but I challenge all of them to go and see if they can stick it for more than a week, it’s a nice place to visit, but you shouldn’t stick around. My mum and I lived in three houses/flats here, including one not so lovingly referred to as “The Shed”.
  • Wells, Somerset, UK, This was just for six months, but we lived in a really big old place that had been refurbished and split into townhouses. It looked sooo cool from the outside.
  • Bristol, UK, 1997-1999, We lived in a house and a flat during the time we were in Brizzle, and had our car either stolen or vandalised more times than I can count. Weirdly enough I still really like Bristol though.
  • Cardiff, just for six months, I went to a school with 60 students, 6 people were in my year, 12 people in my class (it was year five and six combined). On my first day I was told off for failing a test on Welsh History, and the kids would speak Welsh to each other to exclude me. I really hated living there.

What was I doing 10 years ago?

I would have been just about to turn 12, about to go into my second year of my scholarship at a grammar school (which I was politely asked to leave a year later - apparently if you have a scholaship there are all these crazy rules about actually doing homework and paying attention in class!). My Dad would have just bought his restuarant so I would have been excited about him being only half an hour away as opposed to three hours. I would have just started “going out” with a boy called Richard Harrison, we got together before the summer holidays and met up once with a group of friends to go to the cinema to see Deep Impact, we held hands and it was all very exciting, by the time school started back in September I’d decided that I was more into a guy called Adam and so got my best friend to dump Richard for me. We spoke a couple of months ago, he and his current girlfriend were travelling around Australia and wanted to know if I wanted to get together for a coffee, we got to chatting about it all and I discovered that Rich is still holding this against me!

5 Things on My To-Do List Today

  1. Work more on craftblog, I’m going to email a few prospective contributors and advertisers today, as well as getting more content on there.
  2. Do the washing up before the life forms growing on it develop the knowledge to create fire and weapons and rise up to attack me.
  3. I was going to walk around the corner and treat Declan to fish and chips for lunch, but Dan swiped the tenner that was sitting on the desk that I had allocated for it, so that idea is out the window.
  4. Spend a great deal of time with the boy, he’s been neglected over the past few days as I’ve been working so hard - the “No TV during the day” rule has been thrown out of the window recently as I’ve been relying on the digital mummy to amuse him. I need to make up for that today. We’ll probably do some painting and he’s finally got into sitting still so I can read to him so we’ll probably get through a few books as well.
  5. Put some laundry on the line and put the dry stuff away.

God, my days are boring :?

Snacks I like to eat

  • KFC is a snack, right?
  • Coleslaw sandwiches, but it has to be my own home made coleslaw so I don’t get these very often.
  • Boost bars - my food for this pregnancy has been Boost Bars, anything sweet will do, but Boost Bars totally hit the spot for me, very weird considering that with Declan all I wanted was lemons and vinegar.
  • I’m really struggling with this, I just don’t snack or eat between meals at all.
  • Neenish tarts - The Aldi brand Neenish tarts are $2.50 for 4 and they are sooooo yummy.

If I was a billionaire

  • I would buy some land and design a house, I’ve had enough of living in houses that just don’t work for me and having to put up with kitchens designed by someone who has obviously never even boiled a kettle, let alone actually cooked for a family.
  • I would move all my family out to Australia and set them all up, they don’t get a free ride, but I’d buy them all houses and then charge them minimal rent, that’s fair, right? :D
  • I’d buy Dan an Aston Martin, and a Browns season pass, and weekly flights to Cleveland.
  • I would put into action all of the amazing business ideas I have, without being worried about one of them failing or putting my money into something that isn’t going to work out. Having the money would also allow me to do it properly instead of cutting corners, like they say, “the first million is always the hardest”. I shall put Richard Branson to shame.
  • And finally, I’ll be completely honest and say I’d probably have more kids, if we had the money to house and feed them comfortably, as well as put them all through private school and university if they want to, then there’s no way I’d be stopping at two.

6 Bloggers to go next:

  1. Jenni
  2. Dan (no link, because don’t forget, it’s top secret!)
  3. Vanessa
  4. Tracie
  5. Leigh
  6. Rhys

And finally, because I’m easily amused, Bobba Fett meets Flashdance. Best stop motion clip EVAR.

July 7, 2008. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . General, Interwebz. 5 Comments.

AFW Meet Up

Today was the AFW meet up, where I got to eat much chocolate (probably too much) and have some superb conversation with some lovely ladies, Riayn, Christie, Leigh and Veronica. We got to talk blogging, geekery and just about everything else under the sun, and I have to say, it was a wonderful change to have a conversation that didn’t involve discussing Sesame Street or drool.

AFW Meet Up

Leigh and I shared a chocolate, banana, marshmallow and pecan pizza, and I was reminded just how much I love blogging, the plate was barely set down on the table before EVERYONE had pulled out a camera to photograph the crazy chocolate pizza, bloggers have no shame in looking moderately insane for a good photo and something to write about. It was so tasty, but very rich and probably more suited to four people sharing it instead of two. Infact I think that was the case for most of the food there, just a hot chocolate was giving me a sugar high.

AFW Meet Up

It was a great couple of hours, and was nice to put some faces to the names behind the blogs - unfortunately Veronica is missing in the photo as she left before I got up the courage to ask a stranger to take a picture of us. I had a wonderful time and there’s already talk of a get together for “High Tea” in the city, hopefully with a couple of new faces, good company and good food - this is a regular event I could quite get into!

I returned home to find Dan as sick as a dog, whatever I had over he last couple of days he seems to have caught, and I’m starting to suspect Declan might have it as well as he’s far more sooky than his usual self. It should be lots of fun at our place tonight.

June 29, 2008. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , . Friends & Family, Interwebz. 8 Comments.

A Craft Made Especially For Me

When you’re named after a plant or flower I think you tend to go one of two ways, you either think it’s fabulous and have a collection of things with that flower/leaf on, or you think it’s highly embarrassing and dread anyone buying you a bouquet of flowers. I fall into the first camp, I love my name (as an offside, my Mum hates it and is still persuading me to go by my middle name despite me resisting for the last twenty two years!) and I love Fern leaves. If I spot a fern leaf fabric then I’ll usually grab a bit, I have plenty of jewellery featuring the leaves and I even had fern leaves in my wedding bouquet.

Which is why this tutorial from Painted Fish Studio is completely awesome. I now have a list as long as my arm with things that I need to print with fern leaves - now I just wonder if I’d have the patience to do a queen size duvet with this technique?

June 22, 2008. Tags: , , , , , , . Interwebz. No Comments.

Wordle

I have just discovered Wordle via Meet Me At Mikes, it’s an awesome Java App that creates very cool looking word clouds.

My first one (no guesses what CD I’m currently listening to!) -

And then after some contemplating I did what every Internet user under the age of 25 would do if they were presented with this, I Rickrolled it!!

This is fabulous, I seem to have found yet another way to procrastinate :)

Show me your word clouds!

June 18, 2008. Tags: , , , , , , , . Interwebz. 3 Comments.

Flickr Meme

Shamelessly swiped from Leigh, I give you a Flickr Mosaic Meme… it goes a little something like this:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, and pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

memosaic

1. Farn - fern, 2. Red Hot Chili Peppers, 3. Wild window, 4. purple haze, 5. Brendan Fraser, 6. Beagle Bailey, 7. Universal Studios - 3, 8. Errr..this is a banoffee tart, not pie, 9. I am an Art Therapist, 10. Declan Painting, 11. L’impatient, 12. Brian_Pint_reacy_pub_Treacy’s_Portlaoise

The questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favourite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favourite colour?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favourite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favourite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word that describes you?
12. What is your flickr name?

Believe it or not I didn’t cheat once for this, even on question ten, I searched for Declan and up pops his face on the first page, along with an awful lot of pets, I didn’t realise Declan was such a popular name for dogs!

What I’m really curious about is to see whether Dan can work out my answers based on the pictures given, as some of them (number 11 in particular is fairly obscure), it’d be like a modern day version of “Knowing Me, Knowing You”!

ETA: Dan did fairly well, he only got stuck on numbers 3, 6 and 11, all of which I’d picked somewhat obscure photos to represent :) I guess I’ll keep him for now.

June 13, 2008. Tags: , , , , , . Interwebz. 1 Comment.

Facebook Highs

I LOVE FACEBOOK! I just found (well actually they both found me!) two friends from year THREE, we met when I was seven, and they did a hell of a lot better than me because they actually remembered my surname! It’s amazing, it makes me want to go back to the UK and hang out with all the friends I lost with each school change. Lately I’ve been hit with such a strong sense of homesickness, I think if the option came up tomorrow I would probably move back to the UK, I know I would regret it fairly quickly, but recently I’ve been longing for the sense of history and past that I just don’t have here.

Anyway, onto facebook etiquette… I just did a quick search and found my next door neighbour, we get along okay, she invited me over for a girly candle party when we first moved in, I’ll chat to her or her husband when we see each other and I baked them some cookies for Christmas. She has a son a few months older than Declan and she’s expecting another boy in March (IIRC) so I would like to be friendly with her, because that’s about the only person that I know who has a child, but I don’t want to be pushy, would adding her be seen as kinda stalkerish and definitely pushy, or would it be seen as the first step to becoming friends?

January 22, 2008. Tags: , , , , , , . Friends & Family, Interwebz. 6 Comments.

“My Mind Is Beginning To Unravel, Like Small Kittens With A Tapestry”

Browsing around this morning hunting for any more information on Bill Bailey’s Eurovision prospects (he’s confirmed it in writing, during sketches and on a filmed interview, but I still don’t believe he’s going to go through with it!) I ended up being sucked into YouTube and clips from his various shows. Not long after I moved out here “Part Troll” came to Sydney and I was so hyped, before I even bought tickets the show was cancelled due to ill health and I completely forgot about it when they rescheduled - still kicking myself for that one.

So I thought I’d share a Bill Bailey classic with you. This is Bill on Blood Sports and Vegetarians, originally I was going to pick his now infamous “Argos” sketch, but, as it would make absolutely no sense to anyone outside of the UK, I decided against it :) Enjoy.

January 15, 2008. Tags: , , , , , , , , . General, Interwebz. 1 Comment.

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