My Haul

Christmas was kind to me this year!

The best present would have to go to Ben who wrote me a song!! Arghh it was so awesome, he's going to put it onto a cd for me soon, so hopefully I'll be able to share, I could be biased but I reckon it's A-grade, radio quality and it made me insanely giggle!

I also got a nice box of goodies from ben!

the coolest bird bunny ornament from a cool etsy shop that goes by the name melabo

Heather and Dan got Ben and I this awesome tin, I kind of knew there would be chocolate's inside because Heather informed me that I should put it in the fridge. Anyway we have this thing were we don't open each others present's till christmas, but! The day before Christmas I was craving some chocolate soooo bad and yup did the unthinkable!

Look at all these other presents they got me from the Europe trip, I could have died, sooo amazing!

The fake gingerbread ornament up close and personal! The funny story behind this is that when I dropped their gift off on Christmas eve, they had their own one hanging up and I was in love with it so much. So when I opened my gift on Christmas day and saw they got me one too, best moment :)

also a huge stash from grandma, spoilt!

and from my folks...

I think my favourite was the vintage swan measuring cups, soo amazing, actually I'm in love with the cute placemat as well!

look at that print!

I also got the sweetest handmade card from one of the teachers I worked with in Japan. I recently got back in contact with her, very sweet for her to go to all the trouble :) Lovely lady!

I also had to keep the envelope for the stamps, oh Japan how I love thee!

shots from christmas

Christmas morning I woke up on the family's couch at 6am, Santa had been, though I had dinstinct dreams of helping him put the presents under the tree this year, strange!

Its nice spending christmas around kids they haven't lost the magic!

I then headed back to the coast for work, got sunburnt and a bit of heat stroke, went home, had a cold shower and then napped for two hours and when I woke up it was time to head to ben's where Shaz had cooked a turkey and ben had carved the ham and we made some delicious eggnog and unwrapped gifts!

So all in all a very merry christmas!

Gingerbread Houses

I also made some mini gingerbread houses (using this recipe), surprisingly took a lot longer to make then I thought, but lucky in the fact that nothing went wrong... I had visions beforehand of burnt gingerbread and roofs falling of houses collapsing!

all lined up and ready to go!

Handmade Present stash

I like to go down the handmade route at Christmas, unfortunately this year I left Christmas a bit too late but I still ended up making a few things for people, so here is what I made....

Pretzel heatpacks! I wanted to make something practical but was cute :)

If you want to have a go at making one yourself, fairly straight forward, I just purchased some cotton material, sewed it into a long snake shape, double stitched on the sewing machine, filled with rice and then used embroidery thread for the salt :)

I also made some mushroom ornaments, it was fun collecting different patterned material! They did kind of drive me crazy in the end, lots of little fiddly sewing, turned me into some sort of crazy mushroom lady :P

I knicked some brown mushroom bags from the grocery store to bag them in too :P

For J's mushroom I added a little face, he has a thing for plush and I think he liked his mushroom, it's always a bit of hit and miss with kids and handmade stuff!

also made some gingerbread plush :)
They make me giggle!

Hope everyone had a mighty fine Christmas!

Christmas Day

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!!

The day before Christmas!

I'm off to Brisbane to hang out with my family where I'll eat, sleep then drive back home for Christmas day! I have to work Christmas day, but afterwards Ben, Shaz and I are going to have a little Christmas party!! I'm excited

So what ever your plans are, I hope that you're happy!

Awww

The other day my neighbour came around to give me a present that the landlord had dropped off for me

How sweet is that, never heard of a landlord giving presents, apparently he always gives out eggs at easter!

Mini Golf with Shaz and Ben

Ben's friend Shaz is here from the UK for a month, so we all went and played some mini golf on the weekend, it's been raining a lot lately and I'll blame the rainey greens for such a bad putting performance on my behalf!

it looks so easy until next thing you know you're up to ten hits before that sucker even goes in :P

I did appreciate the choose of ball colour, pink, yes please! And the guys who worked there were very lovely, making up nice excuses why I did indeed play so badly!

The one big let down is the lack of novelty, I guess the gold coast defnitely wins on that one!
No guesses needed who came last :P

Circus in the dark

The other day on the way to pick up some pizzas, eek, yes can't resist those cheap fatty delicious puff pastry pizzas, yummo! Anyway, getting side tracked.  We walked past this circus tent and I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures :)  Pity we had actually missed the circus but I think animals were involved, judging by those cages, so actually, I'm really quite happy to have missed it :)

Ben suggested we sneak in and sleep in the tent,
but there was a bunch of mysterious figures floating around to scare me off doing that :P

Sketchbook Page 5

Friday five Local Etsy Artists!

I thought I'd pick some local esty artists this week!

First up is WendyJune a Melbourne artists that paints cute monsters!

Love the colours she uses!

Second for today is the ever so lovely Catbrabbitplush a hobart artist currently working in Melbourne, how plush are nothing short of amazing! Been a lover of catrabbit for a while now and for good reason!

Third on the list is my lovely boyfriend ben who goes by the art name Humble Dumpling, not sure I've ever shown any of his work but it's rad! Woot go Ben!

Fourth is Noferin out of Melbourne, also been a huge fan of theirs for a while, they create such pretty landscapes and characters, everything is done perfectly!

And lucky last for today is dizzylittledotty aka Lauren Carney a Brisbane artist who I think is especially awesome!

All fine artists and all definitely worth a look in my humble opinion!

Sketchbook page 4

Just a quickie, found this quote in an old diary of mine...

Keeping with the post-it theme!

Burntfeather at Super Dry -Curvy

This all has happened weeks ago but I think now is a good time to blog about it myself!

I got contacted by Curvy  which at first I was a little surprised at because I hadn't got into this years book (bummed about at the time, but moved on :) )  

Anyway they contacted me saying there was going to be a pop up Curvy show at The Galleries in Sydney (Shopping Centre) and they had choosen 8 artists to put their art into selected stores and I was one of those eight.  So that was all pretty fun! I think I had a week to ship some art down, so it was all a bit rush rush!

I also got contacted because they wanted to do a little write up and they wanted me to do some post it notes as well, so I was a little bit of a busy bee for a couple of weeks.  Anyway the write up is up now, so if you've got some time to kill, make sure you go along and have a read and you can see my post its too! I haven't read the whole tthing yet, too nervous to read my own voice :P

The Write Up

Buderim Falls

I've had a rad weekend, it rained all of Sunday but that didn't stop Ben and I going for an explore.  We've been to Buderim falls a few times now, actually it was one of our first dates and I got a bit scared Ben was going to kiss me, but I'm a weiner like that, he didn't so I was lucky, well my nerves were thankful, errr I think I'm getting off point here.  So yes, Sunday we went exploring, it was raining in the pictures but you can't really tell, just nice spitting and because it's summer you can get away with this whole swimming in the rain thing, one of the coolest things about summer I reckon!

who is the fool that brought gumboots?
I always think we are going for a trek along marked out paths but I really should know better  :P

 Ben behind the waterfall!

Because of the rain we only saw people right as we were leaving there is a funny nudity moment involved at that point too but I guess this blog is rated G, so I'll leave it at that :)