Read about it here and here.

Thanks so much to Natalie for sending me these gorgeous organic cotton and bamboo wipes. They are really soft, very sweet colours, and great value. I just love them, great for babies, kids and big people. Have a look for them in Natalies etsy shop.

I also got this teeny ‘gratitude rabbit’ with the wipes, seriously cute, this bunny lives on top of my sewing machine.

Thanks so much to Natalie for sending me these gorgeous organic cotton and bamboo wipes. They are really soft, very sweet colours, and great value. I just love them, great for babies, kids and big people. Have a look for them in Natalies etsy shop.

I also got this teeny ‘gratitude rabbit’ with the wipes, seriously cute, this bunny lives on top of my sewing machine.

I made this gorgeous Blueberry Lemon Buckle the other night, you can find the recipe here. It was so good and the aroma from the oven that filled the house was amazing! So yummy. It calls for buttermilk which I didn’t have so I used sour cream instead and it turned out fine. I also used canned blueberries (fresh are too expensive unless in season which is summer) but it would work with frozen also. By the way ‘buckle’  ”is an old American term for a simple, single-layer cake made with blueberries or other berries.” (Food Lovers Companion) The cake is topped with a crumble mixture and then a tart lemon glaze.

Not so good food experience, we went to Splendour in the Grass yesterday and all feeling a little queezy after some questionable food on sticks…mmmm. Anyway saw a cool band called Bridezillas, worth a look.

I’m reading Outliers at the moment, really facinating stuff by Malcolm Gladwell who also wrote Blink and Tipping Point, both also good.

School holidays have taken there toll evidenced by the sparsity of blog posts but we will be back on track next week!

Recently I had a custom stamp made by Karuna from outoftheblues. It turned out absolutely gorgeous, Karuna really has an amazing talent for carving out the smallest details and she is such a nice person. he actual picture is one that I drew myself a while ago. I know this won’t be my last stamp from Karuna!

I plan to make some cards with this one, I’ll post when they are done. Also I will be having another give away and will post about that too. Why am I telling you what I will do instead of just doing it? Mmmm…I do have good intentions, I do get it all done, eventually. Dearest Del won the last giveaway, go Del! And here is what she won, chair not included…

Stay tuned…

Well so far I have learnt that I probably need to read the intsruction manual that came with my camera, use my tripod, turn off the flash, and update my skills on photoshop. I guess it really depends on how far you want to go with this stuff and also what your product is. The thing I find most difficult is achieveing a white background, however I see that there are many ways to do this in phtoshop so I think I will use that method rather than trying to achieve it with the camera. Here is a pretty good tutorial about how to get a white background. And here are two photo’s, the second one was photoshopped following the tutorial.

Yes that looks better, still not great though. My natural preference for photo’s is soft natural light but it’s not always possible. I’ll keep looking into this one. Any comments/suggestions would be great!

I came across these ADORable stamps recently on etsy, stamps are great and these are too cute! They are made by a gorgeous girl, Karuna and available at her outoftheblues etsy store…

I mean seriously I nearly cried when I saw those tiny kitchen utensils! For more about Karuna you can visit her sweet blog,  outoftheblues.

I haven’t been able to post for a while due to the crazy weather we have had the past week. Some pretty wild storms and flooding closed all our local schools so the kids have been home since last Wednesday and go back tomorrow, we’ve also had blackouts, so you know. The beach got a bit of a hammering as you can see.

All the foam from the big surf looks so cool, the wind wobbles it slightly so it looks like it’s alive, and the kids (not really my kids) love to play in it.

So we are all back on track and I can finally get some more sewing done! I used to put a quote at the end of each post but lost the habit, I think I will start doing them again. So here you go.

Postquote: “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women)

I LOVE cooking shows and could seriously watch them day and night. Just recently I have been enjoying three greats, The Supersizers Go, the River Cottage Series and Lidias Italy. The Supersizers Go is really fascinating and very funny. This is what it’s about, “Restaurant critic Giles Coren and comedian Sue Perkins supersize their way through the cuisine of six different eras in Britain’s history.”. That Sue is such a card, honestly!

Lidia cooks the most amazing Italian food. Healthy and delcious, full of all the good stuff, veges, olive oil, beans, pasta, cheese, garlic etc etc…and how gorgeous is she?!

Okay I have a serious crush on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Just look at the way he is looking at that chicken! He has an intelligent and compassionate view on eating meat and there is heaps of information about this on his excellent website, as well as online courses on how to butcher a pig! Don’t be put off he is an amazing source of food info.

By the by, I have posted today on small world stores, bit sad but take a look if your up for it today. Also the long awaited (by me anyway) Camera Obscura album is out, very nice. Looks like they are touring the US, well worth a look. This is their new clip.

I’m out of my mind for two reasons, first the good news, I have tickets to see my much adored favorite band Okkervil River for this Sunday night. The bad news is we have nowhere for the kids to go so I may have to go solo. Even if we had a sitter I have a wee boy who is very anxious when we leave him at the moment so I would be worried about him. I wish Mia could go with me she loves them too but alas I would be totally ashamed to get caught sneaking her in with a fake id.  I’ve never been to see a band on my own, it will be sad and strange, but I may have to, I can’t miss this! The other bad news is that I just wasted an hour of my life trying to add a  ******* audio file to this ****** post (insert your own ****** swears). Deep breath……I can only give you this weird video of them and it’s not their best song either but is from their lovely album Down the River of Golden Dreams. Check out the the eyeliner, the melodrama and the boaty  (Split Enz/Crowded House re-make) scenery. They mean well.