All posts filed under: Life Adventures

I am reading these books and magazines.

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I thought I would share some reading matter this week. What are you reading? Do you read books? One at a time or can you keep up with more than one? I can read one at a time, I think my brain would pop if I tried more! I do read kids novels to my son at night, so I kind of read two books at once, one to him and one to myself. I love magazines but I have to have a novel to read a bedtime, reading a magazine at bedtime gives me so many ideas and inspirations, they almost stop me sleeping. Consequently I don’t get through as many mags as I would like and sometimes I don’t even get through the ones I buy before the next issue is out. In fact the new issue of The Great Discontent is due out soon, so I had better get cracking and finish this one! I discovered The Great Discontent when I came across The 100 day Project which is hosted by the …

Jumble sales. Rummage sales. Goodwill. Yard sales. I love them!

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I love a bargain and preferably a hunted down bargain.  Don’t get me wrong, I do like a good deal from a shop, with the magical layers of price tickets as the cost has been gradually reduced to a rock bottom ‘heck what a good deal’ price. Today I am talking about the second hand sales and all their wonder!  Whether it is someone’s front yard or a bun fight at the local village hall, I am all about the treasure hunt! Since I have lived in America, I have not been to a jumble sale which makes me sad.  Schools don’t hold them and there are no village halls to put a sale in. I think they are called rummage sales here, but I have not come across one of those either.  When I was younger, the guides, the scouts and the schools all had endless rounds of jumble sales to raise money for a canoeing trip or a new roof for the scout hut. I would help set them up with Mum and …

‘I Like’ Fridays Easter Special

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This weekend we will be egg hunting, cleaning up the local woods and creek, making easter nests and eating hot cross buns.  In the spirit of the Easter season and Spring generally, this is what I have been liking this week- I am waiting for my Hot Cross Buns to rise as I write this. As usual I got covered in flour and ended up in a mess trying to make nice neat ‘crosses’ on my buns! Even though the boys are getting bigger, we will still have an Easter Egg hunt in the garden.  It has rained all day today and the grass is about 7 feet high (ok, just a few inches..), but an egg hunt we shall have! I have the ingredients to make Easter egg nests using cereal (I use Trader Joe’s Shredded bite sized Wheats), chocolate and chocolate eggs.  This is another messy yummy project which is essential to our Easter weekend! I have made them with cornflakes and shredded wheat and we like the shredded wheat best as it looks …

Weekly Photos 13/52. One + Four = Life.

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1. Sketching in Spring Break.  Drawing Cityscapes and getting inspired by the book 365 Things to Draw and Paint. 2. Daffodils and my first ever crochet project (I have since started again as I was losing so many stitches!) 3. Veggie soup for dinner. 4. Line tickets for a local Estate Sale.  I scored some vintage magazines a book all about character from the twenties! For my weekly photos this week (and maybe for ever and ever) I am joining in with Pip at Meet me at Mikes, taking and posting four photos from my week. I hope you had a good week and the sun is shining where you are.

‘I Like’ Fridays

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Today brings Spring to the Western hemisphere along with a solar eclipse and a Supermoon tonight.  Phew, quite the celestial action! I hope I captured the atmosphere in my coffee and doughnut photo – Supermoon coffee and eclipse doughnut! So what are we liking this week? I got a couple of new t shirts and a dress from Uniqlo which I love.  The ones I got are here, here and here. This new US magazine, Womankind, looks like a good read.  I have a copy which I have yet to open!  As with most of my favourite mags, this one originated in Australia. Converse shoes are a current favourite in our house, I just got a pair of red lowtops and my youngest got a pair of black hightops and they are the same size!  Yay that means I can borrow my son’s shoes.  There is something I never thought I would say! My Wild Unknown tarot cards might make an appearance today as we are under such an amazing trifecta of natural occurrences. They …

Let the Sparkle out – Grey hair update

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  I have done it, after a year of two, three and more tone hair, I have settled on a natural brown with some sparkly chunks. To be honest I didn’t see the very solid grey streak coming at all, even though the grey has always been more prominent at the front, usually from before a week after dyeing it, the glow would begin shining through.  I saw this as a bad thing and ended up dyeing my hair almost monthly,  sorry hair. I think the year it has taken has been a good thing in hindsight, getting used to the colour coming (or lack of it), then being more and more keen to see the natural end result.  If the decision was taken to stop dyeing and within a week or a month, everything was in it’s grey glory, I think the shock of the intense colour change might not be for the faint-hearted.  Even the peek within a couple of months can be quite alarming, but I think that is mainly because of …

DIY Lavender and Clary Sage Face/Body Balm

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I love balms and perfumes.  This is a recent revelation in my world, I have always been sadly addicted to lip balms and the prettier the packaging and more exotic the flavour, the better, but I have never been quite this into them.  What happened?  I started to make them. This year I have let myself try new makes and DIY’s and among them came lip balm.  My good friend has lots of the base oils which I didn’t have and we decided to have a go one day.  Well, now I can’t stop…… I have been making lip balms, body and hand balms and now I have entered the heady and wonderful world of solid perfumes.  I love that we can make this stuff ourselves and we know what is in there, especially when it comes to slapping balm on lips and face, it is good to know what is soaking into our skin. This week I ran out of face moisturiser and was reluctant to pay another $20 or more for a teeny …

‘I like’ Fridays. Yoga Special

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    This week I am going to dedicate ‘I like’ Friday’s post to yoga, because I like yoga. I really shouldn’t like it because I am more of a cardio kinda gal who doesn’t feel like the exercise was even worth it unless I am sweaty and stinky by the end. This is probably why after all these years I am still terrible at yoga. I always need to pee about half way through the class. Really badly. By the last ‘corpse’ pose, you know the one where you are suppose to relax (not nap) and let thoughts come and then go. The very same pose where I decide which bathroom is nearest and whether I have the ingredients to make a green chili tonight (just down the corridor and yes, in case you are interested). My hips complain and creak even when we sit in Easy pose, sitting legs crossed is neither comfortable nor easy for my cranky hips. No amount of folded blankets help either, unless I am encased in them, that might …

Girl Fifteen Letters – a Hand Lettering Challenge for March.

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Do you always look at the fabulous hand lettering which seems to be everywhere at the minute and think, I wonder if I can do that? I can write the letters just fine, why not add my own pzazz?! Well, I have been thinking this for far too long, so on the back of my immensly enjoyable month taking part in Tinkersketch, I decided that in March I am going to write and draw letters every day. Just for a few minutes or as long as the mood takes me, no pressure. I have no experience in creating hand lettering, I borrowed ‘Draw Your Own Alphabets’ by Tony Seddon from the library and I bought ‘Hand Lettering Ledger’ by Mary Kate McDevitt.   I have signed up for the lettering course at Made Vibrant and I hung onto Lisa Congdon‘s every word in her Line Drawing class at Creative Bug in which she teaches a lesson on lettering. That all said, I really haven’t had a go, I have flicked through the books and watched the first videos of the …