It’s chilly here in Sydney, but flowers always warm the flat somehow 
These are some beautiful Sweet Peas from the markets on Sunday… aren’t they gorgeous?
Since my last post here, I have some news! My fiancé and I ran away to Hawaii…and now he’s my gorgeous Husband! We were married on Shipwrecks Beach on the island of Kauai, and it was the most beautiful day of my life! Pictures to come… xo
Hello world! It’s been a while!
Each Sunday at Marrickville in Sydney there are wonderful markets held on Addison Rd. We love to head there for some breakfast and to pick up our veggies for the week ahead. For the last few weeks I’ve brought a fresh bunch of flowers home too, as they are always so fresh and pretty, and much more affordable than a regular florist too!
This week I bought a beautiful purple bunch of mini Chrysanthemums. They are so gorgeous that even though I hardly post anymore, I couldn’t resist sharing a picture:
- Em xoxo
Once you stop blogging for a while, the shame sets in… ‘Oh no, I had such great expectations!’… ‘I really should have kept it going’… and then the inevitable – ‘well, there’s no point now, it’s been too long between posts, I’ve killed it’.
Pfft. Silliness.
No one reads this blog anyway!! I’m writing it for me, to practice putting words on a page and have a bit of fun posting pretty/funny/inspirational stuff.
So, without further ado, I pronounce this blog revived and ready for 2011. Once a week (or at least once a fortnight) I will endeavor to post something here, even if it’s simply a picture. That way, by 2012 I should have anywhere between 26-52 posts!
A little update since I last wrote anything… I finished the yoga course, just have to complete 30 hours of classes before I can get my insurance and start teaching! So exciting. After a brief stint working in a tea shop (loved this!!) while completing the course, I am now back in an office job from 9-5 each day. I would have happily continued to make and sell tea, but my dodgy ankles have decided my fate – seated work or yoga teaching (with breaks in between) are more my style. Oh well, c’est la vie! On the up side, being back at a computer everyday means I can start posting here again Other than that, still planning a wedding, still beading and still want to try more DIY projects and learn new skills.
In addition to this, 2011 I have a couple of new resolutions. Firstly, my fiance and I have been working hard to cut the clutter from our home and our lives and this year I want to continue to move towards living minimally without unnecessary spending and waste. Second, 2010 saw many a medical drama for me including spending the last three months of the year on a crazy elimination diet to figure out intolerances (all with the supervision of an immunologist with the allergy clinic at the RPA hospital – don’t ever attempt this sort of thing without a specialist’s help!). Turns out, after weeks of rice, pears, white chocolae, potatoes and green beans I’m intolerant to gluten, amines, preservatives and colours. Not much then… Haha. So, my second resolution is to help my body be as healthy as it can be by eating lots of fresh and wholesome food and moving towards a vegetarian diet.
Green smoothies here I come!
As I experiment with new recipes and ideas I’ll post them here.
All in all I’m really excited to find out what 2011 holds. I’ll be getting married this year, it’s the 2nd post-university year and my first as a yoga teacher. We’re hoping to start an epic adventure later this year too - head off travelling with no particular destination in sight – so all in all, lots to look forward to, and lots of reasons to sit here at my desk with a big grin on my face
Hopefully we'll get to places like this...
Would also love to see the Northern Lights - soo pretty!!
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” - Lao-Tzu
… is that it takes a lot of work!!
I’ve been rather slack of late, taking time to heal my injured ankle and also completing my yoga teacher training course (fun, but hard to do with the ankle!).
This little blog has taken a back seat for now, but it isn’t dead yet… Especially given I sewed my first cushion on a sewing machine last night! Woot! I will post a pic of it tomorrow and am aiming to write a proper post (not just another apoogy for the lack of posts) some time this week…
Emily xo
John Cleese is awesome, and this is an interesting video for anyone who wants to foster their creativity!
I know I’d like to be more creative! I am going to try and set aside time and shut myself away from distractions this afternoon, so I can come up with more post ideas for this blog!
*Sigh*
It’s been a slow few weeks. Winter always makes me want to curl up inside with a book, a cup of tea and a big block of chocolate. It certainly doesn’t inspire me to get out into the world, try new things or maintain any sort of exercise routine. Recently this desire to laze about and sleep a lot has been compounded with being unwell and generally not feeling 100% so I haven’t really pushed myself! Over the past month I have also started a new job that requires me to be standing/running around/carrying things, so I am fairly tired when I get home! All in all, it really shouldn’t be a huge surprise that my regular yoga practice has been abandoned and my mat didn’t move from the corner of the room for almost two months! … Until this week that is!
Tomorrow night I’m going to go back to yoga again, and this will be the third time in a week! When I finally pulled myself out of bed and off to yoga on Tuesday morning, I rediscovered the joy I find when I practice yoga. Later that same day I browsed over to the Yoga Journal site to see an article on the front page about losing your desire to maintain a regular practice. What timing! The whole piece rang true to me, and the advice was simple, practical and inspiring. In particular, I loved the idea that everyone’s yoga practice will change over time – it will ebb and flow as your life unfolds, and change much like the seasons. No one can be 100% committed 100% of the time, and shouldn’t aim to be! This is a lovely idea, and it makes any guilt I felt about not rolling my mat out seem silly and unnecessary – just because I haven’t been to a class in a while, doesn’t mean I can’t pick it up again. Todd Norian, who is the former director of teacher training at Kripalu Centre said he likes to remember a simple mantra that he uses for meditation and can be applied to most things in life – “begin again”. If you fall behind, be gentle with yourself but come back to it. Begin again.
So that is what I’m going to do. Now that I have rediscovered how uplifting I find a simple 1 hour yoga class can be, I’m going to take advantage of this burst of enthusiasm and use it to re-establish my commitment to a regular practice. To read the article yourself click here…
Namaste!
I love this song! In fact, all of the songs by the gorgeous Florence Welch are lovely. Putting this up as they played at Splendour in the Grass this evening and I wish I could have been there!
Enjoy
The productivity continues! Not only have I started blogging again & started a new job but the engagament party invites have been finished and sent off! Hooray!
I thought I’d share the design here. It’s super simple, as I have never made an invitation before so didn’t want to set myself an overly complicated task. The finished product exceeded my expectations too – who knew white paper stuck on black card could actually look quite pretty?!
First off I went shopping (fun fun fun!) at the art store nearby. I could have spent all day in there wondering around day dreaming about all the crafty things I could make. In the end, I came away with black cardboard, lace tape (so pretty, thank you whoever came up with this idea), and a packet of beauiful origami paper.
Lace tape
Next I popped into office works and picked up a guillotine and nice white paper (slightly heavier than normal, and brighter white).
Finally it was time to start! Coming up with the wording on the actual invite was pretty tricky. We went with “Dear …., We would like to invite you to our engagement party! Please join us from 6pm on … at … RSVP by July 23… Can’t wait to see you there! Love, Emily and Karl.” – short but sweet.
First up came all the measuring and cutting. The black card should be cut into 12cmX12cm squares. The white part with the writing measures 10cm across, 9cm down. I cut the origami into 12cm strips – these pieces go along the bottom of the invite. Also, the lace tape can be cut into little squares and used to secure the invite in the top right hand corner – this wasn’t part of my original design but I thought it looked really cute!
White onto black
Origami Strips
Voila:
The finished product!
The finished product! I’m really happy with how they turned out and the project was lots of fun. As you can see here, I also put some of the lace tape in a strip around the left hand bottom corner of the plain paper envelopes I bought. I just felt this tied the whole thing together.
Now to start designing the wedding invites – I have a feeling these will be much trickier!
Today I ate one of these delectable green tea cupcakes:
I’ve wanted to make these myself for sometime, but never having tried one I wasn’t sure I’d like them… I did! You can definitely taste the green tea, which is awesome, but they were still buttery and sweet and soft – which = yummy! Mine came from Cupcakes on Pitt and I haven’t seen them anywhere else yet.
Such a simple idea though – just add matcha powder to your regular vanilla cupcake mix! Matcha is fine powdered green tea used in Japanese tea ceremonies. To make matcha tea you use a whisk and combine it with water gradually – making a slightly bitter, grassy and a little grainy hot green tea. Ok, that description sounds quite negative – it’s actually quite nice! Also, being a powder means it makes for awesome green baked goods like cupcakes.
Google found me a few yummy looking recipes, but the one that makes these looks the best to me:
Food Mayhem's Mini Matcha Cupcakes
Click here for the Mini Matcha Cupake recipe from Food Mayhem!
Yum yum yum, I’ll post again when I make these myself
Where have I been for the three weeks (!) since my last post?
Well, changing jobs combined with a couple of continuing health issues & general fatigue lead to a short blogging hiatus. During my downtime I brainstormed ideas for new polka dot pjs posts, but never actually sat down to write them. The first week after I left my job was spent sleeping, eating, reading books, watching silly TV (I love you Parks & Recreation!) and drinking tea. I read 3 books sitting on the couch in my pyjamas and left the house occasionally for coffee with friends. We also ate take out most nights, as there was no way I was in the mood to cook! At the end of week 1, I mustered the energy to journey to Canberra to visit my gorgeous friend Sarah. Together we cooked, drank wine, took ime to catch up properly and went shopping at the markets – it was such a lovely weekend!
Week 2 was a little more productive – I got my beading kit out and planned some earrings.
I took a few long walks in the park across from where I live.
I love clouds, they always make me smile!
I also, enjoy watching the ducks and the huge spoon bill birds that live in the park. So cool that we have wildlife like this in a park 15 minutes from the CBD.
Week 3 (this past week) I started a new job, made the earrings I planned and finally pulled together our engagement party invitations (more on those soon). Phew, I now feel like I’m getting back into the swing of things and am ready at last to start blogging again. I missed this – writing out my thoughts and posting pretty pictures – even if no one missed me! (Happy about this, there’s something liberating in knowing that you don’t have a large audience…)
Stay tuned for my attempt to make a choc chip banana bread (currently in the oven), step-by-step look atthe party invites and the first of a series of posts about tea – first stop, Assam!
Em xx