Jikana Damaru

Photography Challenge - Week 4

Another week of photos from the White Peach 30 Day Photography Challenge. Only a couple of days to go so here are my photo's from week 4.

Yes that is a fish!

Couldn't resist another photo of the beautiful pink hobnail cake stands.

A Winter's Morning Sunrise from our bedroom balcony - so clear and crisp - brrr...

Only two days to go with this challenge - on the hunt for a new challenge now! Does anyone have any suggestions?

Bowties for BOYS - celebration SALE now!

Hello my possums... sorry I've been a bit scant this week; Elliott has a fever and to be honest, sleep is a luxury not a right at the moment! Just trying to keep my eyeballs open with toothpicks today...

Anyway, I did get a bit of exciting news this morning (or is it afternoon, I can't tell...) when Madeit featured one of my little by bow ties on their front page for a 'party' feature! I've only fairly recently starting listing on Madeit, so I am terribly flattered to be on the front page of this gorgeous handmade and AUSSIE site!

To celebrate, I'm listing my brand new bow ties for just 10 bucks until this Sunday!

My bow ties really are terribly cute (if I don't say so myself!) and:

- sturdy, with a little pin on the back to attach to a onesie or collared shirt
- appropriate for babies, toddlers, little boys...
- perfect for special occasions, parties, dinners or just general looking too cool for school
- a great little gift
- available in a range of patterns, colours and fabrics
- did I mention ON SALE UNTIL SUNDAY?

Buy them on Madeit here and checkout the range below, modelled by the gorgeous Joshua (Fern's love interest ;) and lil Elliott:

I hope you like, and feel free to tell your friends about my sale!
Right, off to have a triple-shot-flat-white...... x

wordless Wednesday : pancake brekkie

her choice of pancake topping is nutella!!

thank you for joining in with your wordless posts

if you are here for the first time today : welcome

all you need to do to play along is add your wordless blog post to the list below then link back to here

& pop past any others who have joined in with a comment if you can

please do not add your blog if you are only coming to link up to promote your own linky. wordless blog posts only. thanks

Pretty cloakroom apothecary jars

Bird Apothecary Jar filled with spotty emery boards

I have had my two larger bird apothecary jars since last November when I ordered them on holiday in Florida from Modern Chic Home. At Christmas they were filled with coconut mushroom candy and chocolate sticks for my Winter Woodland themed dessert table. At Easter they were filled with pretty pink and blue M&M's and hand made chocolate butterflies for my Easter table. The rest of the time they have been carefully stored away. Not anymore! I finally will have a permanent home for them when they are placed on a shelf in my new laundry room and cloakroom.

After much deliberation as to what would look good and be useful in the bird apothecary jars, I filled the tallest one with hand wrapped soaps to match my colour and print theme that I showed you a couple of weeks back. For the shorter one I bought spotty emery boards from Cath Kidston and floral emery boards form Poundland. I like to display items in odd numbers, so I bought a third bird apothecary jar from Primrose & Plum. Choosing what to fill this one with was tricky but eventually I went for my small pink dotty hairbrush and hairbands to match my colour theme. Now I wait patiently for the room to be decorated so I can add my decorative touches!

Have a sweet day!

Further reflections on word verification

At the risk of becoming the web's foremost commentator on word verification, I just had to share this one.

I blog a lot from my phone. It drives me nuts, especially with the whole auto-correct thing making me say things like 'farmed' when I really wrote 'farked'. I end up writing really deep comments like "wow, you should just tell them to farm off" and "The world is really farmed up". Makes me sound like I'm overly supportive of our hardworking primary producers when all I really want to do is use the world's most common adjective to express my distaste without actually writing fuck.

But I digress.

I blog a lot from my phone. It drives me nuts. It takes ages to type out a comment in the tiny little box and then you hit 'send' and the random (but is it?) word verification rolls up. The other night, after struggling along with my one finger typing on the tiny little virtual-keys and trying to read what I wrote in the tiny little font and writing a really long comment because I just can't shut-up even in a tiny little box, well...
This is the word verification that rolled in: hytzyqwbd.

Or was it hytqzybd?

Or hbzyqwmk?

Either way, I just stared at that tiny little mother farmer and thought what the farm?

All that effort and now I have to spend 10 minutes trying to type out the indecipherable word verification while that stupid auto-correct sees you typing 'hbzyqwmk' and suggests things like 'he thinks' just because it's stupid and can't? It's bad enough when you get a word veri with vowels - but what's with these lengthy odes to the constanant? What's wrong with 'cat' or 'sat' or 'mat'? Could a robot read 'cat' and type out 'cat'? Could it?

Aah. So glad I got that out.

Come on, hit me with some word verification stories and perhaps an auto-correct or two?

[Image from here]

baking days

a little peek into

a weekly ritual

of mine

baking goodies for lunch boxes for both the big & little loves in this house

Recovery for the young*

Ever reminisce about those 'work to play to work' days? The ones where you would go to work, hit the bar hard-baby straight after, dance the night away, walk home in the light of a blushing sun, take a quick shower and go to work? Hell, you might even have managed to back up the next night too. Yeah, those days... ah, those days... hmmm, yes, those days...

How long does it take you to recover from a big night out these days?

For me it's three days, maybe four. Oh, okay, I'll be honest, it's at least 3 months.

These days a 'big' weekend involves scheduling more than one thing across the entire 48 hours. I panic if someone invites us somewhere on Sunday afternoon because there isn't enough 'recovery' time before work on Monday. And that's just a family afternoon out with the kids - don't even get me started on the meltdown that an actual night out night out involves.

I don't know when I got to be so feeble. The urge to 'punch through' just left me sometime in my mid-thirties and has never been seen again. It wasn't even because I had children (I nursed many a hangover for a good few years after that). I just got sensible and who can blame me? Being sick this week reminded me of how annoying it is to be off your peak - it hurts, yes, but even worse, you just can't get anything done.

So nowadays (should that be nowanights?), the idea of a boozy bar, loud music and actual dancing (ie, public dancing) just makes me squirm. All that drinking, all that posturing, all that yelling. By 10 o'clock I'm practically running out the door home to the joy of peace and quiet and a warm, loving man.

Does this make me old? I don't think of it as old, I think of it as clearing the way for today's feisty young folk. Yes, well. God knows, when I was one of the feisty I used to freak out to the max whenever I found out someone was at a bar and forgodsakeforty. Seriously, you're still out? Get a life, dude. So, it was always my ambition to not be that person and just look at me now - I've achieved my goal!

Am I old? Am I sad? Am I normal?

Are you still out painting the town red?*

* At heart, obviously.
** But I will warn you, red is such a nineties colour...

[Image by Jaz Marsh]