Bejazzled Jack-O-Lantern Candle

 It's Halloween time!! Though I'm not willing to commit to purchasing a pumpkin and carving out it's innards (as fun as it is!) I have committed to covering the house and garden with glitter to make this: A bejazzled jack-o-lantern tea light holder...

I started out with a clear glass candle holder, craft glue, sticky tape and a whole bunch of GLITTER!

Bringing the jack-o-lantern to life:

1. I cut out a sticky tape stencil to protect the areas I didn't want orange. 
2. Mix gold and bronze glitter with a generous amount of craft glue, it is important to remember you can always add more glitter later. 
3. Paint the glass all over.
4. To get better coverage I poured dry glitter over the glue mixture then mixed it all together with my finger to make it look more eve
5. Leave to dry overnight. 
6. When the body is dry paint the glue onto the eyes and mouth with a small paint brush or the nozzle and pour dry glitter onto the areas one at a time to avoid the glitter sticking in unwanted areas.You can usually blow most of the excess glitter off.

 And voila! You have your very own Bejazzled Jack-O-Lantern Candle!


Enjoy xx

Fun in the Sun!

Finally! Some sun! I took full advantage of the sun this weekend finger painting with friends and having some delicious little picnics and a cheeky day time bon fire! 

loooovely!

Surprise!! on you

So tomorrow is my birthday...

Now I love a party but for some reason I find birthday parties a little... self indulgent, I just like the whole decorating, cake making etc etc. So I decided last week that I would have a pizza party while my parents were away, which just so happened to be the weekend before my birthday.

After browsing for hours at the beautiful home made party treats on eatdrinkchic.com and pininterest I decided I would have a surprise party... for my guests. It would include all the fun and decorations that are involved with a birthday but without all the birthday-ness. Only I decided this on Thursday and my pizza night was on Saturday - Yay for DIY!!

So inspired by pretty things I got a little crafty... I made party flags, meringues, a cake and hung up lanterns all in 4 hours before the guests were meant to arrive... and I think it turned out quite well!

These meringues are my favourite recipe!

They are from Stephanie Alexander and can be found here.
They are deliciously caramelly brown sugar meringues which always go down a treat and are super easy to make! They also gave me an excuse to finally use the beautiful cookie jar mum got for Christmas!... isn't it cute.

Next to the meringues are my cake...I didn't enjoy this so much but I have a weird thing about texture. The cake was pineapple and coconut and seemed to go down a treat with the party (but you can never really tell when someone is trying to be polite...), also in defence of the recipe I didn't have "crushed pineapple" so I attempted to crush pineapple rings - maybe not the best idea....

Anyway it was a practise run for the cake I am making tomorrow, however I have decided instead to make a coconut cake with pineapple syrup - thus eliminating the whole texture thing as well as my hideous weakness of buttercream icing (which I always, ALWAYS curdle... I don't even know how!?)

Then my pride and joy of the evening was my little party flags... no one really got the quote but I liked it... These were so surprisingly easy! I just grabbed a bunch of brown paper bags and cut them out into triangles, I found it easiest to cut them in groups of 4 to save time and having to rule out heaps of triangles, with the bottom of the bag acting as a sought of hinge.

Next I painted on the desired lettering before glueing them on to a nice piece of ribbon. If you want to try making them be sure to leave about 2cm between the 'hinge' and the glue so you can slide the letters across or take them off etc.

The finished product was pretty cute!

Over all I think I enjoyed my surprise the most! It made an ordinary occasion seem fancy and beautiful! and when I came down stairs this morning to clean up, I was inspired to leave the decorations up for a champagne high tea with my gals... next week perhaps! xx

Changing the Sheets

My life these last few weeks is much like my new mattress... Sunny, exciting, beautiful, and a little lumpy.

With everything wrapping up quietly and uneventfully this horrific chapter of my life is nearly over. The only hints to the nightmare that was recovery are my thousands of new (and beautiful AND GRACIOUSLY ACCEPTED) pyjamas and that small jar of bio-oil keen eyes may spy in the background...

Tomorrow is my last physio rehab session and I've already seen the last of my surgeon... the surreal reality is about to begin.

Unfortunately, due to a number of circumstances my post-surgery life is not as I planned it to be. No longer will I be jetting off to Japan as a celebratory escape from recovery, no longer will I have full-time work. So I have to plan once more on how to keep busy (at least it will soon only be for 4 days a week instead of the full seven).

Crafting is my new thing. And it feel wonderful to finish things - a type of satisfaction I rarely felt before. So because I cannot live the life I planned, I am planning on making this life my new life!

The perfect opportunity to start getting up early, finishing everything, accomplishing small things, staying on task, living dreams and reading books. At the risk of sounding entirely wanky, it's given me an opportunity to re-examine my life before I truly begin one. It reminds me of Robert Frost's poem the road not taken... (always one of my least favourite poems due to the Board of Studies insistance of making us study it every year at school, but very poignant) and considering my extreme bable... I feel it's more fitting to leave you with his beautiful words

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Leaps and bounds!

I feel about a zillion times better!!!

My scar has shed it's scab leaving it grossly pink but not nearly as gross as before! My energy levels are way way up! (NB to the point where I can spend 3 hours at work before fading out into shades of grey). Physio is exciting! The group meetings after not so much!

I can walk for thirty minutes as of today and I'm pretty sure in 25 minutes I can do half of my old 'short walk' that use to take 35 minutes which is pretty good too!

AND EVEN BETTER!! I have started to finish things.

I have finished the cushions - FINALLY! was starting to doubt that would happen - AND they look wonderful! even if most of their wonder stems from the fabric I am just super excited that I was able to sew them half decently with a little help on the finishing touches from mum.

see: beautiful!

And today after my three hours of work I begin my next project - the remodelling of a model manequin. I picked it up from my old neighbours as they packed up shop to travel the world and it was pretty stinky and raggedy (evidenced above) but I have decided to give the old girl a much needed face lift! So today I start papermache... SOO Exciting I feel like I'm in primary school again!

I also have started a food diary - which isn't surprising considering I'm so obsessed with it - but not the boring kind where you count calories, the exciting kind where you are on search for the best cheap Japanese!

I will attempt to keep this all up to date, however with my new found achievements coming in leaps and bounds the nanna nap has returned also just to keep me going.

The future looks bright!!

Comin' round the mountain

At last I am happy to report I'm feeling on the up!

I am finally achieving things and have exited the mental rut I was quite clearly in last week. A couple of times I have been able to go out to lunch with friends or a dinner (which took it way out of me because it was such a schmancy restaurant that we had to wait till 10.30 to eat). But it's getting a lot better. Oh and... I can walk upstairs, shower standing, and walk 20 minutes twice a day all by myself!!!

Obviously there have been some pretty sad aspects to recovery... like the whole ' you know who is worth it' thing in terms of people falling off the face of the earth. It's hard being alone so much or when not exactly alone just without friends. And I guess it's true that some people just disappear but the worst part is I think sometimes I'd rather go on pretending that they are just super busy and can't reply to my email/text/ etc. rather than they don't care at all. One friend even moved to Melbourne without telling me - that was a bit harsh. Then you feel all self pityous etc. But I'm determined not to let that get me down for very long. I'm thinking ahead.

Luckily I start rehab next week! Last time I went to the rehab centre everyone was again the youngest by many a year.. so probably not the best place to make friends but it gave me an idea. I'm going to join a club - sporting or otherwise (let's face it probably otherwise).

Also on the whole positive thinking vibe I have actually started sewing. I have made a heat pack and am now experimenting in decorational embroidery haha it sounds super lame but it's nice to be able to finish things and do them all by myself!

This weekend I'm going to tentatively re-enter the social world with a brief but very exciting appearance at a party! Alas, no wild drinking yet... I'm still all scabby and 'healing.' But riddle me this... why must healing be so itchy?!