Cai Guo-Qiang at GOMA

Last week I had to go to Brisbane for work and very fortunately my meeting finished earlier than it was scheduled to. I hightailed it out of there and walked straight to GOMA (may I say that for a Tasmanian, Brisbane was particularly hot and humid and walking long distances was perhaps a little foolish!).  I've wanted to visit GOMA for ages, but recently had seen images from the Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition that is currently being held and knew it was going to be good, but in fact it was exceptionally good. There is so much there to see and to think about, I am still thinking about it, which is a very nice feeling.

my perfect escape

Our bedroom is one of those rooms that has the best view in the house, and yet we only go in there to sleep, and, dare I admit it, leave clothes lying around in. It has been pretty uninspired. Fortunately Adairs is running a competition at the moment where it is possible to recreate your perfect escape in your bedroom, and I was extremely lucky to get the opportunity to create my perfect escape for the Adairs blog. I used New York as my inspiration and wanted to create something clean but also a little bit smart. It looks so much better. I like this room now, plus nothing beats nice new fresh linen and the Mercer +Reid alpaca throw is the most lovely colour.

If you want to enter the competition you can do so here. They have some pretty lovely products to choose from, I think!

January instagrams

January always goes by super fast and this year was no different. We managed to get a few beach trips in, lots of beautiful apricots off the tree, a bit of house tidying and improving (slowly getting there), a happy dog and a mexican themed Australia day.

Kinfolk natural decor class at Ethos

One Sunday, just before Christmas, I was lucky enough to attend the first Kinfolk event in Tasmania, which was a natural decor class held at Ethos and hosted by Ethos co-owner Chloe and the very talented photographer Sarah Williams. I was a bit unsure if booking a class for a whole Sunday afternoon so close to Christmas was a good idea, particularly given how busy I had been at work. But actually going to that class was such a wonderful decision, it was the most relaxing and enjoyable afternoon I'd had in quite a while. I am still feeling inspired and motivated and I really hope there will be some new events for Tasmania in 2014.

Also Ethos is so photogenic, I love the brown bottle chandalier and that little tin on a tiny alcove, just such good colours!

Yay Friday!

First week back at work for the year and it's been as busy and brain frizzing as last year was. I thought it would be easy to make changes in my weekly routine, that the new year would automatically bring changes, but this week has taught me that you actually have to work very hard to make that happen!

Anyway one of my favourite things about a new year is picking out a new calendar, I've always loved it for some reason since I was about 10! This year I ordered the Snug Studio calendar in white (top image), which I also put up on my study wall with peach washi tape, and then it promptly fell off about five minutes later…..so I need to think of some better way to display it (that's the problem when you live in a state with no Ikea, frames are expensive elsewhere).

Also this week I found two really great free printable calendars, the Weekday Carnival one (bottom right) and one by Jasmine Dowling (bottom left) with some great hand lettering. I've printed this one off for my wall at work, which is a rather unpleasant dirty beige colour and needs all the cheering up it can get.

Happy friday!

Snug Studio calendar / Jasmine Dowling / Weekday Carnival

Newcastle Beach

While we only stayed in Newcastle for one night on our way back down to Sydney, I feel like it is definitely a place I would like to re-visit another day, now we have an idea of where things are. We missed out on visiting some of the interesting little stores in Darby Street because we got in too late in the day, so I could go back just for those alone! The next morning after breakfast we went for a walk along the foreshore and it was super windy and wild and the sea mist looked quite amazing. I loved taking these pictures, I could have posted more but I think this is probably enough!

2014

Happy 2014! I am so glad it is a new year and I hope that it will be a good one. While I am generally not a big resolution person, last year was a hard slog and was very work oriented, so in 2014 I want to be very conscious of making changes and making things happen outside work, so that I don't slip right back into that space again. One thing I do intend to do is blog and photograph more as I recently got a new camera (the 5D mark III - which is exciting but also at the moment a complete mystery to me) oh and perhaps do some more craft.

We were fortunate enough to have 16 days off over the break and our christmas was in two parts, a nice evening dinner with my family on the friday before christmas, then we travelled to Matt's family in Coffs Harbour for a week, before heading back down to Sydney for a few days via Newcastle for a night. I've never travelled at this time of year before and I have to say it was such a good idea, we were able to take Jerry to to the beach in Coffs everyday (yes we are crazy to take the dog on holidays, but it was nice for everyone to meet him and it was a bit of a one off), go for a few lunches and explore beautiful places, relax and then at the end hang out in the city. We also had a few days to spend at home which was nice. Feels like the break covered all bases, and I'm in a much better headspace than I was in early December. So bring on a happy 2014!