“How to be an Explorer of the World” – by Keri Smith

There is always a light, somewhere in the darkness.

by Olivia Bee @ flickr

The end of the semester is finally drawing near, and by the end of the month, I will be just one more semester away from finishing my Masters degree. It’s finally starting to feel like I can do this! – that all these months of hard work, having limited free time & feeling like I was going crazy from working all the time, might really be worth it. Still, I can’t speak too soon; there’s still exams to go, and that final semester. But the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter, and it’s pushing me to keep going.

Some things that I am particularly looking forward to, in my mid-semester break (when for a few weeks, I will have weekends again!):

• Working on a new layout & site stuff for this blog! {I realise the current design doesn’t look right in Internet Explorer – I’ve been trying to fix it but I think a whole new design might be in order…}
• Catching up on the huge pile of magazines I’ve accumulated in the last few months
• Letter writing & sending care packages to friends
• Spending time with friends I haven’t seen for much too long
• Devouring books from an Amazon order I’m still yet to make
• Hopefully going away for a weekend with my partner, just to get away from the real world for a little while
• Wedding & honeymoon planning!
• Writing, writing, writing

I want to spend rainy weekends lying in bed reading, & not feeling guilty for not being up before 9am. I want to find new recipes to try & actually enjoy the process of preparing meals to eat & ways to experiment with flavours. I want to spend more time with the kids & see the world through their eyes, rather than this mad rushrushrush thing that I do at the moment where I try to achieve several things at once. I want to tell my friends that I love them face to face instead of at the end of an email apologising for not being able to see them because I’m just too busy working again. I want to go shopping for new clothes and not keeping looking at my watch because I’ve only scheduled 2 hours to do it in, and I want to absorb the colours & designs & words on webpages without thinking that I should be doing something else instead.

They are my fairy lights at the end of this tunnel.

I have to confess – I am a total stationery junkie. It’s always been a favourite thing of mine, right from the time I started writing letters, around the age of 10. Now, I have shelves filled with writing paper & cards, boxes of letter sets & notepads. I’m not sure if I’ll ever write enough letters to use it all up, but it still doesn’t stop me from browsing for more, and admiring pretty designs when I see them.

Papaya Art make some of my current favourite stationery & card sets. Containing designs by the talented Kathleen Rossi-Howell and Anahata Katkin, their prints, journals, cards & stationery range are colourful, cheerful, and a little bit quirky. I have some of the card sets and they are absolutely beautiful – the envelopes are so bright and are such a lovely thing to send to brighten up someone’s mailbox! I also have one of the journals too, and the lined paper is lovely to write on – plus the journal is not too heavy to carry around for everyday use (always important!)

I have featured a few things I love in this post, but there are so many amazing card designs, calendars, prints and even office supplies, that it is definitely worth taking a look at for yourself. On cold winter(ish) nights like tonight, their cheerful patterns are just the thing I need to inspire me.

Visit their website here.

Journal designs:

Card sets

Postcard Tins

by yyellowbird @ flickr

This has been another week of lots of work & not much else… I have thankfully had a couple of days off from work to concentrate on study, but it’s not much of a break as I spend 10-12 hours each day reading textbooks, taking notes, doing practice questions. And lets face it, accounting theory & commercial law are not particularly riveting! But it’s Friday today, I’m having tonight off to go out for dinner with my partner, and I’m trying to get through the days & all the work in the best way I can.

Here are a few things that have been helping…

• New music by Sarah Slean – you can listen to her not-yet-released album “The Art of Time” over at her website. Every Tuesday and Thursday, a new song from the album is being released to listen to, right up until June 2 which is the official release date. I am rediscovering an appreciation for Sarah’s music this week!
• Another music artist I love at the moment is SPC-ECO (pronounced Space Echo) – featuring Dean Garcia, from the band Curve, and his daughter, Rose Berlin, on vocals. Their music is electronic-shoegaze-ambient & is slightly ethereal. Their album is available to buy as a digital download for a donation only.
• I bought one of these Estee Lauder lipsticks recently, and it really smells like chocolate! Yum!
• I have been trying to switch off from work-related reading for at least a few minutes each day, and am very slowly making my way through the pile of Vogue Australia magazines that have been left unread for too long.
• On a completely different note, I saw the Star Trek movie last weekend, and I surprisingly loved it! Surprising because I’d never even seen an episode of Star Trek before, and certainly didn’t expect to enjoy it so much (my best friend in high school & I used to always say how boring it was! I had to confess to her that I actually enjoyed the movie… the shame of having to eat my words!) I want vulcan ears now…

Dujour magazine looks absolutely amazing – I am definitely very tempted to order a print copy of the latest issue…

&some images I love from their last issue…

2 dresses I love at the moment…

I totally covet those boots as well!

If only I didn’t get so cold in winter! The black dress is *totally* my style, and the pink dress is so pretty & summery – something to look forward to!

Soul Catch Fire by Eleanor Jane

Eleanor Jane’s zines are amongst my very favourites. Her writing and photography transport you to another world – I come out of reading one of Elle’s zines feeling inspired to write and live more creatively. Elle works as a professional freelance photographer, and I admire her determination and hard work in a tough industry so, so much.

Her zines are personal in nature, filled with full-colour photos, journal entries and adventures in London, New York & trekking though various places in North America. Her photography warrants a blog post on its own, but her zines are like miniature art pieces in themselves.

Girl Photographer #3

Under the cut are more images from her Girl Photographer zine series, which you can buy from her Etsy shop, or see more of on her website ♥

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One of my biggest guilty pleasures is Australia’s Next Top Model – generally reality tv shows annoy me, but I love shows about fashion & magazines & modelling. In episode 2, which aired earlier in the month, the girls did a fashion shoot called “Tulle on the Trapeze”, and 9 (out of 12) of the girls were featured in Cosmopolitan magazine. Cosmo mag is another thing that I don’t usually like, but I made an exception this month, just because the photoshoot & the clothes the girls were wearing were so beautiful.

Here are my favourite images (click to view larger!):

More inspiration from Rhonna Farrer ♥

Some fun reads & other links for recent times…

• More Kate Miller-Heidke love – listen to a streaming full-length recent show (it says recorded 1 May 2008 but I’m pretty certain it’s from 1 May 2009 as it’s the same setlist she played when I saw her last week, plus her second album hadn’t been released this time last year).
• Elements & Artifacts has a gorgeous new update for summer, including a beautiful series titled “Midsummer Fairy Flowers”. I can’t decide what to order!
• Microsoft have been working on a clock inspired by Mrs Weasley’s family clock in Harry Potter – using some sort of GPS tracking from mobile phones, the clock tells you if your family members are at work, school, or any other general place that you can set up.
• The poems & photographs here are so beautiful.
• I am seriously in love with these shoes, after seeing them in Nubby Twiglet’s photos. It may be a good thing they don’t have them in my size, otherwise I would be pretty tempted to buy them.
• Rose-Coloured Rain has some motivational words & images over here that are worth printing out!
• I LOVE Menu Plan Mondays over at Organizing Junkie – there are a million meal ideas, and I love the idea of actually being organised with meal planning at the start of the week!
• One of these Office PODS might be just the thing I need to fix my problem of trying to study with kids around…!

Let me know what sites or blog posts/articles you’ve been enjoying lately!