Happy Halloween!

Possibly one of the best Halloween costumes I have ever seen! I love that Richard didn't even realise there was a small child in it at first, ha. More costume amazing-ness found here via these lovelies. So far today we have; eaten way (way) too much candy, dressed up, filled up on roasted pumpkin seeds and poutine, watched 2 Vampyre Weekend movies and seen a lifetimes worth of short skirts and hot pants. Tomorrow we will be celebrating the Day of the Dead with papercutting and Guatemalan hot chocolate and no doubt further harvest-y Samhain goodness.

Hope all your nights were lovely and spooky!

A walk in the woods.

This past weekend Richard and I decided to slip out of the city for the day and head over to Deep Cove. Since we don't have a car, it is a bit of a trek which admittedly almost changed our mind, but I'm so glad we did it! The bus ride over there is lovely, and quite relaxing, and the day was so perfect for a day in the cove! We've decided that we need to do something like this every couple of weeks, otherwise it is just too easy to get caught up in all the business and get frustrated and stressed, you know? Also, being able to relax and spend the day together away from normal life was really great to brainstorm and get excited about new creative ideas. We visited Room 6, which is so cute and chocka with handmade goodness. I picked myself up the latest Uppercase and some Blue Sky Alpaca, while Richard scored a Louis Riel button! After that, we found a little track (although perhaps not a real one...) that wound its way through the forest and along the water, so we walked, chatted amongst all the mossy trees. Sadly our camera battery was dying, but I did manage to get a few shots of all the beautiful colours and textures we saw. The light was so blue and eerie, I loved it!

Of course we finished off the day with some donuts from Honeys, that every single person (stranger or not) told me to go to when I mentioned our mini-trip. The were huge, doughy and most definitely did not disappoint!

I hope all your weeks are going well so far, anyone got any exciting plans for Halloween? I'm beside myself with excitement as I get to carve my very first pumpkin tonight! The apple cider is hot, pumpkin cupcakes are laid out and now I'm just waiting on some lovelies to join me for a carving party!

xo

My place and Yours: On the Shelf.

Pip has started a fun new meme over at Mikes called My Place & Yours, where each someone chooses a place or perspective and you then post an image or two of that place. A lovely way to take time and think about simple, every day things and views, and then to go and take a peek at those same things from everyone elses perspectives.

The theme for this week was 'On the shelf'. Here is our record shelf (ok, shelves), jam packed full. Sadly not all the records make it onto the shelf as we long ago ran out of room and am somehow unable to stop buying more. Aside from of course the record listening, something I really love about records is seeing them just like this. Spines all pressed tight together, there colours making patterns from afar.

What's on your shelf? You can see some more shelves by heading over here!

Shop Update!

New bookmarks and clocks in the shop! I'm particularly smitten with that wee woodgrain one up there, and also the subject heading bookmarks which are taken from an 1883 edition of an encyclopedia that Richard found in an alleyway, of all places, and that features such chapter titles as; courtship, grammar, astronomy and letter writing. So lovely! We are also taking part in the current 'Indie Love' Poppytalk Handmade Market, along with many other fantastic crafters and designers, so be sure to take a look.

Lastly, I wanted to mention that I have received a few comments and such about my note on Thanksgiving in my last post that I'd like to address, but will do so in a post or two.

Happy Tuesday, all!

xo

Content

This is just a quick post, firstly to say thanks to those of you who responded to my last post, either on here, facebook or in email. It is always good to hear both that other people understand where you're at, and also their thoughts and ideas about how they deal with stuff.

Secondly, I'm still totally lagging behind on that shop update sadly, but I've been having real trouble with the product photography and just generally being frustrated with our camera. I did snap that shot up there tonight though, partly to show you some of our new work (that's our new chalkboard size, 14"!) and partly because I'm loving the cozy light of our apartment at the moment. Its getting darker much earlier now, and we mostly use lamps to light up our place as the warm yellow glow is such so much more homey. Now that I've pulled my sweaters out, sitting here with the heat on and a belly full of thanksgiving* food & wine, with hot tea next to me, I'm rather content.

Happy Monday, friends.

xo

* Thanksgiving is a bit of a new experience for me, as it isn't a holiday that is celebrated in New Zealand. While we have a lot to be thankful for in the present, a warm house, steady employment, food, etc I do find the idea of being 'thankful' for what is colonialism and eventually the huge genocide of First Nations peoples extremely problematic.

The Balancing act, some thoughts.

I find that I've been getting overwhelmed quite easily recently, life gets busy! There is lots happening now that Fall is here and the year is starting to wind down. Craft shows, Thanksgiving, birthdays, Halloween and scarily enough Christmas are all getting much closer. Eep! So I've been thinking a lot about the balancing act that life can become, and in trying to figure out how to balance all it can sometimes start to freak me out even more! Am I alone in this? I think not, especially in light of conversations I've had recently with fellow crafty ladies and those working for themselves. Then, in the middle of all my thinking and worrying came two fantastic posts by Lauren over at The Boss of You blog, called The Balance Myth (pt.1 & pt.2) that so completely spoke to how I was feeling. Please, please read them. Hearing someone else talk about how they feel the exact same way as I did was so good! Especially when that someone is a person that I not only greatly admire, but totally imagined was balancing everything perfectly. I'm sure that these perceptions of others play a large part in my/our feelings of inadequacy because there are so many other fantastic bloggers and the like, who seem to have it all together! When, the reality is we're all viewing only certain parts of those people, only what they chose to show us. I'm not saying that its dishonest or that they're trying to trick us, because we all do it. We all edit and make decisions about what we give others to see about ourselves, both online and in real life. While it can be hard to remember, we have to remind ourselves that they are all real people just like us, with unfolded laundry, unfinished projects, unpaid bills, unanswered emails, etc. And that's ok.

So, while I am definitely going to be taking Lauren's advice in pt. 2 of her post about helping to stay organised and balanced (especially the twitter one, how easy that can become overwhelming) one of the most important things I've learnt from my thinking, discussing and reading Lauren's blog posts, is letting go. Both letting go of thing I don't actually have to be doing (but have made up in my head that I should be, or that I have taken on but secretly don't actually want to be doing) and also letting go of the worry when things don't all get done. I really want to be living in the present (hippy-ish, I know) much more than I have been and enjoying the day to day rather than getting uptight about what is or isn't getting done.

Any thoughts?

A Fall Weekend

Weekend-ing meant; a new quilt for the bed, new bookmarks in the making (apple and orange wood, that smell amazing), found wooden shoe forms, neighbourhood walks and flannel shirts, fabric scraps (I love how this photo tricks you into thinking that save from that one piece of fabric, our floor is spotless. Ahem..), collections, autumn leaves, new boots in need of new laces, kitten snuggling.

(You know that shop update I said was coming? It is, I promise! Only I found more clock parts and got distracted by embroidery, so it is now this coming Friday. Also, Jessica has done a wee interview with us over on her lovely blog. Go take a peek, there is a giveaway there, too!)