A Quick and Easy Travel Journal

I have always been one to keep a journal when I travel.  I have done this lots of different ways over the years, such as a diary, a scrapbook, a digital photo book, and last year I even published part of my Cook Islands travel journal on my blog!  This week we are going to Exmouth in Western Australia to spend some time with my beautiful sister-in-law and her hubby and our gorgeous nephew. 

Travel Tip - How to Pack Shoes in Your Suitcase

A quick and easy idea for keeping the dirty bases of your shoes off the rest of your clothes while packed in the suitcase...

Shower caps!! Genius!!  I bought a pack of 5 from my IGA for under $2!!

My Wrapping Station

I started to make-over my home office a few months back.  I showed you the before pictures quite a while ago, but progress has been slow, due to my indecisiveness, so I don't have much to report back sorry!  I am currently doing an online course with the amazing Aby Garvey from Simplify 101, called Organise your Creative Workspace.  I am now slowly unpacking my creative process and my style, in order to design the perfect home office/creative studio for me!  So, it is going to be a little while before you see any 'after' pictures!

A little side project however, has been my wrapping station.  I had found my inspiration and pinned it to my Pinterest board, and hunted local shops for the bits and pieces that I needed to make it a reality.   One might say I am 'wrapped' with the outcome!  Let's take a closer look...

My New Calendar

So life has been really hectic for me this year...  Work and home just seem to be overloaded with events, jobs and 'things' that were making my days run into each other with long lists of 'to dos'. 

I decided to take control of my time, by enrolling in my first ever online class, 'It's About Time', with Aby Garvey from Simplify 101.  Let me tell you, I am now addicted to online classes, and I am currently about to start my third class this year!  I will blog about online learning another time soon, but for anyone out there who is wondering whether or not to take the plunge, I personally highly recommend it.  It is fabulous for self-paced learning, and it is surprising just how personalised it can be.

Anyway, one of the steps in my quest to better organise my time was to review my calendar system.  I have blogged about my calendar before, which you can read about here.  I am lucky enough to have been given beautiful family calendars for Christmas for the past couple of years, which I keenly embraced as our key home time management system.  Unfortunately, a few factors started to bother me about these other styles of calendars, and when I found myself missing appointments, I decided I needed to rethink my approach.

My New Laundry - Plumbing & Tiling

In our new laundry, we put in an Ikea Domsjo Sink (which I can't find on the website for some reason). I love the ceramic, rather than stainless steel!  It is a fabulous size, nice and wide and deep - I am sure it will be used for a multitude of purposes over coming years.

A Wedding Day Survival Kit for Lovers of Wine and Cheese

I posted a little while ago about the amazing Wedding Day Survival Kit that my sisters gave me on my special day - you can read about it here.

One of my beautiful sisters recently got married, so we had to get the creative juices flowing in order to come up with a wedding survival kit that was suited to her modern lifestyle and outlook on the world.  One of Nicky and Simon's favourite things to do is to go for wine and cheese at Oxford Street (one of Brisbane's most trendy restaurant strips).  So, my other sister and I put our heads together and came up with a survival kit that wasn't so traditional, rather contemporary, however still really meaningful.

We scripted a poem, framed it in this gorgeous frame (which I bought at Big W), added some handmade wine charms (which I will post about someday soon), a bottle of Moet and some strawberries...  and there we had our modern twist on the Wedding Day Survival Kit.