Round Here

Disgraceful cross-promotion

simplytam — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:47:28 +0000

Celine Navarro is part of my most favourite design teams over at Studio Calico, and she is running a four week class shortly that looks fun! Her style is so different and colourful, and her mini-books are to die for. Here are her details:

MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY AND TAKE MY ONLINE CLASS!

Come join me for my first 4 week class : you will learn many techniques (my favorites!), you’ll be inspired by trendy color combos, you’ll be in love with new sketches, and you’ll participate in the most fun, colorful, technique workshop you’ve ever taken!

For 25€, you’ll have access to :

· a private blog with workshops posted every Tuesday and Friday

· new color combos twice a week

· new sketches posted twice a week

· TWO new techniques posted twice a week

· inspirationnal posts posted every week

· my “soccer” and “non-soccer” thoughts and feelings (always in a funny way)

· what’s going on during the World Cup with a different look to it : get to know the countries that participate int he World Cup

· VIDEO tips and techniques!

· access to a FLICKR gallery for you to post your beauties

· TWO live chats where you’ll be able to ask your questions

· full supply lists of products used on my projects

and all this for a WHOLE MONTH!!!

And, the icing on the cake, for the BIG FINAL game, your last class will be a FULL mini album class because, hey! It’s the WORLD CUP!

And you’ll be able to order the kit if you want to.

Don’t feel like you HAVE to watch the Soccer games, get READY TO SCRAP!

Refashionating

simplytam — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:05:29 +0000

OK, so you know when you have a party to go to, and it’s 4.30pm and your hair’s wet and you still have to straighten it and do your makeup and whatever else, and you go to the closet to figure out what you’re going to wear and you decide you have absolutely nothing suitable and hubby has the car so you can’t go on a quick shopping spree….

Then you spot a black singlet, because black singlets work with everything, but it’s not quite party-worthy, so in your crazy, mustfindsomethingtowear state you grab your fabric scissors, another black singlet and your bag of fabric scraps, say a quick prayer that you don’t ruin it all, and run to the sewing machine…

Yeah, so that was me on Saturday night. And just in case you get stuck in the same situation, I thought I’d post a little tutorial. In my craziness, I didn’t get many photos, so I hope you get the feel of it

Firstly, I found an old black singlet that I didn’t mind cutting up. Knit or stretch fabrics are the best here, because they don’t fray so you don’t have to worry about any pesky hemming. I cut the hem off the old singlet, and then cut some strips across it. I then cut the hem off one side of the strip to give me one long strip (with a hem in the middle of it, but don’t stress, it will get hidden).

I cut another two strips, slightly smaller than the first. You can cut as many as you like – the more strips, the more ruffles you will have. The next step is to ruffle your ruffles. Choose the longest stitch on your sewing machine and sew a straight line up the middle of the strip of fabric, leave a good amount of thread at each end and DON’T BACKSTITCH. Then, hold on to one of the threads at one of the ends, and pull. Even the ruffles out along the strip until you have the look that you want. You may need to gather from the other end too. Tie the threads at each end once you’re happy.

Next, I pinned the ruffles to the singlet and *carefully* tried it on to make sure the positioning was ok. It was. Thank goodness.

I went ahead and sewed the ruffles to the singlet.

I felt that the singlet needed something more, and I’m really into grey at the moment, so I grabbed some offcuts of grey poplin, cut strips from them, gathered the strips, then kind of just twirled them around into little flowers. I just pinned them with safety pins and pinned them to the singlet so I can take them off if I want to. I frayed the edges a little too.

I was having fun at this point (and procrastinating from cleaning and cooking) so I freehand cut some little leaves out of the grey fabric and stitched them on too.

It was darned hard to get a picture of it on; this is me in my bathroom mirror – heeeee!

And every outfit is made better by yellow shoes.

Inspired by interiors

simplytam — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:02:21 +0000

I’ve been adding loads of interior design blogs to my reader lately. We are *still* slowly renovating, and it is so inspiring particularly to see what some people can achieve on a budget. I am dying to add colour to this house – we have white walls, white trim and grey carpet. Our furniture is neutral. I dream of orange and turquoise and yellow and lime.

I added these two rooms to my Tumblr page last week. Obviously I have an affinity for that yellow/grey/black colour scheme, although I don’t think I’d use it in our room (I’m thinking red/orange/white at the moment…)

What colour scheme is your ideal bedroom? I need ideas!

Ikea love

simplytam — Sun, 23 May 2010 10:54:52 +0000

I headed out all by myself (mummy bliss!) to Ikea this afternoon. I really love Ikea.

I love the drive through Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburbs in Autumn to get to Ikea.

I love getting a new coffee table for $25 and cute new bedside lamps (please ignore the fact that my bedside table desperately needs decluttering – it’s on my to-do list!)

I love grabbing random cheap things that make me happy: tealight candles, wooden hangers, new textas and bright plastic placemats for the boys.

I love my boys getting creative with the packaging and transforming themselves into the cutest robots I’ve ever seen.

On being a mum

simplytam — Mon, 17 May 2010 22:13:15 +0000

Mother’s Day around here tends to be a day of rushing around, forgetting to buy presents, writing cards on the run, making portable type desserts and getting in and out of the car what seems like twenty times. I do dream of a day where we go out for a lazy lunch and I can spend the day cuddling my boys.

Despite the rush and craziness, it is a good opportunity to reflect on this crazy thing called Motherhood.

I was NOT a maternal type teenager. I was driven and academic and dreamed of long working hours and a rewarding career. Then I hit my mid-twenties and I NEEDED a baby. I’m not really sure what happened. Something in my biological clock ticked over and I decided IT WAS TIME to start a family. I’m glad it did – it took us a little while to have our first precious boy and I am so glad that we didn’t wait until later. I gave up a wonderful career to be a mummy. And I have never, ever regretted it.

I simply feel now that I was made to be a mummy. Some days are draining, unrewarding and exhausting. Others are fun and special and make it all worthwhile. These two boys are funny and clever and gorgeous and I love them to bits. I am so blessed to have been trusted with their little lives. I cook, clean, sew, cuddle, soothe, shop… and love every part of my domestic mummy-life. I’m ‘just a mum’ and I love it. Crazy but true.

Discovering Tumblr

simplytam — Sun, 16 May 2010 21:48:41 +0000

Ooh, have you? I discovered it this week and it has become my new favourite thing. I generally bookmark all those little things that spark my interest – beautiful things, tutorials, ideas – and they get lost in the abyss of my computer.

With Tumblr though, I can post a photo. This is wonderful in so many ways: it is MUCH better at triggering my memory; I have pages of lovely things to inspire me; I can follow other peoples’ Tumblrs to exponentially multiply the loveliness, and I can share the wonderful things I find with my friends.

My Tumblr is here. I used this post over at the Studio Calico blog to help me get started. Please link me up if you have a Tumblr blog or if you create a new one – I’d love to see what inspires you

Sorry

simplytam — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:08:49 +0000

I just disappeared, I know. It has been a tough year. And it is looking to be a tough few months ahead. Not sure when I’ll be back to regular blogging. I miss it, but it just doesn’t fit into my life right now. I miss the interaction and the sharing and the ability to write my thoughts (for someone who has difficulty *speaking* them, writing is oh so good). Please don’t desert me just yet – I like you. I’ll be back.

December 3

simplytam — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:31:27 +0000

This was one of those days where we were completely ordinary and I forgot to take any photos whatsoever. Sooooo, I thought I’d share with you some of the things on MY Christmas list this year.

1. A cute yellow handbag

2. Jean Paul Gaultier Le Classique perfume (I’m almost out)

3. Apple Mighty Mouse (no more RSI from using the lappie mousepad!)

4. Kikki-K recipe binder (or anything from Kikki-K – stationary lovers heaven!)

5. iPod dock so we can listen to tunes when we go away

Now, I just need to make sure Santa reads my blog!

December 2

simplytam — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:31:23 +0000

Summer fruit was always a big part of Christmas to us growing up. The first nectarines, peaches and plums of the season would be in a big bowl on the Christmas trolley, ready to be eaten if we had any room after our huge Christmas lunch. These days, it seems that summer fruits are around for a lot longer, and we can start enjoying them earlier. Today the boys tucked into a big, juicy mango – made a BIG mess and had very sticky fingers, but LOVED it!

December 1

simplytam — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:49:12 +0000

This year is take two of my December Daily album. Which is nice in one way, as I have an album all ready to go from last year. Just have to change the ’2008′ to ’2009′! I’ll try to blog my pictures and journalling semi-regularly to use as prompts for my album as I won’t be working on it daily (I don’t print pics at home so it makes it a bit tricky!)

I usually put my Christmas tree up on December 1, but this year I’ve decided our fake tree is a bit too big for our house (poor judgement when we bought it!) so I am going to head out on the weekend and buy our first real tree, I think…

So, in lieu of putting the tree up today, we headed out and bought some new decorations for the lounge room. The boys are SO into all the decorations at the shops this year so I thought they might like some more pretty things at home. I bought a few metres of satin and hung it off our rafters with big baubles hanging off it. I think I’ll add some more bits to the middles when I dig the rest of our decorations out of the shed.

And it’s been a while since I’ve posted something scrappy, so here’s a layout I did at my last crop with my girls. The pics are of my two boys rolling around naked on our bed after a bath. It’s such a fun time – they love to play with Daddy after dinner as they usually haven’t seen him all day. And they get to play rough and tumble with him!