Growing your own...

My lovely man Mark has been working super hard on re-establishing our vegetable garden after coming home from overseas in January. We had done some trial planting last year where we planted broad beans and some radishes. Our crops were quite large and I guess this inspired us to go even further!

We have now taken over half of our front yard and turned it into a vegetable garden, along with our own compost bin. The soil to start off with, definitely needs some TLC and when the compost really gets going it's going to be lush with worms! We ended up growing our little plants in the front yard as it gets much more sun than our back yard and our back yard has a very large possum that seems to use our back yard as his restaurant. He has yet to devour any of our little veggies in the front!

All of the little veggies are being grown from seed, it's much cheaper and I think more rewarding as you see them pop up. Currently our crop includes a variety of lettuces, spinach, silverbeet, rocket(arugula) and beetroot. It's looking great in just a week or so, very healthy, though we will see if we are inundated with vegetables and will need to give some away!

Belated Birthday Babuskas

If you've been reading along on my blog, you will know that I love matryoshkas (or babushkas as some people call them). I even got one tattooed on my hip by the gorgeous Silje. I have loads of matryoshkas, books, I have also tried my hand at making them! So when my faux sister Shannon and I caught up since our crazy Januarys I was totally excited to be given a very cute wooden matryoshka brooch!

Here's a photo from our weekend, unfortunately farewelling another lovely lady as she embarks on some very academic adventures in another state.

I should point out that this is us trying to act like we aren't being photographed! The photographer wanted some candid shots which are impossible to do when you know you are being photographed!

A yay to black and white photos, dark hair with fringe gals, faux sisters and matryoshkas!

Cool necklaces and hair dramas...

I thought that I should show you all a photo of the cute stethoscope necklace that Mark got me in New York. We were walking around in soho and I think that I spied a really cute bag in the shop window (which I didn't end up buying!) but saw this pushed up the back of a cabinet and just had to have it! What a find huh? It's made from brass and occassionally it hits other metal things and sounds like my bike bell!

I'm also going through some hair dramas as I'm waiting to get my hair cut next week for the Melbourne wedding. I'm holding off on cutting my own fringe but man, it's really long at the moment! Normally I blow it down dry but I've had to use the good old ghd straighteners to give it a 'rockerbilly' curl under to kind of push it up and out of my eyes! I'm not sure if I could deal with this look for a long time, I would really need to invest in some hairspray. What do you think? I'm still leaning towards my shortish fringe myself!

New Style Icon...

Ok, I'm not sure if it's just a lady crush but I'm totally digging Ida Maria's stylings recently. I found these photos when taking part in the Facebook doppelganger week. I think that I really need to invest in a top hat to wear around.


Oh and maybe a red bedazzled number and head wear - oh, who am I kidding, I have headwear like this in my wardrobe already!


And glitter masks as headbands? Well that takes me back to the days of working in a costume store! Lovely Ida, you rock!

Valentine's Day 2010

Ah Valentine's Day... what did you do? Well Mark and I decided this year to go against our usual tradition of having Valentine's Day dinner at one of our favourite restaurants The Press Club and have dinner at home. We mostly decided on this as with the Melbourne wedding coming up and some credit cards to pay off after our overseas adventure, we couldn't justify the expense. The funny thing is that the restaurant is actually closed at the moment for renovations so we couldn't of gone anyway!

As a Valentine's Day treat I picked up some delicious red velvet cupcakes from Sugadeaux. How cute are they with the little lips and love heart lollipops?! Many of them were eaten throughout the day.

I should point out that Valentine's Day here at Casa MaMa was a little weird as my mum was staying over the weekend to do the final fitting on my wedding dress. So not really romantic at all. I probably owe Mark another 'Valentine's Day' as it was a little weird sharing Valentine's cupcakes with your Mum/mother in law! he, he, he...

Just to let you know...

Did you know that I also write a 'foodie' type blog as well? Well I do, it's mostly a place to keep recipes that I love all in the one place but I also try to write about the other things that I love such as cocktails and eating at great restaurants! Visit www.dinewineandmartinis.blogspot.com to check it out.

Here is a link to the post on making coffee at home and a sneak peak at the cute coffee percolator we bought. Enjoy!

6 degrees on the interweb...

The internet (interwebby!) makes the world a pretty small place. I want to give you a bit of an example of my take on 6 degrees of seperation on the interweb...

I'm on flickr and friend folk whose images are cool and who make interesting stuff. I friended Kapten Hanna a few years ago, she is a tattoo artist and I made the decision that I loved her work so much that I would travel to the USA to get some inking by her. So I travelled to Portland Maine, we met and felt like we had known each other for ages and became 'real friends' rather than just interweb friends. She inked this lovely lady on my arm (it's a lady on a lady by a lady!)

Around a year ago I also friended the lovely Silje on flickr. She made cute stuff, had a cute dog called cupcake and I really liked her paintings. There was one painting in particular of a matryoshka doll that I adored and thought would make an awesome tattoo so while I was in Portland, I emailed her to see if she would mind if I used her image as a tattoo. (This is a good courtesy I think! Ask before you ink!)


I also enjoyed Silje's blog and etsy store too! The funny thing is after emailing her, I realized a. that she tattoos and b. that she was based in Portland Maine too! Weird huh? So we teed up to meet and I got my lovely matryoshka doll done by the artist I loved! Here's a pic after it was done with me in my nana undies!

She naturally knew Hanna as they are dog lovers, knitters and tattooists so we had a bit to chat about.

As a bit of a crafty gal, I belong to various crafty social media sites and groups. One of them is Raverly and I belong to the tattoo and knitters group where we post and chat about tattooing. I posted images of my 2 new tattoos on this site and got a lovely message from Sam aka Jenny Leggings. We became friends and follow each others twitter and blogs. I was reading her post about her recent embroidery of a russian nesting doll which was inspired by... yep, Silje's original matryoshka paintings!

So even though this isn't really a 6 degrees of seperation, I just wanted to point out how awesome the interweb can be! I have gorgeous friends who are based in the USA and UK and who are from Sweeden and Norway and we all dig the same stuff and keep up to date with what we are making, watching and loving. The interweb is pretty cool huh?!

oooh runway skulls!

This was found via craftzine news but originally comes from these guys at Street Anatomy!

This is completely up my alley. I love a good tailored suit and these amazing fabric sculpture skulls are to die for! I wonder if I could attempt to make one and add it to a cute little black dress? (insert the sound of my brain ticking over right here!)

I just love this!