love, janie lou

things and their adjectives

a nice thing ::

 

Our parents went away for their wedding anniversary last weekend (33 years, folks!) and they brought back gifts for us... including exquisite chocolates. Mm. Again: mm.

an interesting thing ::

 

Not to say you should all rush out and buy it (okay, you should if you want to), but my Mirabel's Christmas quilt is one of the projects in the latest issue of Country Threads, Volume 8 #12. This project was my attempt to get at some of the deeper significance of Christmas without all the trite cliches and the cheeseified versions of baby Jesus and oxen and whatnot. I don't like to cartoonise this amazing thing of God becoming man and not just man but a weak and helpless baby. So this is my (still warm and fuzzy) take on how we celebrate. Stitchery is so much fun.

an exciting thing ::

 

That's right, folks: shop update this Friday morning, all going to plan. We are all makeity makeity and we're excited about our new stuff, so check back Friday for the goods!

danielle.xo

the monday list of cool stuff

Cool creative things for you to enjoy on a sleepy, getting-warmer Monday:

• The BrisStyle etsy team (which Lauren and I are a part of) just keeps growing and growing. We dreamed of introducing you to the various shops and blogs one by one, but the list is so long now the feat may well prove impossible. Instead, head over to the BrisStyle blog to keep up with the news from this gathering of Brisbane designers, or jump over here to see all the BrisStyle etsy stores in the one place. Buy local! Yeah!
• Frankie magazine has the cutest wallpapers to download for absolutely nothing. I have the little hand-stitched cat as my laptop wallpaper right at this very moment.
• After forgetting the link for a while, I just rediscovered Camilla Engman's amazing blog and spent too much time on Friday afternoon going through the archives.
• I wish I had an iPod so I could make this cute cover for it.
• Also, I am still inspired by the colours and the message of Salvation Mountain (which I posted about here) and I have been playing lots with paints purchased in a wildly kitsch array of colours. On Thursday I made portraits for three girlfriends whose birthdays fall in August; it was the perfect opportunity to fiddle with bright colours. Yay!
• Not as cool as getting your own beautiful bundle in the mail, but it's fun to look at someone else's.

What's inspiring you just now?

danielle. xo

drawing a blank

It feels like long ages since I have done anything creative with paper or fabric. Mostly this is due to the shadow of deadlines hanging dark and threatening like thunderclouds (is there such a thing as thunderclouds? I do believe I have invented something today) over my head. Not that I mind; I love deadlines and they fuel my productivity no end. But I like space between them so there's a little making in there, too. At last now (after completing a bunch of work and also the novel manuscript) I'm coming up for air and looking forward to getting to work on new things. I don't even know what the new things are, as yet, but I'm looking forward to them all the same.

I am also finding myself completely lost without a camera. My beloved Kodak (we'd been together three years) died tragically and swiftly earlier this year and so I keep stealing Lauren's camera at inopportune moments. But she is on a mission of mercy interstate at the moment so I am without clickability anywhere. You would not think a camera is something that would seem so essential to the everday, but I'm finding that it is.

So... in the absence of real pictures and anything meaty to say, I present to you a list of current inspirations in the hope that if you, like me, are drawing some blanks at the moment, you might be refreshed and invigorated by someone else's creative goodness:

Flossy-P's blog is such a delight -- and her artwork: oh my!

How on earth does this lady find such charming thrifted things?

Ladies in Brisbane who make lovely things!

Stephanie Congdon Barnes :: even her blog is fresh and crisp and clean.

danielle. xox

findings

This is Lauren, being busy this morning, stitching up an all-new batch of purses and wallets, some for our store and some for another store [we'll tell you about that when it's actually all live and happening].

And this is how I've been busy lately--trying to polish up a novel draft into something final and complete and good. When I began, I had no idea how scary it would be. Writing the first draft--even the agonising patches when the words had to be churned and squeezed out like washing through an ancient mangle--is a breeze compared to the absolutely terrifying territory known as The Edit. I honestly confess I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to this stage. Each step is a steep learning curve. Nevertheless, I am attacking my manuscript [and I do take a very worldly delight in calling that fat pile of paper "my manuscript"] with a red pen and various highlighter pencils and hoping that I'll do more good than harm. What if I actually edit out something I shouldn't? Something that might actually be good? was the plaintive cry yesterday. And my own rationale answered me: Don't worry. You can always write more. This stuff isn't the best writing you'll ever produce. If it is, you might as well quit now, chicken. The calm voice of reason. Now, to remember it.

I've been storing up little happy pieces of internet goodness to share for a while now, and today (which feels like Monday but is actually Tuesday) is the perfect day to offload a bundle of it. There is no rhyme or reason or even a continuing thread amongst this collection. It is all simply good stuff:

• Elegant Musings is a blog I stumbled across recently and I've been super-inspired by it. Look at the vintage clothes! Look at the wardrobe remixes! Look at the artwork! It's all so lovely and feminine.
• Sarah at The Small Object has a really great post up about the beginnings of her small business. I don't know about you, but I am a process person and I love reading about others' processes. I'm still fascinated by the Through the Windows segment on Playschool and I can't walk past an old-fashioned candy store without checking to see if they might be making something and I can watch. Which all goes to say that I loved reading this post and I think you will, too.
• Anne Rice, former author of vampire stories and other scaryish horror tales, shares the amazing story of what she calls her "return to faith" over at The Washington Post. I think her story is incredible, and I love it that this eloquent and articulate woman is now using her voice to give honest testimony to a wondrous hope.
• You likely won't be able to read the words, but the pictures are quite enough over here. I am gathering images into a folder I've titled "Modestly Cool"--fashion that is modest, fresh, and feminine. I found heaps of inspiration at this site.

That is all for now. I'm off to eat sundried tomato and asparagus risotto, watch a final episode of The West Wing before it's due back at the library, and then: birthday shopping for Lauren. She turns 23 this Sunday!

d. xo

february ten

February seems stuck in the netherworld between Summer and Autumn. Some days are balmy, warm, or sticky. Others--like today--are grey and windy and promise rain but offer little. The year has well begun and is floating along in all its busyness, but there is lots of happiness, too--a perfect time, as Amanda @ SouleMama says, to be a little more attentive to the things that bring joy. Inspired by her, here is my current February ten:

1. Baking on a Sunday afternoon, inspired by Bill Granger. Result of combined inspiration, surfing through recipe books, and few ingredients: moist white chocolate muffins, to be enjoyed only very occasionally.

2. A beautiful, unexpected Valentine.

3. Valentine mail in the post!

4. Childish excitement about the shop being open.

5. Being in love with my local library and their very cool online feature that allows you to create a whole stack of books gathered from a bunch of libraries and have them delivered right to the library closest to you--all at the click of the mouse. I have become good at exceeding my online hold limit :).

6. A cheap screen-printing tutorial.

7. My uncle and my wee little Dutch, blonde cousin coming from Holland and arriving to stay tomorrow.

8. America's Country Living magazine.

9. My little brother's perpetual zaniness. He is in the crazy stage at the moment, but he couples it with so much high-dosage affection that he thwarts any attempts to stay cranky at him. Lately he has been calling us all "my dear" and wants to watch Pride and Prejudice together.

10. Spending the whole weekend with just my family and doing lots of reading and chatting and eating muffins and watching movies together.

d.

P.S. Bill Granger has some recipes on his website!

selah

Woo! 2008 has certainly started off with a bang and more up-past-midnight evenings than you can poke a stick at. We're definitely ready for a break. Roll on, Australia Day long weekend!

There's a word used in the Psalms, selah, which means "pause and calmly think of that." I think we need a selah weekend, a weekend of pausing and calmly thinking. What inspirations do you enjoy during a calm weekend? Here's a current list of what's floating my boat (with Lauren's list to follow):

danielle's current inspirations:

• visually I am being very much inspired by two blogs: Simply Breakfast and my polaroid blog. The breakfast photography blog makes me want to go slow and spend time making my breakfast lovely and special and nourishing (lately, breakfast has been a sometimes-neglected whirlwind). And the polaroid photography perfectly fulfils my obsession with soft light and images.
• musically I am loving the Newsboys' Thrive album, which I bought for my dad for Christmas but which fact does not stop me listening to it. Apart from the so very Newsboys lyrics (a combination of quirk and pure poetry), the music is also distinctly them: catchy and joyful pop rock that makes you want to know the King more.
• literarily (is there such a word?) I'm excited about a new author a long-distance friend introduced me to: Ellis Peters. Okay, well she's not a new author per se, but she's new to me. I love a good mystery story but shy away from gratuitous gore and crude language and other nasty stuff--which sorely limits my reading in the detective line of things. What fun to disover Ellis Peters (aka Edith Pargeter, John Refern, Joylon Carr, and Peter Benedict; it appears this author was not just a master of the mystery, but also of the pseudonym!) and find refreshing, wholesome detective stories--albeit with somewhat cheesy titles. I have only read a few so far, but I am looking forward to many more whodunnit delights.
• devotionally I'm finding J.B. Phillips' Letters to Young Churches (now republished as The New Testament in Modern English, I believe) a wonderful tool for enhancing my reading of the epistles. Currently I'm exploring Corinthians, and it's fun and fresh to read a chapter from the scriptures and then the corresponding chapter in Phillips' translation. It opens my eyes to see things in new ways, and that's always helpful!

I'll leave you with pictures of two more things that have been inspiring me lately. One is the handmade, handwritten invite to a very creative friend's birthday, and the other is a bundle of delicious half-made goodness that Lauren is whipping up for the grand opening of our little etsy store. Enjoy and be inspired!