I’ve been featured in a really lovely blog called Maddabling. It’s always a treat when someone thinks you’re worthy of their time and precious space on their blog.
Find me here.
And don’t forget to read the comments because I swear I didn’t pay anyone to write what they did.
It’s just that Empire of Delight customers and admirers are just so tremendously awesome with incredible taste.
My 100 Day Action Plan and 31 Steps to Super Career Woman Success has been a total bomb.
But lets all relax and eat some cake. I know I will be.
Clearly I’m preoccupied and my blog is the first thing to go. We’ve got workshop renovations to deal with and husbands and children on holidays, not to mention I’m cooking meals every night instead of feeding the kids cereal for dinner and this kind of commitment takes time and effort.
Although I must brag about my quiche Lorraine and curry chicken pie, both of which are awesome.
Then there’s been the reworking of my bath bombs. I completely changed my recipe and have created the most brilliant bath bombs…if I do say so myself. But dear reader, they really are smashing, I’m positively chuffed with them.
I’ll be introducing them at the next market which will be in October. Don’t check the calendar yet I haven’t updated it…but it’s on my to do list.
Well that didn’t go well! I just disappeared off the face of the earth for a few days.
I had no phone and no internet for days and have been getting increasingly frustrated by it all (as Telstra employees will testify).
It turns out that our very naughty rabbit, who is perhaps given too much freedom in the house, had chewed through both cords connecting the phone and modem.
So lets all pretend the last week didn’t happen! We can all just skip along merrily and convince ourselves that Day 3 is supposed to start tomorrow and we are exactly where we are meant to be. I’ll happily hang out in Denial Land if you will too.
Shall we do that? It sounds like the best idea to me.
See you tomorrow.
Sometimes in life there are way too many choices. There are just so many cool careers out there that I feel like I want to pursue them all, as if I could have a second career on the sideline and it wouldn’t be too much work.
So what would I do if I magically had the time to have a second, third, even fourth career?
Like Bakerella, who seems to spend her day making cookies and taking cool photos of them.
Like Twigs & Honey.
Especially art like Rebecca Rebouche, who creates the most divine paintings.
Like Australian designer Mel Bomba.
Just like Kiss the Grooms Elizabeth Messina.
It ‘sounds’ like a great idea, gutting old ugly houses and redecorating them into something beautiful.
Like the very talented Elise Hurst who wrote and illustrated one of our favourite books, The Night Garden.
I could just read all day long. Bliss.
Like The Shoe Girl who spends her day dressing up and designing fab shoes for top fashion labels.
You design pretty things like Rifle Paper Co, people love them and use them a wedding invitations. Perfect.
I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the day.
With my own reality show of course.
Where the only thing I do is what I want, when I want…and then I blog about it of course.
No explanation necessary.
Tomorrow I’m having my very first giveaway. So be sure to check back.
No reason…I’m just that nice.
I’ve got almost 200 blogs on my blog reader, some are updated several times a day, others, almost never. But there are always favourites, ones I click on as soon as I see a new post. It’s an ever changing list of favs, however I’m pretty fickle and can go off a blog really quick if they don’t keep me interested.
Some, gasp! even get deleted if they start posting really poor quality work. Shameful I know but it’s competitive out there in blog world and you have to be good to get and keep peoples attention. Survival of the most entertaining.
Here are my six favourite blogs right now…this list could change next week, or later today. But right now, they’re it.
Bakerella. Quite simply the coolest sweets and baking blog on the internet. In it you’ll find the best tutorials for cupcakes, brownies, cookies and every other type of sweet dessert. The photos are always clear, fun and vibrant. It’s an absolute joy to read.
Ish & Chi blogger Viv has flawless decorating sense. she’s stylish, bold and isn’t afraid to mix expensive pieces with cheap and cheerful. She’s also a dab hand at renovating and putting an outfit together.
Little Green Notebook. This was a blog I subscribed to originally thinking it would be good and was very disappointed with. I wasn’t impressed with the posts and it kind of got forgotten about in feed reader, where I’d click on it occasionally and quickly scan the posts. Then suddenly it got really good. Her posts got really exciting with great interior decorating content and the room renovations were just fantastic. Now I love every post and look forward to what’s coming next.
Sweet Fine Day have only recently been on my blog list. Jenna and Mark make fantastic desserts and take really beautiful pictures of their creations. But also they live in New York with their two young children and seem to have an amazing cosmopolitan life of trips to Central Park, the farmers market or their local cafe. All documented with Jenna's relentless snapping away.
The Design Files. Anything interesting and innovative that’s happening in Australia is documented here. The curators have impeccable taste and I especially love the studio and retail interior features.
This is Glamorous are exactly as their name suggests. The blog is chocker block full of glamour, fashion, dreamy interiors and divine photography. There’s no chatting on this blog, it’s all style over substance and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Today I spent the day wondering why everyone was so uncommunicative. No one was returning my calls and emails were being ignored. Some of them were very important (to me) and I spent the day hovering near the computer and clutching my phone hoping they would call me back.
Not a single person did.
Just as I was beginning to feel quite rejected and friendless I remembered it was a public holiday today everywhere except in Western Australia. All the communications had been to the eastern states so it was obvious why no one was talking to me.
They all had much better things to do today.
To make myself feel better I revamped the blog and took some more new product shots.
I’m not entirely happy with them yet and the banner needs redoing to give it that finished look but all in all I like the new blue colour scheme.
Oh and a snazzy new pic of me…really, I look just like that.
The subject of body image and dealing with pain have been at the forefront of my week. I’m fine by the way, but sometimes we have to deal with pain and suffer for a while.
This week I was reminded that I am grateful I’m not sick often and rarely have to visit hospitals. Kind and attentive nurses cannot counterbalance the cold sterile rooms and that terrible moment at two in the morning when you wake and realise you’re alone and not with your family and not in your own soft bed.
And you don’t want to hear children crying, or those words “you’ll have to stay another night”, or “out of 1 to 10 what is your pain score?” and you cry “eight!” because right then and there it hurts that much.
And just when I was feeling sorry for myself I found this video and it made me realise my pain score was thankfully now zero and that there are plenty of other scores I needed to be keeping.
Stephanie and I don’t share the same beliefs but I still enjoyed this video. It was so beautifully made and I loved her message of the joy of motherhood and love.
I have a dear friend who I speak to on a regular basis who whenever she asks me what’s happening is always given the same reply “Nothing much”. Which isn’t true and her and her fiancé complained bitterly to me recently that they learnt more about what was going on in my life by reading my blog than talking to me.
The problem is, is that all the little things that make a life interesting and exciting always seem to disappear from my memory when ever anyone asks me what’s going on in my life.
Besides, aren’t they really only interested in the big news? Don’t people really want to hear about all the disasters and dramas happening? I’m sure people would much rather hear that the Queen came to visit and we Zumba’d the afternoon away, or what happened when I tested the theory that you shouldn’t let a bull loose in a china shop, rather than the news that my digital set top box has stopped working and I’m heartbroken or I’ve given up chocolate and am equally heartbroken.
But it turns out people really are interested in the boring, mundane realities of my life. Because it’s not boring and mundane to them.
So in honour of that I’m posting a little picture of what happens when three year olds are given free reign with the car and all the toys they can carry.
Enjoy Gemma. This will be your world in two small years.
