Happy-Making: Yellow

Sunshiney. Citrusy. Zingy.

Hooray for yellow! Hooray for the weekend! Hooray for catching up! With friends, with laundry, with cleaning.

This week has been a real mixed bag and I can't wait for the weekend. I hope yours is wonderful! xx

Happy-Making: Fathers

Sunday is Fathers Day and this week, Sparky-the-Wonder-Dad is my happy-maker. He's an amazing Dad, wonderful hubs and brilliant friend. He works so hard for us only to come home and give more of himself to make us feel special and loved. And we do.

Isla says it best: "I love you. I love you so much. I love you Daddy. We're family."

Happiness and inspiration:

- Continuing the declutter and photographing a heap of things to sell on eBay.

- Hearing Isy tell Toby that she loved him - heartswell!

- "Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is the beauty of things modest and humble. It is the beauty if things unconventional." via Re-Nest

Have a beautiful weekend and remember to tell any fathers/grandfathers in your life just how much you love and appreciate them. xx

Happy-Making: Slow

I've been readjusting my view of the world lately, and I've come to a conclusion: sometimes slow is best. Soaking up experiences, savouring, creating meaningfully. Slow is good.

I'm reading all about creating a slow home here, and I dig it. It's basically what I'm all about, only more articulate.

This weekend will hopefully be a good mixture of fast and slow. Lazy mornings, birthday parties, maybe some gardening and continue the declutter.

Some things that are currently inspiring me:

5 Reasons to Declutter your Home, via Re-Nest.

This incredible vintage Airstream caravan/home/studio, also via Re-Nest

Nine Quick Tips to Identify Clutter, via zenhabits

DIY: Recycled Road Map Cork Boards, via design*sponge

These amazeballs cups made from plastic bags, via The Supercyclers

Happy-Making: The Little Things

My girl's cheeky grin, a pretty shadow, a baby giggling, Friday night movies with Isla and Sparky...

Given how jumped-up I've been feeling lately, it's so nice to take genuine pleasure and joy and happiness from the little things.

More happy-making: I saw Bridesmaids with two of my sisters last week and nearly wet my pants with laughter. It was the first time I'd been to the movies since Isla was born (the last one I saw was Slumdog Millionaire) and it was fun fun fun!

Plus, in other movie-related news, if you're a Tim Winton fan like me I can highly recommend you get your hands on a copy of the mini-series Cloudstreet. It is absolutely beautiful and I loved it. I've already watched it twice. Quick Lamb had my heart all aflutter.

I hope your weekend is wonderful and relaxing. Sparky has taken himself off for a golf weekend so it's just the kidlets and I. It's meant to rain all weekend so I forsee lots of movies, craft, popcorn and cuddles under blankets. Can hardly wait!!

x

Happy-Making: Dirty Hands and Weekend Reads

(Blogger buggarised around and I only just saw that this post never made it up on Friday. So here it is... On Monday!!)

It's been a funny old week, but it's ending on a delightfully high note. Not only did Sparky and I start our new exercise routine this morning (waking at 5am six days a week to do either yoga/jog) and it felt goooood, but I've also been able to get my hands into the dirt and start working on our garden beds. It's my favourite domestic thing to do and after an hour or two in the garden, I feel like I've been on holidays. Or am flush with that post-exercise endorphin rush.

Plus the sun is shining (it's as windy as all get-out, but I'm not going to complain) and I got my new issue of frankie in the post today, just in time for the weekend! AND it's chock-full of awesome things that people make. Win:win:win!

Bonus: Tonight, I'm making caramel popcorn! My teeth are aching with happiness (or is that sugar?) already.

I hope you all have wonderfully content weekends, and much happiness results. xx

Happy-Making: Instagram and Yoga

Geeking out for my regular Friday happy post. I'm so ridiculously addicted to Instagram (are you on it? let me know!) and have started to find excuses to take photos of pretty, unexpected things just so I can play around with them on IG. It's actually been great - it's seen me take note and appreciate the little things a bit more.

Also, I've always loved the idea of yoga, and any time I actually try it I find myself much more centred, chilled and just healthier in myself, but I've never had the cash or consistent time to make it a regular thing. About a month ago I found this yoga (for iPhone) app and it. is. awesome. Best $2.49 I've ever spent.

So if you're into yoga or interested in starting, I totally recommend it. (And I'm not being paid for this - it really has helped my state of mind so much, and in turn is a massive happy-maker.)

This long weekend is due to be a chilly one, but we're going to make the most of it, with a stew cook-off, maybe some painting, a bit of op-shopping and tons of chill time on the lounge. Maybe a red wine or two. Or three.

Hope yours is full of fabulousness too! x

Happy-Making: Family and Finders Keepers

The weekend is shaping up to be stupendous, with painting to do and a visit to Ikea in the mix, as well as a trip to the fairly incredible Finders Keepers market tomorrow. (Seriously. It's awesome. You should go.)

I'm really keen to check out some of the handmade action on hand, as the only times I've ever been to the markets was as a stallholder myself, and had no time to shop around and see the sights. It should be really nice to head in tomorrow morning, have a coffee and check it out. Hopefully I'll see you there!

In other happy-making:

- finding gem photos you had forgotten about

- booking next year's holiday to Byron

- weather warm enough for bare feet in cool grass

- dinner in the slow cooker

- rhubarb and apple crumble


I hope your weekends are wonderful! x

Happy-Making: Four Years

Sparky is the ultimate happy-maker.

*Cue groans*

Fromage-fest aside, I hope you all have wonderfully, fabulous long, long, long (if you're in Australia or NZ) weekends. We are, of course, painting, chilling on our finished deck (hurray!), eating soup, having a picnic, baking bread and (maybe) hot cross buns, cleaning up the backyard and generally soaking it up. Should be all sorts of nice.

Happy Easter! xxx 

Happy-Making: Between Two Ferns

Having a sick kidlet makes me sad.


Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifinakis makes me happy. So does slow-cooked red chicken curry, red wine and a beautiful, finished deck to sit on.

I hope your weekends are wonderful! x

(I can't embed the video, but it's totally worth a click if you're keen on slightly crass, piss-taking humour. Which I am.)

Happy-Making: The Simple Things

 

Isy has spent hours playing with these tiny animals I found for her last week. We build farms out of cushions and mountains out of beanbags. We feed them apples and have races. We make sock monsters to chase them, but end up turning them into tickle monsters so as not to scare ourselves.

I also love exploring and finding new things. This beautiful lagoon is not five minutes walk from our house and this is the first time we've been there. So pretty.


As for the weekend, it's shaping up nicely. The weather's meant to be gorgeous (great for painting = win), I'm getting a haircut tomorrow, hopefully catching up with some lovely people for a coffee sometime, a lamb pot roast, maybe a movie and some caramel popcorn (RED or True Grit? Decisions.)  I also bought some bits and pieces to start making Easter presents, so hopefully I'll have time to mess about with those too.

I hope you have an awesome weekend your good selves. xx

Happy-Making: Smalls

The things that make me happy this week are BABES! They're everywhere! I'm in the middle of a delicious baby bloom with about 10 ladies I know delightfully up the duff. Oh, the glow! The shine! The roundness! Love.

And not surprisingly, it's making me clucky. Which, with a 25 month-old and a 4-month-old is where the madness lies. The madness! 

I also loved spending this morning with my nan and the kids. It was so super lovely to see her have a cuddle with both of them. It's not easy mixing the toddler with a nursing home but Isy did remarkably well.

Anyway... Happiness:

It's been pretty light-on here this week and for that I'm sorry. You know those weeks where everything that needs to be done gets done, but everything else is left at some percentage of complete (like, 12%). That's me, right here. But next week is sure to be all kinds of lovely and all manner of awesome, just you wait!

The weekend will hopefully see me get stuck into the painting at some stage, which is, you know, unexpected. I also have a heap of projects I've started or want to start, so hopefully I may get some time to do one or two of those.  I have spray paint and am not afraid to use it.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!! xx

Happy-Making: Flashmobs

I love a good flashmob. In fact, Sparky tells me that I'm like Cameron from Modern Family, "It's one of my life's ambitions to be in a flash mob," and I tend to agree with him aside from the fact that I am a straight lady.

I get all weepy and goosebumpy watching the good ones, and only mind a little bit that they're getting all corporatised.

This Bondi one is cute and I love love loved the bus driver birthday flashmob in Denmark.

Anyways, we've got a massive weekend planned around these parts. A trip to IKEA, 60 square metres of turf to lay, catching up with the outlaws, maybe some painting...

I sincerely hope your weekend is filled with fabulousity. xx

Happy-Making: Campfires

There's something truly hypnotic about campfires. Whenever Sparky and I go camping I'm the one who is all, "Is it time to light the fire yet? Really? Just because it's 11am, I can't light the fire and sit around it and drink red wine? Are you sure?" I even remember having quite an argument with Sparky after we tried (and failed) to light a campfire in. the. rain. I got quite emotional. In my defence, I was pregnant.

Camping is absolutely one of my favourite things to do. It's just so damn relaxing. The toughest decisions of the day are based around food, fire, beverages and marshmallows. What's not to like?! This is so what I'd like to be doing this weekend:

Instead, we just received a delivery of 3 cubic metres of topsoil that needs to be shifted to the backyard and laid down where the slab used to be. We're turfing next weekend so we need to get it sorted tomorrow. So Saturday is all about the shovel, shovel, shovel, push wheelbarrow, dump, rake, rake, rake. Rinse and repeat. I'd also like to do some more paint prep but we shall see. I'd also really love love love to do something garden related, as I feel the autumn planting season slipping away from me, but I should probably just fertilise the plants we have. (Remember, the beginning and end of the footy season are the ideal times to prune, fertilise and mulch your native garden. Just make sure you use a native-friendly fertiliser.)

Hopefully Sunday we can go for a drive and see some lovely people, drink some coffee, maybe go for a walk. There's some easy bushwalks around here that we've never done, so we'll see.

Hope you have a fabulously wonderful weekend!! x

Happy-Making

The smell of freshly-baked banana bread and the knowledge that tomorrow is my birthday. Yay squared!

The weekend holds for us: hanging out as an awesome foursome, shopping, birthday dinner, painting (of course. but this time, it's the outside of the house, which is a novel turn), coffee and at least one walk around my newest favourite walking track near the lagoon.

Hope your weekend is just as fun! x

Happy-Making: Heartswell

This little one turns two over the weekend. Boom.

Happy-Making: Heart Shaped

In lieu of Friday's missing Happy-Making.

Paint and unpainted surfaces surround us constantly at the moment, but this little droplet made me oodles of happy.

Happy-Making: The Elevator Krump

My brother-in-law, Seamus McAlary, is a stand-up comedian and recently spent a weekend filming this hilarious video with a couple of friends. Makes me laugh. Every time.

Hope you have a great weekend!

We're painting and clearing the backyard of garage debris so that Isy can finally play outside again without me freaking out about her hurting herself. Should be grand!

Happy-Making

Don't you love looking at photos from past holidays?

I hope you have a fabulous weekend. We're spending Saturday painting (natch!) and family BBQ-ing and Sunday cleaning out the garage to have it removed next week.

Brooke x