lanne

I do not like new typepad. I do not like here or there. I do not like it anywhere. 

I do not like it sam I am. 

So I got a new blog  -

It will take a while to fill with pretty things - but I am working on it 

http://lanne.squarespace.com/

enjoy. 

another week another post

I am busy trying to set up a new blog (slowly but surely right?) but every chance I get to blog - has been spent working on the new blog - it is a catch 22 LOL

The week that was?

Still working on the cool project. Finally sorted our new gift certificates and got the ones ordered printed and done. LOVING checking off to dos - not the daily ones but the big ones! 

I have a huge binder with all the changes to PWL in it - each area has a concept and then some action steps. Took a while to design the folder but it works SO freaking well! and it is awesome to check stuff off. 

I had a shoot on Sunday a rare thing for me - we moved Saturdays session to Sunday. We met up Spoon - and decided not to waunder too far. There was a prestige car lot that had become vacant and that was some fun, then when i went to move my car I spotted some alleys.. so we pretty much shot everything within 100 meters of the cafe. :) I will share some images soon - waiting on the client to finalise his order. I am really loving some of them tho. 

Monday was tough. I hurt my neck, throwing my back pack on the shoot on Sunday. I thought maybe I got a touch of sun - hence the headache but loads of water didn't ease it and Monday was bad. I rested a bit but once I got in the car to get lcohie - i knew it was a bad idea. The only idea as no one is near us and could help but.. a bad idea all the same. I made it about 10 mins into the trip and called andrew to come home as soon as his meetings were done - but he was a good hours drive away. I made it to school - one foot after the other down to prep. Hoping I wouldn't throw up. I pulled lochie out of class early, and we walked back to the car. I climbed in and got sorted before a steering wheel gripping drive home. ugh. Lochie was awesome - he is now big enough to hang out without supervision 100% of the time. I set him up with a movie, took more painkillers and layed down. Andrew got home about 3 hours later and took over. The week has followed on with migranes/headaches and feeling sick but it does seem to be improving. 

Before the shoot on Sunday we had ducked out and ordered our new bedroom suite. It arrived, on time, in better condition than we thought it might and was bought inside in about 4 mins. AMAZING delivery service! 

It came RTA - which thankfully meant assemble the bed and put door handles on the rest. I can do that. I did the door handles and we did the bed together... L O V E  the new bedroom furniture. Proper grown up bedside tables. We used to have small open tables, which were fine. I thought about buying some proper ones but didn't want something boring and OLD. These fit in beautifully. We also got a dresser rather than a tallboy. We skipped the mirror tho. It is perfect because it would fit under the hanging space in a wardrobe/closet if we moved and didnt have alot of room - likewise it holds the screen from the media room at the perfect height to watch movies in bed ;) We did end up going with this one. Having seen it first. ha. sooooo many stores and beds since, but we didn't love any of them - and decided if we weren't loving it lets get the cheaper end. Now we have it - we think it was the better of all of them. Nice simple lines and the finish is fine. (i thought it might be questionable given the price) but it was all good!

My room photography doesn't live up to this photo - hence I am sharing it LOL Give me a toddler and a dog but not a room! 

I headed to the bank on Tuesday and found walking around was helping my neck/shoulder. Far better than sitting in front the macs. So I kept shopping ;) forgot to go to the bank altogether! but I did find this great blue vase in Freedom Home (carindale). The clear on is a glass from Wheel and Barrow - I got four for the anniversary party. And I moved all the photos to the opposite wall as our bedhead is too high. 

I snapped this the other morning but didn't fuss with the quilt and pillows. I made the bed and then lochie jumped on it and rolled around like a puppy. This is life, not a bedroom catalogue.. so lets just deal with that shall we? It looks nice on the dark carpet tho, and the bedsides offer great storage. there. 

I grabbed some aqua/teal place mats for the bedsides so we don't scratch them and made a print for above the bed in the same colour. It is colour on white, and is some graphic flowers i found online. I wondered if it would be too busy but it seems to balance nicely. (print not shown)

Yesterday Mum had lochie so we raced around all day friday doing jobs, and had the evening/day off.. completely off.. PJ day - exactly what we needed. We set up the screen from the media room and enjoyed some TV on DVD.. love watching series this way. 

We do need more pillows on the bed to make it comfy tho. I found the big european pillows from the sofa worked well.. they are cheap and fabulous from ikea - i couldn't believe the price of them and can not tell you how comfy they are. I think 2 more of these and some orange covers would be nice. Orange and teal is more unexpected than raspberry and teal and less girly. I just need to check our other quilts and make sure that the orange i am thinking of would work. 

And here are again at Sunday. Oh how the weeks fly by. We are still wondering what to do today, but getting out sounds nice. 

Have an awesome weekend everyone and hopefully I can be back linking to the new blog soon. 

new banner

I cheated - the new banner is from tweetstats.com - it reads through your tweets and makes a word cloud of common words - i then got it to make a wordle - the @ replies and it made this - custom colours, screen shot - banner

simple right? 

and... all me. apparently. 

work in progress.

It has been a busy week. I quoted on a rather cool project this week. *fingers crossed*.. I will let you all know what it is when they say yes :) 

In the mean time.. this is my desk. ugh. It was perfect this time yesterday.. oh well.. must be busy huh

Here.. is PROOF.. that i do live in a mess!!!! and.. I shall have to clean this up before my gorgeous helper returns to 'get started on his work! 

I twittered this of him the other day - 

hard at work and super cute.

He even leaves me little love notes

ahh if only everyone had a coworker like him. Actually - he is often a lil sweaty after school, eats my food, talks over my phone conversations, uses my stationary and goes on and on about how much he loves me.. maybe.. he is the ultimate bad coworker..everyone's bad coworker rolled into one. ;)

maybe he is 5 and super cute and I adore him.

Ok OK back to work.. and cleaning up.

***ETA - yesterday someone told me my mess looked staged. Ha. I laughed and wondered why on earth anyone would stage a mess - although I was wishing I could stage the hour it took to clean up and put all the papers away properly. 

Jennifer's comment below pointed it out to me... colour coorindated mess.. hahahaha The office items are colour coordinated to make the place look neat - it is pretty easy to buy black, grey, white and yellow LOL... and the project i was working on was for pwl.. so .. i used my pwl stationary stock. ;)

colour coordinated mess.. still a mess .. but a pretty yellow one ha.

new chair

I want a new chair for the media room. We currently have one 2.5 seater sofa in there.. and I either pull up a stool (we have a couple in the media room for extra seating or wander around or sit next to the client.. not idea

I just want a nice simple armchair.. something minimalist and cheap.. tested out a couple of ikea options and this seems like a good choice. Washable covers etc. 

My concern is if it is white/light etc it may make the latte (pale milky coffeeish off whiteish colour) of the current sofa look dirty. It isn't but we all know what happens to off white when you put white beside it. 

It dawned on me today.. could I dye it? The cover is $30 so I probably wouldn't lose too much sleep if it didn't work ($50 inc dye?) but still..better to think these things through. 

I was thinking.. I could dye it YELLOW (how happy and fun would that be)... I want more yellow in the room and a yellow chair would be COOL. It is sitting on dark gray carpet with grey blinds behind.. perfect? The cover is 100% cotton!

Anyone have any experience or advice about dying.. i googled and I have less confidence now. I have never dyed anything.. so I would love some advice!

Let me know?

a lil after school project

I have had this little project in mind for a while now - today we shot it. 

It keeps raining and isnt likely to dry anytime this week. We parked the car outside and made work of our west facing garage. Door up.. and a box of costumes. 

These images are going above the little desk in Lochies room. Being a child's desk it is low.. leaving lots of wall space.. the desk holds his dvd player and the dvd holder. He has a bean bag and a lil chill out zone.. so i wanted the images above it to support the idea of characters and role play... without being a kids character poster! All I did was crop the image so that it was a lil dramatic than a standard full photo. 

A while back I made him an alphabet poster with each letter in different shades of blue (with green and red letters to spell out Love Lochie). It is in a grey frame - so we are reflecting that onto the opposite wall.. with grey frames.. and black and white images. I bought 3 shades of cardboard to matt the frames with. 

This took 20 mins and I think i shot about 100 photos. Easy Peasy. No fussy editing.. just our standard black and whites :) 

Lochie helped me plan the costumes and we lined them up, ready for a fast change out :) 

He is soooooo cute. I adore him.. can you tell? I am thinking that at least one of these needs to be bigger ;) Please note.. you can click to see it larger and it may take a lil longer than normal to load. :) 

this was my fav outfit... Glasses from maccas, devil cape was part of a set for a couple of dollrs and the hat is a set from Ikea.. cheap and ohhhhhh so funny. He rocked it.. reminded me of those 70s motorbike riders who jumped buses..LOL

better go.. this wonder kid will be in and jumping on me in just a few short hours :) 

What a busy weekend (and few days) it has been

Thursday to Sunday was a mix of pleasure and pain (and no.. we didn't crack open the Divinyls). 

I had a filling removed and replaced on Thursday. oh. my. goodness. I am just a bad dental patient. 

8 needles... lots of shaking and drama from me. I last about 20 mins and then start shaking violently.. it is ALL BAD. I apologise a lot and freak out .. oh yeah they want me back bad.. LOL ;) 

Actually Dr Nick is lovely but .. ugh. 

Of course I KNOW how badly these things go for me. So I waiting until a Thursday when Andrew could drive me and I could come home and rest a bit afterwards and take the Friday easy if I needed too... well that was ruined when Lochie developed a head cold and had both Thursday and Friday off school.

My mouth is still sore. I have bruising right up into my cheek bones and down to my jaw.. seriously hurts. the tooth site is fine.. but the mouth is still recovering. 

Mum took Lochie Friday evening/Saturdayish for us and I got the groceries done in peace, had a quiet night in Friday night and Saturday we had a cooked breaky in peace.. and headed into the city. We wandered through some art stores, got my fave teriyaki chicken for lunch (it is huge so we split it - it was my fave lunch when i worked in the city).. and picked up my new macbook battery. We picked up Lochie from Mum's on our way home and had afternoon tea with her. 

The yard needed mowing and grass in the garden beds needed pulling. The boys got to work on that and I got started on my own project. We scored two packing crates from Andrew's work some time ago and I made one an ottoman in the media room.. the other has been waiting. It is hard to get fabric the right size to cover it all in one go (and who wants to sew if they can skip it?)

I ordered some Amy Butler Lotus Fabric via etsy (lime tree peony) and it finally arrived ready to go. 

This is the crate after I removed the timber rails from the bottom. 

 and the gorgeous Amy Butler fabric.

It took a lil thinking.. I cut one panel and did the back, and then covered the rest. This time I did have to hand stitch the second section to the first but it didn't take THAT long to do.. 

As you can see shooting late in the afternoon at near dark.. did not work out so well for me ;) 

That rug is muted grays..LOL

Lochie was exactly 5.5 and has cottoned on to half birthdays last week. I said fine we would celebrate and when I reminded him we were having a special dinner for his half birthday he seemed to have completely forgotten about it *smacks head*.. ha

We wanted to check out the back yard at night, with all the candles in the wall so we could see if we need (we will) more lighting.. just trying to think of something creative and pleasant.. rather than the spotlights! We figured if we were going to check the lighting we would do it and tell lochie it was all about his special birthday ;) 

We set up the candles and popped him in the bath, so that we he came out it was all twinkling and dark. We then had a BBQ outside by candlelight.. nice enough but we need to work on that lighting.. LOL

He was beyond stoked.. these were taken just before dark. 

The sandstone wall is about 8 feet high? and the rocks are HUGE.. so nice to have a backyard where you cant see the neighbours.. it is super peaceful out there. 

With the success of operation ottoman .. and the complete FAIL of order some echino yellow fabric AND some dot fabric.. I am still hunting down some fabric to make cushions for the media room. 

It is hard to find the right shade of yellow AND something i really love. I have a latte (off white/pale milky coffee) colour sofa.. and some grey toned cushions on it. It isnt a super comfy couch (it is fine but not soft and plush) and I want a few more cushions on it. 

I found some Henry Alexander lemons in various shades of yellow.. one of them must be right huh?

(no i am not buying the apron.. i borrowed this from flickr cause it is hard to find this fabric!) 

I also am lusting after anything Anna Marie Horner.. but particularly this.. which is going to be gone soon as it is from her Drawing Room collection and seems to be hard to track down. 

I just don't think I could do a cushion in it .. as it has so many other colours *which i love but not for the media room*

SO... if anyone has any brilliant ideas.. please share. 

We also need a new bed. ALMOST 2 years ago when we moved to the other house.. well..a few days after we moved in actually the bed broke. My beautiful bed from Freedom.. died. We shopped. We looked.. we glanced and we blinked indignation at one another throughout showrooms all over Brisbane. no bed.. no matter the budget could be agreed upon. 

It was beginning to look a lot like mismatched twin beds.. when we finally had enough of sleeping on the floor and agreed on a basic and boy do i mean basic bed from Ikea. $189 later.. we had a frame and slats.. our temporary arrangement to get us up off the floor. 

Well in moving here.. IT broke. no luck at all with beds.. and we hadnt given alot of thought to a new one other than the need for one. Now we really needed one. Until Andrew realised in their quest to make beds simple to assemble ikea had drilled the holes in two places. Reversing the sides meant th bed was back together.. and.. 5 months later it is still going.. but no more. I am done with it. It feels like a death trap.. I am waiting for it to crash apart and take me with it. LOL 

A new bed is needed NOW. I have finally had enough. We sit down and look through at least 15 stores online and not one freaking bed can we agree on.. arghhhhhhhh

My list... minimalist (enough) simple clean lines... nothing fancy or scrolling timber, metal inserts or leather. No red jarrahs or pale ash coloured nonsense. Just something simple, easy to clean and dust and something our existing bedlinen can take in a room that is creamish walls and dark grey carpet. 

He wants solid, timber and a tallboy..

(yes my list is considerably longer..LOL) 

but finally.. we have lift off... we have a package that we can both live with. We found it and are off to check it out later this week. 

We are going to skip the dresser. I don't think we need it and many of the bedrooms wouldn't have room for it. Let me know what you think? We are no experts on bedroom furniture. 

brilliant

I am loving my new business cards. I have been passing them around and getting awesome feedback

Bespoke Press's Alischa rocked them. I still feel bad for her everytime i tell someone about how they were made (she works HARD operating that press) and how she hand cut them and trimmed all the corners for me.. BY HAND.. ).. some people have even looked at me like I am a slave driver LOL I am not.. but she did work very hard and I do appreciate her perfect results. 

 (the photos were take by Alischa - she is super cool and shares photos when creating your work.. )

OK.. 

so as much as I love her work.. and mine. (ha) I am kinda wishing I had a job at LEGO... not only so I could swing Lochie and Josh+Matt a copy of the big ball thing from Star Wars but because they have hands down the coolest business cards ever... lil lego people modelled on the person. 

Whats not to love. 

For now tho I have to get back to making some more documents.. and trying out a super cool idea I am 'borrowing'.

After school project.

I have been collecting photos of various rooms and ideas lately.. and this one inspired todays project. I have a bunch of 5x7 frames in the cupboard from our old house. I want to hang them right up against one another 3 x 3 or 4 accross and 3 down, and make a grid. To cover a blank spot where we removed the desk from Lochie's room to make way for a chill out area.

On saturday we are going to set up a backdrop and take a series of photos of him in various costumes (he has sooo many dress ups). I will then make them all black and whites and we can fill each frame. 

I want to capture that ... 'dressed up in a cape with a pair of goggles and some workmans gloves' look which he thinks is appropriate for a video store run (and i dont object) before he passes through this stage.. and I think it will be fun to fill his chill out/movie zone with some of his own fun characters. 

I am still tossing up the colours for this.. but i thought Lochie might enjoy cutting the cardboard.. him 'working' in the office is heaps of fun and working out pretty well for the most part. 

This was a mock up I did in PS.. (old photo). 

I will be sure and post some finished products. 

The Office

A few people have emailed me to ask about some stuff in the office.. i thought posting it here might be quicker.. 

lets see

left to right. 

The wall art I have covered before I am sure.. it is two oversized canvases, wrapped in charcoal silk dupion, with two lines of twine and I hang the photos with mini pegs from kikki K

20inch imac. i will be buying a 24 when this one dies

Cook books holding it up are wrapped in gift wrap from Kikki K

Yes.. I use a normal mouse. I love apple but i do not get the mighty mouse. 

The pen cup has a thin metal flower/vine thing (i think it was meant for candles).. you can twist it around stuff. 

Yep.. the iphone..love it. 

There is a business card holder (it is a cute ornate one I picked up at a gift store, a fork easel i bought on etsy .. a cheap plain white vase (big w - there range has greatly improved).. a fake flower. and a lamp from freedom ($20.. nice and simple design we have a few of these). 

Then the big month at a time planner from kikki K it is ridiculously large but i like it. Smiggle have a version of it which seems equally as good, possibly better as it has tear off bits. 

The desks are from Ikea.. cheap and cheerful - simple white table tops and the metal legs .. I think each desk totaled about $120.. bargain. 

Chair is  stefan chair again from Ikea.. $30.. buy a chair pad. No .. these are not overly comfortable for 18+ hour days but they arent BAD. and I think i found the cushion there too. 

the background has the oversized frame I repainted grey.. then the scrolly leaf things are timber cut outs.. they were available in freedom.. and the files.which i adore.. are from kikki k. 

under the desk you can see a drawer unit ..also from ikea.. this rocks. everyone should get one.. or two. 

and thats me. 

:)