Monthly book round up.

Midway through last year I decided to start a book journal. I wrote down everything that I read (and finish) in each month as a way to encourage myself to read more. I used to read a lot when I was younger but it seems there is always something else to do these days and I don't read as much as I would like. 


Looking back at the book journal now you can definitely see when the uni holidays starts and finishes. I tend to read when I'm at my parents house too, mainly because getting on the Internet up in the bush is so damn hard! I have to say that the last few months have been a really poor effort in the reading department for me. I hadn't finished reading any books in February or March this year. BUT I was reading still, I just didn't finish any. (So I guess that makes it a little bit better?


Now it's the end of April (it's actually my dad's birthday today, happy birthday dad!) so I thought I'd share the books I read this month.

I have been reading this book on and off for the last few months. I finally finished it last night! I feel bad that it took so long to read because it was on loan from a friend, but now I can give it back.

I'm counting this one even though it mainly full of graphics and pretty pictures. That still counts as reading right? 

That wasn't all that I read this month, but it was all I finished! I'm about halfway through some other books at the moment, I'm sure I'll be finished them by the end of May.

I hope so anyway! =)

Home-made Day.

I had an awesome day today!

Firstly a sleep in, a nice big cup of tea and raisin toast for breaky followed by a lot of sewing.

Then an afternoon of home-made yummy goodness! (after a spot of food shopping for the previously mentioned yummy home-made goodness. 

I picked up some caramel coffee (shock horror! I sometimes it is nice to break from tea, and this coffee smells fantastic!) And it is always fun to use my coffee plunger. 

I made home-made bread this afternoon to go with the casserole that I was cooking in my slow cooker. It was the recipe that I learnt off mum only the other day. And not to toot my own horn, but it was fantastic! The meat was just perfect and the bread was so yummy too!

Here is Grant slicing the bread into really thick slices. 

Yummo. It was a beef casserole with potato, carrots, diced tomatoes and herbs.

Even Grant though it was awesome. 

I got my custom bag finished, wrapped and ready for giving today. I also got another custom order (yay) so I am able to start working on it straight away. 

Busy busy busy!

Ps. On a side note (literally) I aligned my text to the left today. What do you think? Do you like it? Leave me a note to tell me your opinions! 

Easter Weekend Wrap up.

So the Easter weekend has passed. What a shame, I really enjoyed my five days off back at mum and dad's. I caught up with my grandparents, spent some time with my sister and my mum taught me how to make her version of a casserole. 

Here are some pictures of my weekend.

My mum found this massive 6 foot plus snakeskin at the back door while I was there. So yucky. Out of all places why would it do it right there?! I snapped a photo of my pop with the snakeskin. It reminded me of this old photo.

This is my pa's brother with a dead brown snake. I'm not sure how old this picture is but the original is tiny! 

My sister and I had a yummy cheese fondue for lunch one day. I felt so full after! 

Picked up the kittens! They are soooooo cute! Practically identical, and so little. They don't have names just yet, but after spending almost 4 days with them I am starting to be able to tell them apart by their personalities. 

Hanging with Dudley. It rained for some of the time while I was at home, and Dudley hates the rain. He likes to be clean and so when he's wet all he wants to do is clean himself. The last photo of him was taken right before I left this morning, and he knew I was leaving and wouldn't look me in the eye! He can be such a sook when he wants to be. 

When I got home today my parcel had arrived from DirtRoadSouth! It was a present to myself for reaching 10 sales =) I love it so much!

All in all I had such a good weekend. I got a reasonable amount of chocolate which I wasn't expecting, but it is always a bonus! Now I'm back in Newcastle and ready to get back to work. 

On the agenda for the next few days:

Some uni work.

Working on a custom bag.

Designing a new range of bags (shhh..it's a secret!) 

Some DIY projects.

Sewing.

Sewing.

Sewing.

And some more

Sewing.

Excited to go home.

I'm so excited to go home and see all the family over Easter break. It's been more than 5 weeks since I've been back! We are having a family get together on Good Friday and on Saturday we are going to pick up the new additions to the family, two new kittens! 

They are only just 6 weeks old and are still tiny. I can't wait to play with them. And I can't wait to see what Dudley thinks of them too!

(PS. Dudley is my white Labrador, I raised him from a puppy when I was 17, but I couldn't take him with me when I moved out. He is a real farm dog though and loves the open space and being able to wander around as he pleases.)

Here's Dudley! He loves being silly, wearing bow ties and scarves and playing with oversized tennis balls. 

When I get back from being at home, I'm planning to work on some new designs for the shop, finishing off a custom order, and hopefully quilting up my Goodbye summer, Hello autumn cushion cover. How exciting!

You can stay up to date with Everyday Mae now on Twitter! 

Camden Haven River, a photo by BiancaElyce on Flickr.

The Making of a New Bow Bag.

As you might have read in my previous post, I have been enjoying bows lately and decided to make some bags with bows on them! Here are some in progress shots.

And here are some finished snaps.

The bows turned out very well!

The orange purse that I had been working on in the previous photos sold before I had a chance to list it! My sis thought it would be a very good present for one of her friends birthdays and ta da it was sold. Yay. But the Green Print Purse and the Red Print Purse are both still available in the shop. 

Ps. Did you notice I was wearing a bow in my hair? I made that one too, it was the practice bow before I made the real ones for the purses. I totally forgot that I had it on when the picture was taken too!

I had been playing around with the Poladroid download today at uni while I waited for my group to show up (long story!) and had a lot of fun with it. That's how I made the little polaroid frames on my snaps! Oooo so much fun! And so much time wasted   =) 

It's so easy to use too. I've been seeing everyone use the Instagram pictures and it makes me want an iphone just so I can use it! My compromise was the Poladroid program. 

In other news I have been asked to make another custom bag for a friend! Yay. So I made another quick trip to the fabric shop today to get all stocked up on things I'll need. How exciting! When it is completed my official sales tally is 12. 

I've also started using twitter again. Check me out! 

Weekend Wrap Up.

I've decided to do a weekend wrap up. Ooo how exciting. Maybe I could make this a regular thing? 

Weekends are totally awesome, and I get a four day one every week.

Mwahahahah!

Some things I am loving about this weekend are: 

Wrapping an order to personally deliver to a friend at uni. Thanks Julie!

Coming home on Friday to find my subscription to Frankie magazine had turned up! I love this magazine and have been a subscriber for maybe 3 years? It's so cool. This edition they had mentioned three different Etsy artists on one page! It makes me proud to be an Etsy seller and to know that there are people out there who appreciate handmade goods. 

New architecture books! So this was a bit of a splurge, but honestly they were 30% off. I saved about $35-40 dollars. The nearest Borders store is closing down and they are having massive sales. The architecture section was a little low, I guess other people had the same idea as me!

Working on (and finishing) some new bags. One of my favourite parts, hand sewing! I think I like this the most because I can move around the house to do it, and not be stuck in front of my machine. Today I did this in the (sometimes) sunny Queensland room while it tried really really hard to rain. But it didn't. More about these bags another day 

=)

Cuddles with Ned! One of my other favourite things to do. Ned is kind of my de-facto dog (he belongs to my partners parents and we are looking after him while they live and work overseas.) He loves to snuggle and today he fell asleep on me and started snoring. It was really cute.

Today (Sunday) was a pretty mellow day. I was in the mood for quiet so I relaxed on the lounge listening to Simon & Garfunkel while I did my hand sewing. I also got a bit excited about going home next weekend and packed most of my bag already! I wasn't sure that I would have time through the week, because I'll be spending time on finishing my group assessment for uni, so I thought I'd get it done now. 

I spent all day wearing my Hoodies for your feet, these are so comfy and one of my favourite things about the cold weather. I also made some yummy apple and blueberry muffins and ate a warm one when they came out of the oven. So tasty!

Hope your weekend was as good as mine. Back to uni tomorrow and the only reason I'm looking forward to it is because its almost Easter break, yay!

Love a Rainy Day!

Oh boy, I love a rainy today. So today was just fantastic! 

I even took a (bad) photo of it.

The boyf and I made a quick trip to the fabric shop this morning (and also looked in the ski shop for NZ too, how exciting!) and I got some pretty new fabrics, some batting so I can finish off my cushion cover and I got some super yummy fabric to make a dress with. I found a dress that was a hand-me-down from my mum and liked the shape so I cut a pattern out of it. 

So I starting cutting and sewing it up this afternoon, secretly hoping that I would be finished so I could wear it to a birthday party tonight. And I finished it. AWESOME. It was reasonably simple to sew together. 

See the yummy fabric? And that's how I work, always with a cup of tea! It's not the best photo of me or the dress but I was having a funny expression day, and my lazy eye was out in full force. So that's why my head is  cropped out. 

Underneath the belt I have sewn a piece of elastic, so when I don't want to wear a belt it doesn't look like I'm wearing a sack! So that's all finished and done, ready to wear tonight. 

Making a nice dress pattern was one thing on my to do list as well, so that's something else I can cross off! 

♥♥♥

Film Day.

For part of my new uni assessment that I got this week, I was required to watch The Battleship Potemkin. Apparently our lecturer is doing his Ph.D in Russian Constructivism/De-constructivism and decided to incorporate this film into our course. We are working on a short group project at the moment, based on The Battleship Potemkin, and designing a set for it to be used in a play, as well as designing a large poster to advertise the film. 

It is a 1925 silent film that is based on the true story of a naval mutiny that occurred on the Russian battleship Potemkin. I enjoyed watching the film (I don't think my partner liked listening to the music though!) and thought it was very fascinating. I am finding the work very interesting so far, because it is more graphical than most of the other architectural work that we do. 

You can watch some/part/all (not sure?) of the film here. Or here. 

On a side note, I don't have much group work that I can do on my own this weekend, I'm hoping to get some sewing done this weekend, yay! I am also packing my bags early for my trip next weekend for my Easter break. Back to Mum and Dad's for an extended weekend to see the family. It's been more than a month since I have visited them! I'm also hoping to get some new bags made and listed into the shop over the Easter break.

=) 

Bowing the Day Away.

You can find them here

You can find this here

You can find this here

You can find these here

You can find this here

Do you ever have those days when you just seem to be getting poked in the eye with something? I have been having that with bows. I don't mean literally. But they just seem to keep appearing to me. So I thought I would take it as a sign.  

These are just a few of the images I have been seeing. Aren't they so pretty! I am especially loving the floral shoe clips. I never thought I would say that, floral was never really my thing, but I guess as I'm getting older (and hopefully wiser!) that my tastes are changing. 

I'm working on an idea of incorporating some bows into a small line of purses. I'll see how it pans out 

=) 

A productive weekend.

So far, I've had a very productive weekend (as you can probably tell from the title, ha). Made a start on my next uni report, confused myself about the uni report and gave up doing the uni report for today. 

I also finally photographed the two new pleated bags that I had mentioned before. I was going to do it yesterday, but I left it too late after I went grocery shopping and it was too dark to get nice photos =(

Sadly though (not sad for me, yippee!) the bright multicoloured bag has already sold. It was only on my Etsy for maybe two hours?! I so love the pale blue clutch. It's created from upcycled fabric, which is either a cotton or cotton blend and it has tiny tiny polka dots!

I have some new designs for bags in my head now, I just need to get around to making up their patterns and starting them. Luckily it is almost Easter break from uni so I should be able to get some more made up then. 

On other news, I did something today that was on my previous post that you can view here. Yesterday I bought some black frames for my illustrations and then today I mounted them, framed them and hung them on the wall. 

Here is what they look like! I'm really happy at how they turned out. They are watercolours that have been defined with ink after they dried. 

The illustrations are hung over a small table and I would have put a bigger picture in so you could see the whole wall, but I haven't finished organising the table yet, it's still a work in progress! 


But that is one thing I can cross off my list! 

Mmmm.

 I love a good window seat! I definitely want one when I build my own home. They just look so cozy and a perfect place to read a book.

via here

via here

via here

via here

via here

via here

Now, if only I could make a place like that in my house. I'm sure I would sit there and do my hand-sewing 

=)