I was the first of four children. The only girl.

My mum was 29. My dad was 33.

We’re a family. And we are awesome at it.

Presents and Cards from Sunday’s party…

So, I’m 23. How did I go with my 23 by 23?

1. Finish my scrapbook from our Jan/Feb travels. DONE

2. Secure the Hutchinson job at work. DONE

3. Be a good blog commentor and comment on at least every 3 or so blog posts I read. DONE

4. Buy Powderfinger’s new album DONE

5. Persue graphic design and photography lessons/online courses DONE, Only one more week and my Graduate Certificate is finished!

6. Take an enormously large bank loan for our investment FAIL

7. Find the perfect cupcake recipe DONE

8. Have a handmade christmas DONE, though family members were the only ones who appreciated this. Gifts I gave my friends are unused.

9. Start saving my $$ again (in the piggy bank- loose coins) DONE, though not that well…

10. Loose 5+ kg DONE! I’ve lost 6.6KG!

11. Make a header for this blog!! (have been meaning to do this ever since I put this theme on!!) DONE

12. Read through 2 more books of the bible FAIL

13. Get my reader to 0 DONE, though this is defintely not CURRENTLY the case!!

14. Drink 2 bottles of water a day HALF

15. Start Luke’s scrapbook DONE, it’s STARTED, which is all I required this year.

16. Make plans for another holiday DONE, Booked, and paid for!

17. Track my Weight Watchers points every day! DONE almost completely. I think I’ve only had a few days when I haven’t.

18.  Finish editing Pete’s mime photos! FAIL

19. Make some pants for summer FAIL. They are cut out, but not sewed together.

20. Finish my christmas wall hanging DONE!

21. Finish my paining I started the other week, and paint another DONE! I’ve done several since then! (here) and (here)

22. Scotch Gard the car seats! DONE!

23. Keep Shabbat better. FAIL

Keep an eye out in the next month of so for my 24 by 24!!

Luke’s Nonna doesn’t celebrate Christmas, so technically this is just a random gift, which I will happen to give her when we see her on Christmas Day… She’s really into the Hebrew Roots things, like us, and so I made her this “Shalom” embroidery, which is basically Hebrew for “Peace” Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of the complexities of Shalom…

For my Nana, I made “Love” and for Luke’s Nanna and Pa I made “Family”. Hopefully they like them!

I have a questions for you all, do you think people would be interested in buying embroidery kits? With the Calico cut and the design drawn on it, the pellen for the back, and one (possibly two) coloured embroidery threads? Needle wouldn’t be included. I was thinking I could do “Christmas” “Love” “Joy” “Peace” as well as people’s names… if you think it’s the kind of things you would buy, or if you know people who might get it, let me know, and I’ll put some in my store!

]]> http://lifesvisualjournal.com/2009/11/23/embroidery/feed 0 http://lifesvisualjournal.com/2009/08/26/gifts-glorious-gifts http://lifesvisualjournal.com/2009/08/26/gifts-glorious-gifts#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:49:30 +0000 T'lia http://taliacarbis.com/?p=838 This is Challenge 13 of Blog This.

Do people think you’re hard to buy for or are you constantly dropping hints? What’s on your ultimate gift list? If you were to write a list of 5 things that would be on the list of perfect presents for your next birthday what would they be? Would it be a particular thing or anything from a particular store/shop? An
experience or something with pretty bows? Practical or whimsical?

I’m going to be heaps practical about this. Not cause my birthday is any time soon, but because CHRISTMAS is just a few short months away. My FAVOURITE time of year!!

1. Spotlight voucher. Yes! fabric, craft supplies, scarpbooking, knitting… it’s all there! A few hundred dollars would be perfect…

2. Embroidery threads. I know that sounds kinda boring, but didn’t you hear?! Embroidery is my new thing!! I need to stock up on some more colours…

3. Walls. Okay, so this one isn’t so practical, but I have heaps of stuff I want to put on the walls, and just no wall space really left! (P.S my newest thing I’m doing is framing small embroiderries and putting them up on the wall!

4. Photos Printed… you know I love scrapbooking? And I’m working on my travel scrapbook from Jan/Feb at the moment, but I have HUNDREDS of photos that I need printed from post-schoolies week (2004) to well, now. The earlier part of my life is already scrapbooked. So if all those could just get printed out for me, that’d be great!!

5.  Suprise me! As much as I love getting what I want, I really, truly, madly, deeply (Oh GOD, Savage Garden moment…*shakes head in shame*) love SUPRISES!!! They’re my favourite, and really make an gift giving time special!!

Click the picture of Pepper (below) to see all my Christmas photos from last year (there’s not too many- I promise!)

My best girl stuffed after all the unwrapping on Christmas Eve "08

Hope you enjoyed your long weekend if you were in Australia, and if you’re part of the Commonwealth, then I hope you have a great Queen’s Birthday holiday when it comes around!

Remember when Luke made me my super pot? Well, since then I’ve planted up all my other herbs into tyres (as well as some in the pot Luke made), and straberries and what not in the back garden bed. Nanna gave me a stack of beautiful cane mulch for Christmas (I know, SHAME it has taken my nearly 6 months to do something with it!!), and while Luke is out shopping for my birthday presents (!!!) with Hay & Mon, I decided to invest the time is getting rid of weeds, and using up the much!

Also, it is my birthday on Wednesday, and Luke organised for my family and a few of our friends (unfortunately not all- it was pretty booked out) to go down to the Jazz club in Brisbane on Friday night. If you have not been (and live in QLD) then you MUST go, it is absolutely the best place ever!

And I love my Mum & Dad. They are so cute and in love, and it makes me happy to go out with them. I could seriously just chat with them for ages and not get bored.

Check out the colours compared to when I was making it in the slideshow!

Now, the wax I’ve used is soy wax, which apparently burns 30-50% longer then regular wax (paraffin), it’s water soluable, and biodegradable. Also, there’s not much soot from them, they’re non-toxic, so they’re great if you have little ones around!

Step 1: Organise your area- I made sure that I had all the bits and pieces I would need, as well setting it out on the dining room table in a logical manner- so spaced out well. I also set up a chopping board, which I used to sort of ‘protect’ my table.

I need the following equipment: Scales, Chopping board, sharp knife (steak knife will do), pyrex jug (or a microwavable jug), as well as the wax, my dyes, and the oils.

I also set up my teacups here. Obviously you don’t have to use teacups (but they are so adorable!), you can use tealight containers, or anything you want! My mum has a glass handbag that she wants me to fill up as a candle! You’ll need to set up the wicks in whatever it is you’re using, and make sure they’re clean. I used ready made wicks, with little stands on the bottom, and just applied a double sided sticker to the bottom so they stayed in the cup. But I did run out of them, so I had to just cut up a long wick, and use blu tak on the end. This works fine.

Step 2: Measure out how much wax to use. The instructions I got with my kit said to fill the container I was going to use up with water, and then put it into the jug, so that I could see how big it was. So if I ended up with 90ml of water, I would need to measure 90g of wax. I ended us using more then that, and it’s better to have too much then not enough. Of course, mine are in two colours, so if you want different colours you need to just measure out what you want for that particular colour.

Step 3: Once you’ve put the wax into the jug (obviously with no water in it), then you need to melt it in the microwave. I did short bursts of 20-30 seconds. It’s a bit time consuming to have to stand there near it, but really only takes like 2 minutes to melt. The jug will get REALLY hot, so make sure you use oven mits (btw- look out for a tutorial soon on how to make your own!). You can let this cool on the chopping board now.

Step 4: Organise your colours and smells. Both of these are a bit of a ‘guessing game’. I just shaved off bits of colour and then put it into the wax. It was pretty cool to watch it melt! Remember that the colour you make it here is a LOT darker then what it will actually turn out as. As far as the oils go- put some in, about 3-5ml for a 100g candle. But you can just smell for it to see if it’s okay. The frangapani oil I used the second time was a LOT stronger then the rose one I used first, so make sure you take that into consideration.

Step 5: Depending on how long it took you to decide on your colour etc you may need to let your wax rest a little longer! Apparently if it’s too hot the candle might look a little rough on the top. I found that mine weren’t rough, and I sort of just did one thing after the other. So now you can poor the wax into the teacups.

Step 6: You can trim your wicks now. It’s best to leave about 1/2 cm in height for the first burn. You’ll need to wait about 48 hours before you can use them though- they need to set and ‘cure’. The longer you leave them the better the scent will be. Note: the soy wax will hold the colour, and the scent better then parafin wax anyway.

1. I now have to share my Christmas across two families.

2, Everyone (including myself) is older, and therefore things are not how I remember…

Christmas as a kid, and christmas as an adult are entirely different things. And this year I felt it.

We are now an extended family of people where most of us ‘share’ christmas’ with our in-laws. There aren’t games, or little kids laughing (there are no little kids), or threats of toilet dunkings…

Of course there still is adult laughing, and presents, and photos, and food. Lots of it. My family always makes a big deal of food. There is always way too much of it, but then again, there is always lots, and LOTS of us. Even with just two families (now with all our added spouses), we are a big group ranging from 11-18, and then Nanna, and other aunties and uncles and what not… we are well over 30 when all together, and for me, that’s what christmas is- lots of people, lots of decadent food, and lots of laughing, singing, and crazy things.

Luke’s christmas’ are different. One half of his extended family is all the way down in Melbourne, and the other half are Jewish, so no Christmas there. So yesterday when we spent a good three hours alone at our house playing Rock Band, just us and his little brother Jordan, it was… normal.

I’ll tell you the truth. I cried. This was not the Christmas I had been looking forward to for the last two months (at least), the one I’d prepared for, and made decorations for, and cooked for, and cleaned for, and anticipated… it was different, but stupidly, I didn’t expect the difference.

I have learnt though. Learnt to appreciate the differences, and to appreciate the fact that my idea of Christmas might actually be a bit too much for Luke some times as well… I enjoyed the day, and loved the presents- both the giving, and the receiving part of it. I hope that everyone got what they wanted.

MANY photos of facebook, videos to come, and below, the link to some on my flickr, which I have just started using again, and really wish I had a pro account for, but just can not afford it…

Photos on Flickr… http://flickr.com/photos/sunshinetalia/sets/72157611601051463/