1. 3-D picture walls
I love photo and picture walls, but to make them a little more interesting I mix them up with something other than frames – wooden letters, paper birds, handpainted words or decorative elements, jewellery or single pegged photos. I especially like sticking up a single flower or small bunch of lavender with masking tape on the wall amongst the frames. The inclusion of a little life is a nice surprise and always makes me smile.

You can read the other four ideas I love here. And also be sure to check out Amanda’s blog of all things crafty and cool, and her new eco-friendly stationery store – Lemon Tree Lane – which has a great range of cute cards and prints for all occasions. I love the In Any Language prints, $US10 each – sweet idea!

Images: 1. VT Wonen; 2. Belinda Graham for The Happy Home; 3. Lemon Tree Lane

1. It was during one of said late-night chats I discovered yet another one of busy-bee Nat’s side projects (she has several on the go at the same time. It’s quite exhausting thinking about them, let alone actually doing them, as she is). Although I’m sure it doesn’t count as a side project when it takes up the best part of this year so far and interferes with sleep time! So it was with great excitement I finally got to see what I’d heard so much about: Frontliners.

Natalie and equally-clever-and-busy photographer Kata Varga have teamed up to style up, photograph and interview families doing what families do: playing, working, eating, living at home. These are inspiring spaces by inspiring people who seem to have it all – including the daily struggles and juggles all families do. I especially love the spaces of The Searls (they’re behind Pony Rider – another label I love) and Amanda Mahoney (both below).

It’s nice to see a little imperfection and a little life in home shoots – something magazines seem to inexplicably leave out. I think you’ll like it – go forth and flick through now.

2. One the same night I scored a sneak peek of the some of the Frontliners shoots, Nat naughtily sent me through two links to two new online stores – both of which I’m passing on to you so I won’t be alone in spending cash I shouldn’t be spending on pretty things. Emerald + Ella is one, started by a former food editor from Donna Hay. I immediately clicked through then spent $40 on goodies – all before Nat had even replied to my last email.

But that’ll learn me for being so quick and implusive – I somehow managed to order TWO packs of pink and white striped paper straws instead of just one. Oh well, they should last about 5 years worth of birthday parties for Layla! I also picked up some wooden cutlery and glassine bags. Bestest place for party supplies as well as pretty things for the home and garden – coloured twine, patterned cupcake cases, candy-striped candy bags….

3. And lastly, on my future hit list is this store – LetterboxCo – by freelance stylist Bianca Spiegel. It’s got all sorts of pretty stationery bits and bobs in a similar style. I love the ampersand cushion, numbered bottles and laptop bag. Check it out here.

All images courtesy of Frontliners, Emerald + Ella and LetterboxCo

If I decide to keep it, I’d see about removing the side mouldings or putting a little border around the edges to keep them in place and also cover the wonkiness of the line, but for now I’ll keep it as is to see if I like it enough to go to that much trouble. I do like that there is something interesting in the hallway now! What are your thoughts?

You can find a recipe for fabric-wallpaper paste here. Being just cornflour and water, it’s highly likely you’d be able to peel it off the wall and throw it in the washing machine and reuse if you felt the need. Most certainly can’t do that with wallpaper can you?!?!

Imagine… you’re in your early teens. You’re going to Europe for a holiday. You’re picturing mopeds around Italy, trench coats in Paris and spunky ski instructors in Germany. Instead…

THIS is your mode of transport…

…THIS is your cold-weather outfit…

…and THIS is the result of NOT learning to ski with a spunky ski instructor. Or any ski instructor for that matter.

Welcome to my family holiday. Ok, technically, this was three different trips. But because stupid things seemed to happen to me on my childhood trips away, I’m combining them all.  Now, don’t get me wrong, we had an absolute blast on all of our holidays. I’ve seen some incredible parts of the world and I’m so, so grateful for the experiences – I know not everyone is so lucky. But we do tend to remember the funny, annoying or head-scratcher bits, so in the interest of all who have children (and as a reminder to myself for when mine get bigger), here is what NOT to do on family holiday. Because if you do, they’ll not only not let you forget it, they’ll tell the online world about it too!

DON’T… leave your driving skills at home. So after a few European trips already in a range of hotels, villas and relatives’ places, this time it was as adventurous as you‘d care to get with three children in tow: a motor home trip across Western Europe. We all stare a little dubiously at the bus-sized home on wheels and get in, half excited; half terrified. As we drive down the driveway of the hire place, I ask dad “are you sure you can drive this?” Dad: “Pfft! Of course I – BANG – oh s#$@! Oops…” he says as he swipes the side mirror off on a parked vehicle metres from the hire place. Then there was the terrible height misjudgment of a boomgate which we got stuck under. And the hours we spent attempting to park the darn thing, giving up and just stopping it wherever there was a space big enough and returning to a parking ticket. We had quite the collection…
And a special three cheers to the genius who designed the seatbelts in the motor home. They were attached to the cushions of the seat. Which you took off each day to turn it into a bed. So whenever you turned a corner sharply, you – and the cushion – went sliding off onto the floor or into the kitchen cabinets. But you were wearing your seatbelt!

DON’T… make your family wear ridiculous, matching clothes Living in such a warm climate, we’re not really prepared clothes-wise for the cold European winter. Enter a new coat. Not a nice, normal coat. Not even a ski jacket. But a full-length Drizabone. A family of five Drizabone-wearing Australian dorks checking out the sites and doing everything in their power to look like tourists. But that wasn’t enough. Oh no. Once we were over there, our shoes didn’t work well with the snow, so we cold-footed it to the nearest shoe store closest to Neuschwanstein Castle to get some warmer shoes. Only, because it was nearing the end of the season, they’d pretty much sold out of everything but sandals and… Moon Boots. Typically, they had something normal and cool in Dad’s size and my sister Kristie managed to find something ok to fit her, but mum, Gretchen and I? We were left with Moon Boots, which I’ve since discovered is actually their name and even went through a popular stage when Paris Hilton wore them. But there was no Paris Hilton back then and most definitely no cool factor. And just in case they weren’t obviously bad enough, they were only available in fluro pink or fluro yellow. We looked HOT. It then of course started to rain, so just to top off our incredibly stylish outfits, we grabbed some clear plastic rain hats that tied up under your chin. I actually welcomed this hat – it meant I could obscure my embarrassed, red face – as well as clear plastic can. So there we were, walking around the Fairy Tale castle looking like something out of one – ie, unbelievable!

DON’T… mistake your family members as swimmers or cars – the only two things it would be appropriate to use a Chamois on Towels took up too much space in our bags, so this handtowel-sized, super-soft, luxe, warm piece of rubber (above) was what we used to dry our freezing selves with in camping-ground showers IN THE SNOW. I’d much rather have swapped my Drizabone for a towel. I’m still shivering…

DON’T… trust your daughter to follow your advice Because she’ll listen to her older, cooler cousin’s idea instead. When I was 15 I went to Austria for six weeks to stay with my cousin and help her with her English (I taught her all the swear words of course). Every New Year they‘d head to their holiday house in the Alps and go skiing with a bunch of her friends. I was so excited and was given money for a ski instructor. Of course Niki had a better idea: “how about my friends and I teach you and you can spend the money on something else. Like clothes!” And I did. Only when it came to learning to ski, I was whisked up about 5 different chairlifts onto Austria’s largest Alp (well, it felt like it) and pushed onto a T-bar – because I couldn’t even move in skis on the flat, so clearly I was ready to tackle a T-bar and ski down a mountain. On the way up, my cousin’s friend told me to just slide over the left, push the T-bar behind me to the right and all good. Only I COULDN’T MOVE in skis so I was standing still trying to move out of the way but the T-bar behind me slammed me in the face and knocked me out cold. I demanded a helicopter or snowmobile and stretcher to come get me and my swollen, bruised head. How else was I meant to get down this monster? Instead, I was given some chocolate and a very bad crash-course in skiing. And crash course it was. I crashed the entire way down multiple hills and mountains and possible cliffs. Tore a hole in my ski suit, saw the same four-year-old ski zoom pass me three times and couldn’t walk for days. Never. Attempting. Sking. Again.

Honourable family-holiday mentions…
+ I was attacked by a teeny tiny ancient little woman in Paris. For wearing a camera around my neck. The horror! She was screaming, hitting and kicking me and not quite sure what to do about this, I laughed (it was quite funny, but rather painful – she was tiny, but bloody strong!) which made her madder and she got really got stuck into me.

+ After mustering up the courage to swing off a rope on a huge tree high over a river in Cairns, I managed to land on an eel which got tangled up my legs. Horrifying.

+ A year or so later my sisters and I attempted to swim to other side of Lake Jindabyne (on a narrow section of the lake!). I was fine until I remembered my eel-tangled-in-legs experience and freaked out – halfway across. It was a loooong swim back.

+ Instead of schoolies after Year 12, my family decided to take us camping around Australia’s outback. In the height of summer. We left on Christmas Day and promptly broke down in Dubbo. Attempted a four-wheel-drive-only trek in a Ford Falcon sedan and had to evacuate the car when it started to slide sideways while driving THROUGH A CREEK. We walked across and Dad managed to keep the car afloat.

+ On said trip we showered with scorpians, swam with crocodiles and toileted with frogs – all unwillingly of course.

+ I was nearly decapitated in New Zealand. Riding a quad bike for the first time ever I managed to loose control, smash through a wooden fence and got tangled in the barbed-wire on top of it. Luckily, the handles of the quad bike took the brunt of the barbed-wire, but a couple centimetres higher and it would have been my neck.

+ On the same trip we nearly lost mum while white-water rafting. We all tipped out on the 1-metre “fall” (embarassed!), all stayed in on the 2-metre, and thought we all made it over the 10-metre drop, but while high-fiving our achievement, we noticed we were a (wo)man down. Freaking out, we looked around and noticed the people watching from the shoreline were pointing to a floating pink helmet miles away from our raft: Mum’s. We flew over there praying there was a live  body attached to the helmet and saw mum’s insanely grinning face bobbing in the water. She didn’t realise she was out of the boat until she’d cleared the whole rough water patch!

+ On the same NZ trip, we hadn’t learnt from our European motorhome adventure and hired another one. At one of the caravan parks on New Year’s Eve we befriended other holidaying peers who informed us of the New Year’s fireworks at the lakefront. So my sisters and I went and had fun until our panicked parents came searching for us, frantically calling for us – torch in hand – because we were out so late with strangers. I was 18. It was 12.21am.

And there you have it! There were of course a million and one fun, brilliant non-embarassing moments which I will treasure forever. And I do hope and pray I’m able to provide my children with the same opportunities to see and enjoy the world as my parents did for us…

So, your turn: what’s your most memorable holiday moment – good or bad? x

Then there was the time they’d snuck outside and bought in a bucket of dirt to play “diggers”. Or when Zak drew a kitten’s face on Layla with a permanent marker. Or when they got into the fruit bowl and ate everything in it. Or when they emptied the entire contents of the clean-washing basket onto the floor then topped it up with every item of clothing in Layla’s room “so it can reach all the way up to the ceiling.” Luckily I discovered this before they got into Zak’s clothes (this was this morning!).

But sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. Like recently when I checked up on their “quiet time” in the afternoon to see this. They’d pulled their sleeping bags out of the linen cupboard, taken them out of their bags and laid them on the floor and climbed in because “we’re a bit sick and need to rest.”

PS: If you’re interested (hi Ange!), the kids sleeping bags are by Carstens. My mum bought them online from the States. I’m not sure where but here is an online store that ships internationally – you’ll have to contact them to see if they ship to your country and for rates. They’re really cute – the toys on the top are detachable and are stuck on with velcro and the pillows are a giant T-Rex and unicorn. They love them and there is a heap of other styles.

What do your kiddies do when your back is turned?