1. Matryoshka Kimono Dolls, 2. Colour palette: Green, 3. Tamarillo chutney, 4. Cutest of cute hats!, 5. West Coast adventure, 6. Hands-on dog food!, 7. Pirates treasure bag PART TWO, 8. Autumn, 9. My new crafting space, 10. Friendly cat toys, 11. Birthday pancakes, 12. Magical toadstools, 13. Bush bath bliss, 14. Coral, shell and bone, 15. Autumn Blues, 16. Big skies, 17. Garden meditation, 18. The joy of wood, 19. Gratitude, 20. Birthday bunny

 1. My shop is now open!, 2. Cosy Friday evening, 3. Kimono paper tape PREVIEW!, 4. Happy weekend papercut, 5. Colour palette: Red, 6. Tin can lanterns, 7. Shop update: Tom Cats, 8. Spring love: magnolia blossoms, 9. Poultry PS, 10. …and the winner is…, 11. Display jars for treasures, 12. Pin board inspiration, 13. Monday’s inspiration: Honour, 14. Happy Equinox!, 15. Fresh start and a GIVEAWAY!, 16. Paper Fan Inspiration Cards, 17. Morocco on my mind, 18. Midwinter mandarin lanterns, 19. Rainbow eggs and a basket of flowers, 20. Vintage kimono palette

1. London by night, 2. Travelling feet, 3. Poultry Show, 4. Kimono paper tape PREVIEW!, 5. New things, 6. A new season…, 7. Hand carved stamps: lanterns and blossoms, 8. Monday’s Inspiration: Creativity, 9. Rob Ryan’s shop on Columbia Road, 10. Happy Christmas!, 11. Happy New Year!, 12. Plant skeletons, 13. Header artwork, 14. Paper Fan Inspiration Cards, 15. Earth Hour 2010, 16. Contact me, 17. Monday’s inspiration: Communication, 18. Pirate’s treasure bag, 19. More gratitude, 20. Olive Harvesting

This series is from Morocco. So many different kinds of tiles – in the patios, stairways and rooftops of traditional riads and dars where we stayed; in the great courtyard of an Islamic school in Fez; on the street of a town’s cobbled medina; and the pastel-bricked step of a pottery factory. Oh, and a monkey in the cedar forests of the Middle Atlas, sizing up my bag of peanuts!

These photos are all taken in the Black Forest in Germany where my half-sister and I stayed in a fairy tale 400 year-old traditional farmhouse. We spent the weekend walking through misty forests filled with Autumn leaves, mossy rocks, mushrooms, twisted roots, wild blueberries and chattering streams. Pure magic! Just wait till you see the farmhouse itself…

…And these photos are in the UK. The many different floors of the Victoria and Albert Museum, great ammonite fossils and sea-worn pebbles on the beaches of Exmoor, an ancient stone bridge and fallen berries on moss (also in Exmoor), and the floors of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich (opposite where my brother lives and, more excitingly, where the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean film had just been shot!).

I’m slightly alarmed by how many of the photos feature the same pair of jeans and shoes… I’m ashamed to say, for a fairly seasoned traveller, I actually don’t travel lightly at all, and practically had my whole wardrobe with me, but you certainly wouldn’t know it! These photos must have all been taken on days when I was wearing my most comfortable, practical, walking clothes… : )

In Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation, Charolotte remarks “…every girl goes through a photography phase, like horses, you know dumb pictures of your feet…” Well, it seems I’m still going through that phase! Somehow, photographing my feet in different locations has an irresistible immediacy that I still can’t quite get past.

And hello Autumn in London, England!

Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while, I’ve been so busy getting ready for my trip. I’m going to be away for 6 weeks and will try and touch base with my blog whenever I can. I’m sure I’m going to have lots of wonderful things to share. A week in Morocco for starters! And a long weekend in a beautiful old farmhouse in the Black Forest in Germany… And of course London experiences too.

Before I set off on my trip I picked one of my Paper Fan Inspiration Cards. Here is what I got:

That seems pretty appropriate, doesn’t it? The card’s even  got Autumn leaves on it, which wouldn’t seem like the obviously choice for ‘new beginnings’ (I’m surprised I didn’t illustrate the card with new Spring blossom, now I think about it!), but it works perfectly for me right now!

This trip feels like a really special time for me and somehow a new step or turning point in my life… Everything has just fallen into place so beautifully for it too. I can’t quite believe it!

I’m going to be running 5 Reiki workshops while I’m in the UK which I’m so happy about. I feel utterly lucky to be combining a wonderful holiday with doing the work that I love, and catching up with friends and family who I haven’t seen since I left London and moved back to New Zealand more than three years ago.

Speaking of that time in my life… When I first moved back to New Zealand, for almost a year, every single time I picked an Inspiration Card, I would get New Beginnings!

What ‘new beginnings’ are you welcoming into your life right now? I’d love to hear about them.

We’d had some friends come to visit and decided to have a sort of “Easter egg hunt” for the kids to celebrate Spring. It’s funny living in the Southern Hemisphere where lots of seasonal celebrations have come from Northern Hemisphere traditions and so are out of synch with the seasons in our part of the world: Eggs and baby chicks at Easter when it’s actually harvest time…. Fake snow, reindeer and holly in the middle of Summer…. 

Here we were celebrating all the beautiful Spring flowers in our garden at this time of year, plus we’d just acquired 10 new baby chickens as I remember. We’d decided to do a Spring Treat Hunt at the last minute and had picked up whatever goodies we could from our local shop. I had great fun hiding them around the garden, matching them with different coloured flowers or appropriate locations. Hence the goldfish in the pond!

A bumble bee in the hollyhocks and an elephant in the allysum!

These might just be cheap, artificial sweets, but they colour-matched the irises perfectly!

Happy Equinox wherever you are – Spring or Autumn/Fall. Fingers crossed that the storm blows itself out for our weekend…

CONGRATULATIONS to April Yedinak who has won the giveaway! 

Here’s what April had to say about where she lives and what she’s loving about this time of year: “I live in Hodgenville, KY. Birthplace of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. It is a small town with great people. We have finally had a break in the scorching heat and now it is sunny, breezy and beautiful. We have a long weekend for Labor Day and I intend to enjoy it as much as possible.”

Email me with your address, April, and your prize will be winging its way to you shortly.

Thank you so much to all of you who entered my very first giveaway. It was such a joy to read your comments each day. I felt really touched by how many of you stopped by – from all over the world – and shared a little bit of what you’re loving about this time of year. I wish each and every one of you could have won! : )

I hope you’re having a happy day wherever you are.
Lucy x

Here are two more things I’m loving about Spring right now:

Rainbow eggs again! Once the Winter solstice has passed, our chooks steadily come back on the lay (having taken their annual holiday to moult and generally spruce up for the year ahead). We have a variety of different kinds of chickens (many of them rare breeds) and get a wonderful, pastel array of eggs, from palest blue and green (laid by our araucanas), to china white, and subtle shades of fawn and terracotta.

A basket of flowers from our garden. Daffodils, freesias and iris, magnolia, camellia, manuka and breath of heaven. I love the blending of pinks, yellows, purples and pale greens, with bold strokes of deep crimson…the perfect Spring palette!

These flowers are for the people of Christchurch and the Canterbury region of New Zealand which was hit by a big earthquake yesterday. You are in our thoughts.

Here’s one of my biggest Spring loves: magnolia blossoms.

Sunrise-shaded bud bejewelled with morning dew drops….

Layers of origami petals unfolding…

…palest pinky-white to deepest fuchsia with a russet crown at its centre.

So beautiful!

I’ve been quietly celebrating a few things this week: Monday, of course, was the Winter solstice; on Tuesday my man returned home to me after several weeks away visiting his family on the other side of the world; and on Wednesday my lovely friend Amy had her birthday… So this mandarin lantern is a warm, glowing, citrus-scented kiss sent out to cosy winter nights in front of the fire, to loving and being loved, and to dear women friends.

Here’s what you need for making a mandarin lantern:

1. Mandarins – the loose-skinned variety are the easiest to work with 
2. A sharp knife
3. Cooking oil – I used sunflower oil, but I’m sure you could use whatever oil you have in your kitchen
4. Matches
5. And a husky dog with a penchant for fruit (although if you don’t have one of these to hand, you could simply eat the fruit yourself, or perhaps find a willing child to help you)

Start by cutting the mandarin horizontally around the middle about a third to a half of the way down. Try not to cut into the fruit too much, although if you do, it’s not the end of the world (just a little bit messier later on!).

Gently ease your fingers under the rim of the top part of the skin and remove it, being careful not to split the edges (this took me two attempts).

You now want to lift all the segments out from the bottom half of the fruit. I found the knack to doing this is to hold onto the inner corner of each segment and pull outwards. Again, be careful not to tear the peel (and again this took me two attempts!). Note: The internal pithy “stalk” will become your lamp’s wick, so try to leave at least a little stub inside the base of the lamp.

This last step is where your husky-dog-with-a-penchant-for-fruit comes in handy. Our magical, David Bowie-eyed husky-cross dog, Silver loves most fruit and was a devoted helper during this part of the project.

Cut a chimney hole in the top of the lantern as shown. Your lantern is now finished and ready to be filled with oil and lit!

Trim and pinch the central pith bit in the bottom of the lantern so that it resembles a candle wick. Pour a little vegetable oil in and light the wick. It may take a few moments for the oil to be absorbed into the wick so don’t worry if it doesn’t light immediately.

Put the lid on the lantern, place on a plate (I used a vintage Art Deco plate with Chinese lantern fruit on it), and enjoy! As the lantern heats up it releases a delicious, citrus aroma – perfect for dark, wintery nights. I love how each individual skin cell glows. Isn’t it beautiful?

Did you celebrate Midwinter in a special way? Or Midsummer of course, if you’re reading this from the Northern Hemisphere! If you posted about it on your blog, please do put a link in the comments. I loved reading Maya Donenfeld’s Summer solstice post on her blog maya*made.

This evening I’ve had the house to myself and it’s been wonderful just to collect my thoughts, take a deep breath…and suddenly find what I wanted to post about.

Winter has definitely arrived and this past couple of weeks have been extremely stormy and changeable. I’ve been admiring all the different graphic shapes and silhouettes of bare northern hemisphere trees…

…and this evening they made me think of a box of leaf skeletons that had belonged to my great-grandfather that I recently rediscovered.

My great-grandfather Heinz spent a lot of time in India in the ’60s, I think, and he must have got these leaves there. The large, heart-shaped leaves are from the same kind of sacred fig tree that Buddha attained enlightenment beneath. They’re so perfectly, delecately gauzy and papery.

Two of the leaves have illustrations on them. Painstaking work! They both look like they’ve been drawn in pen first, and then the woman’s been coloured in. I love them. Like paintings on a butterfly’s wing or drawings on a cloud!

And while we’re looking at leaf and tree skeletons, here are some photos I took of the most recent full moon silhouetting trees like shadow puppet scenery. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m always bringing home shells and pebbles and bits of polished glass or broken pottery, beads and vintage buttons, a patterned feather… and then I never quite know what to do with them.

Well, my lovely friend Amy has come up with a great solution.

On the windowsill of her bathroom she has a collection of large, vintage jars filled with found treasures. Once the jars are full, the lids are screwed back on, the jars turned upside down, and voila! simple, beautiful glass display cases. 

There are shells and bits of coral, a smooth pebble, mint coloured kina shell (sea urchin), and the wings of a monarch butterfly. 

Don’t you love how the lettering on the jar looks against the shells inside? She’s also used a jar to create a terrarium with a succulent plant inside.

Simple, beautiful ideas using recycled jars to preserve found objects. Perfect!