'The Graphics Fairy' at graphicsfairy.blogspot.com , is a find, it's like discovering an old trunk in the attic stuffed fill with copyright free vintage prints.  My favourite are the botanicals: I used a beautiful french frame for the label on the lipbalm I made Phoebe: It was the first time I'd made lipbalm and it turned out beautifully. Beeswax - about 2 tbsps or a...

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'I haven't posted in such a long time...what shall I post about baby?' 'Post about me'.  Ok. Some of my favourite pics of Andy: 1.  Finishing the night shift at the Oscar Wilde pub in Berlin and coming home to my boy fallen asleep reading. 2.  Given the cold shoulder in our beautiful apartment in Berlin. 3.  Probably my favourite picture of Andy...

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So sickly sweet it'll make your tummy hurt.  But obviously, I'm kind of proud of them.  They're my presents for the Coombes handmade mid-winter-actually-now-more-like-spring Christmas this weekend.  Jars of peanut butter brownies for the boys.  Jesus, call me Martha Stewart, what's happened to me...where's my cigarettes and beer? So sickly sweet it'll make your tummy hurt.  But obviously, I'm kind of proud of...

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I brought back an Inca God-of-the-Home from Peru.  Actually I bought back two, one for my mum and dad and one for us.  Putting this little god in the home would keep the home-place safe, happy and free from evil.  When I unpacked them from the newspaper after four months of travel, one of them was broken.  I gave my parents the unharmed...

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In the French countryside but it may as well be in another world it's just too perfect.  People actually live these lives?  Perhaps my dreams are too small.  Where I now spend my time dreaming:  www.home-designing.com ...

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Today I made a suitcase table.  I looked everywhere for legs; mitre 10, Hammer Hardware, Warehouse, Target and then finally, my favourite junk shop just up the road from home. Bingo... not only was a perfect little table with screw-off legs sitting ready to go in the tip but there were TWO bell jars for $10!  I've been looking for bell jars for...

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Installation artist Alicia Martin ...

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Maria and the little people, Salt flats, BoliviaBurma awareness march, LondonBad Andy not confessing, Peru2009 & 2010 ...

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These are Ethel and Harriet soy wax china teacup candles made by my talented 'sister in law' Hannah. I've one burning now and they glow beautifully and give off the loveliest soft scent.  They've just become available on Foxes and she sells at the Grey Lynn Kraft Bomb too.  Spent the afternoon taking some pictures of them for her. ...

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First pic is a New Zealand treehouse, The Redwoods, in Warkworth.  And the last one is amazing, a mirrored glass cube.  I imagine it's incredible apart from the birds that keep flying into it.  More treehouses and credits found here I remember the feeling I'd get, when I would clamber up onto our roof and sit looking out over the trees, the neighbours,...

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I discovered the Pecha Kucha format of presentations on Wednesday night, featuring speakers from the Photography Festival currently running in Auckland. Each speaker shows 20 slides for 20 seconds and speaks at the same time. A simple concept but a good one, the speakers are forced to get to the rub of it all, strip it all back and present in short, succinct...

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We gather things together, hunt them out like magpies, drag them into our rooms and then we sit amongst them, looking about ourselves, happy and feeling well represented. "Skulling white wine while searching for the perfect cottage to rent in turkey (the lycian coast) on a sunday afternoon. getting drunker and more languid and happy I stretched my arms and neck and looked...

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Philip Clairmont, Fireplace, 1970. The Fletcher Trust Collection Since I've arrived back home in New Zealand, and supposedly for 'good', I'm attempting to educate myself on our arts and literature culture, I am embarrassed to say I know next to nothing of it, a few Katherine Mansfield books from school, a couple of well known artists  and several photographers. But I am pretty...

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It is the business of a poet, I think, to be destitute as well as honest. He may have money; but he should recognise that it is dirt. He may have prestige; but let him hate it and wear it like an old filthy coat. Then he may be able to stay awake a little better. Love will not harm him, though. It...

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