^ (via)

Okay, so I told you I was bad with self imposed rules. Here are the days of the list that I've missed (Sylvia overtook me!);

♡ A favourite quote:

“The three grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” - Allan K. Chalmers.

♡ Whatever tickles your fancy:


^ (via)

♡ A photo that makes me happy:


^ My sister and I when we were little (she's the little one).

♡ A photo that makes me angry/sad:


^ The feet at the bottom belong to an ex-best friend.

♡ A photo I took:


^ This train carriage was a class room at my high school, painted by students. I did some of my HSC exams in there.

Today I had my first 'Photographing Imaging for Design' class and I really enjoyed it. The first lecture we had was just the history of photography, but the lecturer made it really interesting. I can say however that my second-week uni enthusiasm has somewhat worn off. I thoroughly hate group work. Actually, I don't hate it, I've had a really good time doing group work, it's just this one. In another class we were divided into groups of three and have to make a 'book' - we make certain pages of the book each and the finished product should look like one designer made it. We're not getting graded on it and it's just meant to be something simple. It's a crappy feeling having all of my ideas blocked, ending up with something that doesn't at all represent the task or something that I'm proud of and being left with vague disorganised idea of what we're going to do. I think perhaps the disaster of it was the point of this exercise.

Two very pretty letters arrived today;


^ A brilliant little envelope and note from Sophie in Melbourne. The vintage postcard she included is grand. When C saw the envelope he thought it looked really familiar and realised it's made from a poster exactly the same as one we have on our wall.


^ I'd been really excited about receiving a letter from Micaela ever since she sent me a postcard a few months ago and it was as wonderful as I imagined. She included some beautiful little stationery items and I love her envelope. AND she drew a very sweet little picture of me at the top of her letter;



Yesterday C and I worked out an exaggerated approximation of how much moving to Tasmania is going to cost and I was pleasantly surprised. It's still going to be hard to find the funds to do it, I think we should scrape by. We're going to start buying boxes soon and packing up unnecessary things around the house. I don't think there's going to be much left in the house when we leave and Manneh will still be here!


^ These are wild pumpkins that grew in our little yard from pumpkin seeds we'd thrown in our compost. There are a whole heap of them, though they're not quite ready. I still find it odd that we live in this grubby little suburb and some pumpkins just grew themselves in our yard.

I'm going to have a bath! C bought me an imitation Ped Egg because I said I wanted one, which made me laugh, though I'm not so sure how I feel about 'grating' my feet...

Ps. One of my best friends had a little animation she made screened on Hungry Beast on the ABC tv last night, luckily I was watching by accident!

^ Hollie Chastain.

I will keep up with blogging and letter writing and uni work, I will!
I will keep up with blogging and letter writing and uni work, I will!
I will keep up with blogging and letter writing and uni work (and sleep), I will!


^ There is a huge pumpkin patch monster in my backyard that latches onto your legs when you go near it. And I have new shoes (1st are pretty red Portlands, 2nd were cheap from Sportsgirl) and patterned stockings.

Outgoing; Yes, I actually wrote some letters this week! I get about as many letters each day as I send out in a week. Will I ever catch up?


^ I signed up to Megan's stationery swap a week or two ago (the day sign up closed) even though I knew I would be too poor to be able to really go out and get anything new and awesome. I just couldn't resist. Once partners were assigned I read the details of my partner and totally fell in love with her blog. She actually only lives an hour of two away from me and has spent time in Newcastle. I basically gleaned as much stuff from the drawers of my desk to throw into this package for Pip and hoped I included enough bits and pieces that she'd find at least a few things she liked. She did a lovely post about it, so I was very happy she enjoyed the stationery miscellanea from the depths of my desk!


^ An overdue letter to lovely Jennifer.


^ Elvis > Patty. Made from a magazine page.


^ I wrote this letter and the one below it today in a four hour break between a lecture and a class, while sitting in one of these awkward little desk booths right at the back of the library that I'd never seen. Basically they're one huge desk divided into lots of little partitions. I could hear the guy next to me's stomach rumbling every now and then and he breathed really heavily. Every now and then somebody would pop their head up above the partition and awkward eye contact would be made, then papers would be shuffled. Massively sidetracked, this envelope is made from a page from a numerology book I'd never read.


^ A little envelope for Rebecca, made from a numerology book page.

Incoming;


^ This was an awesome letter and and as you can see all extremely aesthetically pleasing, from Mary, who keeps a rather grand Tumblr.


^ A gorgeous shiny panoramic Disney postcard from Lauren with some very pretty stamps.


^ Very cute illustrated envelope from Nely with a lovely letter.



^ Is this the biggest postcard ever? It's huge! It would never have fit in my letterbox. Wonderfully decorated from Suzan in Denmark. It's so gorgeous, the detail on the woman is so beautiful. I'd love to know what it was originally.


^ Oh man - this surprise package was sneakily left on my doorstep by the incredibly lovely Nici from Blackbird Corner on Friday and I had the biggest smile when I opened it. She said that my house was closer than the express postbox and just dropped it in. Isn't it fantastic!?


^ A great little package from Megan. She included some Redskins (which I love) which were a little melted when they arrived, but they still tasted awesome (I ate them as soon as I saw them in there, haha). Great letter M :)


^ All that came in this package was a new ribbon for my typewriter but I liked the assortment of stamps and that they stuck one on my name.


^ A bright little envelope with a lovely long letter that I can't wait to reply to, from Aaron. I really enjoy his handwriting! Also, you should totally participate in Aaron's 50 US state postcards challenge.

So far I have spent about $150 on materials for my courses for uni and I haven't picked up everything yet :( So my mum is helping out as a birthday present. The art supplies shop at uni is like my dream shop. I found a huge stand of different coloured and patterned tracing papers, but at $2 a sheet I won't be buying a bunch;



So, after having a really poor week I now have a bunch of money that I'm not sure what to do with. I think I'd like to buy an SLR camera, but I'm a bit uncertain about what type of SLR I'd want. Any suggestions?

This week we introduced a 'Punishment Jar' in our household. C and Manneh make a lot of very bad jokes and puns. When they make a bad pun they have to write it down and put it in this jar. Of course, my original idea was that they should have to put money in the jar that I would receive as compensation for having to listen to the jokes.


^ Manneh and the pun jar.

^ Paul Octavious.

One favourite tv show? Pft! Here is my meticulously chosen top 5 (I ♡ box set TV);

Our Hero;


Dexter;

Six Feet Under;


The Mighty Boosh;


The L Word;


Favourite Book(s); Company and Jennifer Government by Australian author, Max Barry (who keeps a rather great blog) -



Regular posts will resume soon. I'm trying to negotiate some kind of uni VS the rest of my life tug of war agreement.

Today I bought two pairs of new shoes (with a large sum of money kindly and surprisingly donated to me by the government for my going back to university) and made friends with the bus driver on the way home. His name was Will, he is Chilean, plays squash and Spanish guitar and we share the same birthday! He forgot his lunch, so he was really hungry (12 hours non-stop driving!). He has been driving buses for ten years and prior to that was a professional musician. He was meant to be on holidays now visiting Chile, but he couldn't go due to the earthquake. It felt quite sad getting off at my stop after making this new friend and hearing his story. I joked he was going to drive past my stop. I hope he's driving a bus I catch again soon. Of course, this could have been a really strange situation, but I think sometimes a chance meeting with a stranger can be strangely meaningful (I just used the word 'strange' three times in that sentence).

Listening to: Birds Stealing Bread - Iron & Wine.

^ Ghost World.

It's amazing how plain and deadpan Scarlett Johansson is in this movie.