Dilemma

After celebrating my 21st birthday on the weekend I'm face with the age-old question.. what to spend my birthday money on? Now I'm not saying there is a lot of it, which is sadly a consequence of not putting on a big "do" and paying for a bar tab and dj and room hire and all that jazz, but you know I'm quite happy with how it turned out, and I guess it evens up in the end.

So right now I have a little extra pocket money to spend and as always I don't want to just put it in the bank and end up spending it on washing powder and bread and petrol and all those boring everyday things. So should I actually save it for something? Like my impending move to Paris (imaginary move I should say), or eventually a new car. The amount of money seems to small to significantly contribute to these dreams anyway though.

So instead I figure, why not spend it on something fun or pretty or nice? Things like:

A beautiful handmade clutch by Kara Smith, although sadly it seems she has sold at least 3 of the clutches/bags I have been lusting over :(

Or perhaps some Shinzi that I've been wanting oh-so-badly ever since I stumbled across the page months ago. Maybe the birthday money could pay for the postage at least!


Then again I could always spend it on something that's practical AND pretty, such as a Le Creuset French Oven:

Or I could spend it on something that's pretty and really quite useless: Seriously though, how beautiful are these wooden cards? I found this over on Poppytalk Handmade which then linked me to the Nightowl Papergoods store, too beautiful, I would never send them though! These are definitely frame-worthy.

Speaking of frames I'm a bit stuck for what I should do with all my Europe photos, I know I have some really nice ones in there that I want to display somehow, not just have them sitting in a photo album gathering dust (or on my computer gathering virtual dust). Some ideas I've come across are Moo cards, a Blurb photo book, a glass pendant with a photo printed onto it, or just simply in frames. What do you think? What have you done with your special holiday snaps?

Oh and my birthday present for myself? A beautiful print from YumiYumi, I couldn't help myself!

p.s Like my new header? I got it from here.

A bit split

Do you ever feel like you're living your life.. a bit split? Stay with me here. I've found this both now and in past experiences, there are times when I feel so positively one way, and then hours or days later I find myself on absolute flipside of that view, without anything really changing? I don't want to harp on about "the breakup" too much buuut because it is my blog and therefore my own little personal space and I can talk about whatever I want, right?

So my viewpoint at the moment is that everything is great and we're friends and I had a nice conversation with him on the phone yesterday without even being upset, so therefore things are good and I'm positive about the future of our friendship. But then two nights ago, despite my efforts to be positive I found myself a tearful mess because I felt alone and like I had lost my best friend and I'd never feel loved again. It seems my feelings on the matter flip whenever feel like it and I'll find myself cheerful and positive one moment and then be crying and "why me"-ing within a few hours.

Yes, yes I know this is how breakups work. But this is only a case-in-point, I often find myself flip-flopping on things that I thought I was certain about. Does anyone else have this?

p.s I promise I'll get crafting again soon. But look I played with photoshop.. that's creative right?

And alone

I've become a bit of a loner lately. I didn't really realise or care about it until now when I suddenly have no boyfriend and therefore have lost about half of my social contacts to awkwardness and the problem of "who gets custody of the friends" issue. My problem is that almost all of my friends in Melbourne are either friends of his, or friends of my friend Michelle... who is a friend of his. So now all of a sudden I'm not invited to social events "just in case" it gets weird, and I'm really regretting not trying harder to make friends (of my own) at uni.

I just really wish I had some friends of my own that I could fall back on to at times like this, and I'm becoming more and more aware that the friends I have don't really fit that need as well as I thought they would. So I'm feeling a bit isolated at the moment, and while I love you webby guys out there looking out for me, I just really need someone to come over and give me a cuddle and a bowl of popcorn or something. That's all.

Feeling Lost

Part of me wants to go back, part of me knows I couldn't handle it. The rest of me is yelling "You can't afford it anyway so why keep thinking about it?!"

Well I think I know the answer to that. Something doesn't feel right inside now that I'm home, now that I'm suddenly no longer tied to this city, this country. I feel a bit lost, like I don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing. Or where I belong.

He took my mojo too

Well I know I said it would be quiet around here for awhile, but I didn't quite mean this quiet. I'll explain. On Monday when I returned home from Cobram Mark came over and proceeded to break up with me. It was a surprise that's for sure. I won't get into the details, suffice to say it wasn't a bad breakup, it was necessary and the logical thing to do, but it still hurt like hell. For a week I just lay around and cried, I felt like I couldn't do anything without it feeling like someone was gradually pulling out my intestines and punching my heart at the same time. So I didn't unpack the final things from Europe, I didn't unpack my bag from Cobram, I didn't clean, I didn't cook with my new scanpan, I didn't go to work on what was meant to be my first day back. I was just so drained emotionally and physically that everything was an effort. Even reading my beloved Frankie was too much for me to handle.

So since getting back from Europe I have now completely lost my mojo, both cooking and crafty. I'm hardly even interested in the things that I used to spend hours reading and doing. I really really hope I get my mojo back, because it was a part of me that I was really excited about, and a developing part that I was so desperate to nurture and protect because it finally gave me something that made me feel... like me. I hope it comes back, but for the time being I need to focus on other parts of me that also need nurturing, such as my whole self image and mental construction of myself. It's something that has been ignored for too long. So while my heart is healing and my mind is being "reconstructed" hopefully my mojo will come crawling back to me.

A belated return to blogland

That's right, I'm back, and I've been back for alomst a week now. It's strange how every now and then I get a blog block, and no matter what thrilling and inspiring things have been going on in my life, I just can't find the motivation to blog about it. This always dissapoints me in the end because I look back and think "why didn't I write about that?". It's a little bit like my travel journal which got abandoned a few days into Nice, and sadly will probably never be updated. Luckily I have 1200 pictures to remind me of our trip!

I've also hit a creative block, although let's be honest, there's been a lot of talking (and spending) about craft and not a lot of actual DOING. Which is frustrating me greatly. The main problem I have is space. I have no space to put my crafty supplies, I have no space to do my crafty things, I have no space to put my finished crafty things (if there ever were any), and currently I lack the head space to think about crafty things. I have one eye on my stitching book, one eye on my soon-to-be-announced uni timetable, one eye on my calendar to decide when to go back to work, one eye on my phone waiting for a call from Fernwood, and one eye on my bank account because I owe mum money for the trip and I don't have much left after that. Unfortunately, I just don't have that many eyes.

What I needed was space (both physical and head space) so I'm in Cobram for the week hanging around at my parents house, doing a whole lot of nothing because my friends are all at work, and planning my next move when I hit the streets of Melbourne again.

So until then it may remain a bit quiet around here, so feel free to check out a (very small) selection of my photos from Europe over on flickr, the others are on facebook and I might get around to posting the links one day. But not today, because I'm starving and these parents of mine never have any food around!

Countdown to Oz

Well here I am on my third last day in Italy and Europe. We have done so much and been here for so long but I am so excited to be going home to the comfort of Australia, its amazing what you miss when youre so far away. I wrote up a list of all the things I want to do when I get back home, and they are so random and varied its really quite funny. I miss the little things the most, like my doona, my coffee mug, making dinner for my brother and me, walks in Cobram with mum, sunday nights with my friend Gabi, our supermarkets (shock, I will never complain about safeway again!), and all kinds of other little things. I cant wait to get home and cook with my new scanpan, go shopping for a dress for an upcoming 21st, be able to have conversations with complete strangers and shop assistants, and walk out my front door in the morning knowing exactly where I am going and how I will get there.

Dont get me wrong, as soon as I get home Ill probably start to miss Europe. Ill miss the culture, the history, (some of) the food, the huuuge amounts of artwork and sculptures, the price of coffee at the train station in Rome (1.15 euros!), the snow at Meribel, the baguettes in Paris. Ive had fun here, and Ive learnt a lot as well, even though being sick really took a lot away from the trip. At least now on my last few days in Rome I am healthy and feeling good (despite very very sore legs and feet). It will be good to go home, but I will be leaving with a lot of good memories and perhaps a couple of not so good memories, but they will just make my stories more interesting!

Ive seen some amazing things, and a lot of very famous things, the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of David, the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel, the canals of Venice, and a whole lot more. Im glad were in an age where I can go home, pull out my laptop and just look through all the photos I took from my trip (over 400 now) and relive the experience. Ill get a lot of photos printed, but the ability to look through it all on my computer is very handy.

I cant write for very long because Im in an internet cafe, so Ill wrap things up here. Ive hope youve enjoyed my few updates on my trip, and I look forward to coming home and getting back into my craftyness and creativeness.