aaaaawww

This is just the cutest thing I've ever seen! >o<

evita se perron

Yesterday was our good friend Wiehan's birthday. Anje, his lovely fiance, had the great idea for us all to go off to Darling to go see Pieter-Dirk Uys, better known as Evita Bezuidenhou. So, we piled into Wiehan's BMW and off we went.

We first did some exploring in the perron, which was the old Darling station and which Pieter-Dirk Uys converted into a museum and theatre in 1996. There are some truly unbelievable and amazing things all around the place.





We then had lunch and after that watched the show which was "A revisionist look at the history of white South Africa, from the arrival in 1652 of the Cactus of Seperate Development on the Drommedaris, through the Great Trek, Blood River, the 1948 Election and arrival of the National Party and official apartheid, through the birth of democracy and the reality of today. Tannie Evita, in English, takes you on a journey, a hilarious roller- coaster ride to freedom of expression." It was wonderful. I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time and I walked out of the show feeling very patriotic and proud how, despite all the strife and political turmoil our country has gone through, it is still a beautiful place to live.




On our drive back we stopped to investigate some wind turbines on one of the farms just outside Darling.

clever little gadget - silhouette digital cutter

I spotted this yesterday on Tomkat Studio, one of the many blogs I frequent, and instantly fell in love. The Silhouette is a digital cutting tool for personal use. It connects to your computer just like a printer, but instead of printing designs it cuts them with a small blade. With the machine connected to your computer, you'll get access to all of the fonts on your PC plus the thousands of cuttable designs found on the Silhouette Online Store and you can obviously make your own too. I can just imagine all the possibilities as this little thing can cut paper, vinyl and do glass etching too. Time to start saving.

fly by night

I've just started reading Fly by Night by Frances Harding. I wasn't sure what to expect from the book, but I must admit that I'm really enjoying it so far, mostly because of the way she writes. Who wouldn't find a book with chapters like "A is for Arson", "B is for Blackmail" and "C is for Contraband" charming. 

I really enjoy her descriptions of things too. Here are two of my favourite so far:

"The path was a troublesome, fretful thing. It worried that it was missing a view of the opposite hills and insisted on climbing for a better look. Then if found the breeze uncommonly chill and ducked back among the trees. It suddenly thought it had forgotten something and doubled back, then realized that it hadn't and turned around again. At last is struggled free of the pines, plumped itself down by the riverside, complained of it's aching stones and refused to go any further. A sensible, well trodden track took over"

"Above the gulls spun and floated like tea leaves in a stirred cup"

cutie pie

Broodiness strikes again :)

love this

words to live by

loft living

I'm yerning to have a house with a loft. Mmm... maybe someday *dreamy look*

my office

With the move looming over us I've been thinking about my office space and what I can do to improve it. I need pretty and inspiring things around me to feel creative and motivated and I think the move will be a great time to start from scratch and create a work environment that will make me happy. Let's hope I actually achieve what I want to.

Here are some images I found inspiring.

Sneak Peak

Well, the week has gotten away from me and I haven't even done one post :(

It's been crazy here, what with all the projects I'm working on and the fact that we're trying to pack up our house for our move next week. And I'm still trying to keep up with my resolution to not work all the time, so I just couldn't bring myself to sit in front of my pc for another minute to do a posting. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

I did just want to put these two sneak peaks up of two projects that I'm working on at the moment and having loads of fun with! I don't always get to as creative as I'd like to be, with all the corporate work that I do, but both these clients have given me free range to do my own thing and I'm enjoying it immensely. Hopefully I'll be able to post about the projects properly when they're finished, but that will still take a while. So, in the mean time, you just get these :)

hot chocolate and cake on the beach, and a new resolution

Lately I've been feeling that my life has been all work and no play, and it's definitely making me a dull (and moody) girl. When people hear that I work for myself the first question they always ask is how do I stay motivated to work when I could just laze around at home. Well, I wish that was my problem. No, I don’t' laze around (if only!), I work way too much.

You can often find Rudi and I, first thing in the morning, barely awake, or last thing at night, just before bed, in front of our pcs. You quickly realize as a freelancer that the more you laze around the less you get paid. No money in the bank is a very good motivator to sit yourself down and do some work. But, unfortunately, it's also way too easy to get stuck into a pattern of working all the time.

I've reached a stage that I work most evenings and weekends now and it has to stop! I need to time manage better, but unlike some people my problem is not procrastinating till the last minute and then having to cram everything in, no, I feel that the minute I get work in I have to try to have it finished and back to the client asap. It's not a good way to work.

So this week I made the decision to plan my workflow better so that I have enough time to work on all the projects in studio, but also have time to actually have a life. So this plan kicked into effect yesterday afternoon. Rudi and I decided to go have some cake at a little place on blouberg beach after work. 4:30 we stopped working, got in our car and drove down to the beach. When we got to the coffee shop we were informed that they were just about to close. Not letting that put us off we ordered some take-away hot chocolate and cake and went to sit on one of the benches by the beach. It actually turned out to be so much nicer than sitting in the shop and it was an absolutely stunning afternoon with no wind and a beautiful sunset.

So here's so many more fun excursions and a little less work...

specially for my hubby ;)

laser cut paper

Isn't this just beautiful. Anyone know where I can find someone to do laser cutting in cape town? I would love to try this out sometime. I love how the poster changes depending on what you see through it.

Done by Marina Bantjes

this is dedication

Will Eisley, the product manager of Adobe Indesign, has tattooed his initials into his forearms, which I suppose isn't really all that big a deal. But what makes these tattoos stand out for me is that he went and included the Adobe InDesign full compliment of printer marks and color bars. Is this just crazy or over the top passion for your job?

I don't think I love my job quite that much. Do you?

wedding stationery

A while back I posted some photos of our wedding invites, save the dates and boxes I made for the kids gifts. I've been meaning to post the rest of the stuff since we got back from honeymoon, but I've been so busy I just haven't gotten a chance. Well, finally, here it is...

{Gift Tags, Name Tags & Balloon Tag}

{Menu & directional signage}

{Guest book pages}

{Circles for cupcakes & take-away bags}

purple haze

I'm just loving this purple themed birthday party. Check it out here.

cute spoons

I saw these melamine spoons in @home a couple of weeks ago and just couldn't resist them. I wish I could get a whole melamine dinner service as ours seem to chip if you just look at them skew.

Stellenbosch NG Kerk

our wedding album

When we went to fetch our wedding photographs yesterday we were expecting to get some prints along with our cd full of photos. To our great surprise and delight we received a wedding album instead. It is absolutely stunning and I'm so glad that I have a ready made one because I know it will take me months to put together the album I've been planning. Thanks Lizelle *grin*

we got our wedding photos yesterday! YAY!

At the beginning of this week we finally got a call from Lizelle to say that our photos were done. It's been a long two months wait, but well worth it. They are absolutely stunning! Keep watching this space to see some of my favourites.


After fetching them we went off for a wonderful dinner at 96 Winery Road (we always try to go have super there when we're in the area. They make the best steak and a decadent desert called "Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate) and then we went home curled up in bed, took the laptop out and looked through all our photos (587 of them).

Lizelle, you are a star!

evolution of type taste Jessica Hische

This is so true!