black & white

This is cute and clever I think. Seen in King Street the other day. I wish I had touched it to see if it was chalk, or if its painted on to look like chalk. They seem to be doing some renovations to His Majesty's Theatre where, I assume, the WA Ballet lives. I have no idea who it was, but I do remember having a conversation with someone about how cramped it is in there, with all their costumes and sets and things, which is why they are looking for a new home. I think they were going to move to the former Blind Institute in Maylands - a great building, I would love to see inside - but I am not sure if that got resolved.

Happy New Year!

H.

pink & green

Another summer-y photo, this time of a pink frangipani at my mum's house, taken on xmas day. Stayed tuned over the next few days as I am going to do a give away - some photo related things I have made that I want to give away to say thanks for reading my blog.

yellow & red

A few of the blogs I really like are from New York, and they've been posting about the snow storms. Others from Europe have also been posting lovely snowy forests, deer, rabbits... all lovely wintery things. So I thought I'd put up some summer pics, in case I have any readers in the northern hemisphere who want to see what its like. In Perth anyway. Some bits of Australia are having cyclones and floods and things. Here its just hot. Xmas was 40 degrees. I looked it up and that's 104 F.

The best snow storm pics I have seen were from Hither and Thither (click here to see) but I also really liked the photo from Door Sixteen (see it here). Both are blogs I really like, and are worth a look anyway (if you can stand the torture of looking at lovely New York-y snow pictures, while you are sweating it out where you are). Also worth a look is this eerie time lapse of snow building in a back yard (here). The pine trees limbs sink lower and lower with the weight of the snow, its really interesting.

I'm still on holidays, hence having the time to look up pictures of snow and convert temperatures to farenheit. Its really lovely. Had a major scary drama with my dog, the vet was still unsure when she came home as to what it was, perhaps snake bite or poison. At one stage he said brain tumour. So I haven't really been out anywhere since xmas and don't have any interesting photos to share (these are a few weeks old). I may just continue to post photos of vegetables for a few days while I continue to work through my packed agenda of watching Gossip Girl, staring at pictures in cook books debating what to make, and keeping an eye on my doggly.

Hope your festivities, whatever they may be, are going well.

H.

yellow

Fresh corn, more produce from the garden of the Perpendicular Pumpkin. Dunked in boiling water for about 20 seconds and eaten without anything else on it. Spectacular.

white & yellow

Well xmas is over for another year, phew! Nice to see relatives and those kind of things , but always very chaotic, and if you are where I am, HOT. We had a big lunch of salads and things, and played a really good game called "Articulate" that involved a lot of shouting. I got these cute geese measuring cups which survived a trip from Melbourne and go very nicely with my Mikasa sugar jar. And I got lots of other lovely things too (but these ones made for a nice photo!).

H.

green, blue, pink & red

I was wandering around with my cousins the other day (they're over west for xmas and new years, which is very lovely) and we came across this brand new shop, Oh Henry! Vintage, upstairs on the corner of William and Aberdeen Streets. As you know, I am fussy about colours that are friends and colours that are not friends. Seeing everything in this shop arranged by colour, and with them all being very good friends, made me feel very peaceful indeed. Seeing things sorted by colour makes me feel all calm, and like there is order in the universe. The opposite, colours all mixed in together, makes me feel restless. So I liked this shop a lot! And I couldn't narrow the photos down to fewer colours for this post, it was all too nice.

I've been putting things on flickr over the last few days (including some extras from Oh Henry!) but am still really getting started. Have a look here if you like. Maybe you are on flickr too and have some tips for me?

H.

white & green

Scenes from the bowling club. We played badly this season. And blamed the weather each time.

red

Tomato season is in full swing at my house. Just little ones this year - cherry and cherry romas. Anyone have any good ideas what to make with them? I was thinking some kind of tart thingy, but perhaps I should make a good tomato sauce to go on the gnocchi I am imagining I am going to make.

I have a friend, Graham, who is far better and growing things than me, and he started a blog about his backyard vege garden called Perpendicular Pumpkin. So if you want to get some tips about organic gardening or just follow its progress, have a look here.

H.

grey & red

I love this! The City of Perth has commissioned artists Bonsai and TwoOne to do a mural on what was a horrendously plain grey wall. Grand Lane - whoever knew it existed? Probably was once a nice laneway, then this massive piece of concrete arrived and ruined it, so it wasn't so much a laneway as just the space next to Woolworths. Now they are making it interesting again, and its awesome. If you want to go look it comes off the Murray St mall, but there was a little barricade up and you had to walk around on to Barrack Street. Go nearly to the end (towards the train station) and turn in before that shop that sells like cowboy stuff - you know like hats and boots and belts and things. There's some info about the project from the City of Perth website here and from the artists' blog here. I also put a few extras on flickr.

First official day of holidays. Was caught off guard by a rainy day, the tail end of some storms up north. Unusual for this time of year, but very refreshing. Excited about my holiday priorities - taking photos, posting photos, reading books, eating pizza shapes. Have set myself a few challenges, like using flickr more as I said the other day but also cooking from recipes which I hardly ever get round to doing. I want to make gnocchi from scratch. Will keep you posted.

H.

pink

Ignoring the fact this xmas decoration turned out nothing like I planned, I do quite like it. Yes, its pink, not yellow. Yes its made entirely from things I found in the xmas box, or in the garden (I made the wreath bit of out twigs, and not being a very twig-y person, spray painted yellow) not from nice new shiny things from the shops as I hoped. But its done now, with a week still to go to xmas.

In exciting news, I am on holidays! I am hoping to use the holidays to post more than I usually do. And updating flickr, because I set up a flickr account then never seemed to have time to choose the photos I wanted to. It takes so long to choose the photos I put up here! To start with I took loads of pics in Northbridge and the city yesterday, so stay tuned for those.

H.

pink & orange

Here's a few snaps of xmas so far: 1) failed xmas decoration after I pulled it all apart and gave up, but you can see the colours are nice, and 2) presents all wrapped finally and artfully arranged for the photo so that no-one can see their name tag. Ha! Colour theme this year was supposed to be yellow, but that was a total failure. No yellow decorations to be bought anywhere. Gold yes, yellow no. Took several trips off the island to the outer borroughs of Perth where the big shops are, but just could not find what I wanted. So tried to make my own, as I was saying the other day. But it really didn't go that well. Its still "pending".

In other news I fell over this morning. I don't mean like tripped, I mean fully stacked it on the concrete at my house and kind of hurt myself. It was very odd - falling over is something that little kids and old people do, not grown ups. I have a lovely egg shaped bruise developing on my leg, a sore arse and a sore wrist. I am not sure what kind of falling it took to result in that combo of injuries, it was certainly spectacular. I was amazed nothing snapped or broke. The worst part was when I realized nothing was broken or really really hurting I just had to go to work. No pat on the back, no hugs, no band-aid or lollies. Just got in the car and carried on. It sucked!

Hope your week has been better!

H.

white & brown

A little while ago I took some photos for the lovely folk at William Topp, and they have just made a facebook album of them (see here). If you still have some xmas shopping to do you should wander down and have a look at their lovely things... robots and squirrels and owls and... jewelry and prints and mobiles.... and... all sorts of things. Here is their info.

My own xmas decorating not progressing so well. Tiny light globe on a string fail. Lead to angry hack up the decoration with scissors outburst. Resulted in total evaporation of xmas spirit and a small pile of tinsel and baubles that, while very pretty, does not in any way resemble a decoration. To be resumed at a later date.

H.

pink, blue & white

These are photos of the Dowerin Drive-in. Just taken from the side of the road. Hard to explain why, but I think these are two of my favourite photos, maybe ever. The sun had just gone over the horizon. Everything had been bright orange, then suddenly it was pink. I couldn't tell if someone was living in this caravan and the little shed next to it, or if it was abandoned. There were signs of life, but it was so run down you just couldn't tell. I felt rushed, and only took a handful of pictures, but sometimes that kind of pressure makes you look really hard and think fast. And then when you look at that handful of pictures its like, wow, thank god I stopped and took those.

Today is the first day in ages, weeks, I don't have to go somewhere or do something. I want to catch up on xmas stuff - making some kind of decoration and wrapping presents. I don't have a tree, but every year I make something, some kind of shape that is decorated. Last year I did the spray painted branch, before that I had a chicken wire and red tinsel thing for a few years. One time I had a pink tinsel cone, that was awesome! Will put up photos of this years when done.

H.