Birthday bits

Happy Monday friends! Yes, I'm another year older today :)

I decided that this is the year to celebrate, big 41. Last year was a bit tricky with lots of difficult things happening, so this year is going to be a bit of fun.

Look at the beautiful cake by very good friend Liz baked and decorated for me? Gorgeous!!

I can't wait to eat it.

I have decided to have a bit of a birthday "week", so started last Friday night with a few drinkies with Lyndon, followed by yummy pizza.

Saturday arvo I had more drinkies with my buddy Liz (cake maker extraordinaire) and so much fancy pants French cheese that I felt sick :) That evening Lyn and I ate yummy Asian takeaway sitting up in bed.

Yesterday, because I felt like it, I had Baileys and popcorn for dinner, followed by maltesers. I'm so naughty!

And today I have popped this lovely bottle of bubbles in the fridge to share with my family this evening.

Lyn spoilt me with this lovely brown box this morning. Inside, well, not a handbag, but a book I have had on my wishlist for a long time.

I'm really looking forward to a family dinner tonight and even going out to an actual restaurant for dinner with Lyn this weekend. We hardly ever go out for a meal, so I'm excited!

I hope you all have a wonderful week too. For the southern Tasmanians, yay for Show Day holiday this Thursday!

xx

Lovely reads

 

It's no secret I love love love books!  All sorts of books but especially art, craft and fashion books.

I recently bought these beauties and thought some of you might like them too.

 

The New Artisans is a beautiful book that profiles over seventy international artists from all areas of craft/art making , including Angus and Celeste from Australia. There are hundreds of images of the most inspiring work. I thoroughly recommend it, though I warn you, it will make you want to jump on the computer, do some searching for these craftspeople and then do some internet shopping!

Next up is Paper Cutting by Laura Heyenga with a forward written by famous paper artist Rob Ryan (I love his work). Again, a thoroughly inspiring book full of stunning colour images of the work of highly talented artists from around the world. The work covers quite traditional paper cutting through to very contemporary, cutting edge work. It makes me want to cut some paper!

 

Lastly is this great book investigating the designs of famous fashion house Louis Vuitton and designer Marc Jacobs. 

 

There's an insert reproduction of an old catalogue. I just love the history!

 

The book is full of eye candy (not to mention arm candy!).

The image below is from one of LV's most favourite collections of mine, Spring Summer 2007. SO much prettiness!

 

 

Are you addicted to books like I am? Do you actually read them, or just tend to flick through the pages of pretty pictures like I do? I already have another bunch of titles on my wishlist.

Have a nice Wednesday my friends.

xx

My weekend: Sibella Court + getting jiggy with it...

Despite having to work on Saturday, I had a lovely weekend.

On Sunday Lyn and I went to the Valley Market in Lenah Valley where I picked up a lovely Christmas deccy to add to my collection. I'll show you when it's on the tree.

I also went to a book launch/ author chat at Fullers Bookshop yesterday afternoon where the guest speaker was stylist to the gods, Sibella Court. She chatted about styling, travel, collecting (not hoarding!) and colour. It was a great afternoon. She answered all of our questions and was super nice.

I had a lovely chat to her and she told me her next book, to be released next year, is about collecting. Sign me up!

And looksee, I had her Stylist's Guide to New York book signed for moi :)

One very interesting thing Sibella said about colour was when choosing a colour palette, if you get a bit stuck or confused, look at a bird and all the shades of colour in its feathers. She says that's her fall back. There you go peeps, a hot tip!

I also popped into the farmers market where I bought a bunch of peonies. They're still pretty tight buds but no doubt I'll photograph them a bit more once they open. The man who sold them to me said he'd just filled an order of 500 bunches for the Presidents Gold Cup on the mainland and also a big order for one of President Obama's dinner functions. Fancy.

We started a jigsaw...

We are now very obsessed.

All other Molly's Maison activities (including the things we need to do) have ceased while we work on this beauty.

My poor old neck is really feeling it!

I reckon at this pace we'll be finished tonight or tomorrow morning. So much for a bit of relaxing puzzle making.

Thanks for all of your lovely comments about the garden in my last post. I can assure you all our garden is far from perfect - I just show you the good bits :)

It's nice to get positive feedback though.

Have a great week friends and take care

xx
Edit: jigsaw successfully completed this afternoon :) x

Books -- happy and sad

It has been a good and a bad book week. I received two lovely books in the mail from Amazon.com -   belated b'day pressies to myself. As you can see, I purchased Dogs in Vogue (a century of canine chic) which as some fabulous photographs combining two of my favourite things: fashion and dogs. And no, it's not dogs in fashion, just dogs in the fashion photos.

I also chose the new book on designer Orla Kiely. Such a beautiful book...

Wonderful patterns...but I wish she'd use more blue and a dash of pink and aqua..

My sad book news is that whilst I was lucky/talented (?) enough to be selected into a book about Australian and New Zealand Textile and Fibre Artists, the book is now not going to be published. I'm a bit gutted. How exciting would that have been? I hate getting my hopes up to get them dashed.

I suppose at least I have my beautiful submission photographs (like the one above) ready for a future book. *sigh*

Fabulous book

I have somewhat of a 'thing' for books, all sorts of books but particularly art, fashion and jewellery books. Well, combine that with an interest in all things fancy and you have my latest treat to myself Louis Vuitton: Art, Fashion and Architecture. This is one beautiful book which is also limited edition so I had to get my little mitts on it.

It has a funky plexiglass cover, dust jacket by artist Takashi Murakami and about 400 pages of gorgeousness. Sigh...

It's full of collaborations with artists, designers and architects.

Above is the rose motif by Stephen Sprouse. I just love it!