The City

We decided to spend the last weekend of the summer school holidays in the city. It was a perfect weekend, sunny and breezy.

Friday afternoon we loitered around Northcote, one of my favourite places for shopping and eating. At lunch in a cute café I spotted our Buffalo Bill Treasure Tin being used as a tip jar - ace!

In the evening we went to see Cinderella at Her Majesty's. In England it is a necessary part of Christmas to see a pantomime every year, so I couldn't resist taking the family to one, it was a fun night out. Some of the songs are still stuck in my head.

Saturday morning we spent at ACMI at an excellent exhibition about representations of Space in film and TV. It was very broad, featuring everything from Kubrick to Bowie to Tintin and Flight of the Conchords. Lunch at Fed Square, sitting on deckchairs, watching the tennis, was quite surreal.

In the afternoon we visited our old pals Nev and Naomi and their gorgeous family in Melbourne and the kids splashed about in the paddling pool happily while we chatted. Then in the evening we went to Abla's with some other dear friends, which was yummy as ever. I used to eat at Abla's all the time when I worked in Carlton in the 90s, it's always nice to go back for their home-cooked Lebanese goodness. Hurrah for the city! If only one could eat even half so well in Ballarat ... sigh.

Back home today, lots to prepare for going back to school this week. I hope you're having a lovely weekend!

Australia Day

Sunshine, friends, food, PAVLOVA, Iced Vovos, kids, good times...

We're Hiring!

Do you know anyone who would like to work at the Lark Shop in Daylesford? We have a position open for a Retail Assistant, details are HERE!

Muppet

Today I took my boys to see The Muppets. It was excellent, we laughed and laughed, and we loved it! I am very much of the Muppet Generation, we used to watch it on TV on Sunday nights in England. Rowlf was my fave character. I think this new movie does justice to the Muppets' tradition pretty nicely. I especially love that Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords wrote a lot of the songs. Inspired choice!

Sea and Tree

We've been holidaying in Far North Queensland for the past week. Hanging out pool-side, diving, wildlife-watching. Lots of sunshine and a fair bit of rain (which is ok with me as I got to wear my Beci Orpin rain poncho - yay!). My hair went frizzy, the mozis loved us, we ate lots of tropical fruit, we sweltered and we chilled.

But now we're back in Victoria! And looking forward to the last week of school holidays - lots of plans for last-minute fun...

Party in Pink

I must made over our home page to include lots of pink party-ish goods as it seems like that time of year to put on a pretty party!

But we also have lots of other colours in our rather excellent PARTY SHOP too, on cups, straws, treat boxes, giant balloons, cupcake stands, decorations, platters, bunting ...

Ahhh, summer...

Source: flickr.com via Allison on Pinterest

Lazing about, spending many wistful hours on Pinterest

Doing Nothing

For the past few days we have been 'doing nothing', which is something I do not find difficult to do at all. Staying in an incredibly lovely place. Just being together. Here is the view from our bedroom...

I wish life was like this more often. x

Op Shop Road Trip

Today we all piled into the car and drove a long way out into the country to some of our favourite little towns for a spot of family op shopping. I snapped some of the lovely things I saw with my iPhone to share with you. Only a few of these came home with me I'd like you to know, I was quite restrained as it's part of my new year thingy to not hoard too much vintage stuff! (But you know, some things were too good to resist...).

Life news

I am sad that I did not blog as often as usual in 2011.

What can I say? Life and work were busy, I was hanging over on Facebook a bit more, but the main reason for my lack of personal blogging is also because lots of things have been happening that I am still dealing with and I haven’t felt like writing about them. Yes, I still live a lovely life in the country with my gorgeous boys and our animals, I still have the best job in the world running Lark, I still get to travel and shop, and I still bake, eat, make things, and laugh a lot with my friends.

But the last few months have been tough as well as amazing. We lost a very dear friend (a mum to three young kids) in August, as well as my lovely great-auntie Joan and Paul’s great-uncle Bill later in the year. Paul had a sudden life-threatening illness in October (he is totally ok now), we found out that our son has Asperger’s Syndrome, and lots of other crappy and challenging stuff has happened around us that I won’t bore you with. We ended the year exhausted.

The GOOD thing about this: all of the chaos has forced us to take big steps to simplify our lives in 2012.

For the last year we’ve been living and working between Daylesford and Ballarat, a historic country town about 40km away, where the boys’ school is. This year we’ve taken the decision to commit to living in Ballarat full-time, and we have bought a new home there, that we will move into in April. We have also found a fab new office and warehouse for Lark in Ballarat.

The Lark Shop will still be open in Daylesford and this will not change, and we will still be spending lots of time in Daylesford as a family, but sadly (gulp) we are going to have to sell the Lark House in order to buy our new home. We are still taking bookings for the house up until May, so you might like to book in now if you were hoping to visit at some time.

Paul and the boys and I are so excited and happy to be putting down roots again after a tumultuous year. We’ve just spent a wonderful Christmas with our dearest friends in Daylesford and Melbourne, now we are looking forward to our summer beach holiday, and to hanging out together doing nothing for a few weeks until school is back.

And of course, putting my work hat on, we have some VERY exciting plans for Lark next year, that I will tell you about as they come to fruition. In the meantime we are already listing lots of new-season products and new designers on our website.

I hope that all is well in your world, and that you, too, find the strength and support you need to deal with the challenges that come up amongst all the good stuff in life! Here's to a truly happy, keep-it-simple, healthy and beautiful 2011!