Turning a flight into a luxury mini-break: My top travel tips

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Turning a flight into a luxury mini-break

This post was written as an entry to the ProBlogger Virgin Australia competition.

I love flying. For me, the allure of plane travel has never waned. Airports themselves still fascinate me. The bustle of people. The palpable emotions. The excitement of either returning home or discovering somewhere new. I still get a thrill when the plane leaves the tarmac. So, when an opportunity came up to fly to Melbourne and back for the day, sans family, I was as excited about the plane flights as I was the event itself.  Read more…

Motherhood & Creativity: A Book Review

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DSC01219Rachel Power’s book, Motherhood & Creativity, struck a real chord with me. The book is a compilation of interviews with successful artists on how being a mother affects their creative practice. These women are all leaders in their various fields, well known and incredibly talented.  Yet, I could identify with every chapter. The experience of motherhood is both unique and universal. Some truths stretch wide. Read more…

Periscope and Slippery Slopes

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Slippery Slopes & PeriscopesWhen I was about twelve years old my neighbour received a walkie-talkie set for her birthday. Not a kids set. A real set. It didn’t take my neighbour, my sister and I long to figure out that we could tune into the radio frequency truck drivers used. We often chatted to these men (and they were always men) and felt a girlish thrill in doing so. The men were polite and respectful, if somewhat bemused to find a trio of girls on their wave length. Very occasionally we would pick up a bad vibe and hurriedly turn the things off if we were concerned about where the conversation was going.

I remembered those walkie talkies the other day as I was playing with Twitter’s new app: Periscope. It’s a live video streaming app where people can comment as you are streaming. I think it has some great potential uses. Q & A sessions. Tutorials. Discovering exactly what sunset looks like in St Petersburg tonight. But it also rang alarm bells.  Read more…

Interview with Nikky of LaBelle Designs

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an interview with LaBelle DesignsNestled into a leafy corner of Tarragindi sit three little shops. A florist, a workroom and a boutique. They are the kinds of little shops that are filled with treasures. The biggest treasures of all being the women who run them.

Today on the blog I am I talking to Nikky, the owner of LaBelle Designs. She speaks about the need to be creative, owning a small business, managing a brain that never stops working and the importance of supporting locally made. Read more…

The healing power of creativity

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Healing through creativityYesterday marked three years since I last held my middle son, Xavier. He died when he was very young, only two weeks old. Three years. An impossible distance between my son and myself. There are rituals around this time of year. Things that I do to remember him, things to mark the hardest days of the year. His birthday. His anniversary. The memory days in between. Most of them revolve around crafting things for him. I firmly believe in the healing power of creativity and it’s ability to connect us to memory and loved ones lost.

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The art of saying No.

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steve jobs

I say yes to things. To ALL the things.

To events, even when they are back to back, leaving me drained and tired. To helping out, even when I realistically have no time to give. To Tupperware parties, even when I have a drawer full of it and need no more. To projects, even when my notebooks are full of unfinished ideas. To the lady at the Myer counter when she wants to sell me hope in a jar, even though I really cannot afford it. To doing things for other people, even when it means my own business suffers from inattention.

Where do all these yeses come from? From an intense desire to be liked by everyone (which I need to tame) and a crippling fear of missing out. Those are not good reasons to say yes. I need to learn the art of saying no. Read more…