It's my birthday!

Today I turn 28, yep 28.....getting close to the big 30! I have had a pretty quite day today, it has been soooo hot so sitting in the shade with a big glass of water is all I have been doing. And since it's my birthday I think that I am allowed to.

I have been so blessed with all the wonderful birthday messages that I have received today & my WH (wonderful husband) gave my a couple of beautiful birthday presents

I l-o-v-e lanterns, and these ones are sooo cute. My favourite part is that I can pull them apart & store them flat (love a good storage solution!).

Isn't this a gorgeous mousepad, it has actually inspired me to do an artwork for our house (more on that another time).

This has been a very eventful week, Queenslanders have been watching two cyclones (Anthony & Yasi), both have hit the topical north coast with Yasi doing the most damage. It seems that Queenslands moto 'beautiful one day perfect the next' needs to be changed to 'flooding one day cyclones the next'. Don't really know if our state can take anymore natural disasters. My prayers & thoughts go out to those who Yasi hit. I know that the road to recover has only just started and will probably be quite long but this will get better.

Blog travels

As I have gotten older my body has changed, not just the normal changes that a girl goes through as she gets older, but I have developed allergies & dermatitis. To this day we haven't been able to 100% figure out what exactly it is that causes my dermatitis, which means that I have to apply a cream from my doctor twice daily to stop the itching and reduce the redness and flaky skin. This twice daily cream application means that I spend 2-3hrs a day sitting doing nothing but waiting for the cream to soak in so I get 100% of the benefit.

So while I am sitting waiting for the cream to soak into my skin & the itching to go away, I am going to grab my blog passport and see where my blog travels take me.

Today we are starting in Australia with one of my favourite blogs for great inspiration & DIY ideas. Eat Drink Chic by Amy Moss, Amy is from Melbourne (a place that I hold quite special as I was born in Frankston that is really close to Melbourne). I love coming back to this blog again and again. Great inspiration from fashion, art, colour and weddings (I am such a sucker for a wedding, and Amy has pictures from some absolutely beautiful weddings).

First stop keeping with my love of weddings is 100 Layer Cake, I love the subtitle of this blog 'crafting your wedding layer by layer'. 100 Layer Cake is a collaboration by three friends, click on 'about us' to learn more about these three friends. BTW I love how they have used photobooth style photos on their about page, cute cute cute. I love reading about real weddings, and there are great DIY ideas that you can not only use for a wedding but for creative gifts and party ideas. L-O-V-E DIY!!!!

Next stop is A Field Journal, I'm sorry but I am so drawn to butterflies which is the reason I was so drawn to this blog. The feeling of all the images in this blog is soft and dream like, I can see myself simply getting lost just looking at the pictures on this blog. In amongst the dreamy pictures I have found great ideas for party decorations and for displaying food. My fav post would have to be about making a crepe paper bouquet, I think that I will make one to display in my home, it will look fabulous!

Our final stop is Lovely Packaging. I am the first to admit that I have a shelf in my craft room that has piles of.....well....packaging. Some companies put alot of time an effort into the way that their product looks on the shelf, I am such a sucker for a beautiful piece of packaging and this blog is all about celebrating great packaging.

Check out these blogs and go on your own blog travels, don't forget your passport!

Inspiration

This past Sunday the youth from our church took over Sunday service. It was the most inspiring and uplifting experience. I always knew that the youth at our church were mature and wonderful people, but I had no idea at their passion or how inspiring they could be.

We had three of the youth give mini sermons, one about the importance of giving to the poor (not just financially), one about being a christian in the army (very eye opening), and about how her faith & relationship with God was shaped by the influence & inspiration of her little brother who lost his battle with cancer about 4 years ago. Loads of tears! Wasn't enough tissues in the place.

And lastly the talent! Especially from those we did know could play instruments or even sing so well. We knew that they were nervous, worried about how things were going to go, but you couldn't tell when they were up on stage.

This is defiantly a service that people are going to be talking about for a very long time, and I really think that they have reached the hearts of almost every person who was at service. So proud of you guys! Wish I had taken our camera, but I think that I will remember every minute of the service for a very long time to come, it really touch my heart and lifted my soul.