Posts Tagged ‘holidays!’

tokyo!

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

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highlights included:

* beautiful green-ness and serenity of kichjoji (my new favourite place in tokyo)

* studio ghibli museum

* riding bikes around our neighborhood (see masami’s awesome BMX with childseat above. so cool)

* hanabi at teppei’s daycare summer fete

* eating cold soba noodles accompanied by a kirin or sapporo almost everyday

* drinking late night champagne with masami

* eating an ispahan macaroon at pierre herme with shauna (possibly one of the best things i have ever eaten)

* paddling in a swan boat in inokashira park

* kitchen shopping in kappabashi

* catching fish and turtles at an asakusa festival 

* watching tyke and ari loose there minds at kiddyland

* discovering cute stores around nakamichi street 

* hara donuts and ice-cream

* spending a ridiculous amount of money on stationary and stickers at loft 

* sipping iced lattes with ebony at this cafe

* being constantly surrounded by awesome graphics 

this trip showed me a different tokyo to my previous visits, but i still loved it just as much, maybe even more. i cant wait to go back!

i’m back…

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

and still coming back down to earth and feeling slightly surreal after our tokyo rendezvous. as expected it was amazing, inspiring, delicious and super-fun, and also at times sweaty, exhausting and exasperating (mostly due to travelling with small children in a huge and humid megalopolis with A LOT of stairs). i am still sorting through my photos but will be posting about all my favourite parts and discoveries soon.

in the meantime here is one of  my favourite discoveries – textile company tafca.  i happened across a display they had put together in parco books (pictured below), where i couldn’t resist buying a scarf in the “dancing” print (also shown below). most of their site is in japanese, but there is an english description in the “concept” section which is so sweet – have a read here

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more tokyo soon! 

p.s this is my 100th post!! who would have thought? not me! as i have said many times before i am loving the blog-life – apart from providing a way to show new work its also been a great form of therapy and support for me. thanks to anyone out there for who takes the time to read my excessively wordy babble xoxo

rounding off nicely

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

i am major countdown mode for our holiday – in a few days i will be exploring new toyko neighbourhoods, eating onigiri from 7-11 and buying ridiculously cute homewares. its been perfect timing with work in the studio too, as today we were able to sign off on lots of recent jobs: a project with japanese company GAS (designing credit cards! more soon!!), textile print for local store grace, an illustration for monthly column in readers digest and the justine clarke tour posters and advertising. and the absolute icing on the cake was a final approval for a very long and equally as frustrating job i have been working for a few months now (have mentioned it before) – cant tell you the relief it gave me to see that leave my inbox forever. 

leah, noe and miso will be holding the fort while we are away, and there is still lots to keep them busy too (well maybe not miso – he will just be getting spoilt rotten by our house-sitters).

one thing i will be sad to miss out on while we are away is MARKit at fed square – a market focusing on illustrative design. not only do i love a good market, but it’s our first ever time taking part in one! we will have all our products at special market prices, plus some other goodies too. and there are lots of other great stall holders as well including zaishu, third drawer down and the lovely victoria mason jewelery. its on sunday 12th of july, 9am -5pm. 

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speaking of our products, the love tree was featured in july/august issue of inside out. thanks to styling genius vanessa colyer tay  and photography genius  sharyn cairns – its never looked so nice! 

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and one more thing to check out… irene grishin-selzer (aka iggy and lou-lou) has a solo show of new ceramic works at outre gallery titled “i threw a kiss in the ocean“. the show opened tonight (was planning to go but unfortunately 2 grumpy kids, rain and a ton of washing made it tricky) and is on until 18th july. i really love irene’s work and have no doubt her new things will be beautiful.

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well, thats about it for me for now. i may have neatly finished off my work, but now the family pre-holiday organisation frenzy begins – pack everything for everyone, clean the house, write instructions for house sitter, set auto-respond on my email, give miso some extra pats, and oh, dont forget to buy cat food. and plane snacks. and something to sedate the children (JOKING). and remember to get to sleep in time for a 4.00 am wake-up to catch the flight. geez, my mental lists are already getting the better of me.

i am fairly sure i will be blogging while i am away (although our laptop literally just died on raph as i was writing this post!), but if not, i have a good excuse and rest assured there will be plenty of japan adventure stories & pics on my return.

oyasuminasai xxo

perfect saturday night

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

in my eyes, its a perfect saturday night at the orpin-rashid’s tonight. i have a banana-coconut cake in the oven, a glass of tempranillo in hand, just finished watching a DVD and the house warm and full of food from today’s market shopping and also surprisingly (sort of ) clean.

if i would had read this of myself (or anyone else for that matter) 10 years ago i would have scoffed and thought “how utterly tragic”. 10 years ago a perfect saturday night didn’t start until at least 1am, involved much more than a glass of tempranillo and definitely didn’t involve baking. on occasion i miss the sense of anticipation and possibility that i used to have before a night out, and of course the general spontaneity of my pre-parenthood life, but on the whole i would say i am pretty happy with this domestic state i am now in. 

5 other things that have been making me happy: 

1. supermarket sarah

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i am sure this is one of those things everyone in the world knows about this except me. online shopping on whole new level. founder annette’s selection is amazing. she does live just around the corner from portobello market, but still, you need a good eye to seek out such awesome-ness. made even better by her hand-drawn”your deserve it” and “buy now” signs. too good. this week supermarket sarah featured the talents of another design gem donna wilson. but my absoltue fav thus far was her col-ab with uber-fantastic patternity.  no wonder just about everything sold on their page. 

2. karen walker’s runaway A/W collection

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its like ms walker has been in my head and designing exactly what i would like to wear right now (with these two outfits in a particular - even down to those cute yellow boat shoes). now on the hunt for both of these outfits.

3. choo choo’s at the toff

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on the nights i do manage to go out – the toff  is one of the places i like to go. having worked for owner camillo for a long time, and knowing a few folk who work there, it has a family vibe for me. this week the toff re-launched their restaurant, re-naming it choo-choo’s and changing the cuisine from 70’s inspired gourmet snacks to contemporary thai food designed to share. 

technically, i am not sure if choo-choo’s is actually making me happy, as i am yet to try the food. but… i did design the new logo and menu (which i have read in depth, and subsequently my drool caused my already mal-functioning keyboard to become even more broken), and have eaten karen batson’s outstanding thai food many times downstairs at cookie (in fact, we love it so much we had our wedding there!), so deliciousness (and happiness) is almost guaranteed. and rumour has it, its been packed every night since the re-launch! i’d book ahead if your thinking of trying it. 

4. my sisters blog

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this is purely selfish reasons really – em lives in seoul, and now with her blogging i can easily keep track of what her and her cute puppies elfi (above) and ferdi are up to on the other side of the ocean. but aside from that, she is a great writer and is sure to cover all things good, crafty and otherwise. take a peek!

5. holidays!

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after weeks of frustrating location, date and budget discussions (ending in a day of tantrums from myself) we have  booked a family holiday and will soon be departing for 2 weeks in tokyo! i have been lucky enough to travel to japan many times before, but its been over 3 years since my last visit. have so many things on my “to do ” list – one of the first is to hire a cute duck boat and paddle around inokashira park enjoying the tokyo summer humidity. i also cant wait to make good use hello sandwich’s tokyo guide (fingers crossed might even get a personal tour from the almost tokyo-resident miss sandwich herself!) 

oh! my cake is just about baked. hope you are having a perfect saturday night too xx

mini golf

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

our summer holidays continue… we recently went to inverloch on another mini holiday. beaches there are amazing – will be adding it to my future-dream-holiday-house-location list. during our stay we came across the obligatory seaside town mini golf course – tyke can not go past a mini golf course with out cries of “please please pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease can we go?!!!!!”. and we usually do. this course was a world of home-made weirdness. colours were awesome. i loved it. 

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summer holidays and a new year surprise

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

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happy new year! i hope you had a fun one. we returned yesterday from our usual spot down the peninsula with assorted family. max and rosie and tess came to visit too. weather was amazing and we got in lots of beach and summer action. 

my new years eve was decisively tame, although new years day got my year off to a pretty great start – at dusk we were treated to a really really amazing electrical storm (my camera broke and i didn’t get to take any pics, although i found some here). as tyke and i watched the lightning from an upstairs window (complimented by many flying foxes floating past), we saw another mysterious shape flying through the stormy sky which then landed out front of the house. on closer inspection we discovered it was a tawny frogmouth! as an lover of anything avian and urban nature in general, i was pretty beside myself. i hope it comes to visit again tonight.

we officially go back to work on monday, and already have some nice projects brewing. more on that soon.

malaysia photos pt 2 – penang and lang kawi

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

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last photo is us leaving… sad – was a great holiday. but on the bright side, now considering moving to lang kawi. you never know…

malaysia photos pt 1 – KL & melacca

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

am not going to mention how busy i am. well i just did, oops. no more. but lets just say on a scale of 1-10 on busy-ness, at the moment i would be an 11. possibly a 25.

as all my brain-space is currently being used up in an exciting designing frenzy (set to last at least another 2 weeks), i wont write my usual wordy dribble – instead you get to go on visual holiday!  here are some photos of our recent holiday to malaysia. 

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