Rise and shine, little blog!

Well, hello there! It's been more than a year since I last posted and I've missed the whole bloggy world. I do hope to be able to keep up regular posts from now on, even if they're not as frequent as they used to be ... and I hope to bring you more fabulous vintage style, architecture, art and design inspiration (as well as occasional pics of life down here in the southern part of Australia).

In the last twelve months our lives have changed quite a bit ...

Dash has grown from a tiny bub into a real little boy ... he's a toddler now with oodles of energy, and he's going to have a little brother in early November this year (eep!).

A few months ago we decided to make a bit of a tree-change so we sold our home in Brunswick

and our holiday house in beautiful Port Fairy (boo hoo!),

and moved to another 90-year-old weatherboard house in the little town of Woodend, about 70km north-west of Melbourne.

I was somewhat apprehensive about leaving the inner city, but so far it's been great - no regrets! Here are a few glimpses of our garden and new neighbourhood:

This year we also had to say a very sad goodbye to our beautiful little Bracken ... but it's nice to think that we were able to give him two years of love and comfort after his rough start in life.

In early May we welcomed a Spanish (Catalan) au pair, Marta, to our family. She's been really lovely, and we'll miss her when she leaves in a couple of weeks to travel in Asia before returning home. Little Dash is quite enamored with his 'big sister' ...

Oooh, there's a lot more going on around here but I'd better stop blabbing and let this blog wake up slowly.

Till next time ....

The big sleep

My dear friends, you may have realised by now that I've really slowed down (and then crawled to a muffled stop) with my blog entries over recent months .... I really do love immersing myself in all your fun, creative stories, and I've been very lucky to make so many wonderful connections through this blog but I've really struggled to get back into the routine of regular posting, particularly since Dash was born.

I think I might have to let this little slice of cyberspace hibernate for a while, although I hope that I don't lose contact with all you fabulously inspiring folks out there (I'll still be quietly wandering around the interwebs and haunting your comments pages so you won't be rid of me entirely!). If you come back and check in several months' time I hope you'll find a new, invigorated Juddie blog ...

Till then, toodle pip!
I'm going to sleep.

Warning: baby overload (indulge me here, folks!)

- my little boy is growing up so fast. He's almost 5 months old now and I wanted to collect a few photos* together in one place as a little record for myself of this strange and wonderful time...

* I always said I didn't want to have a blog filled with pics of my own kid. Oh well. Here's a whole lot at once.

Punch and Judy puppet show

... Paris, 1950s

Place hair here

For some reason artworks and other things made with human hair totally creep me out, and my husband knows that I squirm even looking at photos of traditional Victorian keepsakes such as locks of hair encased in glass, let alone things like the revolting hair and fingernail (yes, you read that correctly!) doily that was offered on Etsy last year for US $200 ... {seriously, who spends the time making and advertising this sh*t?!}.

.... but over at Regretsy this week April posted about some quite fascinating hair-based jewellery, so delicately crafted I can (almost!) look at it without getting the shivers. Melanie Bilenker illustrates quiet scenes from domestic life by embedding individual strands of her own hair in resin - she's very talented and I'm impressed with both her technical skill and the sheer novelty of her work:

What do you think? Does disembodied hair make you feel a bit icky, or is it just another neutral, natural material with plenty of potential applications?

Mmmm .... carrots on sticks, 1941

'War rationing was a way of life during World War Two, creating a national culture of austerity, but it also sparked ingenuity, such as swapping an ice-cream for a carrot on a stick. 
It was the official wartime substitute for ice-cream, and some British children born just before the war didn’t discover what ice-cream actually was until the fighting had finished and rationing stopped. 
The carrot on a stick was offered as the alternative when supplies ran low, because sugar needed to make ice-cream was one of the first luxuries to be hit on rationing, along with bacon and butter.'

(via Retronaut)

Soul Train

I just found a whole lot of wonderful Soul Train videos on YouTube ...
They're fabulous and I don't know why I haven't seen them sooner!