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Coconut oil body scrub.

Place:my office

Poison: water

Favourite things: text messages from my love…

I am working on a homemade Christmas this year….here is a coconut oil body scrub.

Go to an Asian supermarket and find coconut oil, otherwise it’s really expensive.

Buy a few bottles, melt them in boiling hot water.

Put a couple of cups of cooing salt in a bowl, add your favourite essential oil, pour the melted coconut oil over and mix.

Put in some lovely jars and shamwow, a home made Christmas pressie is done.

Try it out, it makes your skin feel lovely!

Much love

A

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Bonbonerie…AHHH!!

Place: My office

Poison: Water

Favourite Things: Inside Out Magazine

Well today a parcel arrived! It made me dance, run around the office with a cheeky smile and turn up Jason Mraz single ‘Lucky’…

A confession, I hate terrible wedding bonbonerie (can’t spell them either) gifts…So I wrote to a generic Inside Out Magazine email address, asking if they had any of their 10th anniversary tea towels, with Rob Ryan’s print on them left over that I could buy…It was a long shot, but sometimes there is just no harm in asking…

AND!!

They gave me 120 of them…I’m so excited…They are perfect for the vibe I am longing to create for my wedding.

Event Management central is in overdrive…I’m excited!!!

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A new landscape

Place: My Office
Poison: Coke Zero
Favourite Things: My new Ipad

I have been chewing on this quote quite alot over the last few weeks…

‘The real voyage of discovery, lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes’

This quote is from Marcel Proust.

What I have been musing on, is the perception of escapism when it comes to inspiration.

If only I could get away to a secluded place, If only I could go on a holiday, if only I didn’t have this responsibility…then maybe I could find that place of peace/ inspiration.

However, I am discovering that inspiration can be found in the mundane, its just asking for new eyes to change your perception.

For example a hugh pile of paperwork…

As I look at the paper work, its like- Ahhhhhh no way, I just need to escape it, can’t wait to get the clutter out of my desk, cupboard or pile….

Yet those times I seek and search through paper work, I always discover a gold mine, of reciepts that remind me of that lovely date we had, a card from a friend with words that make me smile, a photo that evokes a deep memory.

Seeing the pile of extra papers, suddenly becomes a place of inspiration and delight.

Seek and ask for new eyes, wherever you find yourself my creative friend.

Inspiration is there to be found, we just need to look for it…

A

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Ali Cullen!

Place: My Office

Poison: Poison

Favourite Things: John Mayer on itunes

Flicking through some photos in search of inspiration and bang this photo turns up on my screen!

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Okay before you get freaked out, this is a very funny moment. Ali Cullen and I at disneyland, trying to find something non sugar coated and we found these a big leg of turkey! Only in the U S of A…

So this is a quirky tribute to the amazing Ali Cullen, The States and all things large.

Ali, her husband Mark and their destined son Daniel, packed up their lives 5 months ago to go and live in LA and support, lead and encourage our new congregation there. From all the stories, reports and chats I am having, she is doing such an amazing job. Stepping up into all levels of leadership and doing whatever it takes to live large!

Ali, I think you are amazing, and I still think about those few days we spent together in Febuary and was completely blessed by Gods faithfulness.

Here’s a toast to doing whole lifetimes together, not just a few years and moving beyond the easy and superficial layers of friendship, to those that spread across oceans, time differences and made lovely through technology like the internet.

Ann, you and the fam will be so loved when you visit in June.

All my love and much thoughts of inspiration

A

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schapelle meets journalism at its worst

Place: New Norcia Reading Room

Poison: Vegemite on Toast

Favourite Things: Clunky Old and Slow Computers (makes you think more about what you’re doing!)

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Yesterday I read Schapelle Corby’s autobiography and it was deeply concerning. When I was in Bali a couple of years ago, I went to visit her in jail, with no other intention than to pass on some gifts and encourage someone who was in a living nightmare. Whether guilty, innocent or caught up in some gross traffiking bungle, the jail is disgusting, the animals found crawling the floors are vile and no on deserves to live in the squalour she is submitted too.

Reading her autobiography I was appalled by supposed do gooders (esp Christians) who treated her with such disrespect and disdain. My family is in Bali right now, in fact my beautiful sister Jen is there and I assume she will go and visit the Bali 9 and/ or Schapelle and to think that she could be locked away in that living hell scares me to my core.

Why do we always think we have a right to find out the truth in someone’s everyday story? Why does the media rip families to shreds over information that is private, confidential and nobodies business!

My family has had a taste of the media and the ridiculous lies and outright fabricated stories that are touted as fact in disgusting excuses for journalism such as ‘The Sunday Times’ but I truly have no idea what it would be like to be hounded and chased, harrassed and pursued.

This last week has been a hard one for our family because ‘The Sunday Times’ printed a story that was completely false about us. ‘In the guise of free speech’ Jo Spagnolio’s writing should be published as a novel, rather than factual journalism and if he feels he has the right to hound my family, my Father (divorced from my Mother) Dad’s partner or whomever he can find connected to our family…

He should try a dose of his own medicine.

I respect great journalism and love what it brings to our society, but when Australia becomes tainted with the same brush of journalism like the Brittish tabloids and the American glossies, then I’m sorry but we have gone to far.

What’s happened to the good old aussie trait of believing the best in people? What’s happened to people being able to get on wtih their lives in peace and quiet? Journalists who earn their livings by finding the dog scraps under people’s tables deserve to sleep with them as well!

So Schapelle it would be arrogant of me to say I understand your situaton, because Jo Spagnoli’s poor excuse at journalism doesn’t even come close to your hell. But know that I am praying and believing the best for you.

Appalled

A