Anthropology Inspired backyard games night

One of the things M and I had wanted to do last Summer was to host an outdoor dinner and board games night in the backyard, under some twinkly lights, with some of our couple friends. We had set fairy lights up in the backyard for Paige's 21st and left them up for a week hoping to do so, but that week it just rained and it was cold (in Dec!?) so we ended up just taking lights down and never got around to hosting that gathering -sad face! So we were pretty excited to host one this summer, and it was so much fun it might just have to become a yearly event! The night before our little party was also my dear friend Katty's birthday, so although it wasn't exactly labelled a 'birthday party', we did surprise her with a birthday cake, a little present on her chair, some happy birthday wishes and I made some fun feather crowns for all the girls to wear too, which were just the right amount of crazy :)

I wanted the gathering to be a little fancy (you should know by now that I never do things by halves!) but also super easy and non stressful to put together. And somehow I think we managed to accomplish both!?!? For the decorations I just used everything I already had on hand in gold and burnt orange/amber colours. The plates, cutlery and silverware were from Paige's twenty first, and the feathers and lace were actually leftover craft supplies from our wedding! The table was made by my dad and the chairs were from our dining room setting and also the chairs we used for our bridal signing table (which I found on the side of the road). The only things I bought were the white napkins (on sale from my work), some gold sequin trim to make our bohemian inspired headdresses and some fresh flowers, which kept cost down too - yay! I was inspired by this party and wanted to go with a bohemian/feather/fancy mismatched china/anthropologie look. The only crafting I did was to attach some of the feathers to the polka dot straws and napkins with a bit of glue and lace.

I tried to keep the food both fancy looking but easy too. Which was easy because I am currently 'looking after' one of mum's thermomixes (she's a consultant). It got a pretty decent workout for this party! We served cheese, bikkies, carrot + celery sticks and a yummy home made cashew and capsicum dip, This cous cous salad and this tomato, bean and feta cheese salad and chicken + halloumi and beef kebabs. I also made two pizza breads and tzatziki in the thermo too. The drink in the dispenser is actually a bottle of Lipton Peach Iced Tea with a few orange slices thrown in (you should try this, its so easy and yum!) and some friends bought along some other drinks too. For dessert I made a red velvet cake (from a packet to keep it easy, and if I'm honest cause I kinda suck at baking (hello bouncy banana cupcakes of 2012!) and some raspberry fruity dream with tea and coffee.

After dinner and dessert things got a little crazy as Bryan had bought along some sparklers and we all started taking silly photos and dancing around the yard to the music, sparklers in hand. It was one of those really great moments that you don't plan but they just happen and they are so fun! The boys captured some fun shots on our camera. We made some pretty pictures, although I'll spare you the ones the boys had way too much fun making (think toilet humour and fart bubbles) oh dear! Because well this is my blog after all and it's for pretty things only ;) After we calmed down (a bit) the board games came out and I am a little bashful to say that my competitive side may have come out in a big way (oh no!) It was so much fun to end the night with silly games, lots of laughs and just general sillyness. And I'm pretty sure it's safe to say all had a good time as we were still sitting out in the yard playing Articulate till 1:30AM!!  I'm so thankful for sweet friends who we are lucky enough to spend lovely times like this with. What a beautiful blessing friendship is!

^'Jesus' 

^Someone just really enjoyed writing his name! ;)

2014 - a year of festive garlands!

This is an idea that I've been wanting to do since the year we got married, but have never gotten around to starting. Instead of watching another year just fly by, I want to pause a little longer to enjoy each month of the year and celebrate what it brings with it - birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, the changing of seasons ... And what is more festive and celebratory than a festive garland to hang up all month long? Plus garlands are just so dang fun to make! So here you have a year of monthly banners and garlands that I will be creating and posting up a picture of each month (along with what we are celebrating/looking forward to that month). And I'd love for you to join along too if you would like. There is no theme for each month, just feel free to create whatever is inspiring to you or what you are celebrating that month and be sure to leave a comment here so I can link to you and we can all see what you are celebrating too! This month I kinda cheated and made two banners ... but they hang together so nicely :) I really wanted this months banner to say 'Happy New Year' and I had been wanting to try my hand at making tissue paper tassel garlands for awhile now so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and just make both. And tassel garlands - they are so fun to make! I can see myself getting addicted to making these little fellas! You can find lots of different tutorials on Pinterest and I found the gold/silver paper to be the easiest to make them from as the paper dosen't tear. I can see myself making many more of these garlands and I love that they easily thread onto the ribbon so I can take them off and add in different colours depending on the event. The New years banner is made from black and gold glitter card stock threaded onto black ribbon :)  

January 2014 - 'Happy New Year'
This month is pretty obvious huh, a brand new year is upon us, and the slate is all fresh and clean and shiny. 2013 was a great year for us, but it's always exciting to think of what a new year will bring. We're really praying 2014 will bring a new job for Morgan and a start to his career (he finishes his study in 6 months!!)

So here we are in January 2014. This month we are...
Celebrating: a brand sparkly new year
listening to:  Bethel Pandora playlist. non stop.
nibbling on: Ice cold berry smoothies for breakfast (in our new pink and blue mason jar cups)
M's looking forward to: Celebrating Australia Day!
K's looking forward to: Cleaning, purging and organizing the house for the new year.

Christmas twenty thirteen

We truly hope your Christmas was a merry and bright one! Before we move too quickly into the New Year, I really want to recap our Christmas as it was a really sweet one this year. We woke up at home under our twinkling Christmas Tree after our annual 'A's yearly Christmas Tree Camp Out' (something we have done every year since we got married). After our own Christmas present opening (did I mention I got the most amazing gumball knitted ottoman and a croquet set!!) and present opening with M's family we headed down to my Uncle's house in Sydney to spend the majority of the day with my mums family. It was super fun cause my cousin was out from Dubai with her kids (6, 2 and 3 months) and her sisters little one (6 months) celebrated his first Christmas too. And nothing makes Christmas more fun than excited kids and their massive piles of presents!!!

My cousin Rachel is a bit of a foodie and picked our menu for the day - complete with an email of what you were making and a link to the recipe, which was so perfect to not have to think of another thing to do and know that everything would be covered. Even more perfect might have been that I was so busy setting up the Christmas tablescape that my mum and sweet husband made my salad for me! :) My cousin's husband James (our resident family bar tender) started off the festivities with a delicious Pimms cocktails served in mason jars, with red and white paper straws of course! And I was in charge of the decorating after my cousin and Aunt came up with the theme of red and white Nordic Christmas. I seriously love the way my mums side of the family get into the whole decorating aspect of Christmas day! I had to laugh though that the decorators job never stops as we were pulled over on the side of the road on Christmas morning, in the pittering rain, with a pair of secketeers cutting pine branches off one of the pine trees on the council median strip! We had planned a lovely Christmas setup in my Uncle and Aunts new leafy backyard but were rained out and ended up having to set up on their deck - a little squishy, but it worked out all the same. Here's a snapshot of our Christmas 2013 .... Warning - this is a picture heavy post!!!

^^My Aunt reached new levels of perfection with this Pavlova Christmas tree dessert!!!!

Oh Christmas I love you! I think you should come every year!!!

hello 2014!

image source.

Happy New Year all! Can you believe 2014 is upon us already? I really wasn't looking forward to saying good bye to 2013... it was a really great year for us! We spent 6 weeks abroad travelling the USA together and seeing old (and meeting new) friends, We bought out first house (I really should blog about that soon huh!!!??), we welcomed two new darling babies onto my mums side, I celebrated a quarter of a century, Morgan got a new car (which meant I got his 'new to me' car by default), I went fresh and chopped off my hair and Mr A sported a new hair style as well (it's HOT). We spent some of the most loveliest time with friends and family, we got more involved in our church home and we made some lovely purchases that are starting to make our flat really feel like 'ours' (so much so that I'm not sure I'm ready to leave it yet!!) And I enjoyed work more than I ever have (so happy to finally be doing something I enjoy!) Anyway, it was a pretty dang fabulous year and I am sad to see it go! But we must move on to new season and new changes. Praying God would be the center of our next year as a family and that we would get to know him more and deeper above all else! Also I do have some silly little goals of my own for the new year.

Lets see how I go then...

1. Be better at remembering friends birthdays. This is something I am terrible and sporadic at and I really want to be more on top of and prepared for this year!
2. Improve my photography. This was a goal of mine last year and something that I really think I did improve on... however I want to work more this year on my post editing and learning Lightroom which I have finally got after a few years of playing around with the trial version.
3. Finally get artwork up on our walls! We have lived here for 3 years already and I have not put a single nail in the wall that whole time... seriously need to fix that ASAP!
4. Decorate our bedroom. This is the one room I have neglected in my decorating attempts and I hope to remedy that soon. I want to make it a little sanctuary and a room that we enjoy spending time in (not just crashing in come bed time).
5. Spend more time with Jesus.
6. Keep the house tidier. I am a super anal neat freak when it finally comes to tidying up. But the problem is I let my house explode before I do a super duper (wipe down the cupboards and sort everything by alphabetical order tidy). And it drives me nutty (M too). M may not clean things as deeply as me but he sure is better at keeping things tidy year round and I want to be tidier for him so he is happy in this little space of ours too!
7. Work on our cocktail skills and perfect 5 new cocktails, with our new cocktail cart and shaker.
8.  Learn how to make macrons (tried and failed at this last year but I will perfect it one way or another!)
9. Knock our annual savings goal off the mortgage, we better be good at this one as the more we knock off the more we have for renovations!! :)
10. Blog more!

so what are your new years goals?

ps. The image above I found via pinterest and is the LilyandVal etsy shop. They have so many different prints and they are seriously lovely. I'm thinking I need this one for my house "Let your faith be bigger than your fear". Love it! they are my new favs :)

Our 2013 Christmas Cards ...

I had such fun making our 2013 Christmas cards! In Australia, most people just send out a store bought pack of greeting cards and write a small message inside but I have always loved the American Tradition of sending yearly cards with pictures of the family on them. There's something so sweet about hanging up pictures of your smiling loved ones and friends faces as part of your holiday decor. As you know we have many amazing American friends and I love to receive the picture cards from their families each year.  So much so, that I have never even thrown out a single one of these cards and instead store them in our Christmas decoration box. It is so fun each year as we begin to decorate, to pull out the old cards and oh and ah over our friends families and see how much their kids have all grown and what has changed! So for the last two years I have added photos to our cards as well.

For this years card I pulled the best of both worlds together with a traditional greeting card AND a family photo. I used this gorgeous (and free!) gingerbread muffin recipe card download from the blog Cook Republic, so I can't take any credit for the gorgeous artwork on the card. But I did add some of my own decoration to it by way of brown kraft cardstock, candy cane twine, a faux instax of us and a small wooden Christmas decoration. I found the Christmas decorations from our local grocery store for only $4 a packet and love that it was an efficient way of sending a little gift to each family along with their card. And the instax frames that I slipped our photo in were from Kmart.

Another of my favourite details of this years card was the button and string closure on the back of each envelope, which we also did on our wedding invites. It looks tricky to put together but it actually so easy and a cute way of adding a little something to a plain envelope. Basically all you need is a circle hole punch (mine was 2cmD), a small hole punch, an eyelet tool, eyelets, string and coloured cardboard. First cut two circles with the circle hole punch out of your coloured cardstock and then with the smaller hole punch punch a hole in the centre for your eyelets to go through (I find it easier to mark the center with a dot before I punch the holes out). Next place the coloured circles onto the back of the envelope where you want them to sit and mark the center of the circles with a pen. Then punch small holes through your envelope. To put it together I place the small piece of string through the top hole, letting the majority hang towards the bottom right of the hole. Place the red cut circle on top of that and then place the eyelet through the center of all layers and press. Repeat these steps (minus the string) on the bottom circle and tada you have the cutest little button string closure to finish off any envelope! Hopefully that all makes sense as I was going to do a tutorial, but I couldn't quite manage to hold the envelope, eyelet tool and camera all at once ;)

merry and bright

 I promise I will be back to blog the rest of our USA adventure sometime soon! (Oh how I want to preserve the precious memories and share each moment of our amazing trip here on the blog! If only life wasn't so busy!!!) But first Mr A and I wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season. We hope you are enjoying the lead up to Christmas and the excitement that this time of year brings. We sure are loving the fresh pine smell of our tree filling our teeny home, sitting by the twinkling lights at night, blasting out those Christmas carols and the excitement of scheming and finding the perfect gift for one another and each member of our family. We also can't wait to continue our tradition of camping out under the tree on Christmas Eve and falling asleep with the lights twinkling away. It really is the most wonderful time of the year!!!
Merry Christmas all!!!
love the A's xx