I Do, I Do, I Do

It feels like months ago already, that most wonderful of wonderful days that seemed to fly by in 5 minutes and left my smiled-out cheeks ache for days.

But 3 weeks ago, I married the man that fills my heart with glee.

My beautiful friend Caitlin helped me brighten the room on a winter day with hundreds of poppies.

I squeezed into a simple champagne taffeta and ecru lace dress from the 50’s

and a pair of vintage cream heels rescued at an estate sale

Gypsy Scotty picked me and my little helper-loves up in a friends cream valiant

and dropped me to a nearby pub where I met Dad and downed a whiskey to put the nerves at ease.

On my arrival, the gorgeous Ukeladies played ‘Today I met the boy I’m gonna marry’, an old Darlene Love song I’d picked.

And with a healthy dose of laughter, all our friends supported us in tying the knot.

The families were proud and happy

There were speeches that reduced me to tears and Michael sang me a song.

There was great music and dancing. Lots and lots of dancing.

A cake of cheeses.

Congo lines gone askew.

And then there was us. Utterly exhausted and overwhelmed with joy.

 

Everyone was eventually sent home with something to nurture and grow.

We spent the next morning recounting all our favourite parts of the night in bed

before meeting the out-of-staters for brunch.

Adrenalin must have kept me together the weeks leading up to it all, because just 2 days after I collapsed into a fluey mess and lost my voice. My honeymoon was not spent in the arms of my new husband, but with work in Jakarta, trading in sweet whispers and cuddles with a duty free bottle of Jamiesons and hotel slippers.

But I’m back! And crazy happy to be ‘Wifey’

holding up the fort, one card at a time

It's all been very helter skelter lately and the winds have been blowing urgently through my little house of cards.

It's mostly all been very wonderful news.

I've had a very lucky run. First I won the Olympus Testdrive Challenge, then I found out I've been accepted for the Art of Photography show in San Diego. There were 13,692 entries from 67 countries, and 113 pieces were picked by Natasha Egan to be exhibited in the show, so I feel pretty chuffed. And this weekend I found out that I won the 'highly commended' award, judged by Karen Woodbury from Woodbury gallery at this years 'Picture This' for 'a dissection of personal treasures'. 

I had a look at the exhibition last week and was blown away once again by the entries.

Though I haven't been able to squeeze in any time for my own photography projects (and plans I do have) , I've been able to find moments to keep contributing to the Ghostlight project 

I'm also getting married in two weeks time to the most wonderful man and I feel almost breathless with the stress it is causing. Good stress, but frantic stress nonetheless. It will be a low key affair and I'm VERY much looking forward to it. It falls in with all my other favourite things that happen in August. Rununculus, Rain and Blood Oranges. 

I hope you find your little piece of heaven next month too.

Until soon, much love

x

calendar cathedral

Busy doesn’t suit the blue eyes

that miss the open sea.

Her hair’s been tied in a ponytail so tight,

she might rip open at the seams.

She lets the shower run,

lets it wash off in streams

and pokes around for bits of her in the drain.

It seems dinner and booze

sit at the table with the working blues

and the conversation’s drowning

 in the bags under her eyes.

And in the disguise

she fears she might not find herself again.

Again and again,

that is the drill.

So fucking shrill in the morning

with the alarm

that goes

‘here it goes,

here it goes’

Here it goes again.

from house to chapel

Adrian picked me up on Saturday morning for some quality icy wind and car conversation time. We drove 2 1/2 hours out of Melbourne past burnt trees and windsteady horses to a caved in house and a little chapel a bit further up.

Though I nearly froze my behind off to begin with, after a good set of bouncing through the rubble and bricks I'd almost forgotten it was the middle of winter.

A glass of wine in a ghost town bar later and I was mixing boiled lollies with jumbled words on our way back home.

pigeons, pm in the am

When one has some time off, it's quite seductive to go to bed at 5pm and get up at 1am. The world is a silent dark when you wake up to a midnight house. One morning just before dawn, I lost sight of our greyhound Soda racing around in the morning mist of an empty footy oval just as the sun started to come up. It was a pinch magical. 

 

On our way home, we found a dead pigeon. I quickly wrapped him up and took the opportunity for a few pictures.

Tomorrow it's back to the saltmines for this nesty lady. 

Boo.

Le Maroc

Not quite African, not entirely French or Middle Eastern. In this land of kohl-rimmed eyes, stray cats, ancient traditions, and donkey carts there lies a different Scheherazade's tale behind every carved wooden door.

A 'bonjour' opens uncertain faces into smiles in a place where goats can climb trees, hooves balancing on sketchy branches, where strangers watch over each others kids and the police let your traffic error off lightly with an 'a holiday should be a good experience, non'? 

A place where people build forts and ramparts into the wild sea and a rooftop terrace on each house to see it from, courtyards with fountains in the middle of houses that look like mini palaces inside the most unassuming doors and down the skinniest alleys of a medieval medina. Markets serving up stone oven baked bread, perfectly soft and perfectly crusty,  buttery couscous, snail soup, boiled sheep's heads and silky treats steaming away in tajines around every corner.

My Morocco was as much a dusty and pale sunbleached postcard left out in a desert oasis as a vibrant jade and ruby coloured mosaic, changing colours like a chameleon.

 

May's a pretty lucky month!

Not only did I have the pleasure of a wonderful holiday in Morocco and now a week left to while away at home with a fridge full of fancy cheeses, and other goodies, bottles of duty free, a great book, my gorgeous greyhound Soda, my wonderful man and time to create, I also stumbled in the door to these lovely publishing surprises.

 

Very excited to have a write up in 

             Swiss Magazine, Kinki

Feature in the 7th issue of L.A.'s 22 zine 

Feature and front page of issue 17 in one of my favourite photography magazines, Ninja