miessence

Now that I have this blog button thing worked out, I want to tell you about one of my favourite things - miessence products!!




The blog button on the sidebar will take you to our miessence website where you can buy skin care, hair care, body care, cosmetics and nutritional products. We've been using the products for 2 and a half years, pretty much from the moment I decided to rid my bathroom cabinets of all the products with nasty chemicals!! miessence products smell good, work well and are good for your body. We love them!! Go natural!

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I just read a great book that has some timeless ideas to help your family, friends, those you work with, or children in your care to work together in harmony.

Steven Covey names the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. They are:

Be Proactive - Take initiative. Don't blame others for your actions. Be good, even when no one is looking.

Begin with the end in mind - Plan ahead and set goals. Do things that make a difference. Be a good citizen.

Put first things first - Do the have-tos, then the want-tos. Be disciplined and organised.

Think win-win - Balance getting what you want with what others want. Look for a third alternative.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood - Listen to other people's ideas and feelings without interrupting. Look people in the eyes when talking.

Synergise - Value other people's strengths and learn from them. Team with others to create better solutions for problems. Be humble.

Sharpen the Saw - Take care of your body by eating right, exercising, and getting sleep. Spend time with family and friends. Find meaningful ways to help others.


Most of us, probably do most of these things. Just reading it a different way can remind us to keep these things happening in our day to day lives. Food for thought!

Twilight

If you haven't had the chance to see the movie Twilight yet, it is worth doing! Yes, I jumped on the bandwagon last year to read the Twilight series of books after hearing how motivated the highschoolers were in our school to read them. The first book is a 'first true love' fairytale kind of story, and I just love how the passion builds between the main characters - will they, won't they, will they, won't they? Of course, he is a vampire and she is not. So what do they do? The book is a page turner, as you desperately try to find out what happens. Love it, love it, love it!! Believe it or not, the books were written by a church member, and many of her values show through. Thankfully some time had passed between reading the books and watching the DVD, so it felt to me as though the movie stayed true to the book. Highly recommended if you love a good romance, and a bit of fantasy!

The Caucus Race

When Alice floats on her pool of tears in a bottle, she meets a Dodo who conducts a Caucus race so the animals and Alice can get dry. He stands on a tall rock, and everyone runs around it, however the waves keep coming in and nearly drown Alice! Nutters, these characters, complete nutters! Anyway, here's my take on the theme of the Caucus Race - cards with blues and swirls, bubbles and pearls.

Use them for greeting cards, birthday cards...whatever!

Alice down the rabbit hole

Here is a new set of Alice in Wonderland cards! The idea is that they can be used as 21st birthday cards.

The keys and locks are in reference to when Alice falls down the rabbit hole, lands in a tiled hallway, sees a little door and then needs the key to open it. She finds a bottle labelled 'drink me' and shrinks, then eats a lolly labelled 'eat me' and grows huge, then cries and cries until she makes an ocean of tears! I was quite horrified by Alice's adventures when I was young, but now that I've seen the movie as an adult, I realise Alice WAS quite precocious, and she HAD wished for an adventure, and she really was quite capable of coping in her Wonderland. I always thought she was meant to be 7 or 8, but now I think she was intended to be 11 or 12. The blue on the cards is a link to Alice's dress, and the black stripes link to her headband. I hope you can see the links as I do!

Wizard of Oz cards

Here are the first cards for my Wizard of Oz series! These ones represent Kansas.

I love the browns and greys of the paper, and the suggestion of a storm brewing.

Australia

Jonathon gave me the Australia video for my birthday.

It was a beautiful film! Different, in ways, to what I expected. It is more about the stolen generation and parenting than I had realised. And I hadn't expected the references to the Wizard of Oz throughout. Americanised it a bit, but a good parallel to farming in a stark land. Brilliant casting, gorgeous photography. (Although, I wish Nicole had not had so much Botox in her top lip!) I'm glad it had the quirky Baz Luhrman stamp. And the limited edition pack has four postcards too. I love these photos!

Love this movie! Feel like watching it again already.

More answers to 52 questions

I've been powering along, trying to catch up on scrapping tags for Emily Falconbridges 52 Question challenge.

So here they are:

That's nearly all the ones I have to do - only two more and I'm up to date!

Happy Birthday to Me!

We went to Jetty's (again! but we LOVE it there) for breakfast to celebrate my birthday and Mum's birthday with the rest of the family.

Beautiful day, pretty blue skies.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

It was my birthday on Thursday (yay, me!) and I would have posted pics from going out to dinner, but everyone forgot their cameras!! Anyway, the meals were superb, the desserts - deluxe! It was at the Yanchep Inn. Man, I wish I could have photographed the dessert - berry fruit crumble, mmmm.

Anyway, one of my pressies was the book, Confessions of a Shopaholic,

and let me tell you, this book makes you realise how embarrassing it is to be someone who cannot control their spending. It was an absolute contrast to the Louise Bagshawe book I read the other day! The girl in the Shopaholic story would receive letters from Visa and different clothes stores, asking kindly to pay outstanding amounts, and even overdrafts, and her response would be to go out and buy a dress, or two pairs of boots, and a couple of magazines to make herself feel better! And she bought a cappucino and a muffin for breakfast EVERY morning!!

You know, I've always been a bit proud of the fact that I don't have to skimp and save, and don't really have to budget, but reading about this girl's pursuits, it makes me realise it is actually 'ditsy' to NOT budget and to not know exactly how much credit (or debt) you have at any one time. It's actually really embarrassing. And you would never want to sink to the depths of the girl in the story who lies her way into and out of every situation. You can't even feel sorry for her because of the lying. She's just not even likeable!

And while I, personally, am not a huge clothes and shoes buyer, my own confession of a shopaholic is that I have indulged in buying craft stuff lately (although that is supposed to be for making goods for an etsy shop) and I'm a bit of a sucker for DVD sales, magazines, home decorating items, and organic skincare. BUT I AM MAKING A RESOLUTION TO NEVER BE IGNORANT AND DITSY ABOUT MONEY ANYMORE!!! I'm glad I've had Jonathon to keep things in check for me all these years, but, hey, I really have to start to take on board all the lectures and advice that books, TV, magazines, and my Mum have been trying to give me for my whole adult life!

I'm going to make a concerted effort to tame my consumer self. So, let's see how this pans out...

What have I been reading?

Another good one passed on from Mum...Louise Bagshawe's The Devil You Know.


This is about triplet girls separated at birth who all grow up to be strong-willed, business-minded, money-making machines! One gets into real estate, one into band management and the other writes best-selling novels. I was very inspired by this book to be a do-er. You know how you can be a 'gunna' or a 'do-er'? I'd much rather be a do-er. It can be scary, or take money, or time, but it's worth it when you knuckle down and do it. Whatever 'it' is!! My 'it' at the moment is tying up loose ends - all the little projects that have been sitting around for ages. You've already seen Jack's Playroom come to fruition, and over the next week you'll see some more....

Jack's Playroom

How I love being able to do house stuff on the holidays! By that, I mean arranging, rearranging, sorting, tidying, in effect, organising the house. This weekend's big project was to make the cluttered-with-junk family room into - ta-da! Jack's playroom!


Easter Bunny was kind enough to bring us an LCD TV for Easter and it fit perfectly on the shelves! Then I took away all my records and CDs and reorganised the shelves and toys into their groups. Jack has always been into Lego, so most of the toys on display are Star Wars, Mars Mission and Exoforce models. Years ago we let him take his models apart and build something else, but I think it's a major achievement to put them together, so we leave them now. The playroom shelves hold all his models and his other things like Bionicles and Gears of War characters, cars and board games.

We need to get a big rug for the floor in this room (the one in the picture is borrowed from the front lounge) because Jack will spend a lot of time here playing X-Box and building models.
He's already been there all weekend!

Phantom of the Opera Cards

Happy Easter everyone! I've been 'making, making' again today. I couldn't resist starting my Phantom of the Opera cards. They're all about French: roses, reds, blacks, pinks, masks, music, feathers and jewels! All my favourite things! How cute are the dress and mask stickers on the last card? ( And no, I didn't make them!)