postcards from little venice

little venice,

perfect place for a leisurely stroll

just minutes from busy paddington station

i just can’t figure it out

there’s a lot of things i can’t reconcile in this world. this is one of them…

how can people in london supermarkets, be tossing bags of produce from kenya (country of origin may vary depending on seasonality) into their shopping baskets and trolleys without a second glance, when this is happening.

kenya as a country can’t feed itself, yet british residents can buy produce (currently beans, tenderstem broccoli) from there in their local supermarkets…

and it’s not just food…

100 tons of flowers are transported from kenya by dutch farmers every day—these are non-native flowers that are being grown on kenya’s dwindling water supply. Even in the midst of this crisis, the flowers have not missed a day for delivery to western consumers.
- source: mongobaby.com

seriously.
what?

postcards from copenhagen

we’ve just had the best long weekend in copenhagen

city of bicycles

this is a place i fall completely in love with whenever we visit

hanging out with friends,

finding the most interesting places

away from the main streets

elegance

and love are everywhere

there’s amazing coffee

some great places to eat

and the weather was perfect for being outside

love,
-leonie

excitement

maxim bar, copenhagen

5 things i am excited about today

1. discovering that anthropologie is opening a store in london in just a few days. joy!
2. visiting friends in copenhagen this coming weekend (jellyfish salad anyone?)
3. record the day – by lobster & swan
4. the brilliant insider’s guide to my secret london from wee birdy & friends
5. lo-fi london, from notes by naive, reveals to me some yet undiscovered places (not for long)*
6. a journalling tutorial from curiously crafty

what’s got you excited today?

*it was only 5 this morning, and i’ve since found this gem. for a new zealander living in london, this is an awesome find, as it’s often hard to even know where to start looking for delights like this page has

hello autumn

hello

i love your trees, shedding their finery, baring their skeletons to the biting winds.

i love your blue sky days and cool nights that call for blankets, mittens and scarves.

i love the feeling of holding a mug of hot soup or tea in my fingers, sitting beside a warm fire.

i love your colour pallette of reds, oranges, browns, yellows.

i love your sunrises, dancing mist off quiet lakes & ocean shores.

hello autumn, i love you.

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a selection of autumny polaroids from flickr

1. wednesday: orange, 2. Autumn’s gifts, 3. autumn offering, 4. Untitled, 5. There’s just something about pumpkins., 6. tomatoes, 7. autumn leaves, 8. that fall feeling, 9. Untitled, 10. smell of fall, 11. the boldness of fall., 12. polaroad, 13. provincetown-sunrise, 14. ., 15. ocean of light, 16. Untitled

postcards from the shack

dear friends,

seems at the moment, there are adventures to be had around every corner and we get home to unpack, only to find ourselves piling assorted bits and pieces into our bags and we’re off again (just how i like it)…

a couple of weekends ago, we spent another lovely lazy weekend on the isle of wight. we had our own cosy little love nest, a shack belonging to vintage vacations.

there was cake on arrival (delicious)

two really comfy chairs in the front room, a wall of gorgeous vintage mirrors

and a delightful view out into the bay.

there were games to play and a couple of hilarious photo albums to pore through

we took a walk along the coastal path

to the needles and old battery, where rocket testing was done during the cold war (amongst other things)

we drove through beautiful, quiet countryside

walked on the beach collecting treasure (a favourite pastime of mine in any weather/country)

did a bit of foraging & indulged ourselves a little with some local cheese

a magnificently relaxing weekend.

with love,
-leonie

confessions of a journaloholic

journals of all colours & sizes. venice, italy

one of the things we were invited to do as part of introducing ourselves to the rest of the group in jen lee’s session, truth & consequences at SAW, was confess something. my confession was that i love journals & have a stack of them. i love beautifully made paper, gorgeous colours and patterns and journals and often will buy one simply because i like the colour of the cover or the feel of the paper inside.

compared to some people, perhaps my stack of journals is only small. though my true confession is this…

…MOST of them are empty.

the journals

their pages wait to be filled in with imaginings, dreams and the rainbow of colours that is my life. they taunt me with their blank pages, my mind is constantly attacking me for not being one those people that journal. i’ve never kept a daily journal, aside from writing morning pages (which are more like just-try-and-get-them-done-sometime-today pages for me). there are cheap journals in here purchased on our last trip to the usa as i love the sound and the feel of the pages AFTER they are covered in writing (is that weird?). these, i use for my morning pages, as they didn’t cost much and the pages fill quickly so i can get my krinkly feeling/sounding paper fix almost immediately. my current one is covered with the goddess leonie’s how to be a goddess artwork (which you can download for free from here) to give it some pizzaz.

the other journal standing up, in the photo above, is my vision book. this was created at one of christine kane’s retreats & has been added to as i continue my journey & create my vision for my life. this one is filled with images, words, recipes and ideas for what our perfect home looks like.

other journals in this collection have been given to me. i will carry one around in every bag, everywhere i go. some have a couple of pages written in (i always start writing in my journals from the back – again, weirdness), then nothing. blank. a chasm of empty pages from the beginning to very near the end.

the pens

i even have really nice pens to write in these journals with…

• one, a beautiful glass pen, was purchased directly from the maker on murano island, venice. i have turquoise & deep red ink sitting at the ready.
• the second, a limited edition greta garbo mont blanc, was purchased at the chicago airport as a gift to myself for the success i have had with property investing
• a third, green acid-free, archival ink pen completes the set

even these three beautiful items fail to fill the pages, as my mind freezes up and they sit limply in my hand, waiting for instruction.

i’ve bought second-hand books with the intention of creating my own journals and i’ve got a box of assorted papers, collected for the pages – hoping that i can find some instructions for making a journal by hand, as i missed christine & marisa’s class at SAW.

i also like the pages to be perfect (anyone else with me on this one?) – i don’t like scribbling things out and will often cut out a page and start again (or recycle the journal & get another) rather than leaving a spelling mistake or a change in thought scratched out on the page. i’ve never tried wreck this journal, though something right now is calling me to do so as soon as possible!

since jen’s class, i’ve been thinking a lot about why i don’t write. why my journals gather dust on the shelves. i’ve got a pocket-sized writing down the bones book that has leapt out at me this morning, and the words just sit and see what comes out sloshing around in my head.

i guess, this is what wanted to come out first.