Sunday (Life)Style – Finders Keepers market

I’m really excited to share my Sunday (Life)Style post with you all today. In advance, I’m going to confess this is an event I was saving up some money for – it is a market and it has a lot of hand-made, beautiful things for sale and I’ve got very poor self-control where that sort of thing is concerned. But this is my show-and-tell!

Twice a year (in Melbourne), the Finders Keepers Market is held at the Royal Exhibition Building. It is a market that showcases local talent (from Melbourne and other Australian states) who have various crafty/vintage-style businesses. It’s just a GORGEOUS market, and this year there were over 250 different stalls, plus live music, entertainment and food.

It was also PACKED. I went with my mum and we got there fifteen minutes early and joined the line. 5 minutes later, the line went back to the road. When we left just after 1pm (3 hours later) there was still a line to enter and the place was crammed full of people. It was nuts! But a lot of fun, too!

I have some photos from the various stalls to share, then I’ll share my goodies!

Outside and inside the Exhibition Building, and our Finders Keepers entry sticker!

The last picture is a photo of all the business cards/postcards/promotional stuff I collected from some of the stalls. Because all these stall holders were local or Australian I wanted to collect and collate their information for the next time I need to buy gifts!

Now, onto some of my purchases:

My lovely new necklaces, made from beautiful polymer clay (I think!). The first 2 are nine-bead necklaces from Emily Green and the second is from Dear Mabel.

Next up I bought a sample tea selection from Organics for Lily. In my set I bought Peppermint, Green Tea Citrus and Remember Me. I can’t wait to try them!

Then I bought The Very Hungry Bum – which is a cheeky (!) version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. There are also 2 more books Bum Magic (Possum Magic) and Where the Wild Bums Are (Where the Wild Things Are). If you’ve got kids who love parodies (or just bum jokes!) they’ll love these.  Check them out here.

I got 2 cute little terrarium figures from Meow Girl and this gorgeous Chilli Citrus candle from Zen Moments Candles.

Finally, the paper junkie in me bought some new wrapping paper. The Grand Plans for these paper rolls are for use in paper bead making. We’ll see how they turn out!

The first roll is from Bespoke Press (which sells cards and paper goods) and then 4 rolls from InkyCo, who had the most AMAZING gift wrap rolls. I think I’ll be making future purchases from them, for sure!

AND, on top of all my weekend awesomeness, I was SUPER LUCKY to get to catch up with Brooke from Teachable Moments this week while she was in Melbourne. One of my favourite aspects of blogging has always been the community aspect, and I’ve made such wonderful friends through blogging.

Plus, Brooke is just LOVELY! ❤

Now, I’m back to planning for our 100 Days of School celebrations this week!

What awesome things did you get up to this week?

Sunday (Life)Style – July 13

 

Hi friends!

Happy weekend to all of  you! (To my Australian friends enjoying the last day of holidays – enjoy your last day and try to relax!)

Before I dive into the non-teaching related stuff, I actually went into work twice during the holidays. (I know, I know.) I didn’t achieve all my goals, but I did get some stuff done. Next week I’m presenting PD to the staff of my school and I had to prepare handout packs, and I really wanted to do my filing (which I seem to do once every twelve months – please don’t judge me!) and organise the front of my room which has been a bit of disaster zone lately.

Check out my mess! (And the paper bin was totally full by the time I was done.)

The bins underneath the the IWB and whiteboard all contain frequently access materials and rather than spend MORE MONEY on matching containers, I’ve used what I had. It doesn’t look as nice, but it’s a lot more organised than it was when I started and I didn’t waste any more money on school. (This is a goal for this financial year!)

Finally, I added this movable word wall to our big whiteboard (we do still have our original word wall with sight words on the opposite wall), but this is for those words that my kids use in their journal writing. I used Tara West’s Teacher, Teacher, How Do I Spell…? pack, and added a few more Australian-specific words and holidays.

I’m SO excited… these holidays I finished two books. I haven’t done that in soooo long. I feel very accomplished!

Matthew Reilly is my go-to author for books that I just love. Granted, I love action-adventure and sci-fi – and his books always fit into one of those categories. They are very violent (usually), so just beware. BUT, he is an amazing Australian author and his books read like Action Blockbuster Movies and I’m not even kidding.

This one is very different to most of his books, in that it’s set in the past with a Young Queen Elizabeth I, but it’s a murder-intrigue style book. It’s also very definitely for mature readers.

A 13-year old Elizabeth travels to Constantinople with her teacher Roger Ascham for the first international Chess Tournament. Check out the rest of the description here.

So, a couple of weeks ago I posted about my Fortune Cookie Soap box. Included in the subscription box was a $10 voucher to spend in the online store, so I took the opportunity to try some other goodies.

I will confess, the Candy Aisle items from the original box didn’t thrill me, only because the scents were a little sickly sweet for me (I can be quite picky with different scents). But I definitely wanted to give these guys another go, because they have some awesome products.

From the Tree of Life collection I bought the OCD Hand Sanitiser, Personal Space Air Freshener, Steam Me Up Scotty, and Whipped Cream.

From the Polyjuice Potion (!!!) collection I bought the OCD Hand Sanitiser, Personal Space Air Freshener and Whipped Cream. Of the two lines, this is my FAVOURITE. It smells divine. And I’m probably going to divide all the items between home and school so I have nice hand sanitiser and air fresheners and creams to use everywhere!

So, last week I did a video about one of my Memebox subscription boxes, and I’ve got a few of these ordered and they’ll ship out at various times of the year. This week I received the Milk box (which has unfortunately sold out at the moment) which is full of skincare products that all use milk as a base.

What I got:

• Pure Smile Milk Mask Pack (1 full size)
• Skin Ceramic Donkey Milk & Argan Oil Multi Steam Cream (full size)
• Enesti Rice and Milk Foaming Cleanser (full size)
• Pure Smile Choosy Lip Pack Milk (1 full size)
• Hello Everybody Bubble Bath Steam Milk (25g)
• Hello Everybody Nature Holic Body Lotion Milk (full size)
• Pure Smile Choose Lip Scrub (25g)

What I really love about Memebox is that, because it’s full of Korean products, there are so many things I’ve never heard of, or would have bought on my own. I’m really looking forward to trying some of these products, because milk is meant to be fantastic for your skin.

 

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a gorgeous online store called Artsyville.

They have very fun little products that would make AMAZING gifts. I, of course, only had eyes for the gorgeous washi tape and ordered all six patterns (because this is me who’s talking!). When I ordered the tapes there was a special deal where I also received a sample pack of these gorgeous, brightly-coloured doodle cards – that are perfect for notes and gift tags, etc. Her website has gorgeous prints and little gift packs, including this CUTE Super Teacher Box.

The store owner, Aimee, is lovely, and has an instagram page you can follow.

Yesterday I had my nails done AND a Lemon Crush Boost Juice, which pretty much made it the best day ever.

If you live in Melbourne and are interested in getting a BioGel manicure, check out Nails by Nancy – she’s AWESOME!

I also went shopping at Typo and bought more washi tape (picture me hanging my head in shame) and this awesome envelope template! (I thought that was kinda cool!)

I also went to Spotlight and found some fabulous things on SALE! I found some classroom border strips (all $1 each, which for teacher supplies in Australia is AMAZING), plus some cut out decals for $1 a packet. I like to use those for sight words/etc.

I also got 3 packs of Heidi Swapp stamps (each for $4, down from $7), some CUTE Halloween paperclips for my planner in October for 50c each, plus some chalkboard labels for the classroom for $1.

And that was my week!

What was something you did for YOURSELF this week?

(Remember – you are an important person! <3)

Sunday (Life)Style… on Wednesday!

Just to confuse EVERYONE I’m putting up another Sunday (Life)Style post, on a Wednesday, because Youtube was not playing nice and it’s taken me this long to get the video I’d originally planned up for the post.

(I would have held it over until next week, but I have a couple of subscription boxes that I thought I’d do for this coming Sunday’s post….)

SO, you get a mid-week post from me. Or, feel free to bypass it.

But this video is a show-and-tell/haul video from my recent purchase from Priceline – all skincare products because 2 weekends ago they had a deal that if you spent $65 you automatically received a bag full of $340 worth of skincare products (and they weren’t kidding). If you’re in to that kind of thing, feel free to watch!

(You should still be able to access this on Youtube, although it’s unlisted so you can’t search for it. I’m new to this whole Youtube thing, so bear with me while I learn!)

And before you go, leave me a comment saying YAY or NAY on a video for my subscription boxes this weekend (I just got my Wantable Accessories box for June, plus 3 Color boxes from Memebox – a Korean subscription service). If you guys aren’t liking the videos, I’ll just take photos and detail it out for everyone!

Happy Mid-Week!

Sunday (Life) Style – June 29

So, I had the best intentions of uploading a video for all of you today doing a bit of a show-and-tell of my recent Priceline purchase because I got the most AMAZING goodie bag for free for spending $65 on skincare products. I’m holding out hope that tomorrow YouTube doesn’t throw a hissy fit when I try to upload the video.

Keep your fingers crossed?

So, instead, I wanted to share with you a project I worked on tonight.

Some of you might know (particularly if you follow me on Instagram), that I’m in to planner decorating.

I use an assortment of crafting supplies to assist with this – washi tape (I may have a small problem with buying this with abandon!), stamps, stickers and journalling cards.

Now, I don’t know about you, but journalling cards are SOOOOO expensive. Honestly, for little bits of card stock you’d think people would have worked out an economical way of printing and mass producing.

Anyway, I have a collection of Project Life cards and Me and My Big Idea (MAMBI) cards that I like to use, but while getting lost on youtube today (instead of doing any sort of planning for next term), I stumbled onto a video that showed someone designing their own journalling cards.

Why had I not thought of this? (Maybe it’s because I hate my drawings?!!!)

But, in the throws of woe about the price of crafting supplies, I gave it a shot, and I’m pretty thrilled with the results.

These are my original pages, drawn on plain computer paper with pencil, Sharpie pen. I photocopied the black and white images and then coloured in (using regular markers) on the photocopied page. I’m going to invest in some card stock to copy the coloured images on and then slice/cut them up as desired.

So, that’s my Sunday Style activity for you.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to upload the video for you tomorrow on my skincare goodies, but we’ll see how I go!

What did you do with your Sunday?