Favourite things: tea time

Could you do with a cup of tea right now? Me too. Do you take it hot or cold? Sweet or straight? And what goes perfectly with tea? How about this? 1. The travelling tea parlour This is Lady Bonin’s Tea Parlour, selling mobile, take-away tea from the back of a vintage caravan. Oh how I long to while away the hours sipping tea on that Persian carpet and soaking up the South African sun. I wish, wish, wish Lady Bonin would come to Adelaide, but methinks the odds are against me. I'm not sure how watertight that caravan really is. (Lady Bonin found via Shannon of Happiness Is)

2. The teapot wildflowers We have the perfect teapot for this at home, so I am most definitely going to borrow stylist Amy Merrick's fabulous idea. I subscribe to Amy's blog An Apple a Day for a regular dose of beautiful things.

3. The DIY teacup lamp If I ever find the patience (it must be here somewhere), I'd like to make not one but two of these fabulous teacup lamps and use them in our bedroom for night-time reading. This is a lovely, long-term project. First, the hunting through thrift-shops for just the right teacups, saucers and teapots. Then the fun stacking and re-stacking to find the best look. After all that, I suspect the actual making of the lamp may seem pretty quick! Does Bunnings sell lamp kits?

4. The tea party I love the ideas, inspirations and tips for a wonderful tea party in this article on All Women Stalk. All I need is (ahem) some friends in my new town of Adelaide, and I will be tea party ready for spring!

5. The cup cozy When the auld Irish fisherman comes in from a blustery day on the waves, leaves his raincoat and hat dripping by the door and thumps in to warm his hands by the kitchen fire, Mrs Fisherman will bring him over a steaming cup of tea wrapped in this cable knit cup cozy. I want one, too.

The secret journey

Here is a little secret that I haven't shared on this blog to-date: I am off on a holiday. Tomorrow bright and early I hop on a plane, and I will be a-travelling for a month. London - Paris - Languedoc - Provence - Venice - Rome. Oh, methinks there will be grand adventures. I didn't sleep last night for the excitement, just like a little child before Christmas. To keep you entertained in the meantime, I have lined up some absolutely wonderful guest bloggers to keep this site alive. They are creative, kind, surprising, inspiring and clever people, so I know you will love what they pull together. Please show them lots of love and support, and remember to say hi to them in the comments box so they know you're there.

I'll return in October, and I dare say there will be stories to tell.

Yours truly, Naomi

Oddly unsettling

Have you seen these photographs? This is downtown New York in the early 1940s, photographed in colour. Does it look real to you? While World War II raged on distant shores, an amateur photographer from Indiana, Charles Weever Cushman, took a holiday in New York. He took his holiday snaps on a rare and expensive Kodachrome camera, in colour.

Somehow this doesn't quite seem real to me. Maybe it's the soft, hazy, vintage wash in some of the pictures. Or maybe it's because I'm just not wired to picture life in the 40s in colour. Not real life, at least, just movies.

And yet here they all are, these New Yorkers from decades before I was born, going about their lives, walking the streets I walked, entering the doorways I entered. Suddenly, generations of the past are just like me. I feel connected. Neighbourly, almost. Who knew our grandparents' lives were lived in colour?

Take a look through Cushman's incredible collection here. He travelled widely, throughout the US and Europe, and seems to have always carried the trusty Kodachrome with him. It is only by an extreme act of self restraint that I haven't posted in multiplicity of urchins on farm gates from the 1930s, all captured in that oddly unsettling colour.

The human calendar

Once upon a time, I went a-visiting to the website of someone who had left a comment on my blog. (I always try to visit your site if you leave a link to it when you comment). Anyhoo, this particular site was called Hivenn and it turned out the blogger was a sweetheart of a young, blue-haired gal from the UK who took some quite lovely photographs. One of them struck me as particularly moving and I wanted to tell her so, but I couldn't find out where to leave comments.

BUT while I was searching for a comments option, I found this human calendar at the bottom of the page. The little folks inside the boxes will even figure out what day it is on your side of the world and switch places and signs accordingly. Things like this make me embarrassingly happy.

The city's soundtrack

Remember iPods, antique iPhones without the networks: remember those things? I wasn't an early adopter but can I tell you, when I was given my first iPod that baby changed my life. Suddenly, my days had a soundtrack. Even something as mundane as walking to work became a swim in an ocean of my favourite music.

But have you ever wondered what anybody else's soundtrack is? Tyler Cullen hit the streets of New York to open up the city's soundtrack. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFTpV8ZB-38&w=853&h=480]

The pen pal post

Today I pulled together a little pen pal package for my new friend Hermine in Belgium. It was such a fun treasure hunt! Don't know what I'm talking about? Find out here. This is what I put in the big, padded envelope. The inventory:

* A sprig of pink gum blossoms, purloined from the parklands on my walk * A few pages torn from 1930s children's classic Blinky Bill (a spare copy) * A postcard of Glenelg (a little beachside town in Adelaide) * A cute little airmail-themed gift card * A lovely, hand-drawn postcard on wood, that I bought in New York * Some pretty, coloured tissue paper * A travelling copy of Airmail with the hand-painted bookplate * A chocolate frog from Darrel Lea * A photograph of my mother as a girl, arm raised in a snowball fight * Three marbles (of course!) * A necklace made out of a birthday candle * A polariod self portrait showing my reflection in the tea-kettle * Some cutout pictures of my new home of Adelaide and South Australia * Two fall leaves given to me from my friend in Connecticut * A hand-written letter-excerpt from Airmail covered in international stamps * A cute ribbon with a butterfly in the centre, from Anthropologie * A turquoise, hand-painted wooden egg

(Not pictured) * Three little squares of vintage, yellow, chintz fabric * A 50 cent coin (because all the edges are so pretty) * A letter, telling Hermine about life in Australia

I hope it all makes it to Antwerp safely, and that Hermine likes it!

The end of love

I can't get this slow-burning song out of my head lately. It haunts me. I love how it builds and builds and builds. It is so familiar, that breakup ache, the confusion, misunderstandings, lost tenderness... but Gotye makes it beautiful. Every time the song ends, I feel like it has broken up with me. I am undone.

Favourite things: I heart

1. Melty crayon art You can buy this from JK Create on Etsy, OR make your very own using a box of crayons and a hairdryer, thanks to the pioneering experiments of Tracy on Naptime = Craft time. Let me know if you try it!

2. Fashion time machine [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/28753875 w=525&h=295]

100 Years Style East London from Jahbit on Vimeo.

100 years of East London style in 100 seconds. I watched this yesterday and I was blown away. Then I watched it again. Then I clicked "favourite."

3. Free postcard apps

Seriously: the thought of combining my instagram addiction with my addiction for all things postal is making me a little light-headed! Take a look at these five free iPhone apps for sending postcards.

4. Magical floating Ferris Wheel

In this video project, artist Maider Lopez made all the structures of a Ferris Wheel in Austria seem to disappear, creating a magical, floating world.

5. Imogen's imagination come to life

There's a bit of a story to go with this one. Do you remember a while back when I introduced you to Rachel of "i make. you wear it.", who is making a dress a day for charity? I showed you her incredible postcard dress...

Around about the same time that I discovered Rachel, my friend Ruby had also shown me a number of amazing dresses designed by her eight-year-old daughter Imogen. Imogen has a wonderful sense of colour and form. I thought there were some synergies between Rachel's and Imogen's aesthetic, so I showed Ruby the site. She got in touch with Rachel, who has just spent the past week making Imogen's dress designs a reality.

Isn't that wonderful? And how talented is Imi! How awesome is Rachel!

Rachel is doing this project to raise funds for The Starlight Foundation, which brightens the lives of seriously ill children. So if you like what you see, I do hope you'll consider making a donation.

Sweet snippets from Antwerp

Look what arrived in my mailbox today, all the way from Belgium! Remember two weeks ago when I blogged about old-fashioned ways to keep it personal? One of the things I did was get in touch with Hermine of Journal de Jours, to join her wonderful pen pal project. Today the sweetest little package arrived in the mail from Hermine, lovely snippets of her life in Antwerp. Now it's my turn to send a little Aussie package off to Hermine. Any suggestions as to what I should include? What would you like to see?

Secret letters

If you’ve been reading this blog or if you’ve read my novella Airmail, you’ll know that I’m fascinated by the concept of letter-writing. I love the intimacy of writing something by hand, penning your thoughts or feelings or ideas and releasing them for someone else to read. At times, that someone may even be a total stranger. I love the distances that letters cross, traversing cities, nations, distant roads, even oceans in a matter of days.

Email and instant messaging may have changed the nature of the way we write to each other, but we still write.

And to my mind, one of the most beautiful iterations of letter-writing in recent years has been the growth of the Post Secret community.

Post Secret is simple. People anonymously mail a secret on the back (or front) of a handmade postcard. For the writer, they get their secret off their chest. For the rest of the community, they learn that they are not alone. Time and again, Post Secret teaches us that my secret is, after all, yours as well.

Some of the letters and the stories within stories in Airmail are my own secrets, packaged up in fiction. Some of the secrets belong to my friends. Still others are made up. Most likely, you will never know which is which (although now I've got you guessing).

Mr B has been travelling a lot for work lately, and I really miss him when he's away. So here is a video of Valentine’s Day themed Post Secrets, for your reading and viewing pleasure.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzq3srbYEUY&w=640&h=480]