The Maroon Diaries

My mum loved the bunting I made from children's book pages, and she asked me to make her some cards with pieces of similar pages. I didn't want to buy new cardboard and matching envelopes to make a set, though, that would be going against my buy-(almost) nothing-new guidelines. But then I found a set of ten matching cards, new and unopened, in an op shop. They had pictures on the front and logos on the back, but the insides are blank. So, this is what I came up with. I covered the logos on the back with some scraps of book pages or wrapping paper. Each card has its own matching square envelope, with the postcard squares and everything. Schmick. And there we go, that's a project finished that I started years ago and have been meaning to get around to finishing one day for all the time in between. Satisfaction feels! 

...see how they wriggle and squirm! Oh, excitement! My worm farm has arrived! I've always been a dedicated composter. I always put together some kind of composting arrangement wherever I lived, even tiny little ones in the grounds of apartment buildings. When we first moved in here, we used the compost bin already in place - right up the very end of the backyard, in a most inconvenient corner of the carport. But then Mr CJ got sick, and by the time I caught up with dealing with that, I developed a prolapsed disc in my back and couldn't walk much at all for a while. Yes, yes, drama drama. One of the sad consequences of these particular difficulties was that I gave up the composting and resorted to the rubbish bin. It was just too much physical labour for us to cope with. And yes, I felt terribly guilty about it ever since. Recently I read this blog post  by a woman who lives in an apartment block and wished she could compost, but was concerned about the neighbours' ...

I've been a stationery addict since I was just a little kid. I remember the first time I felt that thrilling rush that girls can get while shopping, the one that the whole consumerism movement depends upon exploiting. I was seven years old and in a newsagency/bookshop, surrounded by books and notepads, pens, pencils, rulers and rubber erasers in such an astounding variety of shapes and styles that I marvelled that anyone could come up with the idea to make all these things into colourful little rubbers. Shining accessories were lined up in neat categories, each item defined by its little perspex slot. I can remember the absolutely rapt fascination with which I regarded my first-ever start-of-school-year supplies, aged four. I don't remember ever feeling so deeply about any toys or dolls. It was books, and paper and scissors, and tape and glue and suchlike, that inspired my early explorations of the properties of the physical world. I can still become overwhelmed by such fe...

Yesterday, I got cracking on the next stage of a certain ongoing work-in-progress that I refer to as the door-hanger-thingy. Once I decided that I was going to blog about this project, I thought I'd better come up with a better name for it, preferably one that actually described what it was. I thought about it for a bit and decided that my creation was a Braided Doorway Curtain. Only it didn't really stick. I'm still calling it the door-hanger-thingy. It's an odd fact about my main living area that is technically has no windows. It does, however, have three external doors that can be opened and closed. Each one was once a wall of a telephone box. Oh yes, how cool is that. Add to this the consideration that our backyard is a communal space and really, anybody could be wandering about out there, and the issue of curtains comes to the fore. I've tried many variations since I've been living here - but over time it occurred to me that what I really wanted was a bea...

Op-shopping is more than just a past-time or a way to get cheap stuff for me. I am absolutely obsessed and addicted to op-shopping, beyond all reason. If I'm travelling along in a car, and I see an op shop, or even if I know we're close to one, my heart thumps and my pulse rises. On Thursdays and Fridays from 10am - 2pm, when the very best op shop is open, I just can't sit still. No matter how fiercely I had resolved not to go op shopping that week, it's hopeless. I have to be otherwise occupied or I will end up at the op shop. And I will come home with a garbage bag full. I just can't help myself. Fortunately, this is an addiction that has very few unpleasant side effects - the only one that I can think of being the clutter, and the growing likelihood that I will end up as a case study on that Hoarders show - but a great number of wonderfully positive side effects. Charities are supported, and in turn, the needy are cared for. Landfill is diverted and consumerism...