Kim Archer | Mindful Living

Etzcetera Update

A whirlwind week.

And I thought it was time for an update.

Initially I was going to keep a separate blog just for Etzcetera news BUT I've decided that Etzcetera is an extension of what I already do. SO I've decided to keep this blog rolling along but it will now contain a mix of everything I do - all in the one place.

Some things will stay the same over here and some things will slowly change and evolve as the magazine evolves but I hope to post about

• @Home workshops, sneak peeks and Support Team news
• snippets of our family and home life.
• crafty projects or tutorials I've found online that I want to share with you
• Etzcetera Magazine news, updates, upcoming articles, behind the scenes and tidbits.
• projects I'm working on
• My Pinterest finds. I do LOVE that site and it is loaded with inspiration.
• interesting creative people I stumble across on the net or crafty friends who are doing crafty things!
• and anything else that fits within my little tag line of Craft. Lifestyle. Home. Family. You.

So, I think this blog needs a bit of a facelift and a spruce up to bring it more in line with where I'm headed with everything. If there's anything you would like to see more of on my little blog - let me know:)

I love to read your comments..just click "comments" at the bottom of this post and type in your hello.

Have a great Saturday.

and now we have a facebook page

Etzcetera Magazine now has a Facebook page. Yippppeee. Head on over and "like" us if you want to (pretty please!)

thank you everyone

Thank you.

From the bottom of my heart.

The response to my Etzcetera news has been enormous and overwhelming and I must admit I feel a bit scared now that my long held secret is now out of the bag. 'Cause now it feels really real! Which is both terrifying and thrilling at the same time!

I'll continue to add tidbits of Etzcetera news here on my @Home blog until my new one is set up..

Thanks for signing up to my Etzcetera mailing list too..the confirmation emails have been flooding into my inbox over the past 24 hours!!! Thank you my lovely @Home supporters and to our new names.

Welcome!

introducing...

It's time to tell.

For as long as I can remember I have loved to write.

Growing up, I would write long winded, tell you every last detail about my day letters to my cousin Jacki when we were in Primary School. I would write short stories - even picking up a Newcastle Herald Young Writer's Award in Year 11 for my Case of The Missing Gym Boots story (a riveting tale, let me tell you!!). I would write long stories without endings. I would write pages of teenage romance, each chapter being handed around in geography in Year 8 for my class mates to read.

And I always wanted to work for a magazine.

In my teens, I wanted to be Lisa Wilkinson - the then youngest editor of Dolly Magazine. I kept the clipping of her in Dolly when she talked about how she had gotten the job. I even made a couple of mock up magazines using photos of my family and made up stories and called my little publication The Australian's Kim - yeah, I know..pretty dorky name!

Fast forward to now.

For a couple of years I have had this idea bubbling away in the back of my head. And it just wouldn't go away. At the start of the year when I was sick and took time off work the idea started playing louder and louder in my brain. And I could no longer ignore it.

I decided to launch my own magazine.

I'm not sure when the idea became "I would like to .." to "I am going to.." But somewhere along the way this year I decided to take the plunge. And it was not without angst and worry and what ifs.

BUT it's happening. And I am THRILLED, excited, and eager to announce that my new magazine will launch 1 July 2011.

I would like to introduce to you all,

Etzcetera Magazine

....An online bi-monthly crafty lifestyle magazine.

Visit our website here. Sign up for our newsletter so you can keep up with our happenings as well as be one of the first to know when we have launched.

Tomorrow the media kit will be ready for potential advertisers and our Facebook page will be set up.

Ahhhh.

It's good to get the secret out there..

I hope you will help me spread the news.

coaching..classes..a new all consuming project

Where are all the new classes over on the @Home site? I know our regulars are wondering why there haven't been any new workshops uploaded over the past few months.

Well, I have been working on something enormously ambitious over this first part of the year which has been all consuming and taking up a mammoth amount of my time and energy.

It's a new direction that will marry nicely with what we already do @Home so the site won't be going anywhere. However, in these early stages of developing the new project, my site has been a little neglected and light on for new content - but that's only temporary for just a little while longer.

I've gone through lots of what ifs? and can I do this? and self doubt and fear and anxiety and worry and I've worked through all those doubts and processed it all and I've come out the other end excited, motivated, still a little scared but really, truly thrilled with this new endeavour and eager to share it all..

But it's not time. Not just yet. But soon.

I find it frustrating when people announce on Facebook and their blogs etc that they have a BIG secret squirrel and can't tell just yet and then you have to wait. wait. wait for ages before you hear the big news. So I apologise 'cause that's exactly what I have done!!!

BUT I wanted to make mention of the fact that the @Home site hasn't had any new classes uploaded for a little while but that we will be back on track very soon AND more importantly I wanted to acknowledge someone (besides my family) who has been pivotal in helping me work through my self doubts and take this big leap of faith with this new business venture..

Her name is Julie and she is my business coach.

I haven't ever had a business coach before so it's been quite a novelty to have someone motivating to talk to, someone to encourage and guide and advise and Julie seemed to pop into my life at just the right moment. Julie owns Sassii Coaching and has helped me to move forward with my ideas and turn them into reality.

Each session she gives me a little set of tasks to complete before the next session so that I continually move forward instead of getting stuck in the one place (which I have a tendency to do!!!) And I tell you what, there's a bit of a flurry of activity the night before my next session to make sure I have done all my homework Julie set me the week before!!! I do like to work right up to a deadline!!!!

If you head on over to Julie's site I just noticed my little testimonial is featured on the front page today - woo hoo!!

Over the next week or so I hope to start revealing what I've been up to and I thank all my lovely regulars for being so patient with me...

crazy for colour

Support Team girl and lovely friend Lisa Pate sent me this gorgeous little embellishment pack the other week from her Etsy shop Crazy For Colour!

 

Source.

And it's been sitting here begging for me to play for several weeks!! Lisa has cleverly created some mini mixed media tags loaded with colour and texture and stamping and a fun litte house and flower. Plus some other bits and pieces!

So I scrapbooked a layout..just for fun. Terrible morning lighting..but you get the idea.

LOVE the little package of goodies you gave me Lisa!! Check out Lisa's ETSY STORE here. She has stocked up on some great new things!!!!

a little tutorial

We gave my mum a magazine subscription for Mother's Day and because the notification arrived by email, we didn't have a little wrapped up present to give her on the day.

So, I spent some time on Mother's Day morning making a pretty fabric flower hanger thingy to hang in her study, by her computer, to make her smile - and it smells pretty good too.

Here's how!

supplies

• fabric scraps
• access to a sewing machine + bright red thread
• tiny buttons
• small scrap of cardstock
• a little bit of wadding or toy fill
• something to scent your flower - I used some fragrant wax chips
• length of ribbon for the "hanger".

how to

1. Choose a FIVE fabrics roughly about 12x14cm. Use all the same fabric, two types fabrics OR a different fabric for each of the five petals. 

2. Fold each piece of fabric in half WRONG sides together.

3. Head over to your sewing machine and stitch a very rough petal shape through both layers, leaving the lower edge free open. Stitch three times around your shape.

I prefer a random, shabby, uneven and imperfect flower SO I didn't make a petal template beforehand. BUT if you prefer a neater finish, by all means, create a petal shaped template on paper first to trace around for uniform shaped petals.

4. Once you have stitched your petal, use scissors to carefully snip around your stithing, leaving a narrow border.

5. Stitch all five petal shapes and snip out ready for assembly.

6. Cut TWO rough circles from fabric for your flower centre.

7. Type up a sentiment strip onto cardstock (or computer journal onto a strip of cardstock)

 

8. Machine stitch each end of your cardstock sentiment strip to your fabric centre.

9. Pin each of your petals, sandwiched between your TWO fabric circles.

10. Head back to the sewing machine and stitch all layers together ONCE, leaving a space for where your LAST petal.

11. Leave the opening where the last petal will go, open for now, so we can softly fill our flower shape with wadding.

12. Softly stuff your flower centre with some wadding/toy fill.

13. I added in a few little scented candle chips from my scented candle mishap. But you could add some lavender seeds or a cotton ball fragranced with a few drops of essential oil.

  
14. Finish off by sandwiching your last petal into place and slip a length of folded ribbon behind your petal, stitch all layers. Continue stitching, adding about three rows of messy stitching.

Trim all your threads and give yourself a BIG CLAP, gift wrap and give to someone special. Hang your little fabric flower from a drawer knob, door knob or add to a wardrobe to lightly scent your clothes.

new carpet

Sorry.

I did disappear after the carpet was installed didn't I? I had good intentions of sharing photos but I was also flat chat moving furniture back into place, rearranging rooms and painting furniture! And the days have moved past so quickly it's causing me headspins!

I did however take photos of the carpet in the rooms before all the furniture went back in and I have finally uploaded them to my computer.

I LOVE the carpet - after stressing over the colour, really, I couldn't imagine having any other carpet colour. And I am SO happy I pushed on and got all the bedrooms painted before hand as the colours all came together nicely.

It was a mammoth effort to clear each room totally!! Here's Capri's room before..

and after

and our room before..with our lovely charcoal feature wall all finished..

I was SO pleased to see that cold, hard concrete covered up..with soft, springy, beautiful carpet!!

It was VERY hard to try and photograph the carpet to show a true picture of what it really looks like. The sun was casting light on the floor and it was just hard to try and capture a decent image of the carpet...but you get the idea.

 

No after photos, when our furniture was moved back in - I hate our bedroom suite and it was a shame to have to put the side tables back in there. So I am on the look out for some quirky second hand side tables I can do up! They don't have to even match..something like this would be delightful!

 
Source.

Or this with different handles..

Source

or this

Source

Or even this - painted and distressed in aqua or antique white..

   

I'm on the look out!

mother's day 2011

With all my kids now in high school, this year was the first year in fifteen years where I didn't receive a Mother's Day Stall present :(

Oh how I missed the mug with chocolates all done up in cellophane, the cheap soap wrapped in a hankie and the rose scented candles! Capri reminded me of the time she gave me the vegetable printed tea towel - she was oh so proud and her brothers teased her something shocking for giving me a tea towel!

I miss those little gems! And that vegetable printed teatowel is still in use in the Archer kitchen!

My Mother's Day started the night before when my dad surprised me, my mum and sister with a bunch of flowers each! I don't know that dad has EVER given me flowers! So that was novel.

And my morning started with a cuppa in bed, made by Ken deliberately using a Mothers Day Stall mug from several years ago.

and lots of lovely presents..

Including slippers, Music From the Circle Girls CD, Olivia Newton John's lovely cook book LivWise, Instant Lottery tickets, Daryl Lea licorice and a cute "I love you Mum" heart from Capri who especially chose it so I would feel like I WAS getting something from the Mother's Day Stall!!

And then Brandt presented me some more flowers plus more Instant Lottery Tickets (Scratchies) and I won a combined amount of $27 and a free ticket!

We also went to my parent's place for lunch and I had a very nice Mother's Day indeed! I'll be back with photos of our new carpet (finally!) and some family photos from Mother's Day as well!

Seeya soon.