Category Archives: shopping / or not

I’m dreaming of a simple Christmas

Being fifty-something, I’m old enough to decide what Christmas looks like in our house.

And so it came to pass that when I gingerly peaked inside the Christmas storage boxes a couple of weeks back, I saw nothing inspiring.

There were all the usual suspects collected over the years … shiny baubles, hanks of tinsel, tiny wooden nutcrackers, hang-from-the-ceiling foil stars, santas in almost every iteration you can imagine and trails of sparkly tree lights.

This year, I found it all a bit average … a touch tacky, bordering on gaudy.

So I closed the lid and resolved to have a different type of Christmas at our house. Just this year. Because I can.

I’ve been dreaming of a simpler Christmas with thrifty objects, hand-crafted decorations and a calmer, less consumerist approach. I’m thinking re-purposed, vintage, found objects (as opposed to Made in China, plastic, over-priced, mass-produced).

I’m not sure about the real meaning of Christmas, but I’m certain I won’t find it in those dusty old boxes in the storage room.

Most years we spend $30 on a real Christmas (maybe even $50 for a ceiling scraper). This year the family Christmas celebrations have rotated their way to other households and we won’t be hosting a gathering, as such. There will be less action than usual here over the yuletide. It seems over the top to buy and decorate a tree for what will basically just be Mr P and me. Instead, we will do without the mess and the fuss and see that the money finds its way to someone deserving.

As for gifts, we’re only buying for a handful, mostly via Kris Kringle arrangements. I’ve pledged to shop local, hand-crafted, re-purposed and/or vintage where I can.

Wonder Boy (the Economics major) will tell me I’m not doing my bit for the economy. I’ll tell him not to fret … I’ve done plenty over the years, and I’ll make an effort to rev-up productivity in the new year.

Instead of under the tree, we’ll stack our gifts on the fireplace hearth (it’s summer downunder) beneath this: our Christmas mantle decoration I made by over-printing vintage book pages, their ribbons secured to the mantle by my vintage brass lady bell collection.

Joy photo by Sheryl Allen

The closest thing to a tree in our house will be this trio of thrifted pots I dressed up with fallen pine cones and (more) vintage book pages. Post-Christmas I have plans for the pots in the herb garden.

Pine Cone Pots photo by Sheryl Allen

And today I fashioned this simple door wreath from rose prunings from our garden. Not bad for an incidental gardener.

Christmas Wreath photo by Sheryl Allen

Christmas Door Wreath photo by Sheryl Allen

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas here.

Simple Christmas. Just the kind of Christmas I’m dreaming of.

Because I’m fifty-something and I’m wise enough to understand that Christmas is different for everyone.

And different from year to year.

And because I can.

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Hob-knobbery at the local church jumble sale

Being fifty-something, I love discovering a foraging opportunity close to home.

And so it came to pass that I hurried along to the local church jumble sale, just a few doors down from my own, arriving expectantly at the advertised start time.

Alas, the early bird had beaten me to the worm.

There were sold stickers plastered on all the best bargains … an antique dark wood hall stand ($65), a vintage wooden dresser with barley twist detail down the front (also $65) and some gorgeous depression glassware that I didn’t have the heart to price-check.

I figured it was still worth a poke around.

I managed to snaffle up a few little goodies … a couple of vintage books and a tiny blue Aussie pottery rabbit.

And the millisecond I noticed this, an idea began hatching in a crafty corner of my brain.

I asked the stallholder for a price and waited. And waited. And waited.

He carefully turned my latest find over, ran his finger along the edge and held it up to eye height as if to check it was even and square. He pondered silently, wrestling with some inner dilemma.

Finally, he turned to me, looked me dead in the eye and said “one dollar”.

“Sure,” I smiled (with relief), pressing a gold coin into his palm and dismissing his offer of a plastic bag with a single wave.

I was out of there.

Once home, I double-checked to see what I had.

Obviously, it’s a wooden fence finial, a post topper. Right? Nothing more. Nothing less.

I’ve seen plenty of these. We live on a busy street in an older part of town where there are a lot of period homes and fancy wooden fences. Our street is a main route out of the city for many late-night and on-foot revellers. Fairly regularly, on a Saturday or Sunday morning-after-the-night-before, I’ll find a finial or two and maybe a clutch of fence pickets in our front yard, assuming the merry passers-by have grabbed them from a nearby property before throwing them over our fence.

As you would.

I know how hard it is to get matching fence parts so I always take a wander back up the street, towards the city, find the fence where each piece/s belong and return them. It’s quite satisfying.

But I had something different in mind for this finial find from the local church jumble sale. A couple of coats of paint, a layer of wax, a pair of old keys and some twine, and it’s become my new door stopper, referred to by others in this household as: “The Big Knob”.

Jack Sparrow (Pirate Cat) is still a little wary of it.

And I have no idea what was going through that stallholder’s mind when he was pricing this for me.

I think he was probably taking a lend of me.

And I fell for it … bizarre, over-dramatic hob-knobbery in the church hall.

Dumpster diving … and proud of it

Being fifty-something, I’m honest enough to admit I have dived into a dumpster or two.

I know it’s not everybody’s “normal” but it’s worked for me.

I’m not a serial dumpster diver. I prefer to think of it as opportunist diving rather than intent-based diving. Just now and again, when the situation demands it.

I discovered my laundry basket in a skip just a few doors away from home. Quite unexpectedly, on a sunny Sunday morning. Broad daylight. The basket had a broken handle, which was one less broken handle than the one I was using. Winner!

I have a stunning wooden-handled umbrella (complete with Burberry check) which Mr P retrieved from a dumpster in the dead of the night during a particularly fortuitous transport delivery.

And just a few weeks ago when we swung into my sister’s driveway on our way to this road trip to a funeral, I couldn’t help but spy one of these atop the dumpster in her front yard.

Without much fuss, we saved it from its landfill death and gave it a new home.

What a find! I love these old wooden clothes horses. And even better, this one was our mum’s. I think my sister was shocked (possibly just bemused) that I’d seen value in this piece, when she no longer did. Mind you she was in the midst of a serious declutter and re-furb.

I already have two almost identical clothes horses that are in regular use. The same look – chunky, white-painted wooden cross dowels (to stop the timber tannins seeping into the wet clothes) and the raw timber uprights of that super-simple yet practical design.

Now that Wonder Boy is taking care of his own laundry (yes, even the ironing), there’s more pressure on the Mothership’s clothes horse resources. Often he lets his laundry gather for a week or two, enough that it overflows the rails of two clothes horses and onto stair railings and chair backs.

Knowing he’ll be flying the nest before too long, it’s good planning to have an extra airer to send off with him to his new nest. And if I give him Mum’s, he might just see it as a family heirloom rather than a piece of domestic detritus.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the vintage look and feel of these clothes horses, but I’m still not a fan of the sight of wet washing hanging around, all Chinese laundry style. It’s just a necessary evil, if you don’t have a clothes dryer in your life.

And I don’t. I haven’t had a clothes dryer since Wonder Boy came out of nappies a couple of decades ago.

Those were the days. My kids’ eyes glaze over when I talk about the halcyon days of the Age of Cloth Nappies, when mums were tied to the laundry, the nappy bucket and the clothesline in pursuit of snow-white, fluffy nappies. You’d think I was talking about a prehistoric era before electricity or, God forbid, before iPhones. But it’s really not all that long ago.

Now I’m more environmentally aware. It’s hard to justify sucking the life out of the energy grid to dry clothes mechanically, when one has a clothes line and clothes horses (three!) and a work-from-home-job that lets you rush out at a moment’s notice to rescue the washing from the elements. (Even so, my washing has been known to hang languid and neglected on the line for three rainy days or more when I’m feeling especially lazy.)

I’ve said all this to justify, perhaps normalise, dumpster diving in my sister’s skip. I am Sheryl and I have dumpster-dived (or dove?)

There I said it.

That just leaves the big questions:

If you scream “you beauty!” as you dive into a dumpster and no one hears you, does that mean you didn’t scream? Or that it didn’t happen?

And what is normal … other than just another setting on the dryer?

Cheers and chioggia … Geelong Makers and Growers Market

Being fifty-something, I’m thinking more and more about where my food is grown, how it’s grown and what happens to it on its way to our fridge.

We’ve been exploring farmers markets and loving what we see … and taste!

On Sunday we ventured to the new Geelong Makers and Growers Market in the grounds of historic Osborne House at North Geelong.

What a setting! Even on a chilly, blustery morning, the grass-carpeted locale overlooking Corio Bay was spectacular.

This market is in its infancy. We caught up with it at its third ever outing and had been warned that stallholder numbers were in growth phase. Despite being deep in winter-dom there were a dozen or so stalls and a throng of resilient, rugged-up stallkeepers holding their cheer.

Some familiar faces. Some brand-new-to-us crafters and growers.

We were delighted to find an old favourite La Bassine, a Surf Coast maker of preserves. After much tasting to split our love-it-lots and must-haves we settled on Pear and Vanilla Jam and Fig and Orange Jam. Lip-smacking!

Over at the Spring Creek Organics stall we found all sorts of new delights. There were multi-coloured heirloom carrots – of interest to me who’d been reading about how all carrots were purple until we (yes, people) developed the aesthetically appealing orange variety, the ones readily available in supermarkets.

We chose a huge bag of mixed carrots, big and small, orange, purple and yellow, some broken, some whole. I couldn’t resist the leeks – much more inviting than the straggly, skinny few that I seem to resort to at the supermarket.

Then I discovered chioggia beets. I initially thought these were radishes on steroids.

The stallholder explained exactly what they were (from the beetroot family) and sliced one open to show me the pretty red and white rings inside. He carved off a slice and offered a taste. He wasn’t surprised one bit when I was surprised by the sweetness. He explained how to use/cook with chioggia beets. I was hooked.

That’s what I love about these markets … interacting with the growers and growing my food knowledge.

I have a whole new veggie vocabulary happening.

Old dog. New tricks.

We ended up with quite a stash of fresh tucker including a brown paper bag-full of organic spuds, free range eggs and some lemon relish made by the lovely ladies on the Daffodil Day Stall.

The spuds and leeks went straight into the slow cooker (Potato and Leek Soup for dinner and then lunch).

We roasted off more spuds and a third of the carrots, drizzled in olive oil and fresh herbs from the garden in a side dish that even Jamie Oliver would be chuffed about.

Organic and seasonal really does taste incredibly better! It’s worth paying that little bit more for.

Tomorrow night’s dinner will be framed around Chioggia Beet Fries (and possibly roasted mini pumpkins – another first for us). I found this my-kind-of recipe over here:

Chioggia Beet Fries (serves three)

5-7 medium sized Chioggia beets, peeled and cut into 1/4″ matchsticks

1 Tblsp coconut oil, melted

pinch of sea salt

Preheat the oven to 375°. Place the beets into a bowl and toss with melted coconut oil and a pinch of sea salt. Place on a pre-greased baking sheet and bake for 20-30 minutes, turning once or twice to ensure even cooking. Serve in place of potato fries with a burger and side salad.

It’s a tad presumptuous of me to post the recipe BEFORE I try it, but it looks so simple. (What could possibly go wrong?)

If you’re in or around Geelong, I can recommend a visit to the Geelong Makers and Growers Market, held every third Sunday of the month, from 9am to 1pm, at Osborne House, North Geelong.

I’m confident this market will grow and grow, helping fill the calendar of Geelong markets so we can readily shop fresh, seasonal, organic and direct every week. I predict that by summer, this market will be pumping.

The more we support these initiatives, the faster they’ll grow.

Cheers and Chioggia to you.

My $4 verandah update

Being fifty-something, I’ve learned to watch the pennies.

I try not to waste our “hard-earned” on transient and superfluous fluff that inevitably ends up in landfill.

As regular readers will know, we’re heading towards the big “D” word. Downsizing.

That means readying our home for sale. It’s a humongous task and we’re chipping away at it slowly.

Ever so slowly.

We’re in familiar territory; we’ve been chipping away at renovations here for over a decade!

The experts tell us to concentrate on making a positive first impression, so we’ve been tidying the front yard and entry-way to our 100-year old house. There’s a discernible  domino effect. When we replaced the straggly lavender hedge it was impossible not to ignore the tired looking wicker chairs masquerading as a front verandah quiet spot.

An update was in order.

We’d already allocated a big slice of the budget to another update project at the other end of the verandah (more about that later). This would have to be a shoestring job. That’s why I’m calling it an update, rather than a makeover (don’t want to get your hopes up).

So far, it’s cost us just $4 … and we’re pretty chuffed with the results.

While Mr P set to sprucing up the wicker with a coat of sprayed on white paint from a part-used can in the shed …

I went “shopping” in our own backyard and found a half-round hall table languishing in neglect on the rear deck. Mr P gave it a once-over with the spray-gun and it looks like new.

I resisted the urge to go contemporary (a pop of bright colour here would look brilliant!) But this is a fairly formal looking area and, for resale value, it’s safest to stick with something congruent.

So botanicals it is. On that note, I located a tired topiary pot plant hiding behind some shrubbery.

Fresh cushions were definitely in order so I looked to goodwill for inspiration and found four hydrangea-themed placemats ($2 total) and a botanical style display plate ($2).

I fashioned (that’s fancy talk for the four straight rows of machine stitching I laboured over) the placemats into two cushions, reusing the foam from the old cushions.

For a $4 outlay, we have an updated “quiet” area on our front verandah, a perfect retreat for a summery evening. And hopefully a more impressive entrée to the property for any would-be buyers when “D’ time comes.

Can’t wait for that lavender hedge to grow and complete the vignette.

Moi-made hummus … a three-way affair

 

Being fifty-something, I love an excuse to wrestle an ageing kitchen appliance from the depths of the darkest corner cupboard in my kitchen.

No. Really. I do. I wrote about my enlightenment on this topic over on this post: If it Ain’t Broke.

Ever since, I’ve been treating my Breville Kitchen Wizz with fondness and care (and praying that the karma gods acknowledge random acts of appliance kindness when they’re totting up the numbers).

Yesterday, I shared a first with my Breville Kitchen Wizz.

I know … astonishing that, after all these years, we can still find something fresh in our relationship.

In this case, we rekindled our closeness by sharing the challenge of whipping up some home-made hummus.

I’m a hummus fan, but have never made my own (until now). I put that down to not keeping tahini paste as a staple in my pantry.

But I do have chickpeas. In fact, I have a veritable feast of chickpeas since Mr P found them on sale at one of his secret retail haunts and made a bulk purchase.

I figured it was time to invest in some tahini paste … until I got intimate with Chef Google and discovered there are as many hummus recipes without tahini paste as there are with.

Chef Google surrendered his soul with a hummus recipe for which I had every ingredient on hand. I only fiddled with it a little. I promise. No shopping required. No fuss. No expense.

I reckon that’s too good not to share (even though I’ve said before that this is not [and never will be] a recipe blog … my family would mock me mercilessly given my lack of cooking expertise).

Let’s call this sharing a kitchen breakthrough moment (rather than a recipe).

Do with it what you will.

 

Moi-made hummus

I can chickpeas (drained)

Juice of one small lemon

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves crushed garlic

½ teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon organic cayenne pepper

Wizz it all together (in your Breville Kitchen Wizz, of course) until smooth. Garnish with fresh parsley from the herb garden and serve with sour dough toasts (bread slices brushed with olive oil and lightly oven-baked until golden brown).

There it is … a three-way rendezvous on the kitchen counter: me, my Breville Kitchen Wizz and Chef Google.

The tahini paste didn’t get a look-in.

 

The Flower Dispensary – my faith restored in retail

Being fifty-something, I can get a bit cranky (at times).

Like when I had a good old whinge in this blogpost about the current state of bricks and mortar retail. As I hinted, I was looking in all the wrong places.

Yesterday I had reason to look in the right place … and my faith was restored.

I visited The Flower Dispensary to collect a beautiful Edenborough Evans necklace I’d won in a social media competition. (Thank you!)

As is my wont (as a mostly window shopper), I had been lurking afterhours admiring the window displays at The Flower Dispensary for quite some time. When I stepped inside, I found the beauty was not skin deep. This fabulously styled retail space abounds in awesome – elegant wares, fun stuff, quirky items, fragrant smellies, shiny jewellery, paper-y paperie … oh, and flowers. The flowers!

Owner Lyndal Gubbins has invested her heart and her soul in gathering this collection. Her love of vintage (she’ll tell you it’s a family failing!) is reflected in the shop fittings and the styling – it all blends so well, it’s hard to decipher where the vintage ends and the contemporary begins. And why would you want to?

Truly, I think I could live in this shop.

With her team Michelle and Alice (who take turns on the 3am flower market gig), Lyndal offers a friendly, warm retail environment where you’re welcome to touch and smell and hold … things aren’t bound up in layers of plastic here; they’re real and genuine, like the people behind the jump.

I’ll let the pictures tell the story (mostly … I’ve been experimenting with adding text over images, so stick with me here while I figure out this newest digital frontier).

How’s this for a counter of goodies:

I’ve been searching high and low for one of these stamp sets in lower case (if anyone can track one down for me, Lyndal can):

Nestle up to this nook of nice things:

Brilliant (and great value) Erst Wilder brooches:

A wall of glass:

The latest window display:

Even a vintage typewriter for that genuine old typography on card messages (this photo by The Flower Dispensary):

Photo by The Flower Dispensary

Oh … and those flowers!

The Flower Dispensary is at 333 Pakington St, Newtown. If you’re in the Geelong region, call in and get yourself some REAL retail love. Yes, it’s alive and well. You just need to go looking for it.

Tardy teacup candles (and the crappy end of crafting)

Being fifty-something, I’m seeking to extend my craft repertoire as fast as possible. (While I’ve got time, right?)

I’m looking for easy, quick, inexpensive craft projects … least-effort-for-maximum-impact.

Yes, I’m lazy.

I’d been thinking about teacup candles for a couple of months, browsing through the odd online tutorial, mostly coveting all that vintage china and moody lighting potential.

Teacup Candles

A few weeks ago an invitation arrived for my niece S’s 25th birthday celebration – a tea party, a leisurely afternoon of sipping tea and nibbling ribbon sandwiches.

Perfect!

S had stipulated no presents but a hand-crafted-from-recycled-materials-Auntie-type-gift would surely get me around that?

I picked up these two gold-toned vintage china duos at the Ballarat Trash and Trivia Market.

I had already decided to upcycle the remnants of this HUGE triple-wicked candle that Mr P had souvenired from the props department on one of his TV commercial shoots. It’s seen us through several late-night soirees on the deck but its time has come.

I needed wicks and little metal wick holders. There were plenty available online but time wasn’t on my side so after a morning at the farmers market I braved the BIG scary shopping plaza where I knew there was a BIG craft store. (For a mostly window-shopper like me, “braved” is the correct verb here.)

I searched and sought up and down the aisles, eventually finding what seemed like the solo staffer – she was behind the jump, tapping away on a computer keyboard. I explained what I was after.

Still relentlessly tapping, she said: “We don’t stock those.”

“Are you sure? Candle-making is a very popular craft,” I ventured (resisting the urge to add “according to the blogosphere” or “are you sure you spelled candle correctly?”)

“If it’s not in the computer, we don’t have it,” she rebutted, eyeing my vegie-laden shopping trolley suspiciously.

There was no offer of where I might head to find what I needed. No alternative. No plan B.

So this is what they mean by bricks and mortar retailing … a brick wall.

No wonder it’s in its death throws.

Once again, I found myself at the crappy end of crafting … where I don’t really know what I’m doing, I don’t have what I need (don’t even really KNOW what I need) and am not sure what to do with what I need when I do eventually get it.

This is when I often throw crappy, half-baked craft projects into the bottom of the spare room wardrobe, never to see the light of day again.

Not this time.

I phoned the OTHER BIG craft store (an even braver move, because this one is a MEGA-store) to check their stocks.

“Yes, we have a great range of wicks and wax sold separately or in kits. Why don’t you come out and have a look and we can take you through what we’ve got?”

Brilliant. I did.

Unfortunately, there was a gaping crevasse between the promise of the phone conversation and the reality of the instore experience.

Floor-to-ceiling racks of stock but few staff to help me explore it.

In time, I located a customer service desk and was directed four aisles down, where I found nothing wicky or waxy.

I returned and another staffer directed me to another aisle: “We don’t have much but what we do have is in aisle six beside the googly eyes.”

I found the googly eyes alongside curly polyester hair extensions for dollies and tiny wire spectacles (presumably for those googly eyes).

But nothing waxy or wicky.

I braved (yes, braved) the counter and asked the staffer to show me. She was right … beside the googly eyes and hidden BEHIND the tiny wire spectacles was a single row of packaged wick and a solitary packet of wick holders.

“Is that all you have?” I queried.

“We also have these,” she offered, in the next aisle. “These” were kits for making tealight candles. Do folk actually make tealight candles?

I knew right then, that I wasn’t going to get the advice I needed here. This wasn’t customer service. There was no generosity of spirit. No choice. No smile. No apology. No empathy. This was modern retailing at its worst. Without specialist advice from someone who knows his/her stuff, I might as well buy online. I should have left myself a wider window.

I grabbed what the MEGA-store thought I needed and headed for Google.

Google came through for me (doesn’t it always?) with a brilliant choice of bloggers and videographers sharing their tips and specialist advice on making teacup candles.

Next time, I’m going online-all-the-way, including buying my materials, so I sidestep that crappy end of crafting all together.

The end of the tale? I didn’t get my craft on in time for the tea party (that was entirely my own fault). I grabbed some gorgeous flowers for my niece and had a fun afternoon sipping tea and nibbling ribbon sandwiches.

But I have since done the teacup candle deed. And it wasn’t crappy at all (once I got organised). It went like this:

Chopped some wax off that BIG old candle and melted it in nested saucepans (I used old ones, including a fave vintage glass Pyrex one).

I used two bamboo skewers taped together to secure each wick in the centre of its cup.

Poured in the wax and … voila! … teacup candles. Inspired by leftover wax I got adventurous and grabbed a couple of small crystal jugs from my collection and gave them the candle treatment, too. (Getting candle-cocky by this stage.)

These will be keepers.

Next time I catch up with my niece S, I have a lovely present for her, achieved in the most part with the help of Google and the blogosphere. (I’m even guessing she might read about it here first, which would be quite fitting).

That’s the brilliant, non-crappy end of crafting that makes it all worthwhile … giving.

Can’t wait.

Lego, window-leering, lunch and lollies

Being fifty something I leap at any opportunity I can to feed my inner child.

So it didn’t take much enticing to get Mr P and moi down to Point Lonsdale on The Bellarine for the Queenscliff Bricks (Lego) exhibition. (We never need an excuse to take a drive to this beautiful part of the world.)

I was hoping to see some truly creative Lego masterpieces, maybe in the style of Nathan Sawaya, the creative genius behind this compelling piece of blockery:

lego masterpiece by nathan sawaya

Yellow lego creation By Nathan Sawaya http://www.brickartist.com

Check out Nathan’s website gallery … you don’t have to be a Lego fanatic to appreciate his work.

At Point Lonsdale, I found something entirely different. Well, same … but different. The weekend’s exhibition comprised replica pieces.

Replica space ships:

lego spaceships bellarine

Replica Eiffel tower:

Lego bellarine eiffel tower

Replica Buckingham Palace (complete with a bustling crowd of Lego men and women):

Lego Bellarine Buckingham palace

There was a replica Yoda, a replica Government House, a replica-just-about-anything-you-can-imagine.

The hall was buzzing with little Lego-lovers and big Lego-leerers. It takes a shipload of Lego and even more concentration to put these massive works together.

The Rotary Club had the place running like clockwork. Don’t they know how to run an event? Crowd control, ticket scanning, people counting, catering … even a donut van waiting at the exit for Mr P.

Lunch in nearby Queenscliff was a given, but not before the obligatory wander up then down the main street … always a window shopping winner in this funky seaside locale.

I fed my inner child some more with this behind-the-glass creation:

Upholstery striped chair with tail

Apparently my inner child was skipping hand-in-hand with my inner wannabe upholsterer … these beauties were enough to lure me (and my inner alters) inside for a closer inspection:

Sausage Dog chairs

Lunch at the Beaches Cafe didn’t disappoint. Nor did a swing past the Seaside Lolly Shop to bag some sugar before heading home.

Fully satisfied. All of us. Inner child included.

Lunar Concept Store and Gallery – Mark II

Being fifty-something, I know that some things are too much to digest in one sitting.

That’s exactly how it was when I visited the brand new Lunar Concept Store and Gallery in Pakington St, Geelong West last week.

Just when I thought I’d had my fill of the gorgeous visual feast on offer, I glanced upward and found a ceiling space replete with more sensationally-styled artworks, homewares and ooh-aah goodness.

It was too much to squeeze into my first blog post (which you can read/see here).

Now for the second instalment: a photo essay of the view upwards at Lunar Concept Store and Gallery:

Beautiful and inspiring stuff … and a reminder that it’s always worth looking up for a different perspective.

Lunar Concept Store and Gallery is at 114 Pakington Street, Geelong West, a pleasant stroll (past several great coffee stop opportunities) from Eclectica and Shed Off Pako. Yet, another reason to make Pakington St a destination for your next shopping browsing expedition.

Phone Lunar on (03) 5221 9994 to check opening times … they’re very friendly.

(Again, this post is not sponsored in any way.)