Great opportunity, learning from Nadia van der Mescht

A few weeks ago I was privileged enough to attend the Nadia van der Mescht Creative Business Workshop in Cape Town. I've been swooning over her Durban workshops and have followed her business tips on her blog. So you can understand my excitement when Natasha let me know that there was talk of Nadia coming to our neck of the woods, so to speak. Natasha and I both jumped at the opportunity to attend the Creative Business Workshop and took the long road to Cape Town in the very early hours of the morning. I was so excited that I couldn't sleep the previous night and that was to quite a disadvantage to me as I struggled so hard to stay awake during the workshop. I didn't want to miss anything.

We got there early enough to grab a coffee and then we headed off to Dear Me where the workshop was being hosted. What a lovely little hangout, we couldn't stop gawking at all the interesting details. I will have to take Dave there when we go to Cape Town again. As it was way too early to eat a heavy breakfast, Natasha and I both settled for the Cranberry Karma smoothy (I'm a sucker for anything "berry"). It was non-dairy and super delicious!    

We were able to take some pics of the lovely table settings before the rest of the ladies arrived. We also got to choose our seats (and by that I mean, scope out the prettiest zipper pouches). It was great to finally meet the lovely Nadia in person. The workshop was quite intense and I completely forgot to take more photos. I was way too busy making notes and trying to take everything in. Having learnt a great deal, one major thing stood to me, in order for me to get where I want to be in my business, I need to organise my thoughts on paper. Set goals, have someone to hold me accountable and then, take action. This is my biggest problem, so I need to focus on this part first. The rest will then fall into place!

As you can see above, we were treated with many sweet things! We had goody bags filled with the prettiest business cards and other lovely marketing tools. Some Creatives even sponsored pretty things for the day. The whole experience was just so memorable, the food, the ladies, the venue… Thanks to Nadia for going through the trouble to make this Workshop special for all of us who attended, it was so very inspirational.
 

Search the tag #nvdmlearn to see more photo's of the workshop and visit Bamboo Blossom, Lanalou Style and Hello Pretty to see what they thought of the Creative Business Workshop.

Have an amazing Monday!

xxx

Project a Day: #24 Itty Bitty Bunny

Earlier this year, Natasha (Bamboo Blossom) gave me this really cute Crochet book for making children's clothes, toys and accessories. This is the very first pattern I used from this book. 

 -BUNNY!-

 -I put the translation of the name of the book in the description on the photo above-

-the patterns in this book are really cute and will come in handy with all our friends having babies this year and the next. I sure have a lot of gifting to do-

-some detail shots, so you can see how cute this little bugger really is. This was a very quick and easy pattern to follow. I added the little furry tail, as the pattern didn't have one. And what's a bunny without a bushy tail-

Happy Tuesday

A High Tea and a Serious Case of Bloggers Block

Oh No! October is gone! I missed my Birthday month completely :( I have prepared some posts but just couldn't get to blogging… has that happened to any of you before? The one month I have tons to blog about and I just can't get myself so far as to write the posts.

So today, Dave is working late, again. So I've been spending my Friday nights with the gals over at the Tiny Owl Knit group on Ravelry. Stephanie from Tiny Owl Knits gives away a free pdf pattern every Friday. They call it Free-Pattern-Friday. Anyway, I'll share that some other time…what I really wanted to share with you about two weeks ago is the High Tea I attended at Delau Wellness Center. I was joined by my friends Lily and Natasha (Bamboo Blossom).

  -Ah, my lovely Friends! Lily(left) & Natasha(right)-

-There were treats galore! From red velvet cake to Crème brûlée. Hazelnut Coffee…and all kinds of yummy flavoured teas! It was so nice to be there, meet new ladies and stuff ourselves with delicious sweetness-

  

-Thanks to Karien Louw Schutz, owner of  Delau Wellness Centre right here in Hermanus. We had a great time and would gladly do it again!

Be sure to follow the links to both Bamboo Blossom and Delau for more about these lovely people

Have a great day!

My very first Vintage dress revamp

From time to time my grandmother would send a bag full of stuff with my mom with these instructions "give this bag to Chane', tell her that she can take what she can use and the rest must go to HOSPICE". Mostly such a bag would contain clothes that someone gave her that she can't use or doesn't like. Sometimes it's a whole lot of nonsense that she bought from her local animal welfare shop that she doesn't want anymore. But now and then she would send me something that she thought I would enjoy.

In this case, however, the bag was meant for the charity shop alone. Off course I'm first going to look through the bag before I hand it over... So in between a bunch of old men's work jeans, I found this over sized printed cotton dress. At first I thought I'd use the fabric to make something else but like all things handed down to me, it started growing on me. It's been almost two years since I found this dress and with inspiration from my new peachy cardi, Natasha's post on her first fashion remake.  Here is my first attempt.

-Okay, first step would be to try on the dress. Now you can see...lots of fabric-

-Next step, I turned the dress inside out (and upside down)

-Now I can start pinning where I would like it smaller and see, I raised the hem too(as indicated with blue above)

-Then take it off, run it though the sewing machine, trim where needed, turn right side out, iron and there you have it

PS. This was so much easier than I thought it would be... to see the end result, you have to wait for my 30 Days of Dresses: Dress #2 post, a little later...

xxx

Happy Birthday, Friend!

Hey Natasha (Bamboo Blossom)! Happy Birthday to you! I'm so glad you like your prezzy....yay! I made you this "goody jar" which contains the following goodies:

1. Vintage Buttons - because you love sewing
2. A winter brooch - I made using vintage corduroy that I found at the charity shop
3. Grape lipbalm - because it's yummy
4. Rubber Ducky - just for fun
5. Ice-cream scented bubbles - because it's awesome
6. Mini crochet bunting - I made this one for your work area
7. A lovely beaded handbag charm - but you can really put it anywhere you like<3 

 

 Thank you for inviting Dave and I to your party. It was awesome! The movie at Romantiques was great! I love "Some like it hot", Marilyn Monroe is so funny, and don't get me started on the cross-dressing Jack Lemmon and  Tony Curtis... Natasha also made all her guests party packs to enjoy during the movie. Those Brownies were yummy! Only, it was a bit difficult to see what you were eating in the dark theater and when the movie was out, Dave told me that he had almost dunked his brownie in the tomato sauce (which was meant for the pastry), hahaha! I don't even want to think what that would have tasted like, yuck! 

So after the movie we went to Tapa's for drinks and ended up having Nacho platters. OH MY WORD! I've had Nachos at various places, but this was by far the best Nachos I have ever had! Wow! Anyway, thanx for a really awesome time, friendy! Let's do it again!

-It was so nice meeting all Natasha's lovely friends, hope to see you guys again-

xxx

Hello Friend:)

A few months ago there was a new follower on my blog, then on Pinterest, then on facebook and then in my  facebook inbox, and the next thing you know we're having lunch at Burgundy's. This lovely lady's name is Natasha and she runs a blog called Bamboo Blossom. It was so nice meeting you, Natasha. She was also the the first to respond to my 100th post give away and she was the lucky draw winner for the doggy badges. We have so much in common and we both love thrifting and discovering awesome finds at our local charity and secondhand shops. She is also a creative like me, check out her Etsy shop here.

I love making new friends:) 

xxx