the light garden: May 2010

Monday, May 31, 2010

Giveaway!

I truely do love writing here. And that you all stop by, read, comment and email means so much to me. We've shared, we've laughed, we've cried...ok maybe that was just me, but it's been amazing. Seriously.

So when I realised over the weekend that I had reached 100 followers I wanted to celebrate! I decided on a glass of wine and a plate of cheese for me and a giveaway for you!

The winner will get:

A 'My Own Elephant' custom print. This soft and gentle print would make a special gift for a child who loves animals or for a new baby's nursery. It's customized to include the name of the little person receiving it and would be perfect for hanging in their room or by their door. It comes in either gentle blues or soft lavenders and is printed using archival inks on beautiful acid free thick textured paper.

AND

A set of 6 'Little Toadstool' gift tags

AND

A professionally printed full size card featuring the 'I Heart Hedghogs' illustration.

Doing ANY of the following gives you an entry (you get one entry for each thing that you do -yay!):

1. Follow the Light Garden Journal (by the way, if you're not sure what I am on about with following - just scroll down and you will see a 'follow' button in the side bar) - if you are already a follower that counts too!

AND/OR

2. Write about the giveaway on your blog, via facebook, tweet it or email your friends about it.

AND/OR

3. Tell me what your favourite item from the Light Garden shop is.

Just let me know what you did by leaving a comment on this post (**please leave a separate comment for each thing you do so that all your entries get counted**) and you will be in the draw! I will be selecting the winner via a random number generator next Tuesday June 8 and will post who the winner is here then.

Thank you so much for all of your support!

PS I have something big planned for Making Mondays next week so stay tuned!

Friday, May 28, 2010

Very Happy (but also a little sad)

**Firstly a quick note - the sale over at the Light Garden shop ENDS TODAY! So if you have been thinking about getting something don't miss out!**

I was very happy to see that the wallpaper designs I did for Studio Nommo have already got a little fantastic press - yay!

Tammy Everts wrote a lovely, lovely post over at ohdeedoh.com (you probably already know it, but if not, it's an awesome site with lots of great ideas and design for kids), with an excerpt of the article also featured on their sister site apartmenttherapy.com I love these sites and was pretty damn excited!

Which was good for cheering us up around here, because Mum left to go back to Australia today :( We had such a wonderful time with her here. She helped us to make the most out of every day, to do lots of yummy cooking and baking and to enjoy the little things. One of the most wonderful things was seeing her and Yashar get to know each other better. He has been asking where she is many times since she left - wanting her to tell him goldilocks and to play with the puppet dog and reindeer with him. We will be missing her lots, but we are so happy to have her here for the time we did.

We spent some of last day together at our favourite park, on a rug under the mulberry tree, with homemade apricot cake, and strawberries delivered to us on a fig leaf by the dear old gardener that works full time there. It was so lovely.

These are the strawberries in the dappled sunlight - even though they are partly white they were totally ripe - and delicious - I googled and found that there are quite a few varieties of white strawberries...I never knew!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Stormy Light

Firstly, I wanted to say thank you so much for all your lovely lovely feedback on the wallpaper designs for Studio Nommo! I am so excited about it! And if you missed that post, you can check it out here.

While my Mum is visiting we took the chance to have a weekend away at the Black Sea town of Sile (pronounced Shi-ley). It only took us about an hour to get there - perfect for a weekend away. Pretty much every place we visit has me dreaming of one day buying a little house there. This one had me dreaming of a little place to escape Istanbul. It was so beautiful.

It was a stormy weekend, which although meant a little less time at the beach, also gave us some beautiful stormy light. It reflected off the water making it look like satin. And I was loving all those shades of grey.

This scene reminds me of a painting. don't you think?

ps don't forget that the sale in the Light Garden shop ends on Friday, so if you are thinking of buying a print don't miss out!

Monday, May 24, 2010

My wallpaper designs for Studio Nommo!

Yeeee! I'm so excited - I finished the wallpaper designs I have been working on! And they are now available at Studio Nommo! A little while ago the opportunity presented itself to design these for their bespoke baby collection and I jumped at the chance.

Studio Nommo is an independent wallpaper studio owned by Deniz Akgullu and based here in Istanbul. They work with a range of very talented illustrators and designers around the world including Sweeden based Studio Violet and Chicago based Ashley Alexander. Studio Nommo has had a fantastic amount of publicity - very well deserved and exciting for a small independent studio. Most recently they made it to the 'Best Interiors Addresses' list in the UK's Daily Telegraph.

I drew the wallpaper design above with real country houses in France and Italy as my inspiration.

I created the design below because it is exactly what I would want to put in Yashar's room. You can see in the photo up the top that his little shoes match in perfectly with it :)

The French and Italian Countryside design below makes use of Studio Nommo's ability to print custom sized wallpapers (the wallpapers are printed in Germany). It allowed me to make my illustration in to a sort of panorama. Each of the houses in the photo below are about 50 cm high and there are 12 different large houses across in the full design. I thought it would be so fun for little ones to be surrounded by these!

I hope you like the designs! I have to say that I was a little bit proud of them! ;)

Please feel free to use these images to blog about them etc - I would love your help in getting the word out!

Friday, May 21, 2010

Sale and some street shots!

Firstly I just wanted to quickly let you know that I am having a one week sale over at the Light Garden shop with 20% off cards and prints (including custom prints but excluding matted prints and custom cards). Summer is almost here so it's time to celebrate! It starts today and finishes Friday 28. ~~I will head over there right now to get all that set up.~~ All ready to roll now. Yay! I love a sale!

Also I have some very exciting things to show you next week with my illustrations. Yeeee! I can hardly wait! And by the way, I owe lots of people emails and am way behind on that so I hope you don't think I'm terribly rude. I'll be catching up soon I promise!

And here are some street shots from this week...yep, I'm trying hard to stick to the commitment. On Wednesday (which was a public holiday here) we headed in to Tahtakale (remember that earlier sourcing excursion I went on?) for the morning in search of ribbons and material.

Then we headed over to my new favourite area of Istanbul - Galata - I'm a sucker for crumbling old buildings, dreaming of the day when I can buy one and renovate. And the cute little shops and the little cafe (sorry I forget the name of the cafe) where you can have a great bottle of wine and a cheese plate are definite draw cards too!

Monday, May 17, 2010

Making Mondays: My Own Muesli

I really like good muesli...but the right mix is hard to find! I tried a muesli recipe in Bill's Open Kitchen (I love this book! - and wrote about it here) which was great. Then yesterday we decided to make up my own muesli mix and it was so yummy I decided to put the recipe on here!

4 cups oats

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 cup chopped almonds

1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

2 dessert spoons of honey

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Handful of dried cranberries

Handful of sultanas

Mix all ingredients except cranberries and sultanas in a large bowl. Spread out a large tray (I halved the mixture and spread it on two trays). Place in the oven for around 20 minutes - moving mixture around occasionally. Make sure to keep a close eye on it - it can burn quickly.

It was good!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Inspiring mothers

I hope you all had a wonderful mothers day. I felt especially lucky to be able to spend mine with my Mum while she is visiting here. As Yashar grows, I appreciate more and more what my own mother did for my sisters and I. It's not that any of us were ungrateful before, but it's more of a realisation of all that it takes to be a mother. All that goes on behind the scenes - the care, the total refocusing of priorities, the all consuming love, the teaching and cooking and doctoring. And everything else.

Mothers around the world are doing amazing things, raising their children while being strong, independent women (whether or not they have a husband or partner). They are overcoming adversity, daring to dream of both being able to raise happy well cared for children and to be personally fulfilled, and all the while doing it their way. I urge you to take some time to think about the wonderful women around you and what you can learn from them and how we can support each other.

Just this weekend my sister in law opened her own small children's clothes shop. These are some photos of the first opening day (after lots of time spent renovating, painting, tiling), with plans for a 'grand opening' next week. Here is one amazing woman and mother! Always welcoming and caring. She has been though some tough times but is still strong, independent and positive. At age 13, she lost her father who died suddenly from a brain tumor. At the end of high school she achieved excellent results - more than enough to get her into a good University here. But she chose to follow her religious beliefs and continue to wear a headscarf, which meant that she was not allowed to attend University (wearing headscarves is banned in Universities here). So instead she found an entry level job in the accounting section of a private hospital and eventually worked her way up to become finance manager of the hospital.

A while after marrying her husband, they decided to have a child - but lost their first baby in the ninth month of her pregnancy. They tried again and they now have a beautiful little 2 year old girl. After returning to work for some time, she made the courageous (I think!) move to start her own business so that she could be close to her daughter while still bringing in income for her family and by doing something she enjoyed.

She decided to use her small savings and take a risk - to go from dreaming to actually believing that she could do it.

A sneaky photo I took of Tuba, my sister in law, in her new shop!

I am so inspired by her and by the other amazing mothers that I am surrounded by - and I'm guessing a lot of you might feel the same way! A belated happy mothers day to you all!

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Photo things

Wow, was I sick this week. Really, it was gross. But all better now, phew!

I have been getting used to my new toy...the yummy camera Senol and his family got me for my birthday :) These are a few random photos taken this week.

Some blossoms in the grounds of the Sakip Sabanci Muzesi where Mum and I went to see 'Transcending Borders with Brush and Pen.'

Another from the jam making fiesta:

This last photo is not one of the best shots I've taken...but...it's more than a random photo, it's a committment :) For a long time I have been passing people and places and thinking, I would love to take that photo. And that every body has a story. So, now I have the camera, no more excuses, I'm committing to take more photos of people I pass, of scenes on the street, all the photos that I have been wanting to take and I'll be posting some of them here.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Making Mondays - In Season: Strawberry Jam

Wow! We have been doing a lot of cooking around here! Including this yummy yummy strawberry jam. I really like making jam...I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it involves making something that lasts a tiny bit longer than tonight's dinner. And that you can give a jar to your mother in law and your neighbour.

I also love that it involves using fruit that is in season. The smell of these strawberries as I was chopping them up was so delicious. I was in heaven. The strawberries were sweet and ripe, so I cut the sugar a little and it made a beautiful rich jam. Yum!

The recipe is from Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros (the book I mentioned last week that I was lucky enough to get for my birthday). This book is sooo good! It has pretty much become my new cooking bible. Just like Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion: The Complete Book of Ingredients and Recipes for the Australian Kitchen and Greg Malouf's Arabesque were in Australia (but that were too heavy to carry with me). As much as I like being able to look up a recipe on the web, I love books so much more, with beautiful pictures that you can pour over and be inspired by. And I love the old recipe book my Mum has with recipes collected over the years and all the memories that go with them. What's your favourite cookbook?

About Turkey ******** **********************

Turquoise: Lucy and Greg Malouf. This has a fantastic combination of history, special and delicious recipes and beautiful photography. ******************* ***

Istanbul: Memories of the city. Talented author, Orhan Pamuk gives a personal and interesting insight into Istanbul's recent history, the feel of the city and the mentality of the people. This is on my list to read for a second time. ****

Istanbul Wallpaper* City Guide. I love this guide because it gets you out of the tourist traps and into the 'real' Istanbul. It has so many great finds - like the area called Cukurcuma, heaven for vintage lovers.

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