Update - Back to Work

First proper update of the year! I've been back at work a week now and so far have been working pretty hard which is exciting for me. I've been running this business from home for three years now (full time for the last year) and it's taken a long time to really get good at working from home, but I think I'm finally getting there.

We had an awesome Christmas/New Years break back in Australia and despite how much we packed into two weeks, it still went way too quickly. We spent the week around Christmas with my family in the Snowy Mountains and then James' family in Newcastle, and the week around New Year's in Sydney. We spent a lot of time taking advantage of the random little things we've missed - fresh healthy food, good avocadoes, breakfasts at cafes, pubs, supermarkets, clean air, usable public transport, quiet streets - I'm not saying we can't find any of that in Manila, it's just all so different. We went from our normal view of tall buildings as far as the eye can see (not that far with the pollution), to views like this:

We were well overdue for a break from Manila and it was just what we needed. I think we've come back pretty refreshed! I've got good work routines in place, we've been keeping the place reasonably tidy and I've been trying out lots of new recipes inspired by the fresh Aussie food we enjoyed over the break.

This is the recipe photo from Real Living. Our dinner was just as good but maybe not as stylish looking!

I've just finished a custom dress order and right about to start another one, and I have a bridal order to work on this year as well! I'm also trying to produce lots of bridal samples for the Etsy store, which is now back online after the holiday break. There's not much on there at the moment so I want to fill it up a bit more with samples and custom orders.

Finally, Jodie from jodiehilton.com did a feature on me and my work for her site this week, so go and check it out here if you want to learn some random little known facts about me!

Weekly(ish) update - typhoons and travel

I've been taking a break from work lately because we've been entertaining visitors all month! What a tough month it's been... seeing friends, getting treats from home, eating out, beach holidays, city holidays, mountain holidays, Disneyland... oh wait, it's actually been a pretty great month for me.

Our first guests were my friends Jess and Caitlin - Jess and I went to uni together (she was also my bridesmaid) and Caitlin is her sister. As soon as they arrived in Manila, I attempted to take them to as many of our favourite restaurants and bars as possible - we ate a lot that first weekend!

The three of us flew to Palawan to enjoy a week of total back to basics beach time. We stayed at Secret Paradise Resort which is very much as the name describes. I still couldn't tell you exactly where it is because I have no idea. We drove for about three hours from the airport through farmland, jungle and along very bumpy, narrow mud tracks until we reached the tiny seaside town of Port Barton. We arrived during a typhoon (no, not that typhoon... that was still to come) so we sat at Port Barton for awhile waiting for the rain to die down enough for us to head out on our little boat. Of course as soon as we set off, it started raining again, but we were so wet by that point that it didn't really matter.

At least our boat had a bit of a roof!

The rain had stopped by the next morning and we had a few beautiful days of relaxing, swimming, snorkelling and reading. I took lots of photos with my film camera which haven't been developed yet, so all I can show you for now is one of the many sunset photos I took on my phone.

The day we were due to leave Palawan, Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan was hurtling towards the Philippines. Of course we had no idea, because we'd been gleefully frolicking around the beach all week with no internet or TV. We wanted to see the Underground River at Sabang so we arranged for the boat to pick us up at 6am. This was a stroke of luck because as we sailed away from the cove the sea was very rough and the heavy rain had just started.

Any later and we wouldn't have got out at all - a bamboo hut with no electricity is fun for a quick holiday, but not where you want to be during a natural disaster. We drove through pouring rain to Sabang, where a man greeted us at the car with 'You can't go to the underground river today! Don't you know there's a typhoon?!' If you're wondering why I wasn't tipped off by the crazy weather, let me explain. We're at the tail end of Philippine rainy season and big storms happen almost every week - sometimes it can be sunny one moment, then raining so heavily you can't see the end of the street, then stinking hot a few minutes later. So without seeing a weather forecast, the weather didn't seem unusual to me at this point. That is, until we got back to Puerto Princesa and accessed the internet. Messages, emails and missed calls popped up from our families and text alerts from the airline telling us that flights were grounded. We found a hotel and spent two days sitting on our beds watching America's Next Top Model with the volume turned right up to drown out the incredible torrential rain outside. We were extremely lucky in many ways. Lucky that we were staying on the west coast and not the east, where the typhoon hit most violently. Lucky that we got on that boat just in time. Most of all, we're lucky that we could afford to wait it out in a nice hotel and fly out as soon as it was over. As I'm sure you've heard, many people weren't that lucky, so please consider helping them any way you can.

After Jess and Caitlin left, my parents arrived fresh from a big European adventure. They were in the mood to relax for awhile (and so was I after the typhoon) so we spent the first week doing exactly that before flying to Hong Kong for a few days. Mum and Dad haven't been to Hong Kong since we went as a family in 1997 so it was fun for them to see what's changed. As with my last trip to Hong Kong, I spent a lot of time in the haberdashery shops around Sham Shui Po being overwhelmed by choice.

We also spent a day at Disneyland and got to see Mickey and Minnie lighting their Christmas tree! Totally magical.

Our next trip was to Baguio, a little city up in the mountains of Northern Luzon. James and I went earlier in the year and absolutely loved the place we stayed (The Manor at Camp John Hay). It's like a giant log cabin hidden away in a pine forest, but with a fantastic restaurant and wonderful five star service.

One of my favourite things about Baguio is the relatively cool temperatures - such a novelty after living in Manila! They also had the place all tizzied up for Christmas and that made me very excited.

Now we're back in Manila and Mum and Dad will be leaving soon so I'll be back to work next week. For now I'm doing that quintessentially Gen-Y thing where I regress into childhood while my parents do all my housework and make dinner for me.

Update - Samples & Cigarette Girls

It's been far too long since my last post so I wanted to check in and update you on what I've been up to since the awful day when I spilled water all over my laptop and killed the wi-fi (handy hint: don't do that).

In my last post I mentioned that I am taking Bell Street in a new direction, focusing on bridal and custom work rather than ready to wear collections. As a result most of my time lately has been spent on business planning, dreaming, designing and pattern making. I am currently working on some bridal samples and finished 'Maggie' (above) last week - she's very sweet.

As much as I want to focus on bridal, I also love doing costumes and will never say no to working with Rollergirl Promotions - those girls are too much fun! I made them these vintage style cigarette girl outfits for a corporate event and they looked amazing, as usual.

James and I recently went to Hong Kong for a quick break as it's less than two hours flight from Manila. We had a great time and loved the city, although we didn't get to see as much of it as we planned due to us both getting horrible sniffly colds. We didn't let it ruin our trip though, and hey - if you have to be sick in bed, better to be in a lovely hotel bed and have someone else clean your room each day!

I did manage to make it to Hong Kong's garment district, Sham Shui Po, and had a bit of a 'wahhh, why don't we live here?!' moment when I realised how easy it is to find and get everything you need. I got some beautiful ivory silk fabrics for bridal samples and stocked up on a whole lot of miscellaneous haberdashery (James' favourite word) that I haven't been able to find in Manila.

Manila is already in full Christmas mode, which I love! I'm in a very positive excited mood at the moment, because I have so many fun things to look forward to - and that's the key to happiness, according to my Mum (or a book that she read). In just over two weeks my awesome friend and bridesmaid extraordinaire, Jess, will be arriving in Manila with her sister and the three of us are going to an amazing beach resort called Secret Paradise. On the same day that they leave, my Mum and Dad are arriving! They're also keen to do some travel so we're heading back to Hong Kong (with a compulsory day at Disneyland) and then to Baguio which is a few hours north of Manila. It's safe to say I'm not going to get much work done in November. I'll be working furiously on a custom ball gown and more Rollergirl costumes in December, then it's back to Australia for Christmas and New Years - I can't wait!

Have a Very Sixties Christmas

Hello... Merry Christmas! Our shipment from Australia arrived yesterday so we've been busy unpacking and setting everything up... the apartment finally feels more like 'our place'! I've been distracting myself by making a sixties Christmas playlist (it's at the bottom of this post) and looking at lots of vintage Christmas cards and photos from the sixties.

How to bring a bit of sixties style to your Christmas day:

• Pick two colours (red & white, maybe?) and wear only those colours from head to toe. There was no such thing as being 'too matchy-matchy'
• Use LOTS of sparkle in your decorations. Glittery ornaments, silver wrapping paper and lots and lots of tinsel!
• Go old-school with your pre-dinner nibblies. Try some devils on horseback, or cheese cubes and cocktail onions on toothpicks. Actually, anything on a toothpick is a good idea!
• Make some ridiculously strong punch. Make sure it's pink!
• If you're in a warm climate, wear a big silky dress or kaftan with lots of sparkly jewellery. In a cold climate, put on your best Christmas jumper with a pleated skirt and warm knee-high socks.

• Hook some Christmas baubles onto a pair of earrings. The bigger, the better!

• Listen to the Retro Christmas playlist I made specially for you!

Enjoy your Christmas festivities! On Christmas day we're going to a big Christmas buffet at the Shangri La restaurant. We got invited to it right after we'd bought all the food to make our own Christmas dinner, so we'll do our dinner on Christmas Eve instead. We'll be trying to recreate a good Aussie Christmas dinner (actually lunch but we call it dinner) with turkey, ham, all our favourite salads, and pavlova for dessert. We've got lots of fun drinks to invent some Christmas cocktails and we'll spend the day watching all the Christmas episodes of The Office and QI, and working our way through some movies - Love Actually, Elf, The Santa Clause, Muppets Christmas Carol and Miracle on 34th St. Then we're going out for drinks with a friend and when we come home, we'll open our presents at midnight and have some more food - apparently it's the Filipino thing to do!
What are you doing for Christmas?

DIY Pom-Pom Christmas Ornaments

I'm going to credit Sadie with the inspiration for this post. Having left most of my Christmas stuff back in Australia, I was wondering how I was going to start from scratch again and decorate a Christmas tree without buying even more decorations that would eventually end up being thrown out when we go back home in two years. When I read Sadie's post about how to make your own pom-poms, I realised that this was the answer! Easy, cheap, home-made decorations that won't break if you cram them in a bag. They're a very ethical solution if you've got leftover wool, too. As I've just arrived here I don't have any leftover anything, so I went out and got some white yarn.

I used the method described by Sadie to make the bigger pompoms (hers are much better than mine, yours will look better too if you have more patience than me and use a lot of yarn!). For the small pompoms, I have my own method...

I didn't take any pictures because I was doing them in front of the TV at night, so I drew some pictures for you. You'll need an ordinary kitchen fork, and some yarn.

1. Wrap your yarn around a fork. Mmmm, looks like spaghetti... don't eat it. Keep wrapping until its nice and fat, or until you get sick of it.
2. Cut a piece of yarn around 15cm long and wrap it around the middle of your little wad of yarn. As you start to tie your knot, pull the yarn off the fork.
3. Once the yarn is off the fork you can really tighten that knot. At this point it'll start to look less like spaghetti and more like bowtie pasta (or farfalle, if you're fancy).
4. Use a sharp pair of scissors to cut open all the little loops you've created. Fluff it open and you've got a teeny tiny pom-pom!

Go through your kitchen drawers to find different sized forks to use. I used a salad server to make medium-sized pom-poms!

I attached them to the tree with those little plastic loops used to attach price tags to clothes. You can get them anywhere they sell office supplies (or just use more yarn).

They look cute on the Christmas tree, don't they? Like cute little snowballs.

I got this ampelmann (traffic light man) decoration in Berlin and I love it!

This little owl is actually a bookmark that James' mum gave me but he looks happy being a Christmas decoration at the moment!