*e*

oh dear!

this morning as i was driving home from school drop-off enjoying all the green leaves and trees i had a thought ~ my blog! and upon firing up my computer i discover SNOWY WINTERY PHOTOS are the last things i posted? oh dear! that must be remedied ~ i have so much to share from the last 2 beautiful bali retreats, studio love, flower and springtime beauty! life is full and colourful and very much appreciated right now despite the busy-ness. 

for now, i want to share some other blog posts (from women who actually do blog, lol!), it makes my heart burst with gratitude to have shared time in bali with my best friend tara last october, and she shares her incredibly written and photographed journey in this post

then our march retreat was well documented by the lovely amanda soule aka soulemama ~ she is on it with the blogging that one! lots of posts about different aspects of our trip (you can search on her blog for 'bali'),  then our march retreat was well documented by the lovely amanda soule aka soulemama ~ she is on it with the blogging that one! lots of posts about different aspects of our trip (you can search on her blog for 'bali'),     

i have lots i want to record and share here soonish ~ i'm off to squam this weekend to vend at the art fair ~ meanwhile if you're interested in reading about bali please check out tara and amanda's posts!

our october retreat is fully booked and we have started taking booking for january 2016 ~ details on our website 

xo

ps: i do document daily, in a much smaller easier format of good ol instagram @emfalconbridge if you want to follow me!

my life right now in pictures

snow, snow, more snow, baking, crafting, dreaming + planning, snow, circus shenanigans, freezing freezing, more baking and crafting, more snow. the end.

xo

fabric is my candy

so...i might have been the most excited of the group to hit this big fabric shop in bali! (can you tell?)

seni (that smiling beauty above, who is one of nicole's oldest friends) took us to this 3 storey building in a town close to her home where i was in colour and pattern bliss. fabricccc! you are soooo gooooood! we chose and gathered some things to play with as we conceptualize some kits and goodies for the women's co-op that we are setting up with seni.

this shop is where the locals come to buy fabric for their ceremonial clothing ~ there were so many beautiful woven ikat fabrics it was so tricky to choose just a few... after um, several hours in the fabric building, we moved on to the pom-pom shop where placing a large order of pom-poms proved to be a long and drawn out comedy skit involving all of the characters you see below ~we love doing biz in bali! its always hilarious, laid-back, and colourful!!

also exhausting and requires a lot of iced-kopi/fresh young coconuts to get us through ;)when we got home yindi and i set up our own crazy sewing studio on the porch and had some fun playing with the new goodies ~ the neon pink holey fabric being irresistible to us both ~yindi whipped up some new clothes for our em & nicole dolls, and i decided to turn my hula hoop into a loom for some weaving (coz i wanted to use all of the fabrics!) ~ a fun and relaxing project that we both worked on in the mornings while drinking watermelon smoothies :) it's really easy to set up a hula-hoop loom, and something kids really love being part of ~ i first saw instructions on pinterest a few years ago and we have had many going in our living room at various times!carrying the bali colourful handmade vibe back here into the land of white ~ love having all these fun bits and pieces to work with in my studio and the memories and stories of how we got them to bask in while i sew !

xo

bali with my babe

ohhhh bali. where do i start? 

i just returned from a juicy week with my beautiful middle babe ~ what a gift to spend this time with her...she was wide eyed, in awe and gratitude over every beautiful flower, big green leaf, stray dog, offering and smiley balinese person. it was so joyful to witness!we stayed with nicole and her family just outside of ubud, in a blue house attached to a family compound, a beautiful family nicole has been friends with and visiting for the past 25 years! i am really enjoying getting to know all of her friends better and feeling as if they are becoming my friends too :) everyone loved yindi, and yindi loved everyone! isn't it amazing how with children there is no language or cultural barrier ~ just love.

nicole and yindi have a special bond from our many creative days together in perth...i was unwell with a chest infection for a good chunk of the trip so they spent a lot of time together painting, doing tai chi, yoga and cuddles!

i lovvvve being in bali ~ i've always had wanderlust and love to travel, and worked to find creative ways to do so! last october, after we ran our second soulful escape to bali i came home with a dream to bring each of my kids with me individually ~ to share the magic of bali with them and have delicious one on one time. my parents believed that travel was the best education and took us on some amazing adventures during our childhood ~ budget style ~ my mum is very creative and thrifty and i'm grateful to her for coming up with ways for us to see different parts of the world and have always tried to do this with my own children. my most treasured childhood memories are of road trips, camping and travel. seeing new places together.

so a plan was hatched and it was this cutie in the middle who got the first mumma trip...and what a yummy little love she was to travel with ~ the purpose of this trip was to set up a women's co-op in the village where we run our retreats ~ i'll share more on that later ~ yindi went with the flow, hanging out and finding fun wherever we went (although out 'business' was usually conducted in our friends houses so it wasn't too hard to find fun...puppies! kids! pigs! coconuts!)...we were able to brainstorm heaps of ideas, source materials and supplies locally, and make some solid plans.

and eat lots of mango.
blue house, i miss you!

yindi, with her golden shiny heart ~ collected donations of art supplies and used clothing/shoes from friends at school to take to a local kindy in the village ~ the bali children's project...i thought we would deliver the basket and go, but we got invited to spend the morning in the school ~ so cute seeing the little kids play and draw together with yindi...
look at all those smiles and flip-flopped feet! 

now we are back in a winter wonderland and these pictures feel like a world away! yindi and i are wearing our tassel necklaces, sprinkling dried coconut on everything we eat and winking at each other reminiscing the amazing time we shared in bali.

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looking forward to being back there with these beautiful faces in march, when we run soulful escape again! the family above invite our group into their home to teach us how to make offerings, play us music and feed us treats. in exchange we give them a good laugh by trying to learn balinese dance.

we still have a few spots left for march. contact us via our website if you're interested in joining!

xo

2015 offering

a

year

of

s o u l * m a k e s


with a new year on our doorstep i have put together a little plan that i'm bursting with excitement about!

self-care comes in many forms, and like i mentioned in my last blog post (it felt good to share, thankyou lovely people!) - is something i am constantly working on to be a mindset as well as the physical act of self-care. slowing down, living and breathing in the moment, feeling gratitude and appreciating simple things are all part of it for me.

and as you surely know...i love to make things! making things is my happy place...yet...i rarely make anything special for myself ~ do you? too often i *have* to make things to sell, for birthday gifts, for rapidly growing children...i would love for this to change. i am worth making lovely things for! i can create the time once a month to work on something simple and beautiful for myself...

would you like to join me?

i have dreamed up 12 beautiful projects for the year ~ to make for yourself to wear, or to adorn your bedroom or sacred place. 

these will be simple but special - no fancy equipment or even a sewing machine will be needed. just your hands and an open heart. 

many different materials and types of work are included - beads, twigs, hand stitching, beeswax, dyeing, image transfers to name a few. it will be work that you can (mostly!) pop into a basket to sit and do at the park, or tucked in bed late at night with herbal tea.

each month you will recieve a juicy and beautiful package in the mail with all the things you'll need to create the project ~ these goodies will be hand chosen and sourced from my travels to bali, local artisan friends, vintage and junk shops, my studio stash and mother earth herself!

along with the package, i will be emailing a monthly video sharing my journey and thoughts on self-love and instructions for the project.

it's my hope that in gathering this creative self-care circle, we will share and connect through a private facebook group, make new friends and support each other!

cost ~

$46 per month + shipping (yes, i will ship internationally)

this is a year long commitment and you will be agreeing to pay monthly. 10% discount if paid in full for the year :) 

to join a year of s o u l * m a k e s please email me emilyfalconbridge{AT}hotmail.com with "soul*makes" in the subject line. let me know where you live and wether you choose to pay monthly or in full ~ i will send you a paypal invoice for 2 months payment up front, with the remainding months billed from march-december 2015. there is a limited amount of slots available so it will be first come first served! please email with any questions xo *the first package will ship january 12...

 

**i will be creating these projects for myself month by month as i make the videos to send you! some of the projects we will create are lanterns, garlands, wooden pendants, weavings, hand dyed scarf, necklaces and bracelets, dreamcatchers, pajakis, pillows, image transfers, slippers...

your package will include all the supplies beautifully wrapped with pictures of the project ~ and ready for you to watch the short video and get making! xo

swirly circles of gratitude :)

i know i hardly come to this space any more - and today i was going to just post these funny mini me dollies of nicole and i - one of our beautiful october retreat goddesses made them for us as a gift - we had all sorts of hilarious fun with them in bali, and then we were too sad to separate them so they both came home with me...my kids have enjoyed dressing and undressing and taking them to school and now putting them on the christmas tree!

but what i want to share today as i sit here, is such overwhelming gratitude in my heart ~ right now life is crazy busy, overwhelmingly so, and sad terrible things are happening in the world, and people are lonely and and and...i have a tendancy to get overwhelmed by all of this and shut down, hide, feel it all, wrestle with it all inside, especially at this time of year being far away from my family and land. 

i've felt a real shift in myself this year and i am so grateful to be able to feel some peace in my heart, and hopefulness in the world, and inspiration. i can't pinpoint exactly how this happened (no magic pill here!) but i can say that working with the beauty-filled wise woman nicole - cultivating our friendship more deeply as well as creating these retreats together - an actual dream of both of ours that we have followed through on has been monumental. i hold onto the image of the two of us floating in the ocean in fremantle on a beautiful blue sky aussie summers day dreaming up our bali retreat and wondering "can we do this?!"...and then putting it out there with all the nerves and insecurity that comes from putting a large dream out there, then feeling the beauty of success after a lot of hard work, that yes! we made this happen!

then for me there is the soul-food of being in bali, soaking in the natural beauty and befriending the dear souls who i have been hearing stories about for years from nicole (friends she has had for the past 25 years), and appreciating the way their culture works, and being inspired by the simple laid back way of life in bali. i'm a worshipper of warm climates, bare feet and slow paced days, so i feel very present and at ease, and beautiful when i am there! it is a gift to feel truly connected to *me*, and to have had this time twice in one year has filled me up so much after years of neglecting to nourish myself.

many of the women on our past october retreat individually visited an amazing balinese healer agus...a longtime friend of paul and nicole's. the experiences we all had with him were goosebump worthy and i have continued to feel the ripples of peace and strength from this after coming home.

so this morning, instead of feeling overwhelmed (and if you could see my house you would know why) i am focusing on feeling grateful. because i am, for so much!

i don't want to come across smug by sharing this - tone can always be misread and that has made me shy away in the past from writing about my feelings...arrrr!

i'm so so so grateful for meaningful friendships and making them work from afar, and for gathering with circles of women ('m part of a local monthly womens group as well as the circles we have formed on our retreat) - i have learned how important it is to share our stories with each other and offer support, wisdom and love in this way! so so important.

the dolls look like us right?

(i wish you all knew this woman. i feel so so lucky to be in her circle)

i will come back to this blog (i promise!) and post an actual report on our last soulful escape to bali (we have a fancy new website now, check it owwwt), there are several photos here on our facebook page, and we also have an instagram @soulfulescapetobali #soulfulescapetobali

for now, lots of love and peace from me to you - really, really, really xxx

craft fair season

 it is here ! the one time of the year that i may or may not have a bulging pocket of cash - 4 weekends of craft fairs in a row - yeeha! 

i really do enjoy it, my inner child feels like she is playing grownups, and selling to real live people and cutie cute babies is the best! 

added to my ususal explosion of brightly coloured upcycled skirts this year are some beautiful vintage balinese sari skirts and bags that i bought from the sweetest father and son in ubud, and these earrings made from old balinese coin, sterling silver and some very excited sketches nicole and i came up with while sitting in a cafe in bali! it was a bit of an experiment and one that turned out better than we imagined so i can't wait to get more happening next time :)

my last fair is the first weekend in december and i will be listing unsold goodies online for those interested, watch this space or my facebook/instagram for updates xo

faith and mandalas

 

 

mandalas make me happy. friends make me happy. making mandalas with friends makes me really happy!

faith and i became online friends several years ago and have had several fun creative get-togethers this year, including her family staying with us for a week during the summer and lots of painty time in my studio (we would have had more painty time had i not developed a freaky swollen eye rendering me blind for 3 days and unable to teach our joint workshop - blind painting class anyone?!!)...putting aside fabrics for a few days and spreading out all the painting stuff was a juicy way to inhabit my new studio - fuelled by flourless chocolate cake from the cafe accross the road (mm!) we worked on a bunch of mini canvases, collaborating like this was really fun and freeing and has motivated me to create more opportunites for myself to get together with friends and do what makes me happy, instead of feeling lonely and retreating away. this is my meditation...(faith making one of her beautiful flower mandalas, i don't do it enough but making these has changed me!)

cheers to friends, creative flow and carving out a life you love! xo

if you are on instagram, follow @inourelement where you find all of our mini mandalas, along with our creative gathering on the cape this coming weekend

annapurna living

today my dear friend carrie-anne launches her baby, annapurna living - a place of beauty, nourishment and inspiration. i'm so happy for her and love seeing dreams manifest. have a peek :)

xo

that obligatory autumn post !

 oh i've missed coming here - life has been busy and full and really busy! i always forget about my blog in the midst of all the crazy. but here i am! just back from bali and still floating on the high from sharing such a magical week there with amazing women from around the world. re-entry has been easier this time due to the fact that it is not winter! autumn is my favourite time of year here, it is so homey and lovely. we have had a teenage girl living with us for the past few months from perth, here on a sort-of exchange...i have known her since she was a baby and it has been really fun showing her all around and seeing her experience all the funny american things (a squirrel! look at the size of this pizza!) for the first time. i'm feeling inspired creatively in so many ways and have been loving my studio space to spread out in and start preparing for all the holiday craft fairs i have coming up in the next few months...making things makes me happy! and i am determined to learn how to knit a hat this winter. the air is getting crisp and cool and i do get a bit scared of what is coming weather-wise...but for now we are still enjoying sunny days and bare feet on occasion!   if you have seen the recent issue of taproot magazine *MEND*, you may have spotted my 'put a patch on it' article - i was honred and excited to contribute for the first tiem to such a beautiful publication. i have been a subscriber from the beginning and it is a beautiful independant magazine that my whole family enjoys - ivy got inspired by katrina rodabaugh's mendfullness article and did the above to her jeans (love!)sending you lots of love today, i'm hoping to be back here more reguarly as the months get colder and force me indoors xo