This year I discovered one of my favourite places on Earth: Crystal Castle.

I went there for the first time a month ago with my friend Simone and her baby girl Lilly and it was wonderful. Before we got there I was feeling really down and low energy, and even just being five minutes away from there I started to feel so much better. It is located in the Byron hinterland with very little phone service, and I think that keeps it pure. When we actually got in there and had a look around and started to walk among the crystals, I felt even better.

At Crystal Castle you have your choice of different nature walks and psychic readings. Both Simone and I got a psychic reading and loved it – it was actually one of the best experiences I have ever had. The lady that read for me was so positive and saw so much potential for me, which made me feel a lot better and gave me the motivation and the pick me up I needed. She was on point with my personality and my gifts. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and to get some negative information or difficult information to handle but it never came which was such a beautiful feeling. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone see all the things you have going for you, whether you are in that energy or not. We didn’t do any of the different nature walks that day as we had the pram with us and the weather wasn’t too nice, so when the opportunity came to go with some of my other friends, I was excited to explore more of what Crystal Castle had to offer.

Brittany, Janice, Sarah and I made our way down to Crystal Castle last Sunday, despite the weather report telling us there may be rain and lightning. We got incredibly lucky as there was no rain and no lightning! It was a beautiful, sunny, humid day which was beautiful and such a relief. I didn’t get a psychic reading this time, but I did get aura photos and was disappointed to learn that my aura was still red. I think it will remain that way until next year when I make a lot of changes to my life and I start a new journey.

My favourite feature of the grounds is most definitely The Wishing Tree. Thousands of wishes and intentions have been set and hung on the tree over the years. Some have fallen onto the ground. My friend Janice said that maybe all the wishes that have come true are the ones that are now on the ground. I loved that. I certainly hope mine will fall to the ground someday. I checked where I hung my wish and intention last time and it was still there.

I’m so glad I took my DSLR as it was a beautiful day and I didn’t want to have to wait for film to be developed! I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed my day there.

If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend visiting Crystal Castle. There is truly something for everyone, whether you consider yourself a spiritual person or not.

Well that was a pretty lame attempt at poetry, but it was fun. I’ve never written poetry before except in school when they made us, and I hated it at the time. I’d like to do it some more, it’s really interesting and fascinating to read and to hear. I love that you can convey so much in so few words, and that there could be years worth of story in just one line.

Keegan Allen’s Life.Love.Beauty was my favourite book release of last year. It’s hard to describe just how badly I’ve wanted a book like this to be released – I’d always hoped John Mayer would create a similar book, filled with photos, words, lyrics and much more, so we could gain insight into his unique and creative brain.

Predominantly comprising of film photos and poetry, the book give an insight into both Keegan’s professional and personal lives dating back to his childhood. He experiments with various types of photography and 35mm films – it was great to see him utilise Lomochrome Purple as you can see is true love and passion for photography. If you follow him on Snapchat (lifelovebeautyb) you will see that he’s made many videos about cameras and photography which I love.

The quality of the pages is decent. It’s not a high quality photo book that you would pay up to $100 for. I suspect that due to Keegan’s fan base being so young they wanted to keep costs down to make it affordable for that age group which is understandable. The paper pages are thicker than a regular novel, but they are not high quality photo book paper.

I’ve got to admit that I’m a sucker for hardcover photo books that are great on a coffee table, and this is one that I will always have out for other people to look at. I think anyone who loves photography and emotions will love looking through this book. It’s great to look at just a few pages, or to read as a whole.

I would highly recommend this book for any PLL fan and anyone that’s interested in seeing a book made purely of love and passion. Please let me know your thoughts if you’ve picked it up – I’d love to know if you loved it as much as I did.

Have you ever had a moment where you’ve been rummaging through an old shoebox in your closet that you haven’t seen in years, and discovered hidden treasures?

I’ve had that moment a couple of times over my life and it’s always an incredibly warm and nostalgic feeling that is hard to shake.

Recently, my mum and I have been cleaning out cupboards and closets that have just been crammed with stuff – a lot of it is junk and needs to be thrown out, but every now and then we find something special. I pulled out a plastic tub that was on the floor in the hallway cupboard and quickly discovered that it was a box filled to the brim with ephemera that belonged to my dad. It mostly contained cards, letters and documents from around the time he died, but there were also some unique keepsakes.

Here are some of my favourite discoveries…

Dad’s Memory Box

I’m a big believer in memory keeping and for years I didn’t know that we still had so many of dad’s things. Finding something as special and valuable as his memory box nearly brought me to tears. I don’t know why a lot of the stuff is there and I never will, all I know is that it meant enough to him to keep in the box.

Finding things like this is such a gift. It’s as if I get more of my dad revealed to me as I get emotionally and mentally stronger over the years. When I was younger I felt such grief and loss, as it was like he just vanished and I was left there trying to hold on to whatever I could. Now, I feel like I had nothing for all of those years just so I could discover and have more to hold now.

Box contents: pocket knives, pieces of watches, medallions, cuff links, patches, a pen, jewellery, keys, patches, snooker cue chalk, and two used stamps. I can’t help but wonder why those two specific stamps are there as he was an avid stamp collector and had numerous stamp albums. They must have been really sentimental, or a particular favourite of his.

This is why memory keeping is special – because each one of those things represented something to my dad, but I’ll never know what they are. All I have are the remnants of what was special to him, without the reason why. As humans we go through life alone and it’s a beautiful thing to keep mementos for yourself.

35mm Film Camera

I don’t know who this camera belongs to; it could be my dad’s, grandmother’s, grandfather’s… I really have no idea which makes it even more special. There’s one little problem which is that the shutter is stuck. I’m going to take it to a camera shop and see if it can be restored to working condition as I’d love to capture memories on the same camera that they did. I checked to see if there was any film in the camera but unfortunately there was none when I found it.

Click here to see some family photos from back in the day.

Super 8 Film Footage

This was one of the most exciting things that I found because I’ve had a fascination with Super8 footage for a long time. I unwound it and could see bits and pieces – it is colour film and had a lot of my dad’s family members on it. My best guess would be that the footage is from the 70s. I’m desperate to get it scanned onto dvd so I can view it properly as there were some frames with up to 8 people on there! I’d love to be able to have a Super 8 camera and shoot footage with it all the time but the truth is that I just can’t justify the cost, sadly.

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I’m so incredibly grateful to come across these things – they are so precious to me and it honestly feels like the gift that keeps on giving. He’s no longer here with us and neither are the rest of his family members, but there are still things to learn and discover about them through the things they kept.

Please let me know if you’ve inherited any special items from people who have passed away, or if you’ve found something after they’ve gone. I would love to hear your story.  

Over the last couple of months I feel like I’ve abandoned this little blog. There’s no excuse but I will give you the reason why. I honestly believe it’s because I’ve stopped seeing value in my day to day life and don’t feel like it’s worth sharing with anyone. I’ve been struggling with the idea of mediocrity and have recently found out that I’m just like everybody else and I’m not special or different like I used to think I was. Most people already know that about themselves, but it’s really shocked me and made me reevaluate everything. You could call it a quarter life crisis. All of that said, I’m going to try to update this blog more and maybe by doing that I’ll see the value in each and every day again.

Today I wanted to share with my little getaway from this past weekend. I went with my two friends Janice & Sarah to Yamba – a little town just for a quick weekend trip. We all felt like we needed to get away – they had both finished Uni for the year and I have been feeling pretty stressed about my job & figuring out when is the best time for me to move next year.

Photos were taken on my Canon 60D with the 50mm f1.8 lens.