The Power of a Morning Mantra

What’s your secret to a good start for the day? It might be a morning walk, a balanced breakfast, or listening to the news or a podcast on your way to work. You do you, everyone has their preferred routines. The truth is, the key to turning a good morning into a great day could …

The Art of Mindfulness

Mindfulness (noun): The quality or state of being conscious or aware of something. A mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique. You're caught up in the daily hustle and bustle, you're constantly on the go …

Autistic and aging: What comes next?

The prospect of disability colliding with adulthood is a scary, yet imminent one, which unveils a whole new set of concerns for individuals, families and carers combined. Preparing a snack of biscuits and chocolate milk as the spoon clangs loudly against his glass, Sam chats to his Mum. “Mum, I’m so hungry! Can I grab …

Coconut & Berry Muffins

You don't have to be a baking connoisseur to make a good muffin, that's a fun fact that I have recently learned. When it comes to baking, for me especially, a recipe usually has to be as easy as "put that in there, mix it with this and leave it in the oven for this amount of …

The Future of Floriade

Story by Alison Hattley and Monika Damcevska  The National Capital Authority has announced that Floriade, Canberra’s biggest event, will lose the ability to be displayed in Commonwealth Park, when its contract will expire in late 2015. The ACT government has had to consider the different location possibilities for the potential future of Floriade. At the opening launch …

Q&A: Christiaan Slotemaker de Bruine

Floriade was the idea of Christiaan Slotemaker de Bruine, a landscape architect working and living in Canberra. The flower festival we know and love was based on a world famous tulip festival in Holland named ‘Keukenhof’. Christiaan began his design plans for the largest flower festival in the Southern Hemisphere in 1986, and chose Commonwealth Park …

Holy Granoly!

I've only recently jumped on the granola band-wagon, but boyyyy oh boy, is it delicious! Most of the time I've steered clear of granola, as most of the store-bought stuff is high in sugar and is full of unnecessary ingredients and I've always been too lazy/scared/timid to try making my own. Home-made granola is the …

My top 3 photo editing apps

If I had a dollar for every time I was asked "what app is this?????" on my Instagram photos... okay, I probably wouldn't be a millionaire, but I would have plenty of extra dollars lying around! I love to take and edit photos on my phone and I am a self-confessed iPhone-ographer in that sense. For this …

SITG 2015

The ground was sludge but spirits were high as we marched through the gates and into Australia's largest winter music festival, Splendour in the Grass. As I trudged through the mud, I found myself thanking the inventor of gumboots over and over as the mud was a mixture of slippery/wet/thick/glue/pls help because I am seriously stuck and about …

Byron Bay: Mokha Cafe

After 12 long hours of driving (and almost losing our minds), we finally made it to Byron Bay and set out to find somewhere to eat our first meal and settle into 'holiday mode'. As we put out patrol into the misty rain that swept over Byron that afternoon we came across the Mokha Cafe, a …