Goodbye, For Now...

Well peeps, after much thought and consideration, I have decided to take an extended blogging holiday. Nickel Pickel is feeling like it has run it's course, in it's current capacity at least. I originally started blogging when I moved to Australia and found myself insanely homesick and wanting a way to share what I was up to with my friends and family back home. It then followed me around the world and now 3 years later I am back in NZ, and feeling like it's time for a change.

At this stage, my plan is to be blogging again in the New Year, hopefully with a little more direction then I have now, some new projects and with renewed energy. It might be here at Nickel Pickel, it might be somewhere completely new and fresh! Wait and see, but I promise to keep you posted.

Don't worry blog friends, I will still be lurking and randomly commenting on all your online goodness, but from Nickel Pickel, it's bye for now, and thanks for all your lovely, kind words and encouragement over the years!

x Nikki

Hiding Out

This was me on Sunday, hiding out under my cardigan, draped over my laptop to protect from the glare of the sun... oh, and some more new glasses! Raspberry red ones this time, just 'cos :p

For the Love (or Hate) of Water

I'm on a two week mooch holiday at the moment - mooch in that I've taken time off work, not to go anywhere in particular, just to spend some time doing some 'me' things that I haven't felt the time or energy to do lately. I'm one week in, and one of my goals for my little break was to sort my body out a little bit. Not loose weight specifically, just give it a bit of a cleanse, and a rest from the crap I put into it.

So I'm eating a lot of fruit and veges, very little meat, and drinking tons of water.
That probably doesn't seem that full on to many of you but I am a terrible emotional eater, and I can't remember when I last made it through a day without eating 6 or 7 biscuits, a couple of muesli bars and a few bags of chips, alongside all the other stuff I was eating. That's every single day. Oh, and I NEVER drink water. I hate it. Don't care what you say, it does nothing for me, and apart from the occasional glass now and then, I pretty much steer clear of it. Until this week.

I have been drinking around 8-10 glasses of it every day, and I feel really really good. Like so good, I weighed myself this morning, and 5 days in I've lost 3 kilos. That wasn't my specific intention, but it's definitely a bonus! So this thing called water that I hate so much, that I'm constantly reading is the number one thing to consume, especially if you're trying to lose weight, well, it may have just found an unlikely friend in me.

You Know You're Cool When...

Your highest criteria for buying sunglasses is finding ones that will sit over your actual glasses and kind of, sort of cover them to a point that you can wear them while driving and not feel like a complete dork.

Oh, and you know you're SUPER cool when you do a 'pout pose' and blog about it. Hah!

It's Only Me

I find I am taking a lot of photos of myself these days, and studying them all the time. Not in a vain way, but in a pure fascination with how unrecognizable I am to myself. I struggle to comprehend how much I think I've changed in the last few years.

You know when you're 'younger' and you hear so many women talking about how 'this' changes and 'that' changes and you have to look after 'that' or 'this' will happen... and you kinda think yeah yeah, one day, one day when I'm much, much older.

Ummm so all of a sudden, I think I'm there. It's almost like I woke up when I turned 25 and my skin is freckled and a bit tired looking, my hair is a bit oily and lank, my face has pudgied out... could be that I haven't been wearing enough sunscreen, could be that I have a thyroid condition wreaking all sorts of havoc on my body, could be that I have gone back to being a natural mousy blonde and I don't have chemicals in it to keep it stripped and dry, could be that I've put on nearly 20 kilos in the last 5 years. Yikes! Did I just admit to that? Yes, yes I did. And I don't have kids to blame this on either!

I'm not saying this cos I'm getting upset about it - I've done what I've done and I am who I am, I take full responsibility. It's just so crazy how it seems you can go from one day looking in the mirror and being really content with how youthful you are, to the next thinking, 'what the heck happened!?'  The body is a fascinating thing, it really, truly is, and man it's so cliched but if you don't look after it, it starts to show that's for sure!

Funny, unrecognizable me.

Look Out! It's A Ramble!

I'm having one of those self-reflective days today. I have these now and then - I freak out that I'm 25 and haven't become that 'successful' artist/designer that I was planning on being. I freak out that I don't know what 'I want to be when I grow up'. I freak out that I want to have kids in the next five years and all of a sudden there's not enough room for all the other things I want to do that have to fit in the space between! And most of all I freak out that I'm not drawing enough, and maybe if I don't draw something soon, I'll forget how to draw forever and ever...!

Sometimes I swear I'm two people in one. The best way for me to describe that is I'm an insanely creative, free spirit, trapped in an uber-organised, paranoid perfectionist shell. These are surely the traits of two different people!?

My shell stops me from committing to the real me. It stops me from sharing my creativeness which I really want to do, and from sharing the un-edited version of myself. The stupid thing is that I have books and books of drawings I've started, ideas for drawings, and ideas for things to design and make... but I'm so scared it'll all come out wrong when I try to produce the real deal that I tend not to start at all. It's safer that way, right?!

And this internet is no help at all. It is my best friend, it is my worst enemy. I see something better then my work and boom! Self doubt sets in and then there's no way I'm committing pencil to paper.

When I look back at my blog and the things that have slipped out now and then it's kinda funny.
Sometimes I wonder what possessed me, sometimes I wonder how I can feel so confident as to click that PUBLISH button, and sometimes I wish I could un-click it!

Probably like this post, I'll want to take this back soon...