Etsy is mocking me

Why is it that exactly when you are having a financial crisis you find the most awesome stuff ever on Etsy?


I'm also wondering whether my love for all things Swedish came before or after I started working at Ikea? I'm thinking before, but it has enhanced the effect. I went to the Scandinavian Christmas Bazaar (fete) in Toorak a few weekends ago and it was fantastic. I wish I had taken my camera so I could show you the amazing things they were selling. I bought a few really beautiful papercut ornaments and decorations for myself and my mum and chowed down on Danish pancakes and Swedish waffles, yum!


I can't wait for it to come around next year and hopefully this time I won't have to go alone because it really is a fun atmosphere to be with family and friends, I strongly recommend it (oh and you get to gawk at all the ridiculously huge and beautiful Toorak mansions which is also fun).

One of many Christmas traditions

StickyScreen, leave yourself a virtual stickynote, I love it!

I know I've been a bad blogger as usual, despite my promises of keeping you in the loop. It seems that once you finish your degree and stop getting AusStudy payments you actually have to work more than one day a week to support yourself, who knew? So I have been slogging it out at IKEA most days, trying to be as polite as I possibly can while explaining once again why it is that we don't provide plastic shopping bags, and why you have to load up your trolleys yourself, and why you can't take the trolleys to the carpark. I try, I really do, but when you've dealt with the same snippy remarks about exactly the same things with every third customer can you really blame me if I don't answer with a smile?


But all that doesn't matter, because it's almost Christmas and I'm only working one day between now and Christmas so I have plenty of time to wrap, bake and shop. Our little flat is a tremendous mess because I either haven't been home or I've been too tired to care about the random mess strewn across all rooms, unfortunately I will have to clean it all before the parents arrive on Christmas day. Shame that.


I thought I might share with you one of the many Christmas traditions I seem to have acquired while living in Melbourne, and it basically involves eating, drinking, and looking at Christmas stuff in the city with one of my fellow ex-hometown compatriots. For the last three years we have ventured into the city to view the Myer windows, the Fed Square advent calender, and the Crown atrium show. This year we followed this with the cheapest and best dumplings in Melbourne from Shanghai Dumpling, my new favourite place to eat in the city, and then cocktails at Cookie which are always huge and amazing (despite the 20 minute wait). It's one of my favourite Christmas traditions despite how increasingly disapointing the Myer windows are and how both Fed Square and Crown seem unable to give up what they have done for the past few years for something new.

One of the other Christmas traditions I have is with my parents and my aunt, every Christmas Eve we watch Carols by Candlelight (in the dark, with actual candles) and drink champagne, eat cheese and sing along badly (they are all tone death) to the carols. This year we are taking it one step further and going to the rehearsals which are on the day before, Mum is packing us a picnic and I'm hoping to have time to bake us up some goodies as well, I can't wait!

Eye Spy what I want for Christmas

Well here we are on the first of December, I put up my Christmas tree last night because I knew I wouldn't be motivated enough to do it today in between gym, acupuncture and packing for ye olde hometown. You may or may not remember but my Christmas tree for the past two years has been a bit sad, a bit lean-y, and a bit small. So we upgraded to an adult-sized tree this year, which means I'm more than lacking in the decorations department. Mum told me just to say it was a 'work in progress' and that it's better to have buy a few nice decorations every year rather than a bunch of cheap crappy ones. I definately agree, we've never been ones for the whole matching ornament department-store looking tree, where's the tradition in that? I can appreciate how pretty they look and how crazy ours look, but these ones are built up over years of memories and milestones.

Since 'This is' wrapped up I've been a bit worried that I might run out of things to talk about on here, and I'm almost out of polaroid film so that also presents a problem. While I didn't always remember to do my 'This is' post it at least gave me something to think about when I was trying to come up with something to post about. So I've decided to jump of board the 'Eye Spy' which is fairly similar, only a bit simpler and open for interpretation. A big thanks to Bug and Pop for hosting it. The first topic 'what I want for Christmas' is so difficult for me to answer, I have a million things I want for Christmas, but I know I won't be getting them. I already know one thing I'm getting after I almost bought it for myself and my brother rushed in and said 'you might want to wait until after Christmas'. So here is a hypothetical list of things I would hypothetically like to have for Christmas:

- new subscription to Frankie mag
- subscription to Dumbo feather, pass it on
- a facial and massage
- a pretty brown bag
- new Kikki K diary
- proper BBQ for the balcony
- food processor and mixer
- a cabinet for my Granny's awesome collection of salt and pepper shakers I have inherited

That's about all, a girl can dream can't she?

A Melbourne Shakespeare tale

Well I have finally finished my degree! Well to be technical I haven't passed yet so I can't be certain that it is all over, but fingers crossed right? My last exam was on Monday and it was the hardest of the three, passable though I think. I've been a busy little girl for the rest of the week trying to catch up with my socialising and shopping before I head back to ye olde hometown next week for a few days with the parents.

I thought I'd share with you this polaroid I took last week sometime. I've been wanting to take a polaroid of this house ever since I got my camera, and every day I walk past it on my way to and from uni and I make up little stories about it in my head. You see directly opposite this big old mansion sits another big old mansion. In my head they were built by warring neighbours back in the olde days (I'm not good with era's) who were trying to outdo each other, a bit Romeo and Juliet style.

And in true Shakespearean tradition there were star crossed lovers who would each sit in their bell towers, with their candle flickering, staring out across the gardens and the street to the person in the other tower. Who knows maybe they even did some kind of wacky light signals with their candles? I'm sure it's possible. Maybe they ran away and eloped, or maybe the girl was married off to some rich kid in Canterbury.

So there you go, a little peek into the silliness that is in my head as I walk by these houses everyday with my head skyward, wondering what the insides of these very pretty old houses look like.

I'll be back to regular programming now so I will be back sharing all my wonderful discoveries and insightful philosphising that has been going on over the last few weeks, aren't you just so excited?

Cuteness overload

Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

Now I know you've probably seen this little french girl all over the blogs by now, but could she be any cuter?! Look at those eyes! Gah, jealously. I'm so teaching my kids french (after I learn french..) so they can be this cute.

Make me happy

I've been feeling a tad melodramatic lately, in case you haven't noticed. So before this turned into another poor-me-I'm-so-displaced-in-life post I decided to kick that thought process in the guts and instead contribute to Mike's week of happy (very late), if only for a day. So in no particular order, 50 things that make me happy:

1. playing with light
2. silver watches
3. chopsticks
4. polaroids
5. bright nail polish
6. white bedsheets and floral pillow covers
7. business cards
8. wooden tea trays
9. brunch
10. gin rummy
11. Leffe Blonde
12. decluttering
13. recluttering
14. 'testing" the cookie dough/cake batter
15. list-making
16. gift-wrap
17. gingerbread houses
18. summer nights
19. hot air balloons
20. pink champagne
21. handbound notebooks
22. bbqs
23. homemade lemonade
24. lying on the grass
25. giggling children
26. secret santa
27. circus tents
28. etsy mail
29. rainbow crotchet throw rugs
30. bright eyes (I'd forgotten how much I adore this video)
31. 4pm naps
32. tropical cocktails
33. wanderlust
34. big old houses with bell towers
35. sending postcards 'just because'
36. epiphanies
37. cookbooks with beautiful pictures
38. cardigan weather
39. fish and chips
40. disposable cameras
41. ceiling fans
42. the silent study floor of my uni library
43. red lentil soup
44. warm turkish bread with spinach dip
45. pie charts
46. swedish christmas ornaments
47. frozen raspberries and grapes
48. laundromats
49. calendars
50. 'summer' by Josh Pyke

I put my pants on both legs at a time

does anyone else watch this and just think 'ultimate wedgie'?

Quarter-life crisis, take 2

Do you ever feel like this? I sometimes feel like I need to expect less so I don't feel dissapointed when I'm 80 and looking back on my life.

This is.. my favourite quote

I'm not sure if we're meant to use actual quotes by famous people or something like that for this week's theme. To be honest I haven't actually been to the post of the blog of the person who came up with this week's theme. I'm in the last stages of finishing my report which is due tomorrow at 8pm and I'm going a little batty.

So to honour this, I've used a 'quote' from issue four of Mankind Mag. For some reason just looking at this picture (by Nicole Parks fyi) made me go 'oh yeah', as if it wasn't completely obvious. So often I sit at my computer staring at a blank screen so scared of writing something completely crap and unsubmittable that I continue staring at the blank screen and don't write anything for hours. This little quote just tell me 'just write SOMETHING anything, then at least you're thinking about it and you're haflway there'.

I wrote this quote on a bit of paper and it now sits above my laptop, with my 'keep calm and carry on' postcard and another quote that I love:

'There is no greater tragedy than doing nothing, for fear of doing too little'.

I found this quote back in VCE when I was having similar problems with my work, I'm such a perfectionist that I always expect the best from myself and when I feel I can't do my best I just do nothing, which is only selling myself short. These quotes keep my going and push me over the edge more often than not. Hopefully you find them useful too.

Etsy love

I love these so much it hurts a little bit. Unfortunately my budget simply does not stretch to $55 US a print :( Aren't they just absolutely adorable though?


I don't know if it's the whole working at Ikea thing or what, but I seem to have a soft spot for Nordic looking stuff at the moment. Doesn't help that one of my other favourite shops is Kikki K. The Swedes are taking over! And I'm quite happy for them to.


So instead of sending myself broke I settled with this equally gorgeous gocco print by LittlestFlower which I bought after less than 2 minutes of deliberation. Possibly an all-time record for me, I generally mull over purchases for a good 2-3 days before hitting that 'purchase' button. But for $9 including the frame, I'd be stupid not to.

Before I die..

I love this site. It's funny seeing how some people say really frivolous things while others take the deep road.

Personally, before I die I want to experience reckless, out of control, all consuming love. No matter how soul-shattering and blinding it is, I wanna give it a go. Because as a Piscean I'm predisposed to be a bit of a sucker for romantic punishment.

I would have said 'find contentment' or 'be happy' or something similar to the one in the photo above. Which I also want of course, but I'm a bit stuck on this love thing for the moment.

What about you? What do you want to do before you die?

This is.. a recipe I would like to share

 

You'll have to excuse me for not writing this up myself or taking real photos of the batch I made, things are a little crazy here with the report you see. Hence why this is super late, although that's not really so unusual for me.

Either way, click on the pic above to see the proper size version of it so you can read it. It is probably my favourite soup recipe ever right now, and I am kicking myself (and Delicious) for having not found it when it was actually winter and I could eat it without raising a sweat. I made my first batch of this on Friday when the cold weather kicked in for the weekend (you have to love Melbourne weather like that) and I ate it for every meal until yesterday lunch time. And even though I ate it for every meal for 4 days, I found myself wanting to make another batch straight away. Too bad the old Melbourne weather had decided to kick back into Spring by then so it will just have to wait.

Trust me though, it is awesome. I added a bit more chillii to mine to give it even more of a kick and I ate it with lemon juice squeezed over the top. Yum. For anyone over the other side of the world who might happen upon my little blog, make this your soup recipe of the coming season, you won't regret it!

Relief

I don't usually get much into politics, but there is something amazing about Obama that actually gives me hope for America and the world once again.

This.. something I'm suprised I like

It's kind of freaking me out how clucky and nest-y I am getting these days. Like seriously, I'm 21! Oh and the fact that I'm totally freaked out by babies. And I don't even have a boyfriend. And I have no idea what I'm doing with my life for the next 5 years. All that doesn't really bother me, because I'm excited about living this crazy and unbounded life for the next few years.

But, I am finding myself totally in love with all things kid-related, but mostly baby/toddler related. I think it might have a lot to do with the fact that kid/baby stuff has become a hell of a lot cooler and more designer-y lately, with overseas parents mags like Cookie and Milk, how can anyone resist! My friends think I'm weird (weirder than they already think I am) because I spend hours on the Ikea children's furniture page, yet when I baby comes near me I cower and say "no seriously, I don't do babies". When they can crawl and babble and are less likely to scream for no particular reason, that's when I can be around then, but until then, no thankyou.

So it seriously suprises me when I find myself trying not to buy wooden alphabet blocks and vintage night-lights to hoard away for the day I have those little well-behaved bundles of joy. It hurts me to think that my kids will probably grow up in a world of plastic-toys, computer games and bratz dolls. I know there are people out there who manage to sew clothes for their kids and teach them to knit and home school them, but I just don't know how possible it is to do that without totally socially isolating them? That's just my ponderings anyway, we had a presentation yesterday on the sexualisation of children in the media (advertisements for kids clothes etc) so it's something that is on my mind at the moment. Feel free to contribute your thoughts on the topic!

Flashback Friday.. 5 days late

..or two days early? You decide!

I just love this picture. It's from my Auntie Margaret's wedding and my Mum was one of the bridesmaids. How great is her wedding dress? It's just so 70's with the flowery lace. I find it amazing that my Mum can make her bridesmaids dress actually look good, I mean really, who could pull of something like that? It's even worse in the colour photos, it's a weird shade of orangey/pink. Stay tuned for more stylish photos of my Mum's 20-something life!

One good thing a day #4

One good thing about Spring is the bright streams of light that come through the windows, making you run for the polaroid camera halfway through making a cup of tea.

Things will be quiet here again for the next two weeks, my massive research report is due Monday week, so I will be scrambling to get it together. Hopefully I will be popping in with photos every now and then, but I'm running out of polaroid film so it might be even more sporadic than it already is!

This is.. my favourite films

and some of my favourite scenes..

Across the Universe (I even stopped myself from using a Jude scene!)


Almost Famous


Garden State


Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


Virgin Suicides


Life is Beautiful


I have more, Amelie, Into the Wild, Moulin Rouge, but I'm all youtube-d out! Thanks to Hokey for the theme this week, I had fun reliving some of my favourite scenes.

Word of the day

Tarantism: An urge to overcome melancholy by dancing

One good thing a day #3

One good thing about walking home at 6:30am after 2.5 hours sleep is seeing two hot air balloons floating past the huge full moon as it sank towards the horizon.

I only had my phone so I couldn't take a very good photo, so you'll just have to take my word for it how cool it looked.

Flashback Friday

Here's my gorgeous mum once again. The year was 1972 and she had just won a scavenger hunt. This is probably my favourite photo of my mum. She looks so happy in her hat and with all those bottles of grog. In fact I have a photo of myself from a few years ago, also happy to have alcohol, and you can see exactly how alike our faces are. Too bad I didn't have a cool hat.

One good thing a day #2

One good thing about summer is painting your toenails bright blue.

My calves look huge in this polaroid. But it's just the angle of the photo.. surely.

One good thing a day

One good thing about being so ridiculously stressed for three weeks straight is the knowledge that the end is so near.

I've decided to play, because I need to stop whinging so damn much. Thanks Pip for hooking me up to Bricolagelife. This may turn into 'one good thing a week', but the intention is there.

Navel-gazing

I've been tagged by Bec!

The rules:
- Link to the person who tagged you.
- Mention the rules.
- Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself.
- Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.
- Go to each person's blog and leave a comment that lets them know they've been tagged.

1. When I am stressed/angry I tidy. When I am really stressed/angry I become a sloth. When I am really really stressed/angry I clean obsessively like a hyperactive energizer bunny.

2. Ads make me cry more than movies.

3. I'm really bad at small-talk. It feels fake and forced and unnatural to me. I think this gives people a bad first impression of me.

4. I get inspired easily. But I also get discouraged easily.

5. I've discovered that I automatically empathise with people and things too much. I can empathise with an inanimate object if I don't rationalise with myself.

6. I am terrible at hiding my emotions, my face may as well be a projection screen for my thoughts.

I tag:
Jacinta
Hayley
Bianca
Kat
The mysterious 'K'
and the mysterious 'R'

This is.. my current reading material

Click the pic for extra fun! You might even learn something..

Essay number 2 is now complete, albeit an absolute pile of rubbish. All I want is to pass, seriously, just get me out of here.

Now I get to start on the lab report, lucky me. This is my reading material, 8 articles about individualism and extrinsic motivation. Amazing how a lab report can suck the fun out of even potentiall interesting topics. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a combined total of 179 pages to read, understand and summarise by the end of today...

Keeping good company

These dudes have been keeping me company and providing distraction while I attempt to finish essay no.2. Thanks to Cintia for the great tips on how to string them up! They are quite enjoying hanging by my window and playing in the breeze.

I have to say though, the phrase "never work with children or animals" also applies to paper balloon animals, trying to get a photo when they were facing the same way was impossible! I'm sure my neighbors found it quite amusing seeing this girl standing on her bed, polaroid camera in one hand and trying to twist the balloons in the right direction with the other hand. I'm lucky I didn't face-plant onto my bedside table.

Anyway here they are, I have named the tiger Samuel, and the panda Harry. Hope your weekend is better than mine!

Flashback Friday (on a Thursday)

(Click the pic to see it's full sized glory!)

I know there is/was a Flashback Friday meme going around, so I decided that I'd finally join in for a few weeks. The reason I hadn't joined in until now was because being only 21 and born in 1987, I didn't exactly have any photo that were circa 70's/early 80's that would allow me to particpate!

A couple of days ago I was looking at all these awesome photos I have of my Mum around my room from her 20's and I had a lightbulb moment, I could use them! I absolutely love these photos of my mum, she was stunning back in the day (not to say she isn't now..) with her long brown hair and legs that seemed to go on fuh-ev-ah. Seems I didn't inherit those genes, grr. Although she attributes her teeny tiny 20's body to the fact that her Mum was a terrible cook! And let's face it, home cooking has gone up a few notches since then, in my house it has anyway!

I have about 5 or 6 pictures that I'm going to share with you over the next few weeks, and you'll probably notice that we have exactly the same face pretty much, closest I'll ever get to know what a twin of me would look like. I hope you enjoy these pics, (and I hope Mum doesn't mind me putting them up here!) because I seriously love them and how hippy/retro/STUNNING my old ma looks in them.

The above pic is of my Mum (standing, check out those legs!), my aunty (sitting) and one of my cousins (I assume.. most of them are at least 10 years older than me).

Money money money

Procrastination seems to be becoming an expensive activity for me..

I received my necklace, animal balloons and 'Keep Calm and Carry On' postcards in the mail over the last few days. But I've been too lazy/busy to actually take any photos of them. I'm also trying to figure out where and how to display my animal and world map balloons, do I just tape over the hole? Cinti, any suggestions?

So my latest purchases are these beautiful motivational posters which I've loved ever since I saw them over on Cup of Jo. My love was even more confirmed after seeing them on Design for Mankind and I decided it was a SIGN. After all, I was procrastinating, so what better to spend my money on than a motivational poster or two?

It took me so long to decide which ones to go with, but I felt that these two were particularly important to me at this stage of my life. Plus they were pretty.


I've bought so many posters and art prints and I still haven't framed any of them! I feel so bad for the beautiful things when they arrive and I have nothing to put them in to display them. As soon as all this uni craziness is over I will do it. No really I will.

I'm also so excited because today in a random cleaning spree I found my lost polaroids! I've been trying to figure out what I did with them for months now. Turns out I had put them in a little bag and stacked them on my bookshelf with other stuff that I'd forgotten about. I was amazed by how many there were, I'd could only remember about two. This puts me one step closer to the polaroid heart.

Obligatory feet photo

This was going to my "This is.. show off time" post, but the sunlight totally bleached out my awesome new shoes! I can't seem to get it right with my polaroid at the moment, it's either too dark or too bright so I'm not getting the detail I want.

Anyway, this is my driveway and these are my new shoes, not that you can see them.. they are blue and sort of a cross-hatch, flannel-y type pattern. Does anyone know what that's called? It's driving me insane. (*Edit* It's called plaid! Thanks Kerry, I feel pretty stupid now..)

I got these from rubi shoes, a new division of cotton on, which has the cheapest and most mass produced shoes ever. Which should kill my conscience, but I got four pairs of shoes for $50, and I'm not going to argue with that! They're all a tiny bit big but I need to get insoles anyway because they have absolutely no arch support, so hopefully that might make them fit better. But for less than $15 a pair I don't really care if I can't wear them for longer than an hour at a time!

Please?

Whoops..

So today I was going to do homework right?

Instead I went out for lunch, then went on an online shopping spree and bought this necklace:


Two of these postcards (green and robins egg blue on bottom left). I know everyone has one of these posters know and it's totally yesterday, but I think they are too cute and now that I have postcard size ones I can easily frame them for my itty bitty kitchen, I found them via Lin's post.


Then I made the mistake of checking my bloglines (did I mention that I managed to read all 985 posts that have built up?! No wonder I'm not getting any work done) and saw these gorgeous Japanese paper balloons on My Poppet's online shop. After discovering they were only $3.50 each I of course had to buy myself the panda and the tiger.


To make things worse I had a bit of a browse around after putting these balloons in my cart and noticed the globe paper balloons as well. I figured I already had two paper balloons, what difference is it going to make if I get a globe as well? At least then I will know how to write country names in Japanese right? Perfectly reasonable.


Paypal is an evil invention. But oh well, at least I'll be getting some fun mail in the coming weeks! I was getting a bit sick of all the bills and reminder letters from OPSM/Red Cross/RACV/blah blah.

P.s Did you notice I changed my background? I decided that with the new sunny weather I needed to brighten up my blog a little bit, the grey background was bringing me down. Hope you like it! If not I can always change it back, just for you, because you know how much I love you.

I made tea

Morning (/afternoon) all. Tea anyone?

Guess I should actually do some work today.. but it's so sunny outside!

The evolution of my walls

Still feeling sore and unproductive so instead I'm watching Across the Universe again while putting my posters back up on my walls. They have been bare for far too long.

Something Max says in Across the Universe made me think of my "This is" post from yesterday.

Why is it always what will I do? "What will he do", "What will he do," "Oh, my god what will he do", Do, do, do, do, do. Why isn't the issue here who I am?

Amen Max. Let's focus on who we are instead of what we do. It really annoys me how the majority of us have to spend a third of our lives working just so that we have money in order to actually live. Other than the lucky ones who can combine their work with what they love, it just feels like such a waste. I guess that's the reality of it all though. So depressing.

Anyway I'm here to show you the thrilling evolution of my wall uh.. "display". For the Frankie readers you will note that 90% of what is on my wall is either posters from Frankie or just bits ripped out and cut up. That's right, I'm a hacker, we have discussed this before. The other 10% is made up of random doodles of my own or Avant postcards I used to collect from work.

To be honest I don't pay a lot of attention to what I'm doing when I put all my posters back up after we've had flat inspection. I tend to start with the big posters then work around them. It always looks different everytime which is good because I get sick of looking at the same thing after awhile.

So there you go, do you feel enlightened yet? I probably should have made my bed before doing this, but eh, I'm going for the 'natural' look..

It's pretty hard to see any detail from these photos, but these walls provide me with endless amusment and inspiration when I'm feeling stuck and bored. When I have enough polaroids (or find the ones I've already taken) I'll be doing something like this, I don't care how many other people are doing it, it's still awesome.

p.s Before you are completely despair I will have a good look at Ikea this week and see if in fact we do have the wooden 5x7 frame packs that I was talking about in the previous post. I couldn't find them on the site or in the catalogue, but who knows, maybe we have them on display and I just haven't seen them yet?