Decisions

I think it's been pretty fairly established on my blog that I'm more of a photo person than a crafty person, despite reeeeeally wanting to be a crafty person. There's also a foodie element in there too. I know I don't need to have a specific 'type', but at the moment I feel like I'm torn between the three without really accomplishing any of them. When I look at amazing bloggers like SouleMama and Angry Chicken it just reminds me that there are bloggers out there who do all three, and kick arse at it, and can write really well as well! If only we could all be that talented.

So I've been looking at buying a sewing machine as you all know and I've been given some fantastic suggestions and feedback about sewing machines through comments which have been so helpful. I know I can buy a reasonably cheap(ish) sewing machine which would be more than enough for me to kick my craftiness into gear and hopefully start actually making some stuff! Including a quilt which I really need to have done in 8 months...

On the other hand, I've always loved photography and I'm always the first one to whip out a camera at every event and even just randomly while walking around town. I love the camera I have at the moment which is a Canon Ixus 60 but I think I've just about reached the limit of its capabilities and now I'm craving something a bit more... professional, I guess is the word. So now I've started researching DSLR's and especially Nikon's because I've only ever heard good things about them. This is the one I'm looking at the moment, it's amazing, and seems pretty easy to use for a beginner. It's quite exxy, but then again that's the price you pay for a really good camera unfortunately.

So what do you think? Should I do it? I'm obviously going to put a lot of thought into it considering I don't have a huge amount of money since going to Europe, although I can afford to buy this now if I really desperately wanted it. Are there any super-good photographers out there who can guide me?

*EDIT* Seems the link to the Nikon I was talking about isn't working, this is it instead, click on 'D60 Microsite' so see all the super cool stuff it can do!

Old school entertainment

It's nice to see that even in a modern world of video games, internet and television a street performer can still draw a massive crowd despite very threatening Melbourne weather.

This is.. the contents of my handbag

I tend to swap between a few different bags depending on whether I'm going to uni, gym or out on the town, but for the moment I've been using my brand new Sportsgirl bag for most things so it's accumulated a bit of stuff I wouldn't normally have with me..

My contents:
Phone
Wallet
Purple and green highlighters
Sunglasses
Sunglasses pouch
Kikki K Camera pouch
Mini pen from Kikki K
Ipod and bluey green Ipod holder thingy
Extra gum
Keys
Old train ticket
Lipgloss
Hemp hand lotion
Leather mini notebook bought from Rome

So that's the contents of my handbag, thrilling stuff isn't it! I just got back from my first meeting with the lovely ladies over on the Willow forum which I'm part of, so I am tireddddd, so much talking! I might be back later with a proper post, but my three from last night should keep you going until tomorrow if I don't!

Psst..

...I hope your lights are out

The new love of my life

I'd like you to meet my new boyfriend, Jay from Bedouin Soundclash. He doesn't know we're dating so don't go spreading it around, but we are, whether he knows or not.

So I saw Bedouin Soundclash at The Corner Hotel in Richmond on Thursday night, and despite having only ever heard 2 songs by them ever I was smitten by the first song. Jay, the singer and guitarist has such an amazing voice, it's exactly as you heard it on the cd, and he's cute. And he has a super adorable smile. And we were in the front row and I got eye contact, sure every other person in the front row probably also got eye contact but well.. I don't care.

I got a couple of decent photos which I've put over on flickr, but my camera battery died so I didn't have a chance to play around with my settings as much as I would have liked so that's why the pics that are up on flickr are a bit blurry. Hence why I need this camera. If anyone would like to lend me a grand or so it would be going to a good cause, I promise!

For your viewing and listening pleasure here is a sample of these Canadian cuties:

My name's Fiona and I'm a blogaholic

I remember when I first met the lovely 62 Cherry at a zine fair on Election day in Hawthorn, we got onto the discussion of Bloglines and how wonderful and potentially dangerous it was, she pointed out she had over 100 subscriptions, I was amazed, how could anyone have that many blog subscriptions? Well, I'm now well on my way.

So many wonderful people have sought out my blog somehow and left me supportive comments, which in turn I've followed the links to their blog and discovered yet another fantastic crafty/foodie blog that I just have to subscribe to. Because you see if I don't have it on bloglines then I usually bookmark it in my "Blogs" folder and then completely forget about it, other than Angry Chicken who I still can't seem to find a way to subscribe to so I have to "check" every couple of days in case I miss another witty rambling from her which always makes me laugh out loud.

Anyway back to the point, when I used to click on Bloglines in the morning for my bloggy fix I would only have a few new posts to read then I could get on to doing my homework and all would be well. Now I visit Bloglines and I suddenly have 63 new posts to read! And between today and yesterday some people have made 7 new posts! 7?! In a single night? You guys are nuts. And then the link following begins. I see something I like so I follow the link, or the blogger mentions another blogger so I follow the link. It's very unproductive and ultimately bad for my credit card because there are far too many cool handmade things out there on the web that I want oh-so-badly.

In all I actually only have 36 subscriptions at the moment and they are keeping me very preoccupied and away from my studies, which in my opinion is a good thing, though I probably will change my mind when I start getting back crappy marks. So I thought I'd give a roundup of all the blogs I "watch" on bloglines, just so people can see that they are loved :) So here goes:

PostSecret, Meet Me at Mikes, SouleMama, The Scent of Water, Should You Eat That?, Bluebird Makes Her Nest, The Complete Adventures of Violet and Rose, Hey Bubbles, Ric-Rac, Kwoozy, Daydream Lily, MixTape Zine, Kirin Notebook, Smosch, Design for Mankind, Kootoyoo, Hula Seventy, Arthur's Circus, The Small Object, Aunty Cookie, Mary Jane Midge & Mink, Yumi Yumi, Glittergoods, Shim and Sons, How About Orange, Joyful Abode, Hollabee, Miss Woolly, Three Buttons, Dear Fii, My Poppet, Design Sponge, Lululollylegs, Jaden's Steamy Kitchen, Betty in the Kitchen. Oh and in the process of this I managed to add another one haha, I told you! 101 Cookbooks.

Feeling the love people? Go out and explore, find new blogs, tell me about them, delay my study as much as you possibly can!

The BBQ that kinda wasn't..

So for my mini 21st back home I decided to just have a BBQ with a few of my close friends and cook up some pre-dinner nibblies and maybe something for dessert. Well the way it turned out was that I cooked so much that there was no possibility of us fitting in the actual BBQ food! To me that's a success, after all, it's not like I made the sausages and kebabs that didn't get eaten. Here are some pictures of what I made:

Chicken and pesto mini quiches (recipe here)

Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Buttercream icing and mini easter eggs of course (it was Easter Sunday by the way, recipe here)

Raspberry Swirl Cheesecakes with whipped cream and strawberries on top (recipe here)

I also made roast pumpkin and feta open pies which I took a photo of but then accidentally deleted it while I was going through my camera, you can see what they look like and get the recipe from here. Everything was so amazing and delicious and I didn't stuff anything up! That's unusual for me, I love cooking so much but have a very bad habit of reading recipes wrong and leaving out steps. For example, I once cooked a cheesecake using liquid glucose instead of gelatin. I also once made anzac biscuits and mistook the 1 teaspoon of bicarb soda for 1 tablespoon, let's just say that didn't go down well, just ask my brother, he woolfed down half a dozen of them.

In all it was a lovely night anyway with lots of laughs and "remember when" moments which always make for a great night back home. It was good to be back amongst my friends who I've known for such a long time, and while we obviously still connect on a lot of levels it always reminds me how different I am now and how much these people don't know about me, about the person I've become in Melbourne. This is my fault of course, I expect people to "get" me but forget to explain to them what exactly they need to "get". I'm still finding myself drawn away from Melbourne and perhaps even Australia, I'm in need of something new and stimulating and fresh, but I don't know that I'm strong enough for it. The perpetual question in my life: could I handle it?

Words, pfft.

Stumbleupon sometimes presents me with the most wonderful pictures. It just pops up a blank page with a beautiful picture and it just makes me realise the power that pictures have, sometimes you don't need words to convey something, even something really complex. I wish I could do that, be able to shut my mouth and rest my fingers for a bit and just let the pictures do the talking. It's something I want to work on this year, being more.. concise. I often save these pictures that I stumble upon because I love them so much and forget to save the link as well, so if anyone can help me credit this photo I would be appreciative.

P.s I'll be back tomorrow updating about my little country 21st bbq-that-wasn't-a-bbq with photos of all the scrumptious goodies I baked, mmm.

Prisoner of my own room

My brother is having a Good Friday bbq today with all his friends. Let's just say that they are not exactly my "type" of people, and instead are highly annoying and have a habit of breaking my things. Considering this flat is 90% my things, I don't really like having them here. However when my brother has friends he tends to do a lot of cleaning, this is good, but hardly a compromise. So instead I'm going to take photos of yesterdays purchases, please ignore the bad lighting and the complete lack of photo styling-ness.

So for image number 1 we have my sewing machine dress, it's called the sewing machine dress because I spent my sewing machine money on it. So I guess I had better wear it a lot. And also because I got a discount on it because the zip has become undone slightly and needs a tiny fix.


Not the best photo of it of course, don't mind my many calenders in the background, I try to keep myself organised and it never seems to work. In real life the dress is sort of an electric purple/royal blue colour and it's super pretty and actually fits me well! I would have taken a photo of me wearing it but I'm wearing trackies and am quite comfortable thankyou very much.

Photo number two is my new bag, I seem to buy a new sportsgirl bag every 6 months or so, this is why my hat stand it bulging so much, it has far too many bags on it. But how cute is this bag, as if I could leave it there, it was only $40! Once again worst ever photography skills, I really need to do something about that. Sadly being confined to one's room does not allow for much artistic expression.
Photo number three is of my new almost-emo fingerless gloves that I bought mainly for cold days when I'm on the computer but my fingers are freezing off, or when I'm at uni in far-too-cold lecture rooms and still need to make notes. And on the right are my super-styling purple leather gloves that I bought in Florence while I was over there, they are cashmere lined, luxurious much? I could almost wear them with my purple dress and grey coat I bought in Lyon, mmm then I would be super styling.

And last but not least is my pretty print I bought myself from YumiYumi which arrived in the post this week, it so beautiful in real life but I have no idea where to put it! I need to get a frame specially for it, although I'm running out of hooks, living in a rental flat suuuucks sometimes.

I love this print, but I must say I'm a bit addicted now and pining over this one:

*sigh*

Well I'm off now, I have headachus Maximus and need to lie down and put in some ear plugs or something.

This is.. my demon

Ok so I'm starting my first meme, how exciting! I've jumped on the "this is" bandwagon because every week I keep going "oh man I have such a good one for that!" and then just doing nothing about it. So I made the decision to start, and the first one is "this is my demon". Now I have a lot of demons, but very few of them are practical to photograph and as much as I would just love to post a photo of me looking at myself naked in the mirror with a very distasteful face I just don't think I'm quite ready for that! So instead I give you my demon:


That's right, uni. Well uni, homework, assignments, essays, critical reviews, presentations, lab reports, statistics, textbooks, and above all: procrastination. I put the pro in procrastination, in fact I'm doing it right now, I have a critical review due on Thursday and I'm going to be in Cobram all weekend, hence no homework. So instead of getting it done early I'm sitting here browsing bloglines and basically wasting time to my heart's content.

Although to be fair I did go into the city today for research purposes, for another essay I had to photograph graffiti. So I did, then I went shopping for the remaining 5 hours, because well, wouldn't you? I managed to buy a dress (very pretty, very expensive), a bag, two tops, a leather journal ($25 from oxfam shop, I love that place!) and some cool fingerless gloves (yay winter is coming!). I'll take photos of them another day and do a show and tell. So instead I'll just show you some of the cool graffiti we took photos of, we had to photo on pieces which included a "tag", which is basically the name a graffiti artist gives themself. This kinda sucks because there are some amazing artworks in alleys and laneways around Melbourne.


There's a heap of really great and talented kids out there that's for sure, these pictures here came from Union Lane in the city which is a street art commissioned laneway, so all the "graffiti" here is totally legal, pretty nifty hey. We had a really lovely day in the city, the weather was so strange going from hot-cold-hot-cold but it was nice all the same, and we finished up with Chai latte in Degraves laneway, one of my most fave spots in Melbourne.

Or as smosch would say: we had a fika in Degraves lane, love that word 'fika', I'm going to have to start introducing it into my vocabulary.

Title goes here

So I'm reassessing the sewing machine idea, especially after going to the Stitches and Craft show yesterday and talking to the Janome lady. Apparently you can get some reasonable sewing machines for around $200 which is exactly my price range, I tried looking at the Janome website but it was pretty hopeless really. I'm about to run off to uni so I can't elaborate too much, so does anyone have any tips and tricks for a first time sewing machine purchaser?

I need a date..

So here's the thing right, in my group of friend I am somewhat of an anomaly, I don't really fit in for a number of different reasons, most of them to do with coming from the country buuuut the one I get teased about (in a friendly way of course) is my craftiness, or in their terms my "middle-aged-mother-ness". So when I found out about the Stitches and Craft show in Melbourne my excitement was short-lived when I realised that none of my friends would want to go with me.

I guess the thought of paying to follow me around on a stinking hot day while I oo-ed and ahh-ed over fabric and quilts and stitching wasn't so appealing. Now as much as I would love to just rock up and be confident and walk around by myself.. it's just not going to happen. So I'm sending out a bit of an SOS call to anyone who is going or thinking about going on Saturday or Sunday, 'coz I'd kinda like someone to tag along with *blushes*.

So.. any takers?

Graffiti

Yep. I get it.

Dilemma

After celebrating my 21st birthday on the weekend I'm face with the age-old question.. what to spend my birthday money on? Now I'm not saying there is a lot of it, which is sadly a consequence of not putting on a big "do" and paying for a bar tab and dj and room hire and all that jazz, but you know I'm quite happy with how it turned out, and I guess it evens up in the end.

So right now I have a little extra pocket money to spend and as always I don't want to just put it in the bank and end up spending it on washing powder and bread and petrol and all those boring everyday things. So should I actually save it for something? Like my impending move to Paris (imaginary move I should say), or eventually a new car. The amount of money seems to small to significantly contribute to these dreams anyway though.

So instead I figure, why not spend it on something fun or pretty or nice? Things like:

A beautiful handmade clutch by Kara Smith, although sadly it seems she has sold at least 3 of the clutches/bags I have been lusting over :(

Or perhaps some Shinzi that I've been wanting oh-so-badly ever since I stumbled across the page months ago. Maybe the birthday money could pay for the postage at least!


Then again I could always spend it on something that's practical AND pretty, such as a Le Creuset French Oven:

Or I could spend it on something that's pretty and really quite useless: Seriously though, how beautiful are these wooden cards? I found this over on Poppytalk Handmade which then linked me to the Nightowl Papergoods store, too beautiful, I would never send them though! These are definitely frame-worthy.

Speaking of frames I'm a bit stuck for what I should do with all my Europe photos, I know I have some really nice ones in there that I want to display somehow, not just have them sitting in a photo album gathering dust (or on my computer gathering virtual dust). Some ideas I've come across are Moo cards, a Blurb photo book, a glass pendant with a photo printed onto it, or just simply in frames. What do you think? What have you done with your special holiday snaps?

Oh and my birthday present for myself? A beautiful print from YumiYumi, I couldn't help myself!

p.s Like my new header? I got it from here.

A bit split

Do you ever feel like you're living your life.. a bit split? Stay with me here. I've found this both now and in past experiences, there are times when I feel so positively one way, and then hours or days later I find myself on absolute flipside of that view, without anything really changing? I don't want to harp on about "the breakup" too much buuut because it is my blog and therefore my own little personal space and I can talk about whatever I want, right?

So my viewpoint at the moment is that everything is great and we're friends and I had a nice conversation with him on the phone yesterday without even being upset, so therefore things are good and I'm positive about the future of our friendship. But then two nights ago, despite my efforts to be positive I found myself a tearful mess because I felt alone and like I had lost my best friend and I'd never feel loved again. It seems my feelings on the matter flip whenever feel like it and I'll find myself cheerful and positive one moment and then be crying and "why me"-ing within a few hours.

Yes, yes I know this is how breakups work. But this is only a case-in-point, I often find myself flip-flopping on things that I thought I was certain about. Does anyone else have this?

p.s I promise I'll get crafting again soon. But look I played with photoshop.. that's creative right?

And alone

I've become a bit of a loner lately. I didn't really realise or care about it until now when I suddenly have no boyfriend and therefore have lost about half of my social contacts to awkwardness and the problem of "who gets custody of the friends" issue. My problem is that almost all of my friends in Melbourne are either friends of his, or friends of my friend Michelle... who is a friend of his. So now all of a sudden I'm not invited to social events "just in case" it gets weird, and I'm really regretting not trying harder to make friends (of my own) at uni.

I just really wish I had some friends of my own that I could fall back on to at times like this, and I'm becoming more and more aware that the friends I have don't really fit that need as well as I thought they would. So I'm feeling a bit isolated at the moment, and while I love you webby guys out there looking out for me, I just really need someone to come over and give me a cuddle and a bowl of popcorn or something. That's all.