First Impressions

It was a case of love at first sight with Etsy seller Brookish' Mr Darcy Proposal Dish Towel. We were introduced over Facebook, I declared my interest and my wonderful boyfriend ensured that we were introduced. Like all good romances, we suffered a Set Back (me wanting to frame the towel vs. my boyfriend's strong belief in creation for use), but now we've overcome our Hurdle and never the two shall part. It's another Etsy Happy Ending.


Love that packaging.



Here's to a long, happy relationship

Many thanks to my beloved credit card holder and the fantastic Brookish, whose service and presentation is unparalled and whose gorgeous pieces are more than perfect.

Closer

Well, it's been a big almost-two months since my last post. It seemed like just as I was starting to get back into the habit, I spend two weeks with my boyfriend with no internet and lose the taste for it. And then my grandfather died and school got busy, so I had very little time even if I did have something non-funeral or -school related to say.

In any case, it's been a crazy time and I look forward to getting back into the swing of things. I've found a lot of fun new blogs in the past month and therefore a lot of new people and ideas to inspire me and look forward to making a better contribution to the blogosphere in future.



That's my grandfather at about 20. You can find more family photos from this era at my Flickr

At the week's end

I used to pride myself on having a stupendously awesome memory, but I have found that stress and advancing age (I am 21) have made it distinctly sucky of late. To compensate, I have resolved to try to take more photos of my doings. This has the added benefit of having something to show my parents (who've moved to the other side of the country) and mostly house-bound grandmother.

Here's a few snaps from this week:


This is Sticky Insitute, which I'm writing about for school. It's literally underground; in an arcade that leads from Platform 1 of Melbourne's busiest train station, Flinders St Station, to the other side of road so that train passengers can by-pass traffic.


I took this shot of my reflection in the mirror behind an art installation in Campbell Arcade where Sticky is. It was a slightly disturbing display of what looked like bodily organs among other things mounted on sticks in dirt.


I spy with my little eye...


Truant teenagers sitting on the roof of the shopping centre drinking! I'm assuming they were truant teenagers because anyone else would have been allowed into a pub to drink and wouldn't be stupid enough to drunkenly hang out that high up! The one in brown fell and took the bottles with him!


I sampled this choc-vanilla cupcake on Wednesday at Melbourne's latest cupcake bakery...The Cupcake Bakery...I must say that I was pretty disappointed- dry, bland-tasting cake and oddly textured frosting that either indicated the presence of a large amount of preservatives and additives (and/or was made from powder) and perhaps some crazy mixing. It definitely paled in comparison to...


This awesome cookies'n'cream creation from Little Cupcakes, which I had for the first time on Tuesday and then again on Friday (sheer gluttony, I know!). The cake was moist and rich without being overpowering and the frosting was lovely and buttery, though not too sweet despite the chunks of biscuit.


Frankie is one of my (and everyone else in the blogosphere, I think) favourite Australian magazines. There is an awesome 'road test' of meat substitutes and some great stuff from Marieke Hardy in this issue.


I bought this, along with Frankie, at the airport when I was dropping my brothers off. I can't resist anything to do with Iggy Pop and this was no exception, but it turned out to be a really good mag (I don't know if it's this issue or this magazine) with a new and intriguing manner of interviewing 'the greats'. The obituaries were rather cool, too.


This is the top corner of the 'Word' cover, which may seem rather dull, but I found the placement of the price tag (over Moz's head) fascinating symbolically and wondered what he'd make of it.

Busy, busy, busy!

I've made it to the really busy part of the academic year, which feels like a bit of an achievement considering how many sudden hurdles I've had to jump this year. Thankfully, I'm not quite staring down the 'serious' few weeks yet, though, and I thank God for small mercies!

Lately, my life has revolved around my school work, my responsibilities to my family and dreaming of being able to do fun things. I'd love to have more time to go op-shopping with my boyfriend (who is very good at trawling for hidden treasures and an all-round op-shopping asset), hanging out with my friends and go to exhibitions and movies without having to plan for months ahead and keep one eye on the clock!

This is what I wore today:


(Another appearance by the naughty tree in the backyard)

I wore:
Stripey dress: impulse buy from KMart one night!
White t-shirt dress (underneath: Cotton On
Cardigan: Katies (new!I've needed a brown one for years!)
Boots: Novo (also new!)
Turquoise pendant: a present from Vietnam

because: Whether we think it's right or not, Spring is here and the stripey dress is floaty enough for heat, but is warm enough for the cold with a t-shirt dress and cardigan. The pendant matches the aqua on the dress and the boots are still novel enough that I want to wear them all the time.

And for something different, this is what I had for lunch:


(Well, not that different, I have this every Monday at least)

I must own to being a little slack with my diet and exercise in the past few days (and thus thoroughly deserved the obvious looks from other people trying to work out if I was a few months pregnant!), but I rarely miss having one of these salads for lunch when I'm at school.

Tomorrow, I'm off into the city to conduct some interviews for an article I'm writing on zines and Sticky Institute for school, so wish me luck!

Topshop

Y'know, looking at the Topshop website always leaves me feeling faintly depressed. First of all, the conversion rate from AUD to GBP is pretty crappy, so the price of a garment plus postage is usually more than I can allow myself to spend on one item (that old thift/vintage wearer chestnut!). Plus, because I'm not able to go into the shop to look at the quality of every item that catches my eye, I'm paranoid that if/when I do hit 'buy' and finally receive the parcel, I'll be horribly disappointed.

In any case, I had a look today and as usual, I wanted a million things for Spring and Summer. While I can't have everything, I can at least enjoy looking, so I made a Polyvore set.

Top Shop Picks by deplorable_world on Polyvore.com

Everything I liked I could imagine working well transeasonally. The dresses beg for pretty stockings and the lovely lace and roses would work well with basics all year. We're only really beginning to see the floral/Liberty prints on the high street in Australia, so it's all still novel and fresh to me, and I thought these relatively basic items would transcend trend (providing the fabric and stitching held out that long!) and layer well. The cute black shoes and croc bag are the sort of thing I would keep and wear for years, ditto the recently released Kate Moss collection faux fur.

Fame...

I feel kind of internet-famous right now.

I was casually trawling through a sub-section of a newspaper website when I came upon something that made me pause and then get vaguely paranoid.

In 2007 (nearly 2 years ago), I was a big LiveJournal user and I posted this to my LJ (and never locked it, I might add!). It was a jokey thing, obviously, but I thought the ideas that The Veronicas had evolved from an earlier Australian sister-group called S2S had merit.

As did someone else around the same time, who was clearly a bit confused, but at least not passing off the idea as theirs!

Anyway, so this morning through The Vine, I found a post by someone called SineadMcFly saying basically the same thing I had on my LJ, minus my second step of Jackson Mendoza.

Yeah, it's not a big stretch of the imagination to decide the two (or three) are similar, but I think saying they're the same thing (as I did) is a wee bit suspicious.

I even googled "s2s is the veronicas" out of paranoia and found I was the first and only entry!

So tell me, does this make me internet famous; you know, with my half-baked ideas being STOLEN and passed off as someone else's work a la you thought we wouldn't notice? If so, it was a lot easier than I thought!

"That's peanut butter...."

Not much going on lately- I've been writing an opinion piece on Wikipedia and a web site proposal for school, both of which necessitate a fair bit of time spent on the internet. And to be quite honest, a decent wedge of that has been time wasting.

So these are my two current favourite YouTube videos for entirely different reasons.



This brings back a lot of happy memories of 80s and early 90s animated movies and TV shows for kids- the sort of stuff I grew up on. The fact that it's an ELO song and from a musical also counts in its favour.



Every time I watch this, I suspect it might just be the best thing on the internet. Early Stooges footage with 'square' commentary = sheer awesome!