Absolutely Intoxicating

Oooh how much do I adore thee Jasmine?

My most favourite, favourite, loved more than any other flower.

I love that its fragrance is so heady it can make the air thick with scent and make your head feel giddy. Absolutely Intoxicating.

There was Jasmine all around music block back at QUT The Grove, so it will forever remind me of lazy uni days, and the end of Brissie winter when the sky is clear, the sun is warm, and the breeze is cool and crisp. When you'd be too content stretching in the sun to go back to class and would instead lie in the grass and look at the clouds and solve the world's problems with your mates. Bliss!

I was therefore very very excited to see that the divine Jurlique has brought out a range of Jasmine shower gel and body lotion. Jasmine scented products always seem to smell a bit cheap and a bit nasty - they never seem to capture the true scent of Jasmine, don't you think? I think that's because Jasmine needs to get out in the air, mingle with the smell of dusk and be warmed up by the heat of the night to really and truly smell like Jasmine. I just can't imagine that kind of smell coming out of a bottle?

Well, I can gladly report that the Jurlique range is the least offensive attempt at Jasmine that I have come by so far. It's not quite perfect, but once it's sat on the skin for a little while and the top notes have worn off, you do kind of get that Jasmine base note lingering behind. Pretty.

(Don't you just love how professional I sound with all this 'top note' 'base note' stuff? I should be a nose!)

Cranky Pants

It's cold tonight. And rainy. And there is something strange in the air, not sure what it is though. Maybe the stars are doing something funny tonight? I am home alone, here is what I have been up to!

1. I resisted the urge to raid the fresh loaf of banana bread and the two bags of lollies I bought from the market today for the husband-to-be's "kid's birthday party" themed morning tea tomorrow. You know, I'm not even going to go there - cool? The banana bread looks great though, very c1995 stopping at Brumbies Metropol after school.

2. I made a feta, zucchini and red capsicum frittata for dinner - yum yum yum.

3. I watched the news and got angry about a new report that allegedly shows that there is no difference in the nutritional value of organic and non-organic food. GRRRRR! I need to find a copy of this report online and take a look to get a better understanding. Nothing is that black and white! My first question is this – at what time did they make this comparison between produce? Did they pick 2 tomatoes straight from the vine and compare them immediately? I would be very very surprised to hear that they had the same nutritional value, but I could ultimately believe it if the science was good. But if they are trying to convince us that if I walked into a supermarket and picked up a tomato from under the revolting bright lights and cut it open and it was white and foamy inside and was picked 6 months ago and had been ripened with chemicals in a fridge, and then compared that to a tomato from a local farmer who was selling at the local farmer’s market his fresh and seasonal produce then no fucking way do I believe it. And that’s the reality of supermarket vegetables! I can’t believe that kind of detail is not included in the media? And don’t even get me started on the energy and life force present in organic food, not to even mention the environmental, animal welfare and countless other aspects too. GRRR!

Deep breath Bexy.

4. I made a cup of hot chocolate. I stood on the verandah and listened to the rain. I tried to keep my socks dry out there. I felt a little better.

5. I had planned on playing with my new sewing machine tonight, but after my cranky spell, I am no longer in the mood. Instead I'm going to curl up, watch a DVD and sew some buttons on my almost finished dress. And then I will have a new dress! Hurrah!

Deary me, I'm very moody lately, don't you think?

Through the Viewfinder

Oh wow. I need to take this up as a hobby. It's calling me like it was them sy-reens which might otherwise turn me into a horny toad*. I know I know, I have a lot of hobbies (I refrain from using the phrase "too many hobbies" as hobbies are fun and great and I firmly believe they are good for the soul!)

Just a month ago I sat down and thought about my hobbies and tried to make myself streamline and specialise. I broke it down to:

Things to work on, love, and do well!: crochet, lomography/photography, print gocco, sewing

Other things I would like to be good at: French, Japanese, belly dancing, playing the keyboard, playing the cello, making things out of resin

Things I've kind of started but am going to cut away, for the sake of the greater good: knitting, paper craft, cross stitch, felting

So, I've started looking into TtV (that's what the cool people call it, y'know). It's fabulous. And from what I can ascertain, it is essentially taking a picture on a new digital camera through the viewfinder of an old dual lens camera. You set up a crazy contraption to guide the light and then voila - an awesome dreamy picture through the crusty viewfinder of the other camera. Who thinks up this stuff? Someone clearly F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S. And don't worry, there's no sugar - I am just going to bundle it up with my lomography/photography existing hobby, as surely the concepts of photo composition and light etc can still be somewhat applied? So it's really only an extension of an existing hobby, which is really a very good thing. It really is.

Here are some TtV pictures I found online:


photo 1 from Gingerpixel and photos 2 and 3 from Jenny Cisney

And lastly, Harriet from Brissie. I have mentioned her in a previous post, and in fact this whole TtV adventure started when I had a light bulb moment last night that I would ask if she does wedding photography!!! Like, hello, she is clearly awesome, her photos are mad, she is based in Brissie - perfect!!! She sells these photos and more at her Etsy shop. Legend.

*Oh yeah, the star, forgot about that little love! O Brother Where Art Thou has got to be right up there with best movies ever. It's bonafide.

Advanced Style

Don't ya just hate it when you are super busy at work and uni and then when you're not at work you're brain dead and all you want to do is be a vegetable and nothing particularly newsworthy is happening in your life so you therefore have nothing particularly exciting to put on your new blog? And even if something amazing happened, you couldn't imagine summoning the energy to write it down? And you're just too tired to see as much beauty in the little things as you know you should?

Well, oyster/erster welcome to the last few days. So here I am instead, posting pictures of people infinitely more stylish and interesting than I am from my number 1 favourite blog - Advanced Style. Everyday I hope that I am as kooky and fierce as they are when I've been there and done that with life. My old age will not be a riot of talc and tight perms and harry-high-pants - it will not!!

Alice is coming and I CAN'T WAIT!!

Bedazzling - a retrospective

My last post about the latest additions to my painfully overfull accessories cupboard (that's right, I don't just have a jewellery box, I need an entire CUPBOARD!) got me thinking back to all my well loved pieces from the past. I have always been an accessories kinda gal, but clearly of late my taste has been moving away from the OTT and closer to the pretty and slightly more subtle. Wow - Subtlety, now that's a look I never thought I would be able to add to my list of fads and phases!

Like any true accessories queen, at a very young age I discovered the power of the perfect little something to finish off an outfit.



Since then, my bells and beads and scarves and shoes have been many and varied, with sadly no photos capturing forever some of those wonderful bedazzling moments that come together on a particularly creative whim. But a flip back through the photo albums quickly uncovered a couple of stellar examples of my ghosts of accessories past, all with their own memories and stories. I wonder, if you were there, do you remember these good ole days through what you are wearing in these shots too?

Bedazzling

Ooooh I just got two new necklaces! Hoorah! I love them!

From Made It seller Suga*n*Spice

From Etsy seller roundabout

Major Girl Crush #4 - She-Ra

pics here

Major Boy Crush #1 - Graeme from The Goodies

No one else can pull off brown corduroy like he can. And it's not just normal cord either, it was seriously thick. It takes style to pull that off you know. Combined with the big glasses and the bigger mutton chops - what a hunk.

piccies found here

Warby Weekender!

Spent a lovely weekend at the pretty little house of my beautiful friend Kester. The trip down and back was accompanied by the radio tuned to Gold 104.3 "where the classic hits and fair-dinkum Aussie doubles roll" until we were far enough out to get Yarra Valley FM "for a finger-pickin' good time". I was in paradise, husband-to-be not so much.

We put a roast in the slow cooker and cosied up with some fuego. We read our library books ('Gothic Glamour' and '100 Years of Fabulous Australian Weddings' for me and 'Micro-Serfs' for Pete), we read the paper (yes, that's my favourite goat lady with her beloved goats!) and we ate Guylian sea shells. We brewed some mulled wine in a pot on top of the fire place and we watched some movies (Terminator 1 - fantastic, and Alien Resurrection - terrible).

Unfortunately, I spent most of the evening in a coma from the carbocide committed by ingesting the aforementioned sea shells and mulled wine, but it was fun all the same!

This morning we stopped in at the yummiest cafe in Warby for breakfast. I had the Greek brekkie (scrambled eggs with tomatoes, spinach, olives and feta). Yum yum yum and it certainly satisfied my sudden craving for cooked tomatoes!

When we got home I had a long soak in a hot bath - don't you just love taking a bath in the afternoon? I do!