in december drinking horchata

Horchata - Vampire Weekend

A few more piccies from our trip that I liked and wanted to share with you. Did everybody see the Britney episode of Glee which was on UK teevee this week? Loved it! I think it is the best yet. Mostly because it featured my favourite character Brittany, she is hilarious!

I freakin' love these bendy things.

Mmm coffee. Not. This man thought we wanted two coffees when Wes tried to order one for himself. I think coffee is yucky. But I drank this one because the man who made it was really sweet and I didn't want to offend him. It wasn't actually that yucky.

Paella and sangria: my perfect meal.

baubles

One way of describing the shopping in southern Spain is disappointing. Or do you think I should have snapped up one of these babies?

andalucia

I'm baaack! Just a few photos from our trip around the south of Spain over Christmas and New Year. Loved it. Real sunshine, good food, great company and a random NYE with strangers I will never see again.

Canal-boating in Wales over the long weekend. Had so much fun with my friends. The Brecon Beacons are really beautiful and the canal is so serene you feel like the rest of the world just doesn't even exist. The boats are really hard to drive (as I found out) but you get the hang of the locks and there are soo many pubs aaaallll the way along the canal! I would recommend this holiday to anyone and everyone.

Gee it's been awhile since I've done any fashion-related posts! Well summer's way too busy for thinking about posing for photos. I am actually proud of myself for not even worrying about the blog, I'm just out there living the dream - seriously, can't even begin to describe how much stuff I've packed into the last couple of months - and if I take a few photos while I'm doing it, I'll share them with you :-)

i'll be seeing you

Yes, I actually stayed here. 

Words cannot describe how much I loved my weekend in Tuscany, and how I can't wait to go back, hopefully with more time for sightseeing. I actually went to Pisa and didn't see the leaning tower! Much more pressing matters such as vino and antipasto were at hand. A gorgeous friend was celebrating her Hen's and we did it in style. It was quite last minute but we all whisked ourselves away for a long weekend. I drove on the wrong side of the road, was wooed by a rotund man called Julio, and had the most amazing meal of my life. I will never forget it.

Do I need to explain the title of this post? Stealing Beauty is one of my favourite movies of all time and I always dreamed of living the romance of Tuscany. I also love the soundtrack, which features this mournful Billie Holliday song.

hipstamatic

What the hell kind of weather was that for a long weekend?? Shocking. But that didn't stop us from daytripping across the south-east of England, from Canterbury to the White Cliffs of Dover and back again.

On the way we detoured through a few well-known English seaside towns and the overall consensus is, we must stop going to English seaside towns. My God, they are so depressing! I know that comparisons to our coast are probably not really fair, but I just can't understand how these places ever attract tourists. Or repeat tourists I suppose is more accurate. I know the beach huts look charming but the truth is, they become essential when the beach is that unpleasant! These guys do inland alot better.
 Canterbury is lovely, the cathedral impressive, and we had a truly great dinner at a British restaurant called Deeson's. I recommend highly. And Whitstable was quite nice too just the weather was so bad I seriously regretted even getting out of the car!
Those are my new glasses, by the way, which I mulled over for months before I finally just snapped one day and couldn't stand my old ones anymore. I think they tread a line between funky and twat. And they only hurt my right ear just a little bit.

I bought the broguey-sandals last week!! Yay. Bad news is that the boots sold out on General Pants the same day I posted them!! Damn you Pants-man!!

Having holiday withdrawals...

Well, I just returned from the most amazing trip to Croatia and Italy! Okay, maybe it was a week ago but I'm pretending I only just got back, as it's my only excuse for not posting in so long. I am still recovering, and let me tell you it didn't start well, either! Packing was always going to be a bit of a challenge, being my first summer holiday in a very long while: What do you wear when it's hot? To the beach? And to go out after a day at the beach? AND what do you wear when you're going to be spending a week on a sailing boat, going to the beach, and then going out after?? Anyway, had to go through all the boxes of clothes packed away in my friends' cupboard only to find that the whole box of shoes was missing! They must be at my old flat! Arghh! So I basically had to go on a summer holiday with shoes from my endless winter stint! I had to wear joggers pretty much everyday for almost 2 weeks! It was so hard to get dressed everyday knowing you look like a daggy tourist and not being able to do anything about it! Got some pretty funny looks from the locals, too, like they'd never seen a pair of athletic shoes before or something! Don't you just love travelling to countries where it's not considered rude to stare and point? Anyway, I think I managed to choose only photos where you can't see my shoes. Here are some typical sight-seeing photos to whet your appetite, more to come...

The promenade at Split. Hmm, I look kind of pregnant in this picture. Yeah, not.

Cafe culture inside Diocletian's Palace, Split

Dubrovnik, Croatia's 'Jewel'. Basically our week-long sailing trip was filled with scenery like this!

The Pantheon, Rome. Copied from the Greeks.

The Colosseum. Massive. Awesome.

St. Peter's Basilica, in the outfit that was supposedly so offensive it had to be covered up by scarves bought for 4 Euro each before I could enter!

After seeing the Sistine Chapel, you have to walk for about half an hour just to get out. This staircase was a welcome sight! Not that the Vatican wasn't great, just never-ending.

Viciously, she sleeps

Wow, I have been in London for a few days now and it is completely surreal. In some ways it feels like I never left, and yet my friends have so many stories of the stuff we missed out on :-(
Off to Croatia tomorrow, VERY early but very excited! Hopefully might be able to post from some internet cafe or something, but I'm not getting my hopes up. But of course I will have heaps of fabulous photos to show everyone when I get back!
I am incredibly jetlagged as I write this and have a headache along with occasional sea-sickness (what the?)!

Sorry for the lack of photos but I forgot to take any when I saw all my friends, I was a bit overwhelmed!

Capsule Wardrobe

As the 21st August draws nearer, I start to think about packing. Maybe that should be panic about packing. Of course, in the past 2 years I have had to pack my entire life & move it halfway around the world twice already so I should be a pro, right?

I like to approach it like I’m a designer creating a capsule collection from my archives. It has to distil the essence of me, in a suitcase. Sometimes you might find you learn a lot about yourself & your style. I may have forgotten that item even existed for the past 2 years, but it does serve an essential purpose in a wider context, I swear!

I really should have brought less with me, seeing as I have worn the same outfit pretty much everyday for 4 months. Plus, this time I need to take summer clothes with me, which I haven’t needed since December 2007! Wish me luck!
Made a collage of a few things I couldn’t live without…

My Josh Goot silver trench; My tan brogues I wear every second day; My Carrie dress - a vintage one my sister bought for about 20 bucks but reminds me of Miss Bradshaw; Primark shirt dress that must have a cost-per-wear ratio in the negative by now; Marc Jacobs (that I think might be Marc Fakeobs); Morine Comte Morant top I got on sale from ASOS just in time to wear once before leaving London :-)

Adios muchachos!

So I found out a week ago, but now it’s official – I have, in my hand, our Visas for the UK that have so far taken 4 months to get!!
I can’t believe it, we’re heading back to London! Yay! I feel like I won the lottery! I have missed my friends so much, I can’t wait to see them again, hopefully I do not smother them to death with too many hugs!
To top it all off, we can also go on our Croatia sailing tour which has been in the works since January!! (Bikini body not quite ready, hopefully can get away with a caftan for a whole week).
Of course I have not only missed my friends, but the whole life we had there. We have so much fun, get up to a healthy amount of mischief, travel, and the fashion. Oh, the fashion. I’m really looking forward to blogging from an “Australian girl in London” angle, and I hope you enjoy it too! There are so many interesting, creative exhibitions, collaborations, projects and the like going on all the time, I will be able to share it all with you.
I’m so ready to leave Aus, which is no real reflection on the place, just the fact that I haven’t worked in so long which means no money, and I think I have had enough quiet nights in to last a lifetime. Am definitely thinking about freighting my sewing machine over, though, so I can keep up with my newly acquired hobby. The next week is going to be frantic! We fly A380 on Friday!!!