Five Kind Things For Mum

Delicious Herbal Tea → Everybody loves tea, especially the tasty, relaxing kind in an adorable package. Sleepytime Tea is a mixture of chamomile, spearmint, lemongrass, rosebuds and an abundance of ingredients that sound like they are cultivated in your Grandmother's garden. Anything caffine free with mint & chamomile given to your Mum before bed will surely leave her in a dreamy state of heavenly maternal bliss.
Heart Shaped Notes → Love hearts and handwritten notes, a combination not to be passed up. I used to leave my Mum notes on her pillow when I was little (although they were usually an apology for something dreadful I had done!) and she still brings them up. A little note saying "Have a good day!" tucked into her wallet to surprise her when she pays for her morning coffee, or pulls out her bus ticket brings smiles (and possibly questions, what were you doing fishing around in her bag?)
Letters On The Mirror → The discovery of opaque markers (write on the mirror & it washes right off) had me eager to write messages on all the mirrors in my house. Kind words in unexpected places improve everybody's mood...especially a big "Good Morning!"
Voodoo Dolls! → Perfect for the office bound Mum & not quite as terrifying as the real Voodoo thing. It comes with white pins for good fortune (like a promotion or finding lost keys) & black for bad fortune (migraines and an audit!) My Mum had one on her desk until my friend Teresa visited me while I was doing work experience there and promptly split the Voodoo doll's crotch open. As you do.
Tea & Toast In Bed → Nothing goes with Sunday morning and a newspaper like the perfect hot cup of tea, a couple of slices of toast and a perfectly happy Mum. Throw in a bright blue sky and open windows and you have a wonderful, wonderful day.

Claudia Kishi, Middle School Dropout

With all the 1990's flashbacks that seem to be popping up lately I can't help but think of my favourite 90's reading material, Babysitters Club books! I threw mine out when I moved house a couple of years ago and deeply regretted it until I spotted a bunch at the local op shop for 50 cents and oh, the memories have come flooding back. So I thought, why not devote a post to the BSC.

All pics from Dibbly Fresh
The Hidden Bookcase A big old Babysitters Club resource, my favourite part is the merchandise. Um...a Mallory doll? Why would they take time to specify how ugly Mallory is in every book and then try and sell a doll in her image?
Dibbly Fresh A photo gallery of all the covers, TV shows and the movie.
BSC Snark An analysis of the hilarious and unrealistic world of the BSC.
What Claudia Wore A blog about Claudia's outfits, which were always the best part of the books!
Claudia's Room More snarkiness about the books.



And movie Claudia...oh 1995! So fashion forward!

Mrs John Kennedy

Pic from Kennedy Family Forum
You can watch Jackie Kennedy give a tour of the White House here. She's very poised but it's all very awkward and formal. She does get very excited about the items she chose during the massive restorations of the building.
Guess who's currently reading a Jackie O biography?

Cult Favourites and Lovely Makeup

Photos by Marilyn Minter → The most incredible photos of extremely theatrical, sparkly, dramatic makeup. With Halloween coming up (I always get preemptively excited about anything that involves costumes!) her photographs have me wanting to cover my face in glitter and sparkle.

Pic from The Celebrity City
Avene Skin Care → I love looking at the photos of the makeup tables at fashion shows. For starters, I love nosing through my friends makeup bags so it's sort of like nosing through a makeup artists kit. Even more fun is spotting products that aren't completely out of a regular persons budget. For starters, a collection of Avene products which are amazing (I used to work at a Chemist and would constantly use the testers!). Their acne/not so perfect skin treatment Cleanance K is the best, and theirThermal Springwater Spray is amazing, though Evian and a lot of other brands make the same thing.
There seems to a mad love of Aquaphor (which is not available in Australia) amongst makeup artists and...gasp...Mary-Kate Olsen.
"We are both addicted to aquaphor healing ointment under our eyes and on our lips. It creates a dewy look and keeps our skin moisturised."
I assume Aquaphor is similar to the cult favourite Lucas Pawpaw Ointment which is the worlds most amazing lip balm, eye cream, scar treatment and is, as far as I know, only available in Australia.
So, any cosmetic favourites?

One Beautiful Old Library

Pics from Schwartzray, State Records NSW & Many Pixels on Flickr

Just flicked through this months Australian Vogue to see the lovely Abby Lee Kershaw in the even lovelier State Library of NSW.
The first time I went to the State Library I was working as an office junior at a law firm and was sent there to find an obscure article about children and car safety from the 1900's. Thankfully it took an equally obscure amount of time for the clerk to find it so I wandered around in complete wonderment trying to memorise every fascinating detail. It's like a fairytale building, with an enormous glass ceiling and thousands of beautiful leather bound books on dark wood shelves and I was so excited to see it on the pages of Vogue!

Pics from The Fashion Spot

Green & Gold

Photos from gossipgirlfan.com
With the Olympics on TV every night and Australiana at it's peak (well, except for everytime they play NZ in the Rugby) I have been noticing the green and gold everywhere, including the photos from the set of the new season of Gossip Girl, which obviously I'm fairly excited for. I love the greens, especially the forest green, and I love the yellows just not together.
Although, perhaps if the Australian Olympic team had been dressed by the GG costume department they would have looked as presentable and elegant as Miss Waldorf?

Every month I make a mixtape (mix CD?) that I listen to until I want to set my headphones on fire, I thought I'd share this months!

August 2008 Mixtape
Brian Jonestown Massacre - That Girl Suicide
Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman No Cry
Cake - Friend Is A Four Letter Word
Cake - Love You Madly
El-P - The Overly Dramatic Truth
Iggy Pop & The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog
Jens Lekman - Maple Leaves
Ky-Mani Marley - Heart Of A Lion
Mungo Jerry - In The Summertime
Pete Yorn - Strange Condition
Prokofiev - Montagues and Capulets
Sanny Alves - Supercalifragilisticexpialidoso (A Bossa Nova version of the Disney song!)
Scott McKenzie - San Francisco
War- Why Can't We Be Friends

Cats, Nerd's and Determined Journalists

Cats and Balding Men Don't Mix Well → Further proof that cats will eat anything, this cat went into heart failure after licking a hair growth product off it's owner head. The thought of a cat cleaning it's owners bald scalp makes me laugh but the subsequent almost dead cat doesn't tickle my fancy so much. Which reminds me, one time my Dad came running inside our house excitedly to show me something. When I went with him I found it was a dead cat, which had gone all stiff and had it's eyes open. It was one of the creepiest things I've ever found in the backyard.
Nerdy TV Show Calls For Nerdy Viewers To Suggest Nerdy Props → The completely brilliant, hilarious and quite, quite dorky show The IT Crowd is asking for suggestions for their set, the IT department, which is like a giant game of 'spot the internet meme'. Who doesn't love a show with audience participation? (Unless of course it's one of those insane street performers who want you to stand stock still while they juggle flaming batons next to your head).
Journalist Continues Report After Being Shot On Air → That's dedication! The journo was reporting on the Georgia/Russia conflict and was shot in the left arm by a sniper's bullet and after ducking for cover she continued her report. It's surprising that doesn't happen more often, considering the amount of journo's in war zones. I don't know whether that's impressive or insane!

Country Colours

China's Tomato & Scramble Egg Olympic Uniform→ I love to watch the Olympic opening ceremony every Olympics, especially for the uniforms and the way each country comes into the stadium. I love the smaller African nations, they always have brilliant outfits, they usually look ecstatic to be there and a lot of them dance. Everything about their entrance is fun!
Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the countries I'm from. For Beijin, the Australian uniform is a vile blue dip dye tracksuit and the New Zealanders are wearing Crocs. Apparently there isn't a lot of affection for the Chinese teams uniform either with people comparing it to a scrambled egg and tomato dish.
The Chinese uniform was one of my favourites, mostly because it reminded me of a boy my friend and I saw at a music festival when we were 15. He was wearing a red shirt and a buttercup yellow tie (it was 2000 and we were all really into quirky boys) and we nicknamed him "the cheese and tomato guy". That and the Chinese uniform looks like the sunset after a really hot summers day.
The reaction we have to colour combinations has always fascinated me. My Mum was a belly dance teacher/performer when I was growing up and made and sold a lot of costumes. This is while we were living in NZ and any black/silver costume she made wouldn't sell because it was too patriotic looking. Black and silver would sell to in Australia but green and gold wouldn't (Aussie colours).
Somebody from another country might not look at a green and yellow outfit and think "Why are you dressed like an Australian rugby supporter?" in the same way that I look at the Chinese Olympic uniforms and don't think of a delicious sounding egg dish. It's the tomato and scramble egg clause.

Little Petals

I was just watching the first series of Skins for the umpteenth time, because it's like teenage angst on steroids and because I love Cassie (first season only, she's kind of a nightmare in the second season) and Effy (so dark, complex and brooding). Watching Skins makes me realise that I love those characters, the whimsical, mysterious, multi faceted dreamer. I think it's because we can all relate to the romantic, wide eyed, wild haired girl in the floaty dress in the movies.
I love a well written Romantic Girl (hmmm, is there a better name for them?) and how familiar her thoughts, actions and words are. They might be an overblown version of us, or a different version of us but we empathise because we know the feelings well.

Some obvious favourites;
The Lisbon girls in The Virgin Suicides→ "They had killed themselves over the dying forests; over the manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked higher than the pyramids; they had killed themselves over the failure to find a love none of us could ever be. In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws."


Lolita→ Honestly, I found the book disturbing. I refer only to the sweet, innocent style in the films which is perfect.


Astrid in White Oleander→ The book or the movie, but the book is just so beautifully written. "I'm enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you. Changes its mind. But hatred, now. That's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but hatred cradles you. It's so soothing. I feel infinitely better now."


Effy and Cassie in Skins→ Cassie because she's like every silly daydream and dreadful nightmare combined.
Tony: How's the treatment going, Cassie?
Cassie: Oh, it's cool. I wear a white dress and now I can eat yogurt, cup a soup and hazelnuts now. If I'm not sick, they let me play with the cats. Yeah, it's like... hazy days, you know?

Effy because she's a little dangerous, secretive, and hides her vulnerabilities.
Sometimes I think I was born backwards, you know came out my mum the wrong way. I hear words go past me backwards. The people I should love I hate, and the people I hate...


And general prettiness from White Oleander and some French movie (I've forgotten it's name, something to do with flowers?)


Some Livejournal communities to appeal to your romantic girl sensibilities:
Beds And Dreams
Pearls And Tea
Winters Gold
Little Honeybees
Tea Sparrows
Treasure And Gems

How Zoe Can You Go?

The Rachel Zoe Project → Fashionologie has a preview episode of The Rachel Zoe Project online which will make you faint, flutter and fall in love with the idea of becoming a stylist (like it's that easy or simple). She has rack upon rack of dresses that are far more interesting than she is but that's alright, she has two employees who don't get along and make each other cry so she doesn't need a personality. One of the assistants is the most adorable, foppish gay boy with thick nerd glasses who wants to be friends with the other assistant who is having none of it and wants Rachel Zoe to choose between them. To briefly summarise the show, it's high school with better clothes.
Take The High Road Editorial from UK Vogue. It's most excellent.

Here Comes the Son

I am loving this editorial for the Fashion Rocks supplement with Dhani Harrison (George Harrison's son with his second wife, Olivia Trinidad Arias). Not only does Dhani look almost identical to his Dad, but Sasha Pivovarova plays his muse in this editorial and is definitely working the Patti Boyd, rock and roll wife look.




And some Patti and George for references sake!

New Season of Pushing Daisies!!!!

Plaid and Kenny Rogers

I go through phases of love, hate and indifference when it comes to Mary-Kate Olsen. I like that she does things a little differently, that she's essentially an eccentric millionare with a really great shoe collection. I like that most of her looks can be worn on a chain store budget and mixed and matched and muddled in a million different ways. I like that she dresses with a sense of humour (A Kenny Rogers tshirt?!). What I don't like is that sometimes it's all a bit much. It's a bit too much interesting shoe/oversized proportions/messy hair/405 rings. Imagine the hair up, white tshirt, Givenchy bag of the first outfit with the black mini of the second and the amazing shoes of the third? And the plaid? I remember seeing a movie where a character said when you're dressed up you look in the mirror and take off one accessory. Well, I'd chuck the plaid this time.
I do ,however, like that there wikipedia-ing Kenny Rogers leads to a website called menwholooklikekennyrogers. Oh my!

Hats and Words

A lot of the time I want to make a post and I just can't think of what to write. I love writing, some people like to go crazy and punch walls (most of these people have extensive criminal records) but I prefer pen and paper or a keyboard and screen. Some of the time it's the action of making marks on paper, if my head is a mess I copy out passages of books or plays or poetry I like.
I also have a habit of writing on my clothes. I went through a rough time when I finished high school and took to writing on white tshirts with red acrylic paint (which surprisingly and thankfully didn't come off in the wash). I suppose it was less wearing my heart on my sleeve than wearing it in big, angry letters on my chest. Then came a stage where I just wanted to have words near me and I would write inside pieces of clothing. There's something nice about knowing that there are secret words where only you can see them.
And now, somebody I have always admired greatly, Miss Isabella Blow...