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illustrator Maren ESDAR
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for a time...

hi lovelies, you may have noticed my increasing absence from this blog. i have decided to take an indefinate hiatus from it while i sort out my life (i made a new header and everything!). while i'm gone, please enjoy a cup of tea on me ;)

much love and sparkling christmas wishes to you all x

want.

i have become more than a little obsessed with kuehn keramik - vintage looking, quirky ceramics in all kinds of different homewares products. i would gladly fill my house with these! unfortunately it seems they are only available in berlin, or i would requesting everyone buy me something from here for christmas ;) the internet continues to torture me, sigh.

christmas love

can i tell you a secret? i've already started listening to christmas carols. about a week ago in fact, i love them! but not your average christmas carols, i'm talking old crooners christmas carols - bing crosby, tony bennett, frank sinatra, louis armstrong, even some johnny cash - mmm, delish!





you simply must listen to this eartha kitt song - you can thank me later ;) the sound quality of this one is not so good, but i love the video. click here for one with much better sound quality.

i do love this time of year, i think the atmosphere in the air is beautiful, strangers join together to wish each other joy, we stop work to spend time with loved ones and eat and drink until we can eat and drink no more. i realise for many people it is not a joyous time of year, the loss of family or friends can make it a sad period. my own grandmother died in december 8 years ago this year, but i try to remember all the wonderful christmas' we spent with her, and how much she would be enjoying herself if she was still with us. at this time of year i choose not to spend time focussing on the stress of travelling between split up families, or the cost and commercialisation of present giving (although, giving gifts to people is one of my favourite parts of chrismas, and i may do a post later about gift ideas!), i focus on the wonderful things. so, without furthur ado, my favourite things about christmas:

christmas decorations! there are so many beautiful ones out there at the moment - i like to take inspiration from the ones i see in the store and make my own. this year i'm planning on making my own 'tree' (our apartment is a bit too tiny for a real tree)

christmas carols - as mentioned just before, the old style jazz carols are so joyous and you can't help but feel happy listening to them. of course, they all talk about a white christmas, or how cold it is sitting next to the fire, which is a complete contrast to our christmas' here of 40 degree heat and water fights with your brother, but you can just imagine the snow falling in the moonlight and it's quite romantic and lovely.

my family - christmas at my parent's house in the country is always amazing. mum and i spend a couple of days cooking up a storm (listening to awesome christmas music of course), and then christmas day is always fairly quiet, just the four of us hanging out and eating and generally enjoying each others company.

reminiscing - it's almost a family christmas tradition for us, we always seem to drag out the old music (me usually), and old home movies (my dad of course), from our childhood and laugh about how i used to dance around to the 'popcorn' song when i was really little (i have no idea what the song is actually called) or how my brother had the 'funniest home videos' worthy moment of smacking his head on a drainpipe while filling up a water balloon.

food - more family traditions! we always make most of the same foods for christmas, potato salad, waldorf salad, delicious roast sweet potato and pecan salad, and my mum makes the most amazing pecan pie every year, it always makes us feel so ill, but it is so delicious!

presents! i think i enjoy the process of giving more than actually receiving presents. i love to go shopping (or make my own) presents, and putting a lot of thought into what they'll like, and then wrapping all my presents to a particular theme (i love love love wrapping presents - perhaps a little too much, ha), and then watching the person open it - it's wonderful! i'm a pain in the arse when opening presents, i'm one of those who never wants to rip the paper, so i'll take 5 minutes just extracting the sticky tape! is anyone else this bad?

funnily enough i have never enjoyed christmas cards. i guess it's because most of the time they say "dear.......... merry christmas and a happy new year. love..........." which really, is a pointless waste of paper and then you feel guilty for throwing them away two years later. however, our family always circulates a christmas letter which i did last year for my mum (who was very busy with studying) and i plan on doing this year again, and i quite enjoy doing those, and receiving them from the rest of the family.

so... your turn my lovelies, what do you love about christmas? do you have any christmas traditions? have you ever had a 'white christmas'?

equal love and rights for all!

today we're going to take a bit of a break from the fashion and the blinged up phones (glad you all liked it by the way - send me pictures if you do something similar!!) to talk about a couple of very important causes. the first is one to get all the men in your life involved in as today is 'white ribbon' or 'national swear' day - swear to end men's violence against women. a website called 'my oath' has been set up to allow all aussie men to make an oath to women. it goes a little something like this: I swear: never to commit violence against women, never to excuse violence against women, and never to remain silent about violence against women. This is my oath. such a great cause, get all the lovely aussie men in your life involved today.


the second are the 'equal love' rallies happening nationally this weekend, the 28th of november to rally for same-sex marriage. i personally find it disgusting that we, as a community, are so prejudiced against a whole group of humans. in my mind it is akin to not allowing women or non-caucasian people to vote or sit in the same section of the bus. the rallies are happening in:

melbourne (state library, 1pm)
sydney (sydney town hall, 1pm)
adelaide (parliament house, 11am)
canberra (garema place, civic, 1pm)
brisbane (queens park, opposite treasury casino, 1pm)
perth (outside london court, 2pm)
lismore (corner magellan and molesworth streets, 10am).

if you are unable to make it to any of the rallies (which includes me, unfortunately), please consider signing the petition on the website to show your support. for more info, and to double check the rally times in case i copied it wrong (oops) check the website here. and spread the word!

big love!

pearls + vintage florals = ultimate phone bling

it seems lady melbourne and i are on the same brain wave this week (great minds think alike and all that, ha) and have blinged up our phones - except that mine is a diy version! it's becoming a fairly common problem (at least in my household) to not know whose phone is whose, what with 90% of the population having an iphone. just the other day i lost my phone in the house, called it, only to discover it was in the pocket of one of our friends! oops. that night i decided to scour ebay for some pretty phone bling so my phone would stand out. here's what i found:

of course i couldn't decide which to get so i got both - for a little over $10 for both (yep, including shipping), i didn't have to think too long about it. shipping was incredibly fast, i ordered them on friday and they arrived today, both are from this store (or you can click on the images to go to the specific auction sites). i initially decided to go with the floral sticker first - then realised i could probably make a border of the pearl stickers too, hooray. here's how my phone turned out:

i'm rather pleased with it! what do you lovelies think? have you blinged up your phone or had it "pocket stolen" recently?

ps, i'm still waiting on a 'mirror' screen protector to make my bling-age complete. yes!

do you know.... silk spun?

i have something very exciting to share with you all - a new blogger *cheers*. now, this may not sound terribly exciting at first, but wait until i introduce her. this newcomer is one foxy lady. not only is she beautiful, funny and intelligent, she is artistic, creative, has mad crafting skills, and has an amazingly poetic was of writing. she also happens to be one of my closest friends - hoorah for me! and just to prove it, here we are in all our sassy glory at our graduate interior design exhibition.



and again, but more pose-y...


isn't she delightful? anyway, i highly encourage you to go and check out her blog and show her some serious love - perhaps she will grace us with more blog posts!

with love from aubergine and the cloth moth ;)

edit: the ever lovely sarah from death wears diamond jewellery has rightly pointed out that i am an idiot, and forgot to link to the blog i am raving about. oops. here it is! click here! click here! click here!

thanks sarah :)

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if you have been reading any other aussie blogs recently you will probably know we're in the middle of a heat wave, it's is currently 30 degrees with an expected top of 33! my love and i were having our breakfast on the balcony this morning at 8.30 and it was already 26, craziness! so i thought i would share some delicious images with you to make us all feel cooler. and don't be expecting any outfit posts - it's ain't pretty ;)

today i....

* had a tea party with my favourite ladies of glamour

*said goodbye to a friend. i will miss her dearly

* cheered myself by watching 'gentlemen prefer blondes'



*may or may not have squealed out loud in the 'diamond's are a girls best friend' scene





* had an impromptu photoshoot with cute heart cookies one of my lady's made. delish!




* watched grey gardens.



* wondered what all the fuss was about (apologies if you like this movie, it's interesting, just not as glamorous as i was expecting). i'm eager to see how they remade it, it just seems impossible to recreate such crazy, heh.

* now wondering what i will cook my delightful fiance for dinner. what a good little housewife i am, hehe.


much love to you all!

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