Parrrr-tay!

It was my daughter's birthday last week, and we had the ritual family dinner last Saturday, but due to my total lack of organisation and time just getting away from me in the weeks leading up to her birthday I decided to postpone her party with her friends until the following weekend, which is NOW. I'm proud to say I survived her birthday. It was not nearly as stressful or nightmarish as I imagined it would be lol. Don't get me wrong, I love kids, I do, I just love them a lot less when they're running around screaming. But it was great. We hosted it at an indoor play centre and for the most part the kids were occupied with running and sliding and climbing and jumping and left the grown ups to do boring stuff like drink iced coffees and talk. A super pleasant day for all I think.

I didn't get many photos because my friend was taking a heap with her good camera, and the few I did take came out pretty poorly. SO glad to be getting a new camera tomorrow, I only wish I could have bought it before the party! Better late than never I suppose.

Make Hay While the Sun Shines (Buy Pretty Things)

I don't feel as though I was as productive today as I have been other days. I'm kind of down to all the nasty annoying bits of assignments that have been continually put off because I didn't want to deal with them. Who knew leaving all the worst bits until the last minute would be a bad idea!

CURSE YOU, PAST AMBERRRRR!!! 

So I put in like a ten hour day or something stupid at the library. I was working so slowly though, and getting progressively more frustrated with each passing hour that didn't yield the results I wanted. I did finish one assignment though and made some progress on the others. Three left to go now! I swear I've been down to three twice already and then been given another assignment, but I'm pretty sure I've now been given all the assignments I'm meant to do for this term and now its just powering through and completing them. It shouldn't be too bad. Two of the assignments I have left are probably 80-90% completed, so the bulk of my work is going to be on my report comparing two different types of libraries. I feel like I need to go back to the first one I visited because at that stage we hadn't been given the assessment criteria for the assignment so a lot of my notes are pretty useless. I think another visit would help a lot.

So onto things that hopefully won't bore you to tears! I wore the second of my Modcloth dresses today. This one is by a brand called Maitai and I'm having trouble finding a website for them. I did find one but the font of the name is different than on the tag of my dress and it doesn't have any dresses I recognise from Modcloth on there to confirm I'm looking at the right label. So unfortunately due to my lack of ace detective skills I can't link you to the website of the brand.
I know you're probably sick of hearing me say the words "I love this dress", but I love this dress! I know I say that a lot lately but hey, I wouldn't be buying them if I didn't really like them and there's always that worry that an item purchased online might not quite meet your expectations. This dress actually exceeded them. It was described as being made of lycra on the Modcloth page, so I was expecting something similar to my other skater dresses which are fairly cheap and the sort of fabric you might expect bike shorts to be made of. The fabric on this dress is much thicker, and doesn't have that super matte quality to it where you know after a few washes it will have faded considerably. It really is great for me as with all my lumps and bumps a thicker fabric is more flattering. The cut is amazing, it hugs around my bust and waist and then flares out, skimming my hips and bum. It was super comfy for another long day of squirming around on a super uncomfy desk chair. The colour is gorgeous, the pink has kind of a whisper of lavender to it. Maybe that's just my crazy eyes, but while it definitely is a soft musky pink, it has a hint of being a touch purpley. I love the pattern, yes I've been very into florals lately and I feel very fortunate they they along with polka dots are so in right now. I need to stock up before something else becomes more fashionable and the plethora of gorgeous prints fizzles out.

I'll shut up now and show you pictures! :)

And can we all please just take a moment to appreciate these adorable little hair clips I found while on my lunch break yesterday! They match the dress so well, I couldn't resist buying them.

Perfect Dress for a Day at the Library

Another full day spent at the library. Managed to knock out one assignment and get most of the way through another before calling it quits for the day. I have four assignments left to submit, but I'm pretty sure three of them are at least half done so hopefully I won't have too much trouble getting the rest completed by the end of next week.

After a number of new acquisitions over the past month or two my closet is finally starting to morph into something I like to look at. I opened it this morning to grab a dress and saw the assortment of colours and fabrics and patterns and it just looked so pretty. After months of wearing the same handful of things its really awesome to have some options again!

Mish mash of prettiness!

I wore one of my new dresses today. I really do love it. Its the slightly too big one and I'm thinking I will need to get it taken in, but I've decided I want to try and shift some of my excess weight first. In the meantime its a little baggy, but there are worse things, like being slightly too tight! So this is the first of my purchases from Modcloth. Its by a brand called Mikarose  and its really lovely. It has hidden pockets too which makes me ever so happy!

A Bit Burnt Out

Hello everyone. I've been feeling pretty exhausted lately. I've had a sick little dude at home, loads of assignments to get done and a terrible sleep schedule which has all contributed to me not writing on here as often as I originally planned. That being said, I don't want my blog to completely fall by the wayside so I'm going to increase my efforts and make sure I keep to my plan of blogging at least every other day.

All of last week my son was home from school sick. It involved a serious lack of sleep due to his being up and down all night and I had to skip my classes and couldn't get much work done from home, so this week is a lot of playing catch up. Yesterday was little guy's first day back at school and I spent the whole day at the library working on assignments. I managed to make a fair bit of progress, which felt great after spending a week being super unproductive. Today is normally my full day but one of the classes has finished for the term so I only need to attend in the afternoon. Because I missed last week I got myself mixed up and thought I was meant to be in this morning too, and I wasn't the only one, three other people showed up too. We spent the morning working on our assignments and chatting together before the afternoon class which was business as usual.

I got home and found out my package from Modcloth had arrived! I was so excited to open it and also worried that the dresses wouldn't fit. I tried them all on though and they're awesome! One of them is slightly large around the top, but its really not a big deal, just a little baggy at the back. I could probably take it in, but I think I'll just leave it as I don't think it will be noticeable once I have a cardigan on anyway. The other two fit like a glove and are absolutely perfect. Everything I hoped they'd be and you'll definitely be seeing pictures as I wear them, which I'm sure will be in the next few days because I never can wait to wear a new dress!

On the subject of dresses, I'll leave you with this. Its another vintage one I purchased from Ebay a couple of weeks ago and wore it for the first time yesterday. I really need a better belt to go with it, but I only own black or red so I went with the black and wore black shoes as well.

I Live!

Hello everyone! I'm alive. In case you missed me, I've been absent for a few days as my son has been quite sick all week which has resulted in sleepless nights and unproductive days. It was just a stomach bug but it hit him pretty hard. He's on the mend now and should be back at school tomorrow, which means I can go back to actually getting things done during the day. I missed my classes on Monday and Tuesday and haven't been able to get much work done on any of my assignments so I'm going to be very busy trying to catch up over the next week.

I finally today got around to taking photos of the skirt I re-did. I originally blogged about it back in July when I bought a pretty table cloth from an op-shop and made it into a skirt. Here's the link to that blog entry if you missed it. Anyway, I've only worn it once or twice because I couldn't get the waistband right and it looked quite rough and unfinished, so I decided I would fix it. I shortened it a bit, took it in as it was quite large, added a waistband made of a different fabric and installed a zip. Its still slightly large on me but its MUCH more wearable now than it was before. I forgot to take pictures of it hanging up by itself this morning, and by the time I got home tonight I was too tired to bother, but hopefully you get a good idea of how it looks with pictures of it on me.

Twilight Sparkle Hair

Just a quick one tonight. I've spent much of my night fixing up a skirt that I made awhile back and wasn't entirely happy with (I'll share more about that tomorrow).

Tonight I'm just going to share a picture of my new hair. I dyed it yesterday and I'm super happy with the result. I've been doing more pastel shades the past few times, but this time I really wanted bright colours and I think it turned out awesome. A couple of my friends have compared me to Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which is simultaneously awesome and funny. I swear I didn't have her in mind when I dyed it lol. Since I started with the pink and purple hair a few years ago I've been told I looked like a My Little Pony many times, but this is the first time I've been told I looked like a specific pony.

Left: Me, Right: Twilight Sparkle, just in case you couldn't tell!

Polka Dots!

So I think its pretty evident I've gone a little mad lately with the dress buying. I've gained a lot of weight in the past year and honestly I was having trouble fitting into most of my old clothes. It was depressing and irritating, I was feeling very down about going out anywhere because I was stuck wearing the same 3 or 4 dresses all the time. So I decided to buy myself a bunch of new stuff and it has been slowly trickling in via mail from near and far.

I ordered this dress probably about a month ago, it came from Hong Kong so it took awhile to get here. I was a little concerned about buying a cheap dress from an unknown source, but was so cheap ($15 delivered from Ebay) I figured it was worth the risk. And boy did it pay off! The fabric is a lot more sheer than I expected and I need a slip in order to prevent my underwear being seen, but that's alright. Its really stretchy and comfortable, and reasonably forgiving of my lumps and bumps even though the fabric is very thin and clingy. You can't see the hem in the picture (sorry!) but it hits an inch or two below the knee, which is a great length for me. It swings and floats when I walk and flutters in the breeze, all of which make me feel just a wee bit princessy ^_^ I'm really happy with it.

New Old Dress

I kind of go through fits and phases with my clothing colours. I'll go through a period where everything I buy is bright and bold, then another period where most things are black or otherwise dark. At the moment I'm on a real floral kick, and when I saw this dress on ebay I had to have it. It arrived on Friday and I wore it today. It feels so nice on. Its a nice, thick fabric that feels like it holds me in, its tight and loose in all the right places, its a perfect length and its so darn cute!

I wore it with my peach cardigan, which is fast becoming a wardrobe staple. I love the colour and its my cardigan of choice any time I can get away with wearing it. I was a bit iffy about wearing it with this dress at first, but hesitation faded fast and I thought it looked cute with the orange in the dress.

Today was my full day of classes, but one of the units I'm doing finishes next week so I'm kinda sad about that. I have several assignments due in the next week or two so I'm going to be pretty busy. I was planning on spending tomorrow making a new skirt, but that's going to have to wait until I'm at least satisfied with the amount of progress I've made on my work. Instead, I'll be spending tomorrow in the university library where I can work on things uninterrupted. 

Today we had a field trip to another nearby library. Its located on a high school campus and is used doubly by the school and the community as their public library. Its quite small as it was built when the area was pretty remote. The area is still very rural, but the city has expanded so much in the last 20 years that now its only about 20 minutes out of town. Its still very tiny and services some remote customers as well as the local community. I really enjoyed our visit. Its such a cozy library, books crammed in every available space, richly decorated with murals, streamers, posters and children's artwork. The staff there seem to really love their library, and I think that seeps into the walls and shelves. So far every place we've visited has made me look more forward to getting a job in this field. I can't wait to do my work placement and find out what its really like to spend a week or two working there. Hopefully the job still holds its charm!

My Favourite School

I've been to a lot of different schools. By the time I left high school I had been to 13 different schools. That's an average of one a year from Kindergarten until Year 12. Sometimes I stayed at one for a few years, sometimes I went for only a few weeks or months. The joys of moving a lot! Some schools I hated, some I loved, most fell somewhere in between. But there was only one school that I'll love forever. It was a place I felt instantly at home, I clicked, this was MY school, the place I was meant to be. That place was Hollywood High School.

I got to thinking about it today while I was researching something totally unrelated. I decided to go on the Los Angeles Public Library website to see if they had any helpful resources that might give me some new ideas. Instead, I saw a link to their photo collection, which boasts "80,000+ Historic Photos". I love looking at photos of old Los Angeles, so I immediately wondered what they might have in this collection, and then I wondered specifically about Hollywood High. Even when I was there it was beautiful, run down perhaps, but just gorgeous. Art deco architecture, a small theater for minor performance and a large auditorium that seats 2500 and has its own pipe organ (which was being restored at the time after damage in the 90's that had been neglected). The place was amazing and I loved my (far too short) time there, so I thought I'd share some of the photos I found in the collection, and a few more that I googled.

Pictures from the 1920's and 30's

 The 1937 Ceremony celebrating the widening of Highland avenue took place outside the Hollywood High School auditorium

Modern Pictures of the auditorium, The mural was added in 2002 and features some of the school's celebrity alumni. The rear of the auditorium overlooked the sports field and had the school mascot painted on it.

Science building entrance 1937 and 2011 (sorry the 2011 is a little blurry!)

Interior stairwell

Playgrounds, Procrastination and Pottermore

Today I had an awesome day out with my kiddies. I woke up over an hour late and rushed to get everyone ready. We met up with my friend Paul and his three little ones and let them loose at a local play center. They ran around like crazy for a couple of hours and then we headed out to get lunch. We got fish and chips from a shop around the corner and had an impromptu picnic in the park across the road, which involved some more running and swinging and climbing before it was time to go. They had a great time and haven't shut up all afternoon/night about when we're going to do it again! I'm so glad the kids all get along. I knew they would, they're all so adorable, but seeing them all running around together having fun made me super happy.

This evening I'm trying to get some work done on an assignment. It has me tearing my hair out, I swear. I've been working on it for hours and seriously have nothing done. It sounded incredibly easy but its proving quite frustrating finding all the information I need. I'm really tired, last night was another night of little sleep, so I'm thinking I might just have to give up for today and try it again in the morning. I feel a little defeated and deflated, but hopefully I have more luck tomorrow.

I registered for Pottermore ages ago but at that stage there wasn't much going on there so I never used it and forgot my login details. A few days ago my friend said new features had been added and she'd been using it again, so I re-registered and have whittled away quite a few hours on there. Its fun and relaxing, and interesting! So on that note, I think its time for some Pottermore before bed.

Project Makeover Fugly Dress!

This morning I woke up with a clear sense of purpose! Well no, I woke up grumpy and groggy like every morning. But once I was properly awake, I had a clear sense of purpose!

A dress arrived the other day which I had purchased on Ebay for super cheaps. It looked a bit nanna-ish in the picture but I figured it was only a few dollars and I could probably do something with it. When it arrived, it wasn't quite was I was expecting! It was really a sack with buttons on the front. Everything about it was just so wrong. It was too big, the "waist" was super low, the skirt was too long. The whole thing was about as unflattering as a dress gets.

So I had a think about what I could do with it, and decided to spend today trying to actually do it. I'm pretty sure I've said before how inexperienced I am with sewing, so I'm learning every time I sit down at my machine. But I'm actually really enjoying it and it gives me a great sense of accomplishment once I actually finish something. There is definitely room for improvement with this dress. The bust area is still a little loose, some fabric in the front folded over while I was sewing and I didn't realise so I went straight over it, so I probably need to do that part again, and I'm not completely happy with the gathering at the sides but I was sick of fiddling with it tonight so its staying that way for now. However, as I said, I'm still very new to this so I'm still happy just to end up with something like what I was aiming for!

Here's the dress:

Before and After

And here it is as part of a complete breakfast... um, outfit!

Please excuse the bra straps, I don't even own a strapless bra! The shame!

Field Trip and Online Window Shopping

Hello Poppets! ...Now I want to watch Mrs Doubtfire.

Today I had my full day of classes, which always leaves me super exhausted. We had our usual class in the morning, then went on a field trip! We visited the NT Library in the city, and their back of house processing area which is on a separate site. The library smelled absolutely delicious when I walked in, rich with the crisp scent of semi-gloss paper.  I got to see a newspaper from the late 1800's, the actual real thing, not a copy. Yeah okay, that's probably boring to you, but not to me! I just find everything about libraries interesting, but particularly the lengths some libraries go to preserve old documents.

But lets move on from that before I bore you all to death! I'm currently sitting here with a few items in a cart from the City Chic website, totally torn over whether or not to buy them. The tights and belt I actually need, but I threw in a really cute dress that is on clearance for $50. I don't NEED it, but what's the fun in buying only things you need! I'll continue to mull over it and probably end up buying nothing! I'm a very predictable character that way.

I'm off to try and get some reading done now. I've been stuck on the same book for weeks where it should really only take a few days. So I'm trying to commit to reading for awhile before bed each night to help me get it done. I hate when it takes me this long to get through a book, it doesn't happen often but when it does I feel like I'm being super lazy.

Old Toys

Yesterday I went out with my best friend. After we went back to her place and I helped her sort through her childhood stuffed toys. She has some on display around her bedroom, but a vast majority are stored in big plastic bags waiting for some time in the distant future when she has space to display them and/or a child of her own to play with them.

Toys around her room

Okay so she has a fair few stuffed toys. But she has four times that stashed away in storage! And every once in awhile she likes to go through her stored ones to sort them out and get rid of anything she's decided she doesn't want. Last night became one of those times and we spent several hours sorting through her old toys.

The sorting pile

It took the better part of five hours to sort it all out. This time she bagged them by category so it would make her life easier in the future. She got rid of one big bag's worth, but still had four or five bags to go back into her closet by the time we were done. One bag contained nothing but stuffed bunny rabbits. Her mum buys her one every easter!

I actually love helping her out, I just wish I could do more, but at the end of the day she has to make all the decisions as to what to keep and what to give away, so I can't contribute much to that process. Its loads of fun because my parents didn't keep any of my childhood toys so its the closest I can get to the nostalgia of going through my own old things. I wish I'd taken more photos last night so I could show you my favourite things in her collection. But she has a few things that I had and loved as a little kid.

Speaking of collections, I should share my collection of My Little Pony toys. I'll find my pictures and include them in a future entry :)

Hair After

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I tried to do an ombre of sorts in my hair. The light purple didn't pick up very well, nor did the pink, but I still think overall it looks pretty. If I try it again, I'll make my light purple and the pink a little darker and the dark purple darker still.

Before and After

It looks MUCH better curled than it does straight. Curling it exposes all the nice, richly purple bottom layers, and that really emphasizes the pink in contrast. Its not perfect, but I'm happy enough with it. I had a look online last night for the Special Effects dye I read about, but I can't seem to find any stores that have both colours I want in stock! Just my luck really. I'll keep an eye out and in the meantime I still have a little stock of Fudge to get through.

Dye, Dye, Dye, My Darling

I remember the first time I got brave with my hair. I was 17 and my naturally blonde hair had been a few different temporary colours, but I'd never done anything major with it. I'd wanted to dye it black for ages, but hadn't had the guts to do it. Finally I went ahead and did it, I'd recently had my hair cut shorter too, so my hair had a pretty drastic transformation from golden and down to my hips to shoulder length and black.

 I flipped back and forth over the years between letting the blond grow out and dying it black again, and it wasn't uncommon to see me with about 30cm of blonde regrowth and black ends.

After awhile I got sick of the upkeep, due to continual dying my hair colour was now a boring, drab mousy blonde. I didn't think about it at the time, but now looking back at photos I hate how dull and crappy my hair looked. I hate how dull and crappy I looked. It was all baggy tops and dark pants. I feel really embarrassed that I was putting so little effort in and had apparently forgotten what it was like to dress up and feel pretty. In retrospect I feel like I had lost touch with myself.

*shudder* ugh I hate it!

So cue the break up of a long term relationship, and suddenly I was ready to be FUN again. I started wearing pretty skirts and dresses, bleached my hair and put pink and purple through it, and haven't looked back. I've spent the past 2.5ish years in various states of platinum, pink, purple and blue. It might sound contrary because I'm not going "au naturel", but I really feel so much better and so much more comfortable in my own skin now. Its sometimes a chore to do my makeup and keep my hair pretty and all that jazz, but its a labour of love, and I really enjoy the end result.

Today I spent a large portion of the day dying my hair, I had to bleach my roots, then apply a toner to get rid of the nasty yellowy shade, then I decided to try and to a kind of reverse ombre thing with lighter roots and darker ends. So I applied light purple to my roots and darker purple to my tips, and I also put a bit of pink through the upper layers to give it a little dimension. Pink and purple really is my favourite hair colour combo, and as much as I consider other combinations, I never really stray from my pinks and purples. My hair didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped, the pink really hasn't picked up as well as it should have. I've used a different shade of pink than I usually do and it just doesn't seem to take to my hair as well as the old one, even though they're both Fudge Paintbox dyes.

I must admit though, I am getting super sick of having to touch up my hair every week to keep it nice, so I'm thinking of trying to get my hands on some of the Special Effects semi-permanent dye. It supposedly stays vibrant for ages. The only problem is I can't seem to find anywhere in Australia that sells it and shipping from the US is pretty pricey. Well, I'll keep looking into it and see what I can find.

I've taken a couple of photos tonight, but really the full effect of the colours blended together is meant to look best in curled hair, so I've pinned it up and tomorrow I'll try and get it looking pretty and post some pics.

Hope everyone is doing well! :)