Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman and Iced Tea Dramas...

This is what I wore to see Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman and everyone else that turned up on stage at the Opera House on Australia Day.

Unfortunately, I managed to spill iced tea all throughout my bag and down the front of my dress two songs in. Well of course I did!! Lucky for me I had chosen a dark coloured dress and I managed to dry out by the end of the performance.

It was also unbelievably hot that day too - I set my hair in rollers and after 20minutes they had gone loose and floppy.

The show however was amazing - almost like a variety show with songs and readings and stories. Dress ups and food being made on stage. Bad beer being drunk and tuning into radio stations to hear what Australia had voted song of the year (which by the way was a song by Angus and Julia if you were interested).

Luckily today Sydney is giving us a respite from the heat until the weekend when it will be too hot to do anything again!

XX
Jen

Australia Day...

Happy Australia day you Aussies!

Us Kiwis will just hang out in the corner with our pavlovas, lamingtons and memories of that great NZ horse Pharlap. Hehe...

Today is set to be a scorcher, 33deg c in fact (thats 91.4f according to my trusty online temperature converter). It is infact already really hot and means we should probably be at the beach, unfortunately my poor fair skin just can't handle anymore sun at the moment.

David and I spent both Saturday and Sunday at the beach* last weekend and it was glorious. I haven't been swimming at a beach in such a long time and I had forgotten how much fun it is. The water was so warm and calm and we managed to find a beach in a bay with lots of shade and not too many people about.

Tonight David and I are off to see Amanda Palmer at the Opera House, though I secretly think we are mostly going because her newly acquired husband will be there and he just happens to be Neil Gaiman.

Enjoy your day off if you live in Australia or have a great Wednesday otherwise!!

xx
Jen

* As a side note, on our little exploration to find a beach we liked, we accidently happened upon a nudist beach. Infact we found two nudist beaches before happening upon our family friendly beach which is probably going to become our favourite beach I imagine.

A Posie of Roses...

David bought me surprise roses yesterday to celebrate our two month wedding anniversary.

They are a beautiful blushing pink and I can't wait until they open up completely. Can you believe how perfectly shaped they are? Just beautiful.

I thought I would practice my manual focusing and ended up taking millions of photos of them, but all the better to remember them by - as much as I love fresh flowers, it's just too expensive to buy them regularly, sigh...

XX
Jen

So Sew...

Hello,

Thank you for all of the dress love on the post below :) I bought the dress on Etsy last year from Dear Golden Vintage and have worn it several times since. Its a beautiful soft and breezy dress that is fantastic to wear in this humid heat we are having currently in Sydney.

This weekend I am getting all of my things together to participate in Casey's Swing Dress Sew-a-long. I've never done a sew-a-long before and I'm so happy that Casey is doing it. I've admired her blog/seamstress skills for a very long time now and I'm sure I'll glean all sorts of useful information for future projects from her.

This is also the last of the honeymoon outfits - although I did wear this almost exact same one (except for different shoes) to the Love Vintage Fair a month previous - I didn't post it as an official outfit though, so therefore I think it still counts.

Have a lovely weekend all,

XX Jen

PS) You may have heard of the devastating floods happening in Queensland at the moment. If you have anything to spare, even if it's only $1 you can donate here. I know most people wouldn't bother donating such a small amount, but if 1000 of you all donated $1 I think it puts donating small amounts into perspective and you can see how easily it all starts to add up. I've chosen to donate my money to the Queensland RSPCA and you can do so here as well if you like.

We Are Made of Stars...

David and I were watching Stephen Fry in America last night - he was talking to a man who was showing him an exploding star and relating that to the Big Bang Theory and how the earth was created. He said something like 'we are made of star stuff'.

David turned to me and said:
D: We are made of stars
Me: How very poetic
D: Yeah, there's also a Moby CD called that...

Perhaps slightly less poetic? Unless you are a Moby fan of course...I'm neither here nor there on that subject.

Hope you are having a good week.

And this is another honeymoon outfit.

And that is all.

XX Jen

The Secret World of Knitters....

I had my first knitting lesson today - it was fantastic and I couldn't believe how much I could actually remember. I used to knit quite well when I was younger, and once I remembered the basic stitches, muscle memory just seemed to set in and I was away laughing. I still get a little confused changing from a purl to a knit, but I'm getting there.

And boy is there a whole other crafty little world out there I didn't know about! Listening to the other ladies chat about techniques and tools (most of which I've never heard of) was really interesting and it should be a fun adventure delving further. Very much looking forward to next month!

Other knitters out there - I'm on Ravelry if you'd like to be friends with me,

XX
Jen

Pretty Dresses and Old Houses...

As some of you may know, if you've been reading my blog for a little while, I have a thing for old houses. I don't know what it is about them, but I love them - in fact, I even got married in an old homestead! So, a few weekends after we had arrived back from the wedding, we headed over to Nielson park and explored Strickland House (a house that has seemed to have many many other names).

It's empty at the moment and I had fun peering in the windows and seeing the old signs in rooms from when they had turned it into a hospital for women and babies. We completely missed Vaucluse House, which is the reason I wanted to head over there in the first place! But oh well, next time...

I bought this vintage dress while on honey moon in Christchurch on our way to Akaroa. Sydney has been having some deathly hot days (though thankfully we have had a cool snap the last few days) and this dress is just perfect for them.

I also have rather a few outfit photos left over from the end of last year, so please excuse me while I post them before doing new ones :) These include honey moon outfits too - oops!

XX
Jen