Friday, October 31, 2008

Brain-Mush

This evening, my mind seems to be filled with endless thoughts. I've heard the best way to stop thinking about a thought that's bugging you, is to write it down. So here goes...

1. I am so so so jealous of anyone who's my age and can build a house already. House fixer-upping is not actually fun at all. It's great to have a place, but it's my dream to be able to move into a place and not freak out that the shower's going to be scungey, or the toilet's going to be stained and disgusting, or the window sills aren't going to be sealed. *Sigh*

2. (Thanks Hatti for this one): In 5 weeks, I will be the woman of a house. I will no longer be living in the room I've slept in for the last 18 years, or enjoying the company of the family I have always belonged to. I'll be all 'grown up', cooking every night and living in a space that's half-mine! This is really exciting, but maybe a little more terrifying than I'd anticipated, now that it's so close (to clarify, I definitely don't have cold feet!! I just haven't ever experienced an adventure like this!)

3. I wonder why it has taken me 5 years since finishing high school to get my butt back into creative gear? I've always pined to draw, paint, sew, etc... so why the heck did it take me so long to just buy a sketch book and start trying it out? In high school I worked solidly during every private study period, doing things I should not have been doing, but which kept me alive and excited... drawing, creating stories, cartooning... And for the last 5 years the evidence of this has hung on my wardrobe door as a weird tribute to my finest moments in study period. Why did I stop?

4. I have a pretty cool name. Klara Kamilla. When I was a kid, I hated my middle name. It's my Grandma's name (not why I hated it, I just thought it was old-fashioned and embarrassing!!) But now I really like my name. It's unique :)

5. There are some things I do not tell anyone, for all kinds of reasons. I wonder if they really matter that much? Sure, some things are secrets for a reason, but some things I hold onto are a bit silly!!

6. I'm pining for a large pack of connector-pen/textas. I just discovered this artist, and I actually can't stand to look at her work. It's incredibly crude, and ugly, and very in-your-face, which I'm sure is her aim, so fair enough. But the cool thing about her is that she does a lot of colouring-in with connector pens!! So now I want to :)

7. House-painting is such a painful, slow process. Ergh. We're still working on the first room we started on! It's a little dis-heartening, although last weekend we were able to unwrap one couch and put it against a finished wall, along with a new end table & lamp from Ikea. That little corner of our living room honestly keeps me going. It looks so picture perfect! So I can't wait to see the rest of the room hopefully very soon.

8. Money is not as stretchy as it should be, especially when you have a shiny new mortgage to adjust to, and a wedding.

9. Not everyone you know makes sense. Different people are different. Sometimes I feel like me and my close friends are the only sane people on the planet! But I'm pretty sure everyone feels like that once in a while :)

10. Assignments suck, and I'm so over uni. Lucky it's about to be the Summer break, but I still have a semi-long haul before then (at least classes are over).

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Umm... Duct Tape Rocks!!


So there's this brand opf Duct Tape, Duck, and each year they give out a scholarship to kids who create their prom outifts out of duct tape. Some of these entries are mindblowing!!!
Go here to check out the entries... Way cool!!

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Damn You, Elsie Flannigan!!

I *love* Elsie Flannigan's blog, A Beautiful Mess. For those who don't know, Elsie's an independent artist from Missouri who used to have her own scrapbooking brand which they even sold in my local scrapbooking store. She's 25 and lives like a real artist. Her art is all very cute and girly, not exactly my taste, but her blog and photos are killer and I am well addicted.
This week she posted up an interview of sorts, where she and 3 other artistic-types basically talk about the highs, lows, beginnings and ends of their lifestyles and jobs. The blog post is titled Things I Wish I Had Known and if you, like me, are pining to just let loose and be an artist (in any way, shape or form) this article is a very dangerous read!!! It's very long and wordy, but if you can get through the whole thing, you may well find your little heart pining to live like Elsie does. I'm not talking about the little bits that make up her life, but the essence of it itself - creating. Elsie has all this time to create, and experiment, and do little projects, and dream.
If I could have anything in the world, I'd ask for that (provided I get to keep Chris too, of course! He's the real love of my life...)
I will be an artist. Sometime, somehow. It may not necessarily be my full-time job, but I just have to create. Because there's so much inspiration out there, so much romance and beauty in my life, and I do nothing with it. *Sigh*

Well That's Embarrassing...

LOL. So barring 3 items, every listing in my Etsy shop seems to have expired today. Admittedly I've put zero effort into the store itself since setting it up, although I've been doing plenty of crafting on the side!!!!
Rather than admit defeat, I will say I have bigger plans for the store next year when life settles down again :)

My Christmas List...

It might only be October, but how can I be blamed for being excited about Christmas??? I'm surrounded by it everywhere I go!!! It's everywhere at the shops, the weather feels Christmassy (ie HOT), all plans are going ahead for our Carols in the Park event at work. I can't escape! Not that I want to... So I thought to tide myself over, I'd make a list of the little things that, to me, make Christmas...

1. Hot weather: I realised the other day that I love Summer because it constantly reminds me of Christmas. However, come New Years Day, I kinda hate Summer! It completely loses its charm!
2. Christmas Decorations at the shops: Especially Myer. They have the most beautiful Christmas display *happy sigh*
3. Our new Christmas Tree, Chester: Having mentioned Myer, I figured I'd have to confess that on Sunday I fell for the charm of Myer's Christmas display, combined with their 20% off Christmas Trimmings Sale and... impulsively bought a 6-foot Christmas Tree. I've named him Chester.
4. Home-baked Shortbread Cookies: My Mum always makes piles of yummy shortbread cookies, all cut out with Christmas cookie cutters. Unlike any other baked good produced in our house, which usually disappears with 8 hours, there are so many of these cookies that they literally last us till after the New Year!!
5. Baguely (no idea how to spell it): It's a Hungarian loafy cake which you put aside a whole day for, and bake in bulk quantities. We make both poppy seed and walnut varities. We don't do it every year, because it's soooo time consuming, but on the years we do, it just feels extra Christmassy!!
6. Christmas Wrapping Paper: It's just so wonderful to look at a pile of freshly-wrapped gifts, decked out in bells and reindeer!!
7. Christmas Music: I can't wait to pop some Christmas CDs in the player at work :)
8. Tarhogna (again, who knows how to spell it?): A Hungarian side-dish which basically consists of tiny little 'balls' or even 'seeds' of pasta mixed up with onions and olive oil and I'm not sure what else... It's soooo yummy!! We only ever have it at Christmas time, and it's worth the wait!
9. Decorating: I'm especially excited about decorating this year because it'll be my first Christmas living away from home!! It means that I have a new space to work with, new decorations (although nowhere near the quantity I've grown accustomed to!) and I can keep my tree up just as long as I want! (Right Chris?)
10. Christmas break: Our office is closing from December 25 - January 5, which gives me 10 days to just hang out and enjoy a freaking good break!! Hopefully my spunky new husband will get a good Christmas break too :)

Monday, October 13, 2008

New Look..

Ooops!! Forgot to mention in my previous post, I've bitten the bullet and made myself a handy-dandy banner.
I made it up this morning, and am pretty happy with it, at least for now....

The Birds

I loooove the avian trend. At first I was skeptical, and I can't quite place why, but since then I have fully embraced it. Birds are so pretty and you can do so much.
All day yesterday, my brain was filling up with ideas. There was way too much creative juice happening, and I couldn't quite keep up. I'm now trying my hand at creating a 2009 Planner, as well as a handful of notebooks and a Christmas Organiser for my store, and possibly Made On The Left coming up in November (Eeep! Will I ever have enough stuff???)
Last night I finally drew and coloured up a bird I've been dreaming of for quite some time. I'd done a make-shift little drawing at work, and was pining to put it on paper. So I finally did!!

It has not scanned nicely at all, but basically I'll be cutting the little guy right off the page, and sticking him onto a digitally-created background, maybe stick a few buttons on... I'm hoping this project works out, and am regretting scanning that pic in now as it just does not do him justice!!
In my head, little pictures are starting to swirl... Russian dolls, tea-cups, ghosts, reindeer... Ach! My priorities are way-skewed at the moment, as I still haven't even made my wedding invitations. What to do??

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

"Ohhhhh.... Mmmmm....Mmm... Mmohhh..."

Nothing suss - my title there is a direct quote from the wonderful man that I'm marrying, and I promised him I'd quote him word for word. Those noises (and plenty more) erupted from him as we ate dessert on our special surprise date night last night. But more on that later...
Basically, with me going to Melbourne today (in a few short hours! Yay!) Chris wanted to treat me to a very special dinner. He'd been planning to take me to this place for aaaages but couldn't get bookings for the times we were free. Well, he struck gold and managed to get a booking for us last night. Where did take me?
C Restaurant!
Here's a picture of the restaurant:

And here's a picture of the stunning view we experienced as we dined:

(I can't take credit for the pics, you can find them at the C Restaurant website or WA tourism sites)

As you eat, you're slooooowly revolving around, giving you a 360 scope of the entire city. Wow. Wow. Wow. I could hardly take my eyes off the view the entire time.
And the whole experience? Well, we had a REAL FRENCH WAITER who was snooty to boot, and combed (yes, combed) our table between courses. I had a cocktail (so chic!) and the food itself was... insane. So they come out with our mains and I think "Typical fancy restaurant. You pay through the nose for tiny portions". It may have been a tiny portion, but the food was SO RICH, I was pretty darn full by the end of the meal! I had the gnochi, Chris had the beef and we were pretty smitten.
One thing I loved about it is that, you know in the movies, when people go out for dinner at fancy places and say "I'll have the beef, she'll have the fish."??? THIS IS ONE OF THOSE PLACES! Most restaurants have a big selection of beef dishes, or fish dishes, so you have to be specific. But we literally got to use the words "I'll have the beef", because there was one beef dish. Very glamorous!! Heh.
The finest part of the evening was dessert though. Ohhhh boy. We both ordered Chocolate Moelleux (we were upfront with our waiter, and explained we weren't even going to try and pronounce it, and he rolled it off his tongue probably just to rub it in, hehehe. It's "Mollay" for the record, like "Ole!" with 'M' at the start) We received a plate with green pistachio icecream, the plumpest, juiciest mascerated strawberries (Oh wow in itself!) and this Chocolate cakey-looking thing. Take a forkful of cake and this avalanche of muddy chocolate goo starts flowing out. Oh my word. I think that was the very most wonderful form of chocolate I've ever experienced in my life. Hence Chris's very vocal appreciation.

All in all I had the most AMAZING night! Seriously, it was so good. I can't believe it, but I've sold my soul to the world of fancy, pay-through-the-nose dining. *Squeak*

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Merry Christmas!!

Fun fact of the day... there are only 80 days left till Christmas Eve!!!
Thanks to the clan of 'secret-surprise-planning' bridesmaids out in the kitchen, I've been sent to my room for the first time since I was 6 years old, and to distract myself I've opened iTunes and am bopping along to Christmas music. Yay! I've actually been pining for Christmas alllll dayyyy for some reason so this is a perfect way to wind down :)

Saturday, October 4, 2008

A Heartfelt Letter...

To the person who got into our wireless network, downloaded 8GB in 2 days, exceeded our download limit and had our account shaped until next month:
Thank you kindly for doing us this favour. We so enjoy internet that crawls along like a snail, and crashes every 5 minutes when we try to load a page with pictures on it. We are especially thankful that you've done this for us at the time when 2 of us are working fervently on numerous uni assignments.
Email? Who needs to check that reguarly anyway? If a group you're doing an assignment with are SOOOOO desperate to send you bits of their work that you are compiling, heck, it's practically just as easy for them to print it off and send it through snail mail, especially since this would be quicker than waiting for your email to load up. Thank you for helping us to remember the value of this.
Oh, and don't worry about cutting off our main source of information. News, events, searches... we actually find it very soothing to be able to meditate as we watch pages load a pixel at a time.
As for the ability to open numerous websites in new tabs: thank you for disabling this annoying feature of our web browser. It really gets a bit distracting having to flick between tabs to view several pages at once. It's nice to know that these days, if I do happen to click "Open in new tab", luckily for me, nothing is capable of loading with such a slow internet speed. Things are much more simplified.
You have brought us much pleasure. Enjoy your 8GB of new porn... it's clearly all you've got going for you.
Yours sincerely,
Klara

Friday, October 3, 2008

They May Be Horrible...

But hot-dang, those shakes are actually working!!!
This week I lost 3.6kg... that's 7.9lb if an American happens to chance by this blog :)
So I'm pretty happy, and suddenly I have a renewed like for the shakes (I won't say love - no matter how great the results, at the end of the day they're packets of insanely sweet powder, mixed with cold water, and they will never replace a good savoury meal.)

But yay!

I finally went and tried on the wedding dress yesterday. I was pretty freaking scared, to be honest. I never got to try it on in my size - they pretty much just measure you and choose a size, then someone in a factory makes it. So there was no guarantee of a good, flattering fit... but it was perfect!!!! Yay!!!
I'm a very happy bride :D