The Time Has Come - An important announcement

Well.

The time has come. For the closing of one door, and the opening of another.

I started this blog in 2009, and, as the name suggests, it came out of the place of boredom. I was feeling unsatisfied with my career, and wanted a place to be creative that was just mine, but that was also a way to communicate with people who were interested in the things I was interested in – books, movies, TV, other stuff. And hence, Boredom Abounds By Julia was born.

Since starting the blog in 2009, I’ve gotten married, and last year we had our first child. It’s been the most amazing journey of my life, full of ups and downs (but mostly ups!), but unfortunately my blog has suffered. I love blogging. I love writing, I love finding the humour in things, I love being honest with my opinions, and I love hearing what you (yes, you!) think about what I write, good or bad. I have tried hard not to constantly sit in front of a screen while my husband and child potter around in the background. I want to be a present wife and mother, and combining that with returning to work part-time, and juggling motherhood and marriage meant that my blog has been neglected quite a bit.

But as I find my feet and settle into my new routine as a working mother, I’m trying to find some time to myself again, that time that I would use to write my blog. However, I’m no longer bored. Far from it! Working and having an eighteen month old toddler means I rarely have down time. Not because I’m constantly full to the brim of motherhood duties. More because I have a lot I want to achieve and I have a lot of hobbies, on top of raising a child and being a wife. So I have a to-do list as long as my arm, full of those household jobs that are always there, but also full of things I want to learn and experiment with and achieve for myself.

And so boredom no longer abounds. I have decided to bring Boredom Abounds By Julia to a close, and I want to thank my readers for their support and for coming here and reading the things I had to say for the past three and a half years. It has been greatly appreciated!

However, as I said, I do still love to write, and I do love the blogging medium. I have always hoped to turn my writing into something bigger than just a personal blog – what that is I’m not sure of yet. But I do know that I needed to stop and change direction. And so I’m launching a new website – still a blog, but with a fresh look, and a new location. Some things will be the same, some things will be new. There will be some of the same sort of posts, as well as shorter ones, more suited to publishing on a more frequent schedule (when my schedule allows for it), but the most important thing is that it will remain my voice.

Although I am a mother, I am not a ‘mommyblogger.’ My husband and child are part of my private life and I won’t be writing specifically about them or posting photos of them over at my new website. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my kind of thing. My new blog will remain an entertainment and lifestyle blog over and above anything else, and I really hope you’ll come over and have a look around.

So thank you for reading, today and all the days you came by to relieve the boredom!

And now I’d love for you to come and say hello at Chic To Do - a blog about getting stuff done with style.

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Fun Friday Links

Wow, it's definitely Winter in Melbourne. Rain, cold, grey skies, and a baby with a horrible cough. Hooray!

Hopefully you can warm yourself up with these great links though!

- Watch this massive crowd waiting to watch Green Day spontaneously sing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Will singing flash mobs be the new dance flash mobs?

- The Kitchen Coquette lists their best dessert recipes. Soft centred chocolate tortini with Ferrero Roche crumble, anyone? YES PLEASE.

- Six fairytales for the modern woman. Love this:

- Do you have Bitchy Resting Face? You're not alone.
 
- A bride requested that her guests undertook a 21 day vegan cleanse so they would look good on her day. I'll just let you absorb that for a minute.






I know, right?? If I knew that bride I would decline the invitation to her wedding with a note and a photograph of myself stuffing a hamburger, a chocolate shake, and some greasy shoestring fries down my throat.

And on that note, happy weekend everyone! Pin It

Party time - cake and flowers

We had a big family party over the weekend, a very important birthday for a very important person, and I was able to contribute a few things to the big event: a cake and some flowers.

The flowers were held in a bunch of different sized jars I've been collecting for the last year or so, and I used a pad of scrapbook paper from Spotlight and some scissors that cut in squiggly lines to cover the jars in different patterns. I wanted to also tie some brown twine around the neck of the jars, but ran out of time. 

The cake was a chocolate mud cake and the colours for the party were purple and turquoise, but i couldn't find ready made turquoise fondant, so I thought purple would be nice. I have been wanting to try a large fondant bow for a while now. I am very pleased with the result. The fondant got a bit dry once it was on the cake, but luckily no cracks appeared. I realised it was probably because I used too much cornflour to knead it, so I won't make that mistake again.

Here's the full pic of the cake:

 

 

I'm quite pleased with my creative efforts! Pin It

Monday Morning Melody - Tuesday Edition: Lorde - Royals

Lorde is a 17 year old girl from New Zealand. I first heard this about a month or so ago on the radio, and I love it. Her voice reminds me a bit of Natasha Bedingfield, and this song is ridiculously good.



See? Told you. Pin It

Fun Friday Links

People, it is nearly JUNE. That means WINTER IS COMING. That is crazy.

To distract ourselves from the impending misery of a Melbourne Winter, let's look at some links!

- You need to watch this man's conversations with his 2 year old daughter, as acted out between him and another adult. Hilarious.

- 15 reasons why Dylan McKay is the perfect high school boyfriend.

- The Buffy finale is TEN YEARS OLD. Take a look at 27 moments you'll never forget from the final episode.

- A teenage girl has invented a way to block spoilers on Twitter. She wrote the code by herself in ten hours, and it's just 150 lines of code. Well done, I say!

- Please enjoy this list of all of Kramer's jobs. 

- Then take this Seinfeld quiz matching now-famous actors to their guest parts on the show. I got 100%. YES.

Happy weekend, everyone! Pin It

Book Review - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Author: Alan Bradley
Year of publication: 2009
Publisher: Orion
Page extent: 384

It's 1950 and Flavia de Luce is an eleven year old girl living in at Buckshaw, a formerly grand mansion in the small English village of Bishop's Lacey. An apsiring chemist, Flavia spends most of her time locked away in her fully functioning laboratory performing chemical experiments with frighteningly accurate results. The rest of the time she is being tormented by her older sisters, Daphne and Ophelia (aka The Devil's Hairball), or roaming the countryside and bellowing at the top of her lungs on Gladys, her trusty bicycle. The three girls live with their widowed father, Colonel de Luce, their irritating housekeeper Mrs. Mullet, and Dogger, a former prisoner of war and general caretaker.

Life at Buckshaw gets interesting when Mrs. Mullet finds a dead bird on the doorstep with it's beak piercing a postage stamp known as the Penny Black. A few hours later, Flavia finds a man in the cucumber patch and witnesses his last words and dying breath. Overcome with curiosity and delight at the forensic investigation that takes place at Buckshaw, Flavia begins to examine life at Buckshaw, and her father, in greater detail. When Colonel de Luce is arrested for the murder, he opens up about life at boarding school, the theft of a priceless item, and the apparent suicide of one of his teachers. Convinced that her father is innocent, Flavia's investigation of the murder intensifies, much to the annoyance of Inspector Hewitt at the police department, and she manages to solve the crime, though not without getting herself into a bit of hot water along the way.

I've had this book on my 'to read' list for quite a while, and when I finally got around to reading it, I was completely delighted. Flavia de Luce is an hilarious protaganist - intelligent, glib, and cheekily arrogant, she is the perfect mix of Agatha Christie and Nancy Drew. Bradley's cast of quirky characters that reside in Bishop's Lacey add an additional layer of charm to the story, particularly during Flavia's interactions with them. Her superior, couldn't care less attitude towards Bishop Lacey's who only hinder her attempts at clearing her father's name is quite amusing coming from an eleven year old girl. As she gets closer to solving the crime, Flavia's patience with the adults in the village wears thin, and her boldness and cunning tactics increase with equal parts hilarity and intensity.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a clever romp through the young adult murder mystery genre. Flavia de Luce embarks on her investigation with youthful arrogance, and quickly proves herself as a fearless super sleuth. Bradley's sharply written story is full of witty barbs and condesending observations about life in Bishop's Lacey seen through Flavia's eyes, and it's clearl she thinks she knows better than everyone else. It's a delight from start to finish, with a good dose of suspense dolloped throughout.

In a word: good

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Monday Morning Melody - Robin Thicke ft. T.I., Pharell WIlliams

Two weeks ago I featured another song with Pharrell Williams, and I can't resist featuring this one as well. 


 
Definitely one of the catchiest songs of the year, yes? Pin It

Fun Friday Links

Yay, it's Friday! And Melbourne is being a saucy minx, teasing us with this this gorgeous, late Autumn weather. Ahhh, Melbourne. Just when we think you're plunging us in the depressing, gray days of Winter, you seduce us with blue skies, warm sun, and pink skies at dusk. You cheeky thing, you!

Anyway, let's enjoy some Friday links with our sunshine, shall we?

- The Pregnant Husband is an hilarious tumblr full of gifs to express what one man went through while his wife was pregnant. When I was pregnant, I must say that this one was something I worried about a LOT in the final weeks.

- And now that his wife has given birth, The Pregnant Husband has a new blog called Daddy Newbie. When we had a newborn and I had to brave the supermarket for the first time, this is pretty much how I shopped that day. Also, this? This is possibly the most accurate description of new parenting ever.

- If you love John Karsinski and /or Jimmy Fallon, you need to watch this lip-sync off between them. I love the cutaways to the band. Hilarious.

- 17 photos you need to look at to really understand. Seriously, you will need to look more than twice at a lot of these!

- Parisian twin sisters live as each other's mirror image. So interesting.

- Netherlands work safety posters that a super creepy. Be careful on a ladder or a devil serpant will vomit fire on you! If you get your arm stuck in a piece of machinery, you will be sucked in a portal of hell!

On that note, happy weekend everyone! Pin It

Adventures in Cupcake Decorating - Baby Shower Cupcakes

I made some cupcakes for a baby shower in February using fondant to decorate them, but I wanted to try some with buttercream. One of my best friends had her baby shower last weekend, so it was a perfect opportunity to practice using buttercream. I've been watching a lot of a show called Cupcake Wars, and they all use buttercream, marscapone, cream cheese, and meringue icings with piping bags, and it didn't look too difficult.

 

I don't have a lot of experience with piping bags - the few times I've used them the icing hasn't been very good, but this time I allowed myself a lot of time to really get the buttercream to the right texture. The secret, I think, is to let it whip for a really long time until it's very light and fluffy. 

 

I let the buttercream whip for about twenty minutes, and piped the swirls on really carefully, then sprinkled edible rainbow confetti on to it. I'm quite pleased with the results! The only downside was the patty pans - they were gorgeous rainbow patterns, but they were too thin, so because the cake was chocolate mud, when it cooked, the colour of the cupcake penetrated through the patty pans (which you can see in the top photo) and the colours were totally lost. Luckily the pack had heaps of extra patty pans, so I double layered them and all was fine.

I'm still working on how to get the cupcakes to cook in that perfectly round cupcake shape. I find that mine always go slightly too high in the middle, or a bit lopsided, rising more on one side, but overall I am super happy with how these turned out!

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Retail Therapy

Oh, Myer. Despite your moronic CEO's comments about the National Disability Scheme hurting retail, I love your one day sales. The days when consumers can walk into a shop and feel confident that their suspicions that the regular retail price is jacked up so high it's not worth purchasing until it's "on sale" are right on the money.

Anyway, I have been looking for a pair of chocolate brown, flat, knee high boots for a couple of years know, but I have the blasted Curse of the Wide Calved Girl and usually find it impossible to find boots that zip all the way up to my knee.

But not this year!

These are Diana Ferrari leather boots and they fit like a dream. I don't love the panels of elastic, but alas, us large calved girls can't be too choosy when we find a boot that fits, am I right?

RRP $229.95
Sale price: $170ish. Pin It

Monday Morning Melody - Daft Punk Ft. Pharrell Williams

This song doesn't need any introduction.


 
Because it is AWESOME.

The end. Pin It

Adventures in Cooking - First Birthday Cake

As I mentioned on Monday, it was our daughter's first birthday last week. First of all, I cannot BELIEVE how fast that year went. Second of all, she is still completely adorable. 

We had a party for her at the park with friends and family, and since starting my cupcake decorating endeavours a few months ago, obviously I wanted to make her birthday cake. I was going to do cupcakes, but the logistics of transporting them to a park was a bit crazy, since I would have had to bake 60 or so so that everyone had one. Instead, I decided to do a square slab cake. The results were pretty good!

It was a simple eleven inch chocolate mud cake, decorated with white and coloured fondant, and it was much easier than I thought! I hired the cake tin for $7, and the cake took about three hours to bake in my oven, but the decorating only took about an hour and a half. The most time consuming part was kneading and rolling out the white fondant, which had to be one big sheet big enough to cover the entire cake, and I trimmed off the excess. I would have preferred the cake to be a little bit more moist - it was moist, but I think it could have been even more moist, so next time I'll experiment a bit more. I used a commercial cake mix so that the cake would keep longer, and it was delicious! That size cake served about 60 people with some left over, which was perfect.

I'm looking forward to creating something different and trying new designs when I hopefully make another few cakes for some functions in a couple of months. Pin It

Monday Morning Melody - Rihanna

Hello! I've been AWOL lately. My daughter was sick for nearly three weeks, then I caught it and was sick for two weeks, then we had her FIRST BIRTHDAY, and now here we are. So, it's a Monday, which is a good a time as any to kickstart things again with a Monday Morning Melody.

Disclaimer: I am not a Rihanna fan. When I think of her, the term "oversaturation" comes to mind, and if I hear her on the radio I usually change the station within about a second. But her new single, Stay is different. It's heartbreaking and full of angst, but there's something in her voice that just nails the song.


 
When she gets it right, she really gets it right, Pin It

Fun Friday Links

Long weekend, woo hoo! Well, I'm still on maternity leave, but for everyone else, woo hoo! I did try to give up chocolate until Easter, but that didn't go so well. There's just too much temptation - Easter egg chocolate, particularly the milk chocolate Cadbury variety is my weakness.

So, to get us started, the first link is about Easter eggs.

- 9 Ways to Enjoy Cadbury Creme Eggs. You're welcome. NUMBER THREE OMG.

- I haven't watched Veronica Mars in a loooong time, so this list of its now-famous guest stars was pretty cool.

- Flavorwire has compiled a list of the best break up lines in film.

- How to get that annoying earworm song out of your head. I ALWAYS get songs stuck in my head while I'm trying to fall asleep. Usually something annoying that I would never like, that I heard all of about three seconds of last week.

- Shoshanna from Girls cracks me up. Her million miles an hour, stream of consciousness chatter is hilarious, so please check out this Sh*t Shosh Says. Amazing.

- This has been floating around for a week or so: kids around the world with their most prized possessions. 

Happy weekend! Hope you don't (or do?) indulge in too much chocolate! Pin It

Adventures in Cooking - Mini Jam Tarts

This is a recipe I got from my lovely cousin. She makes these for family get togethers, and they are little bites of crumbly goodness. I love a dessert that is small and easy to eat, but completely delicious and full of flavour, and these mini jam tarts tick all those boxes. 

Something else that's great for us is that they are egg free. We recently found out our (almost ONE YEAR OLD WHAT) daughter is allergic to eggs, so I am now always on the hunt for delicious recipes that are egg free to make for her once she can eat things other than mush.

Ingredients
250g butter, softened to room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
2 cups plain flour, sifted
1 - 2 teaspoons of cold water
1 cup jam (approximate) - any flavour you like
icing sugar to dust

Preparation and cooking time: about 30 minutes.

Method
- Preheat your oven to 180ºC (about 160º for a fan forced oven)

- Grease a mini muffin pan with some butter

- Chuck the butter, vanilla, icing sugar, and flour into a mixer. Beat until it's combined, and starts to resemble a semi-crumbly, dough like consistency. You may need to add the teaspoons of cold water now if the dough isn't sticking together.

- Roll teaspoons of mixture into balls and place into the muffin pan. I made mine about the size of a golf ball.

- Make a hole indent into the centre of each ball with your finger. You can make the hole as big or small as you like. I personally like to make it a bit larger, because then you can fit more jam in, which mixes well with the shortbread-like taste. But make sure you don't pierce through the bottom, otherwise the jam will fall out, and we really can't have that.

- Spoon jam into each hole, making sure it's level with the top of the ball.

- Bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden.

- Cool tarts in the pans.

- Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Delicious!

Got any good egg free recipes or websites? Let me know in the comments! Pin It

Monday Morning Melody - The Lennings

I know, it sounds like The Lemmings, that computer game. But it's not. The Lennings are an American indie folk band and I hadn't heard of them until I caught up on season 3 of Parenthood this past week.  

Unfortunately, I can't embed the video here, but click and take a listen. It took me a couple of minutes to realise it was a really lovely acoustic cover of You're the One That I Want from Grease. 

Seriously, how beautiful is it? It sounds like a completely different song, and I just love it.


I have no idea why the clip is of a saucepan on the stove and making a cup of tea. Maybe that's why they don't want people to embed the video....Although, cheapest music video ever?


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Fun Friday Links

I've been fighting a cold, so the Friday links are a Saturday edition this week! Let's get stuck straight into them, shall we?

- I loved this list of 22 of your Favourite Childhood Style Icons, Revisited. Besides the fact that it's kind of scary how much of this fashion is available RIGHT NOW in shops, I loved how spot on they are with all the characters. Especially Claudia Kishi. Although I think they left off the very important detail of stickers on her shoes, because I remember her doing that on at least one occasion. I think the book where she was accused of cheating on a maths test and the stickers were ocean themed and used on the day when she retook the test? I know, it's sad/amazing how much detail I remember about the BSC. Also, to this day, I still love Cher Horowitz's school wear wardrobe.

- This is from a couple of weeks ago, but it popped up a lot on my Facebook feed, so I thought I'd better post it. Harry Stamps was the dean of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, and this is his obituary. You need to read the whole, thing. The last lines, in particular, are my favourite. I think in my obituary, I want to tell everyone to write to their member of parliament to ask for the repeal of blue coloured drinks. I just don't trust blue. It's not a flavour!

- This piece from NPR is interesting: Are romantic comedies dead? PLEASE, GOD, NO.

- Here is everything Carrie Bradshaw wondered throughout Sex and the City's run. Know what I wondered? How a writer with a teeny, tiny column in a tabloid newspaper could afford not to have any other source of income and still be able to have an apartment on the upper east side on Manhattan, and buy shoes that were $400 a pair. Right? RIGHT?

- Dog photobombs an apartment listing photos. Hilarious.

- Imagine a world without hate, prejudice, and bigotry. Kind of amazing, right?

Happy weekend everyone!


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Book Review - The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp

Title: The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp
Author: Eva Rice
Year of Publication: 2013
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Page extent: 320

 

I first discovered Eva Rice quite a few years ago, when I read her novel The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, which was a complete delight. You should go and read it right now. So when I heard she was FINALLY releasing a new novel, I was ridiculously excited. Even better was that my library actually got a copy of it straight away.

The daughter of a vicar, Tara Jupp is one of eight children living in a small village in Cornwall in the 1960s. Blessed with her late mother's talent for singing, Tara is more interested in secret horseback riding at one of the biggest estates in the village, Trellenack. When Lady W-D discovers Tara had been riding her horses, she agrees not to get her into trouble. Instead, she asks Tara to come to tea, and to bring her beautiful sister, Lucy, to befriend her lonesome daughter, Matilda. Soon Lucy and Matilda are inseparable, with Tara tagging along. As Lucy educates Matilda about boys, Tara spends her days working in the stables at the mansion, and singing in the church choir. 

The arrival of a handsome Spaniard, Raoul, disrupts things, as Matilda is convinced he's her future husband, while Lucy and Raoul, both fascinated by old estates, have eyes only for each other. They marry, breaking Matilda's heart; she loses her best friend, and the man she loves. Lucy and Tara are no longer welcome at Trellenack, and Matilda disappears from their lives. 

Fast forward a few years. Matilda is a successful model and reappears in the village to marry her famous record producer boyfriend, Billy. Tara performs a solo during their wedding ceremony, and her life changes forever. Billy whisks her off to London to cut a record, and Lucy accompanies them to catalogue a Victorian house set to be demolished. Tara is transformed into Cherry Merrywell, and is thrown into the recording studio with the temperamental songwriter Inigo Wallace. Recording music by day, and living fast and furiously by night, Tara experiences London in the swinging sixties from the second she arrives in town. 

However, life isn't as fun and frivolous as it seems. Tara and Lucy's relationship begins to unravel when Lucy's marriage hits a rocky patch, and Tara begins to push the boundaries being imposed upon her by Billy. Life as Cherry Merrywell isn't all it's cracked up to be, and Tara quickly learns that fame and fortune often come with a catch.

Rice's main characters are strongly voiced women, particularly Tara. At seventeen years old, she is thrust into the limelight in London, and her naivety often gets the best of her. Though interestingly, I often forgot she was only a teenager. Rice managed to create a character who conveys a girlish innocence and an adult determination simultaneously. Lucy, however, is aloof and distant, an nice contrast to Tara's openness. The sisters, and the extended Jupp clan have an hilariously flippant attitude to life in their village, and the cast of supporting characters in London paint a wonderfully detailed picture of London's socialites living life as fast and hard as they can.

The only flaw in the novel was the focus on Lucy and Raoul. I felt their relationship could have been explored in much more detail. The reader only learns about their struggles through Tara's limited observations, since Lucy is so closed off. I think Rice could have devoted a little bit more time to their storyline, and to the issues they faced. Their plotline sometimes felt like a cursory glance into married life, when there was obviously a deep love story that had developed.

Overall, the novel was a fast and fun read. The characters were a mix of quirky and everyday people, and Tara's life in London stops just short of becoming a cliche. Her desire not to fit into the mould of a sixties songstress is what makes her so utterly likeable, and this coming of age is written in sweetly understated style.

In a word: good.   

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Monday Morning Melody - Snow Patrol

In honour of St. Patrick's day yesterday, here is a completely gorgeous song from my favourite Irish band, Snow Patrol. I've seen them live three times, which, FYI, is SO worth it, but they've never played this song. It's called You Could Be Happy, and it's the most beautiful break up song, and probably one of my favourite songs from them.


The music box chimes are the loveliest touch, and Gary Lighbody's lyrics are, as usual, perfect. Pin It

Fun Friday Links

It's been a quiet blogging week. I had hoped to do a book review, but I haven't finished the book yet, and I want to attempt an outfit post, but I need to wait until someone other than my ten month old is home to photograph it, because she's reached the stage where she likes to see how hard she can smash things against her high chair tray.

But in the meantime, here are some fun links to keep your Friday entertaining!

- I do love remembering Very Special Episodes from the 80s and 90s. This clip is a montage of the very best worst very special episodes. Remember the Punky Brewster ep with the girl in the fridge? Drama!! Love it.

- Growing up, my sister LOVED to hire Return to Oz from the video shop, and I would watch it with her, but man, that movie is kind of messed up. The Wheelers? The witch with the different heads in the hallway? I can't believe my mother let us keep watching it. Anyway, here are 11 of the most traumatising moments from the film. Oh my God, the insane asylum at the start! I forgot about that.

- Please enjoy this fifteen minute clip of people falling awkwardly. I think my favourite is the Dad jumping on the mattress his baby is sitting on, and seeing the baby fly up in the air. Cracked my shit up.

- Vulture has the Ultimate Sitcom Smackdown happening now. Thoughts? I don't know that Sex and the City can be compared anywhere near Seinfeld, but that's just me.

Happy long weekend if you're in Victoria! And happy....regular two day weekend if you're elsewhere.

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Monday Morning Melody - Bruno Mars

I am really coming around to Bruno Mars. And it's because of this song. I think it's lovely.


It's so full of longing and regret. I think he really nailed the emotions through the lyrics. Pin It

Fun Friday Links

It's the first day of Autumn! The past two days have been cool, and it has been divine to go to bed feeling the need for a warm doona. Of course, fast forward about four months and I'll probably be moaning about the deluge of rain we'll probably have.

Here are your Friday links!

- Did you read Sweet Valley High in the 90s? Like The Baby Sitters Club, I never knew they were written by ghost writers when I was reading them as a teenager, so this interview with one of the ghost writers is really cool. Highlights here, full article here.

- Jennifer Lawrence is totally the media's darling right now. And why not? She's hilarious, adorable, and a brand new Oscar winner. So, here's Jennifer Lawrence being awesome at the Oscars in GIF form.

- Whether or not you enjoy the TV show Girls, this is an interesting piece on the costume designer for the show. I only have one comment - Hannah needs to stop wearing unflattering, high waisted shorts, PLEASE.

-This will fill in your Friday afternoon nicely - the 12 most strangely satisfying videos on the internet. I love the one of the chess piece being made. It kind of reminds of that clip from Seasme Street that showed crayons being made, which my sisters and I loved.

Happy weekend! Pin It

Adventures in Cupcake Decorating

After doing my cupcake decorating class about six weeks ago, I've been slowly creating a cupcake decorating kit with all the basic bits and pieces needed to start cupcake decorating. I bought a bunch of cool stuff, and today I made my first batch of cupcakes for a baby shower. 

I found the design by just searching google images for something simple, since the mother to be doesn't know the gender of the baby, and I had a lot of fun creating these!

It was also my first attempt at colouring fondant myself, which wasn't as difficult or messy as I thought it would be. I bought white fondant, and I used Wilton and Americolour dyes in yellow, pink, and blue to create the three colours. The lady at the shop told me to just dab some on the end of a toothpick, dab it onto the fondant and knead it, and I did. The less colour you use, the lighter the shade, so I used a very small amount of each, then added a bit more and got these lovely pastel colours.

The only downside is that the cupcakes themselves baked in a really strange shape, so I had to do a lot of shearing off the tops with a serrated knife. If anyone can offer tips on how to get that perfectly round cupcake shape, please let me know in the comments!

So, while they don't look as professional as I would have liked, I think they're okay for my first attempt! Pin It

Oscars 2013 Fashion Hits and Misses

Yay, the Oscars! Although the ceremony was kind of a snoozefest, regardless of whether or not you like/don't like Seth McFarlane.

To start with, everyone needs to watch this clip of Jennifer Lawrence meeting Jack Nicholson after the ceremony.



Now, let's get stuck into the fashion!


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Monday Morning Melody - Of Monsters and Men

Two weeks ago, my Monday Morning Melody was The Lumineers' Ho Hey, and when I first heard it on the radio, I kept thinking it was this song: Little Talks by of Monsters and Men.


They sound similar, but not really. But for some reason I though they were the same song for about a month. Anyway, I love them both, so I wanted to feature Of Monsters and Men this week. Your thoughts? Pin It

Fun Friday Links

Busy week for me this week! It was my birthday, and I finished my patchwork quilt, and I had to enroll my daughter in creche, and I did a bunch of other things, the most painful of which happened this morning when I sliced the crap out of my finger while cutting some chicken. GROSS.

Anyway, to distract me from the throbbing in my finger, let's look at some links!

- Nick Miller might be my favourite character on TV. In this piece from Vulture, actor Jake Johnson talks us through Nick Miller's most awkward moves. I just watched the episode where Nick is taken to the little pool by the Asian man, and I have not laughed that hard in a loooong time.

- Like Friends? Take this quiz on Buzzfeed, which is asking how well you know Friends. I watch reruns whenever they're on TV (it's a sickness, I can't not watch), and I'm sad to say I got two wrong.

- I haven't played The Sims in a while (my sister LOVES it), so I don't know how advanced it is now. This list of the 29 Weirdest Thing to Ever Happen in The Sims tells me that they are pretty crazy. Apparently you can drop your Sim baby in a FISH TANK? And sadly, I can related to number 4. A lot. Number 6 and number 13 cracked my shit up.

- The Oscars are this weekend! Some lady had the time to create a site that chronicles every Oscar stat imaginable. I hope you have the rest of the afternoon free, because it is INCREDIBLE.

- My sister lives in London, and posted a link to this Tumblr today. Books on the Underground is photos of books that live on the underground trains that people can read while they travel. Such a good idea! If they did that here, I might take public transport more often......MAYBE.

Happy weekend, everyone!

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Crafty Lady - Bricks & Mortar Patchwork Quilt

I am so happy! I started making this quilt a year ago, a few weeks before I gave birth to my daughter. Once I had her in April, I didn't pull it out of the cupboard again until about November last year. I used this pattern, which was quite easy to do since it was just small and large rectangles.

It's to go on our bed, although I think it might be slightly too narrow. I think the pattern should have added an extra row on the edge, since we have a queen size bed and this probably would suit a double bed more.

Anyway, because it's for our bedroom, I didn't want to make it too floral or overly feminine, so I chose a few fabrics that were bluey gray and went from there.

My favourite fabric is that purple looking one with the white print on it. I did put a few florals in, as you can see, but I also mixed it with more plain or simple geometric patterned ones to even it out.

I wanted to find a nice white and blue doona cover to go with it for Winter, and I found THE perfect one at Bed, Bath, and Table, but it was sold out across Australia. So the search continues.

But I'm quite pleased with my efforts and I can't wait to have this on our bed in Winter!


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