What I wore...

Today I went into the city to do something super fun and secret with my friend Nicola. I can't keep secrets so you'll probably find out soon enough. 

I really like this dress! Although, the shape is a bit funny. It's fine with a cardigan and belt though. The cardigan is my go to cardigan at the moment. I wear it with everything. All together, the outfit cost less than $25!

It's a bit cold and really windy today. Looks like it might rain. Perfect day to stay inside. When I was shopping today I started feeling a bit sick, so I'm going to spend my afternoon watching tv in bed. Nice way to start a week off uni, too!

Dress: back of a record shop ($10!), cardigan: op shop, shoes: cotton on

broach: Gemmas Jewellery Gems, belt: from another dress.

Spinach and Bacon Pasta.

So, we have a vegetable garden that I'm trying to make use of. I bought some english spinach when I was buying things to put in it, and I had no real idea about what I could actually use the spinach for. I usually just use baby spinach leaves in salads, and that's the extent of the spinach usage. These ones are bigger and thicker and I feel that they need to be cooked. So I picked a bunch last night and today I decided to use it in pasta. Oh my god. This was one of the best things I've eaten. So now I will share. I don't have any photos of the cooking process, just the before and after, because I didn't realise until after I'd tasted it that I wanted to share the recipe with everyone.
Also, I don't measure things when I'm cooking things like pasta sauces. I just put a bunch of stuff in and hope it works (it always does, by the way!). So, here it is...

Spinach and Bacon Pasta
Serves 1.

Ingredients.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 an onion
2 little cloves of garlic (or however much you want to put in, I'm not sure how many people like lots of garlic...)
3 button mushrooms
2 rashers of short cut bacon (I used three but that was probably too much)
About 1 tablespoon of pine nuts (probably too much, so put in however many you want)

1 handfull of spinach leaves

About 1 teaspoon of butter. Or enough to cover everything lightly, use as much or as little as you want. 

About 150g cooked pasta (I used leftover pene)

Parmesan and pepper to taste (I like a LOT of cheese...)

Method.

Heat oil in frypan. Finely chop onion and garlic. Fry until the onion is whiteish. While that's frying, chop up the mushrooms into large slices. I got about 4 slices per mushroom. Mushrooms shrink a lot when they're frying and in this dish I think bigger pieces are better. Add the mushrooms and fry till they're cooked a bit. Meanwhile, cut up the bacon into however big slices you want. Add that. When everything looks almost ready, add the pine nuts. Keep an eye on these because they burn easily and then they don't taste too good. Tear up the spinach into smallish pieces when the pine nuts are cooked and add them. Add butter to cover everything lightly, and add the pasta and mix it through.

Put in a bowl to serve and add however much parmesan you want and a bit of pepper.

YUM.

before cooking

Finished product! With a hazelnut iced coffee.

Things I like...

So, I used to have stretched ears, 8mm. I took them out in January and they're not quite closed up yet, but I can wear big studs if they have big backs! So now I've been looking at cute earrings to wear (I had stretched ears for almost 6 years!) These ones are lovely.

Shirts and dresses with ties on them! This one is super cute. And I've started liking green apparently!

These DIY candle holders are a great way to use old jars.

This picture

Kaylah's weekly nail blogs!

Other things...

- I bought The Walking Dead season 1 at JB on the weekend. And then finished watching it. Oh WOW, it's good! Wishing someone told me how great it was sooner! Can't wait to start watching season 2.
-Making delicious food with veggies from the garden!

Colour me Lucky!

So, my favourite clothes shop/website ever has a competition at the moment for Saint Patrick's day. You have to put together a rainbow inspired wishlist, with at least 3 red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple items. And you can win a $50 gift voucher!

So I put together a wishlist with 3 items of each colour. It was fun trying to find things in yellow and orange, because they're colours I usually wouldn't go for... but I found some great ones! So here's a little polyvore set featuring items from my wishlist. Almost everything is from modcloth, except the wayfarers, and the cute little broach by Layla Amber (There's a link to the shop below!)

--1. Tights for every occasion in teal -- 2. Ray Ban Wayfarers -- 

--3. Fair and lemon square dress -- 4. Charter school cardigan in orchid --

-- 5. Woodland squirrel broach --

--6. Sunday market tote in rainbow -- 7. Whisker sweet nothings heel --

Things I like...

This print by Anna Bond.

This coat from modcloth.

This print.

This illustration by The White Deer

This coin bank from Circus Bear Vintage. The shop is full of cute vintage figurines and other nick-nacks.

Other things...

My favourite band in the world ever, Simple Plan, are coming to Australia in June! They're touring with another rad band, We The Kings! And, not only are they playing Sydney, but also Newcastle and Wollongong. I'll be hitting up all 3 shows!! Got my tickets today!

I met some puppies on the weekend. They were so cute, but more about them soon, hopefully!

inspiration

Kitchens, pink, and little trinkets hiding everywhere.

Red? I'd usually stay away from something this dark, but this room is lovely!

This small pink kitchen is very cute. I love the keep calm poster, and smeg fridge!

50's diner inspired kitchen!

beautiful print.

This setup.

Yep. I'm going to blog about that.

Kony 2012. A (very well made) video about Joseph Kony and his involvement in horrible crimes in Africa. You all know, you've all seen it. It's kind of really scary how involved people got after seeing it. Like, really scary. People jumped at the chance to buy posters and action kits to 'cover the night'. That sort of stuff really appeals to our generation! We love graffiti! We love street art, that shit's cool to us. The thing that's really scary though is that we were all willing to throw money at this stuff before looking further into it. Sure the video looked convincing, but it didn't really tell you where the money you were giving them was going to go.
Give money to UNICEF and other aid funds: it goes to feed people and build communities. Give money to RSPCA. It goes to feeding, desexing and finding homes for animals. Give money to cancer/other disease research causes: it goes to people finding a cure (doing this research is a lot more expensive than you would think!) This money, from what I can tell, is going towards hip videos to raise awareness without telling us what happens next.

Ok. So now lots of people know about this guy, and if you looked into it further there are plenty more groups who are involved in finding Joseph Kony and stopping the LRA. But the point is, anyone could have made a video like that for anything and people would be all over it donating. Without checking the validity of it.

It's obviously evoked very strong emotion in a lot of people. If people do decide to support the cause, I'm hoping they do their research first, because it is a good cause. And, if they chose not to support it, for whatever reason, that they use the huge emotional energy they experienced while watching the film, the urge to do something to change the world and that they do go and find a charity/cause/organisation they feel strongly about. That's what I hope will come out of the video, and that's what I got from the video. I should stop doing nothing. Donate blood, sign up for organ donation (why have I not already done this?) and start supporting and donating to animal welfare groups like RSPCA. I'm hoping to adopt a dog very soon instead of buying a puppy, which is something I've started feeling strongly in. And maybe I'll start to advocate what I believe in.

Or maybe everyone will forget about it next week...

What I wore... Paris Dream

Dress - Ally, Sunglasses - vintage via ebay, Belt - from another dress

long sock - factory outlet (I've forgotten where), Boots - Doc Martens

I got this dress last winter. It has such a lovely cut, and the print has the eiffel tower on it!! It's got lots of skirt and is the perfect length! It is a littttle tight, which is why I've only worn it a handful of times. Note to self: try clothes on. I've finally figured out a way to get it on by myself. It has a zip which is almost impossible to do up (another reason I never wear it). Hopefully I can lose a little bit more weight from going to the gym soon so I can wear it more often, haha!

It's starting to get cold here! I love winter, so I'm excited about this! I love wearing stockings with my dresses, and cardigans, and scarfs! I love hot chocolates and lying in bed under a warm doona old freezing cold days watching tv. And skiing! I went downhill skiing in year 9 with school for the first time and it was so fun! I hadn't been since until last year where a bunch of friends and I went to Blue Cow for the day. After the bunny slope we hit a pretty hard slope which took a while to get down then back up, but once we got back to a more beginner slope I picked it back up really quickly and didn't want to stop! The boys were all snowboarding for the first time so didn't pick it up as easily so they were't confident to take on more advanced slopes, but they went a second day and got a lot better. So this year we're going to hit the slopes again, hopefully more than once this time. I really can't wait. Winter is the best.

things I like

This cat picture

This dress from modcloth.

This brooch. I bought this and 2 other cute brooches from Gemma's Jewellery Gems yesterday. She has a sale on at the moment, too!

This beautiful kitchen!

This cutie, who currently goes by the name Tiny. He's only a few weeks old and is so so so adorable! You'll be seeing a lot of him around here very soon! He's totally making me more of a cat person.

Some more things I like...

My friend Tash's tumblr. It's a big collection of beautiful photos and I know I'll be checking there regularly for inspiration. Check it out here.

It's autumn! It's going to start getting cooler. Which means warm jackets, hot chocolates and skiing!

Draw something! So much fun! I'm addicted. My username is Klerr, if anyone wants to verse me. Just a warning - I can't draw!

life update

I haven't been able to get on the computer much recently. I was quite sick last week and I just wanted to sleep whenever I was home. I still had to go to uni because I didn't want to have to go to the doctors to get a certificate. So it took a while to get over that.
This week I've been out every night. The boy is going to Thailand for 3 weeks and he left today, so I spent my week with him. On Wednesday night we went out to celebrate our 3 year anniversary (which was on Saturday). He took me to a fancy wine bar for dinner. It was so lovely! He used to work with the head chef, so almost straight after we got there they bought us out appetisers! Scallops on slices of chorizo sausage. They were so delicious. I ordered duck confit and it was so delicious! Toby ordered fish, which he said was also delicious (I'm not a big fish fan...). We had fries and salt and pepper calamari on the side, which really was too much food! Then we had apple sorbet'. We ordered a creme brule to share for dessert, but we got brought 2 glasses of desert wine and a platter with all 4 of their desserts on it! It was actually the greatest thing that's ever been placed in front of me. As well as the brule, there was chocolate mousse, kaluha semifredo, a little chocolate delicious bar thing, walnut donuts soaked in chocolate with persian fairyfloss, and a lemon sorbet. I wish I took a picture but it looked so good I completely forgot and dug in. It was such a good night. We were giggling all through eating the dessert because it was so good.

It's been raining all week here. We had a day where it only rained a little but there's been a lot of huge puddles forming. The lake has swollen. There's a little creek that's now a big river. And we didn't even get the worst of it! Here's a picture of the lake. The silly swans are sitting on a big puddle. Or maybe it's the lake overflowing...

I'll probably be here a bit more in the next few weeks. I'll be a bit bored with the boy gone, and I'll have plenty of spare time. :)