Travelling Girl: Oslo, Norway

View from the top of the Opera House during a very lovely visit with Maria and Tobias in November 2010. 

Travelling Girl: Barcelona

Barcelona, Spain - September 2010

View from the top of Montjuïc hill. J and I took the cable car up to enjoy this fantastic view over a city we both very quickly and very easily fell in love with. 

As with my 'Thinking Girl' feature I've decided to introduce 'Travelling Girl' as well. Every Tuesday I'm going to post one picture that means the most to me from a previous trip I've taken. I hope you'll all enjoy this brief little insight and it will make you dream of lovely places on a boring midweek day :) 

Thinking Girl: Why I blog

I've decided to try out making it a feature to write a short article based on 50 blog article ideas from The Ultimate Blog Challenge. I thought that this would not only provide a nice break from the usual content found on this blog, but that it would also help to make more personal connections with my audience. Do let me know how you think this feature is going and whether you'd like to see it stay or go! 


Why I Blog....

It's no secret that I've tried and failed at several blogs in my life - and these mostly failed because I ran out of patience or enthusiasm to keep them running, something of which I'm trying really hard not to do with this blog. 

As a teenager I made my first website with one of those awful free template website which I ran with two friends. It was a complete mishmash of random pages filled with glittery blinking icons, colourful rainbow text and 'About me' pages. Needless to say the birth of this blog was very shortly followed by it's death, at around 15 years old when I grew up and realised it really didn't look that great to wear plaid pants that only made me itchy anyway and dye my hair a tomato red colour that did nothing for my complexion.

Since then I made one or two more blogs. The most recent before this one was a music based blog where I did an album review every week. Unfortunately my enthusiasm for this blog waned as I never received the audience I would have liked, even though I did receive a few nice words from the artists whose albums I did review.

I vowed after that never to make a blog again as it was 'pointless and time consuming'.

Friends and family who have friended me on Facebook will no doubt vouch for me when I say that I'm an avid crafter, maker and baker. I live for creativity and if I had a past life I definitely believe I would have been a barefoot daisy chain wearing, jewellery making, painting hippie who drove a lilac VW. Whenever I make something I usually document it (with a lot of photographs) on my personal Facebook page and this lead to a lot of my family and friends requesting (or rather ordering!) me to make a new blog.

So, here we are today at my new home and outlet for all the things I do in my life. It amazes me still that people actually find my life so interesting! And that's why I blog...because it makes me happy to share my love and passion for the things I do with all of you and know that you all take such a great interest in it as well and that I might perhaps be inspiring people to try new things!

What do you think about this new article feature? 
Would you like to see more posts about the travels I've been on?

Born in the wrong decade

I went shopping yesterday and decided for the millionth time that I really was born in the wrong year. Here's a picture of my favourite buy of yesterday:

Polka dot peter pan collar dress!

It's not as garish and 'sack looking' as it might appear in this picture. When I have it on, it's an entirely different story. It fits like a glove and makes me long to wear this dress on a hot summer day with really curly hair, pink lipstick and a pair of white or nude heels! 

How would you 'dress up' this dress?

What kind of style do you all follow?

Changes

Since last summer I had quite light blonde hair. My natural hair colour is dark blonde but I went through a phase of being really obsessed with getting lighter hair! I finally did it last summer and I loved it! I got a full head of highlights which appeared to cause relatively little to no damage at all to my past the shoulders long hair, but I bet this was almost mostly due to the fact that my hair is so thick and in such great condition anyway. It also helps that I got it done by a really talented and lovely hairdresser over at GBH hair design .

The good thing about highlights also is that if you have a light coloured natural hair regrowth anyway, the regrowth once the highlights start to grow out is pretty natural looking and all blends in. This means that I didn't have to recolour my hair for almost half a year! Isn't that crazy?

I recently got some more highlights around a month ago to top up and brighten things up, but I felt as if this didn't go as well. The hairdresser was obviously a lot less talented than the previous one and I feel like I was over processed a little, because my hair felt very coarse and sticky for days afterwards and I also found it was a bit too bright than I wanted.

So while having blonde hair has been great I've been feeling for a while now like stepping up to something a little darker again. I'm not talking any chocolate browns or blacks, but rather just a natural looking dark blonde/light brown that is based more around my natural colour. I'm going to the hairdresser next week and I've got the following pictures along as inspiration. And yep, it's just a pure coincidence that all of these girls are 'big nosed girls' like myself ;)

Actress and singer, Charlotte Gainsbourg. I like her almost there but not that in your face kind of bangs/fringe, and her hair colour.

Norwegian Idol star , Linnea Dale. I like the length of her hair and her parting on the side. Also that she has such a natural look but looks so cute!

Film maker, Sofia Coppola. Love the hair colour! It's really the light brown colour I'm looking for.

I'll make sure to blog about whatever change I make next week. You know...if I don't chicken out or anything  !

Pinterest

I'm not sure how you guys feel about the website Pinterest, but I for one love it! It's like one giant moodboard and makes it so much easier to keep track of things that you love instead of having to save a billion bookmarks onto your internet browser.

You can make as many different boards that you want. Then all you have to do is install the 'Pin It' button onto your internet browser and it's as simple as that. Browse any website you want and when you see something that inspires you or that you might want to own in the future for example, just press the pin it button and it goes directly to your board.

My favourite board is my 'for the home' board. It's full of stuff from Modcloth and Lakeland! You can view it here!

When I grow up, I want to be an interior designer

Although I don't live in my own home yet I still can't resist getting some cute homeware things when I see them. Just like these two cups I found the other day. They were in a sale...and then I saw the typography on the left hand side one and fell in love with it. Its the secret interior-designer in me speaking! 

Sunshine and beaches

This weekend has been pretty full and busy for my standards. If I'm not working on weekends I'm either usually not even in the country or I'm just hibernating at home resting and catching up with cooking or crafting.  This weekend however I've had a special visitor in the form of my boyfriend. He is definitely the kind of guy who likes to remain active throughout the day....a complete contrast to someone like me, who can quite happily spend the entire day doing absolutely nothing in particular and not moving from the same place!

Because the weather was supposed to be fairly sunny and not too cold we decided it would be a nice idea to visit an old quaint village in Kent called Rye. It's full of cute old buildings and cobbled streets, as well as unusual gift shops. It can be nice to spend an afternoon walking around exploring, especially if the weather is as good. 

The best part about Rye however is probably the fact that a short bus ride away or a short cycle ride away if you're lucky....(more about that in a minute) lies the beautiful sandy beach of Camber. You might not think a sandy beach is that special, but for someone who lives in England it definitely is, as we don't really get sandy beaches here but rather pebbly ones. Unfortunately by the time we got to the bike rental place it was closed already, but we plan to make up for that by renting some bikes today instead.

I could really have taken pictures at the beach all day long! 

Isn't it nice? And I think that the polaroid camera on my iPhone makes it look even better. 

And lastly, it's always nice to be given the opportunity to sit down at the beach and take in the world so easily as this :)

Going dotty

Because of my job I don't often see the point in doing manicures any more because due to the amount of times I have to wash my hands during the day manicures never last more than a day without chipping and turning horrible looking. I have a few days off in the coming week though and because of that I decided to go ahead and do a polka dot manicure. Its the first time that I really used the dotting tool that my lovely friend Savannah gave me, but I think it looks cute anyway. Now let's see how long it lasts!

I love...

My new Aztec printed skirt! Please ignore the grey socks, they will not be part of this outfit in the future! :P

Dear Charlotte Gainsbourg,

You are really just me, but in celebrity form.

""I wanted to re-do my nose as an adolescent but thank God my father said, 'Keep your personality, your personality is in your nose', so I didn't do it. Everything tends to show you that you shouldn't touch your face, but I don't know... it's difficult being an actress because the camera magnifies absolutely everything."

She tells me she is rigorous about skincare – she recently discovered Crème de la Mer and uses a touch of make-up daily to cover up spots, but overall, she's not very interested in beauty regimens. Her hair is a natural colour ("although I would dye it if it went grey, which is a bit like Botox in a way"), and she cuts her fringe herself. "I don't take the time to do massages or go to spas, for example, and my feet are terrible," she says.

And when she's off duty, Gainsbourg admits, she isn't too bothered about fashion, either. "I'm always wearing the same things: jeans and an old pair of boots. I like to find myself again after wearing the costumes of a film so it's going back to what I'm used to. I don't like making too much effort." For her musical performances and the red carpet, she is dressed by Ghesquière who, she says, helps her to be more adventurous with her choice of clothes.

Otherwise, she says, she is uninterested. "I'm not very classical," she admits, "it doesn't suit me. I'm not really part of the fashion world and I like keeping a distance."

(quote taken from an interview in The Independent)

I have been thinking of a Charlotteesque hairstyle and have been toying with the idea of going back to brunette coloured hair for ages now. What do you guys think?

It's hard to find things better in life than a really good cup of tea

Today I wanted to write a small blog post about one of my favourite brands of tea. If you know me at all, you'll know that one of things I value most highly in life is a good cup of tea.

All my life I've drunk tea the 'British way' (with milk) because hey, that's how we drink it in South Africa too. Ever since I've been spending more time in mainland Europe however I started to expand from just your average black tea into a whole world of flavours and spices and blends...all without milk! European tea and coffee houses are really the best! It did take a lot of convincing, however...I will always remember the running joke of the family of my ex-boyfriend about how I used to drink 'baby tea' because it had milk in it.

In Austria and Germany they have a brand of tea called Teekanne. Teekane specialise in herbal and fruit teas, and I think you can even get them in America now. I think they have the most delightful names...take a look at these:

"French Kiss" (a strawberry and cherry flavoured tea) 

"Heisse Liebe" ("Hot Love".A raspberry and vanilla flavoured tea...my personal favourite! I have boxes of it!)

"Kleine Suende" (This is hard to translate. I think it almost means something like "Little Sinner". It's a blueberry and vanilla flavoured tea)

Aren't those tea names all just adorable? And they taste great too! Check out the other flavours over here 

All pictures sourced from: www.austria-onlineshop.com, www.teekanne.at and www.emmas-enkel.de