My Bloggable Day

Ladies Day, now with added ladies

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Bec

Waking up after the cocktail party, we headed straight to Hoovers for this:

Replenished, it was time for more of these:

I wore a dress I bought last year some time and a fascinator I bought for half price from a shoe store (?!). Elly kindly leant me a belt and bag.

We headed to the track and went straight to where the competition is most fierce: the Fashions on the Field runway.

My friend Ellenmary (second from the left, below) was a finalist and in my opinion, was robbed of the crown. She made her dress AND hat!

My other friend Carly deservedly took out the prize for best hat. She has an 18th century ship in her fascinator. A SHIP. Try and beat that! You can’t.

Stunning. After our fashion fill it was time to get back to the races. Bec got off to a roaring start:

Me on the other hand…

This is the face of someone who really needs their horse to come first… and it didn’t. This is when to stop folks! And stop I did. No attempting to chase losses for me. I commiserated with Claire.

And then we went to find her people:

It was tough, but we found them! And these lovely ladies even leant Claire a hat for the photo, bless. Time to eat!

MEATZ! What else?!

Lauren wore a lovely tangerine Sacha Drake dress.

Bumped into Em from the Fossick Fashion show (far left):

We headed out to enjoy the late afternoon sunshine. And to take some fake candid photos.

Just so natural. So candid.

Just for a change we hot footed it to the pub across the road after the races for a meal. There was also corny Wedding Singer style entertainment so Bec and I took it upon ourselves to get the dance floor going. Nailed it.

And so ends my week of racing festivities. My friends are off to Kal Cup tomorrow but I am currently flying to Melbourne ahead of my trip to Samoa.

I’ll be coming to you from an island in the Pacific very soon!

Posted in Misc | Tagged Races | 2 Comments

Cocktails and burlesque

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Bec

Those of us who frequent bars in Kalgoorlie are accustomed to seeing naked breasts every time we order a drink. Topless barmaids are one mining town trait that this place will probably never shake. So you think the opportunity to see burlesque would be met with an eye roll, but on Tuesday night at the Hannans Club, the ladies from Sugar Blue practised the Art of the Tease to an adoring (and loud) audience.

And I gotta say, they were good. The party is an annual event on the Race Round fixture and gets bigger and better (and the tickets more expensive!) every year. But hey, opportunities to get dressed up and drink copious amounts of sparkling wine are pretty much restricted to one week in September here, so why not go all out?

My Petra Vanessie dress had its maiden voyage.

My beautiful blond friends:

I was starting to get quite a complex about being the only brunette, so I called Perth for back up and who should arrive?!

Gloria and Emma! My past Kalgoorlie gal pals. With the ledger evened we got on with drinking and chasing the waitresses around the party for food.

SCORE!

Cheeky! Without a doubt some of the best champagne hoarding I’ve ever seen was over at Lauren’s table:

Photo booth time! Five people at once was a tad ambitious…

Time to polish off those drinks:

The night was wrapping up so we teetered up the road to the Tatts Club for the Calcutta. Which, from what I understand, involves wealthy older gentlemen bidding ridiculous cash on horse betting syndicates.

I kept my arms closely pinned to my sides in case an errant arm flail was mistaken for a bid. An excellent evening.

Posted in Misc | 2 Comments

A day at the races

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Bec

Yesterday my housemates and I trotted off to the track for the Boulder Cup. After last year’s disastrous cancellation of all races due to a ‘water logged track’ caused by a sprinkler when it was 25 degrees and sunny, I was a bit worried the day might be rained out as we’d, you know, had actual rain. But everything went ahead as per usual.

I completely changed my outfit at the last minute and wore a really old polka dot shirt, a ~~boring~~ plain black skirt and I hat I got from an op shop for $3.

We had deliciously sticky ribs that got stuck in our teeth:

Washed down with a couple of these:

Then headed to the straight to watch a couple of races (we actually saw horses! and a pretty rainbow).

Isn’t Lauren’s hat amazing? She made it herself! The ultimate DIY. If we look a bit tired here it’s because we’d been at the cast party for our play that wrapped up the night before:

Nothing a giant pair of sunnies couldn’t fix:

Thanks to the very accurate tips from my friend Paddy I won the trifecta on the main race! I raked in a whopping $92.50 for my efforts. I was probably a bit too excited, but I usually never win anything at the races!

Time to celebrate!

I can’t get over how sensibly we all dressed! No towering heels or ridiculously short/tight dresses. I think I might finally be over that part of my life at the ripe old age of 25. I can’t say I’m too sad, especially after seeing some terribly ill-fitting dresses on girls who teetered around with the grace of newborn giraffes in their heels.

We are all wearing sheer tights. I remember when I was about 19, I scoffed at someone who suggested wearing nylons to the races. I vaguely recall saying something along the lines of “Jean Shrimpton didn’t pave the way for bare legs in 1965 so we could go back to wearing stockings at the races!”. Hahaha how stupidly dramatic.

Cue giggling.

Afterwards it was straight to the pub across the road from home for a feed. I continued my meaty diet with pork belly. I don’t think I’d had crackling since I overdosed on it at Christmas and had to lie down. It was delicious.

Ryan’s pizza:

Someone’s chocolate pudding which they kindly shared.

It was a great day and well worth catching a cold for. I’m feeling rather average now, but there are plenty more events on this week so I’m relying heavily on pseudo ephedrine to get me through!

I used my new camera to take these photos and I’m really happy with how they turned out, the real challenge will be using the flash tomorrow night. The flash and I aren’t friends.

Posted in Fashion, Misc | Tagged Fashion, Food, Hats, Kalgoorlie, Races | Leave a comment

Can we just talk about…

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Bec

How cheap strawberries are

This photo encapsulates all my dreams realised. I’ve loved strawberries for as long as I can remember. Not strawberry cake, milkshakes or ice cream. Strawberries. I remember hearing at the start of the year, when strawberries were also at bargain basement prices, that some farmers weren’t bothering to pick them because it wasn’t worth their time. So they just let the plant die. I have no idea if this is correct but if you are a strawberry farmer, please don’t do this. And if you are a strawberry farmer how strange it is that you should enjoy random non farm related blogs, welcome!

How responsible I am becoming

I have been trusted TWICE in TWO weeks to feed hounds belonging to other people. I must just exude responsibility at the moment. Too bad I forgot to put the bins out last week. That would have been a responsible grown up thing to do. Now my driveway smells. You win some…

The Federal Election

Or more specifically, how there WASN’T a sausage sizzle at my local polling booth. Disappointment doesn’t really cover it, especially as this was the first Federal Election I’ve been present to vote in. Last time I was in Vienna and the time before that I was in Vietnam. I did consider flying to Venezuela just for continuity but I couldn’t get a visa in time. That’s a lie. We had sausages in bread at home on Sunday to make up for Saturday.

How I can’t stop reading Maggie Kelly’s blog

Why are you even reading my blog when you could be reading Maggie’s? She is all kinds of hilarious, including the sweary and crass kind (which might not appeal to everyone). Her commentary on everything is spot on. Especially about people who can’t help but constantly city-name-drop about their travels, recent or distant:

“In the true spirit of the inherently Australian ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’, the average punter would far prefer to hear about someone’s long weekend escape in the Kalgoorlie caravan park than their two month escapade in the south of France.” Hahaha. Go there. Now.

How delicious Bircher muesli is?

From a cafe I mean. I had homemade Bircher once and it tasted like cold hospital food combined with dregs from the kitchen sink. I’m pleased to report that Bircher may now be removed from my list of ‘lame things you shouldn’t bother ordering at a cafe’, where it once sat right alongside fruit toast and those tiny lame cakes called ‘friands’.

Posted in Misc | Tagged Dogs, Federal Election, Food, Strawberries | 7 Comments

New cameras

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Bec

It may surprise few people to learn that I enjoy taking photos. I have about 4000 photos on my iPhone alone. Not to mention almost 15,000 on my MacBook… No wonder it runs slower than a herd of snails travelling through peanut butter.

Anyway, I’ve recently purchased a couple of newbies that are pretty decent. This first camera isn’t exactly new, but I’ve been meaning to write about it for ages because it’s a fun toy. It’s the Fugi Film Instax Mini 7S. My friend Tim has one and brought it to our Op Shop party ages ago and I decided I had to have one.

It was on sale for about $90 if I recall correctly. There is something so delightful about instant film cameras. My Grandfather used to take Polaroids and I will always remember how he used to carefully tuck a fresh photo into his lapel pocket so that the warmth would help the picture develop.

Unfortunately the first two photos I took turned out like this:

I have no idea why they are so overexposed. The only thing I thought it might be is they were taken on the beach at Esperance, which has blinding white sand. That combined with the fact you can’t turn the flash off may have resulted in the epic white wash. $4 of film down the drain… The next 8 photos were a success though:

Perhaps because they were all taken at night? I might have to experiment with some day time shots. Obviously, the film is hideously expensive, $20 for 10 photos, so at $2 a pop you want to be super careful with who you ask to take your photo. In my experience, young men make genuinely awful photographers (see the photo second from the left in the top row above – I’ve always wanted a photo of mostly the ceiling!).

The photos do a great job of prettying up our fridge:

The next one is the Samsung NX1000. I’d been in the market for a Compact System Camera (or mirrorless camera) for a while and had my heart set on the Panasonic Lumix GF5. But it was getting increasingly more difficult to track down and the Samsung was my second choice and better suited to my price range. I’m so excited about not having to lug a giant DSLR around, particularly when I go on holidays soon. Compact System Cameras use smaller sensors than DSLR’s (which makes them more compact) but still allow you to change lenses and take good quality photos.

I haven’t had a good play around with the camera yet but I can already tell it is going to take quite a bit of getting used to. I find it weird that it there is no viewfinder and that a lot of the settings apply themselves automatically, rather than being manually applied. Freeeeeeaky. It’s also rather front heavy. I took this rather uninspiring photo of our grubby fruit bowl yesterday:

Considering it was quite dark in our kitchen I was happy with the amount of light the camera managed to pick up. I then snapped this selfie, with Bec being the ultimate lurk in the background:

Niiice. It feels so light and tiny compared to a DSLR:

^ Kind of looks like a weight loss before and after pic! Do you have either of these cameras? Got any tips?

Posted in Misc | Tagged Cameras, Compact System Camera, DSLR, Mirrorless Camera, Photography, Samsung NX1000 | 1 Comment

Sprung!

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Bec

Spring has sprung here in Kal! Today was a whopping 31 degrees. I took the above photo of pear blossom in Lauren and Dave’s front yard recently. I didn’t even know pear blossom was a thing. I was there to feed the hounds while they were in Melbourne gorging on the various delights available in the world’s most livable city. This is how I was greeted:

Haha I don’t think I’ve ever seen a toddler gate that wasn’t being used to keep a dog in or out of somewhere. Adorable.

As you can see I’ve been having some fun with the BeautifulMess app, attempting to improve my iPhone photos with pretty words and patterns. I bought it months ago and then never used it. Now I’m obsessed (and seriously late to the party, as usual). If you love DIY blogs and have never visited A Beautiful Mess head over there right now… Are you gone? Good.

Lauren and Dave kindly brought me back some macarons from Cafe Vue. This one was lavender:

I love the crunch of a macaron.

In other exciting news, I was a little too ecstatic to see a photo of mine on this Buzzfeed list. I am in love with Buzzfeed. It provides me with many laughs and hosts many of my favourite GIFs of all time.

Last night I had a really weird dream in which I was drowning. In the ocean, I think it was at Middle Park in Melbourne (?!). I was fully clothed and wearing heels, which were useless when I tried to kick my legs and make it to the surface. Someone was standing close to me on the shore and I remember telling them when I managed to get out that I was certain I wasn’t going to make it!? Heavy. According to Google, dreaming about drowning means you are feeling overwhelmed by emotions. Ha! What a load of… tabbouleh (which incidentally, I ate for lunch today). I have always had amazingly vivid dreams and nightmares. Are you a dreamer?

18 sleeps until my holiday! Not that I’m counting down or anything…

Posted in Misc | Tagged Dogs, dreams, Macarons, Spring | 5 Comments

Sunday night catch up

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Bec

So I’m in this play. It’s an Australian classic called Don’s Party set on the night of the federal election in 1969. Because of the era I get to spruce up my hair, wear a hideously patterned mini dress and a gold crushed velvet jacket with bell sleeves:

It’s super fun. Basically 11 of us get to eat Twisties and drink beer and occasionally swear at each other. We’ve had three shows so far that have mostly gone off without a hitch. Except the night someone managed to break a door. But that’s another story.

In three weeks I will be lying on a beach in Samoa with my sister and brother-in-law. I suppose you could say I’m a little bit excited. My sister has given me a long list of things to bring that apparently you can’t get on an island in the middle of the Pacific. Exciting things like pesto. And pleather sandals. Anyway, I’ve been struck early this year with pre-bikini-wearing-panic (usually doesn’t set in until late October). So I’ve amped up the old fitness regime in an attempt to Get Physical, Olivia Newton John Style. I bought new runners:

I promised myself I’d buy a pair in black. But came home with these? Strange. Spin or RPM classes are my favourite.

Speaking of sports wear, I finally used the Lululemon voucher (above) my friends kindly gifted me for my birthday. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact I’ve become one of those people who loves and buys obnoxiously expensive gym clothes… On one hand, $110 for gym pants does seem excessive, but on the other hand they seem to last a long time. And I figure if you are going to wear and wash an item a few times a week then it’s probably a good investment. So I’ve gone all soccer mum and started buying Lorna Jane and Lululemon in droves. I’ll make one stylish bag lady one day. Do you splurge or save on gym clothes?

In addition to sweating regularly I’m also attempting to stick to the 1200 calorie a day program that helped me lose some flab earlier in the year. I did the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation and lost 9kg. So now I’m on my second 12 week ‘transformation’. The recipes make it easy to stick to the diet. Especially ones like these delicious nachos:

To round things off here’s a photo of Mango, pleading with his eyes for someone to throw that stick. How cliched.

Throwing sticks is hard! Mango would take off with so much gusto that the stick would land behind or on top of him. But he kept coming back for more. Sometimes doing something you love hurts a little, doesn’t it Mango?

Have a great week.

Posted in Misc | Tagged Catch Up, Week, Weekend | 6 Comments

That time I failed at buying no new clothes for a year

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Bec

I have been dreading writing this post for a while now. Some of you will remember my well intentioned pledge to buy no new clothes for the entirety of 2013. Well, I failed. I failed badly. It started easily enough, I needed a new pair of black jeans because my Acne ones sustained a rather large, unfortunately placed hole and I forgot to take a dress with me to wear to a wedding (in fairness to me I did try to borrow one before buying a new one from Witchery)… These small relapses were a slippery slope to full blown failure. Failure is not something pleasant to admit. I feel as dirty as Sarah “I quit sugar Queen” Wilson probably did yesterday when she admitted to eating two croissants (what a silly thing to give up anyway!)…

In a post earlier this year I admitted to buying two dresses and received the most amount of comments ever on a single post. People telling me to ‘reconsider the parameters’ of my project and other stuff. I felt bad. Then I went and lost 9 kilos and buying new clothes seemed like a really good, fun idea. I won’t list all my purchases, lets just say there are a few extra items… ahem.

Anyway. What have I learnt?

Having goals is pointless if you haven’t thought of how to implement them, considered the hurdles and how to clear them, and have a decent amount of willpower up your sleeve. It’s also important to know why you want to do something. Buying no new clothes for a year because ‘it kind of seemed like a good idea at the time’ is bloody stupid.

So, I am clearly no authority on how to scale down your spending. So I’m referring to others who have clearly had more success:

365 Day Challenge: do not buy any new clothes for one year

No new clothes for a year

56 things to do instead of spending money

Go easy on me, internet!

Posted in Fashion | 10 Comments

Winter Wonderland Party

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Bec

Capping off what has been a rather dense period of themed parties, last Saturday night I celebrated my 25th birthday with a Winter Wonderland party. My original plan was an Apres Ski party, but being so far from snow fields out here in the desert I thought that might be too challenging.

I baked a snow man cake with a little help from Betty Crocker (I was feeling pretty lazy), some Oreos and a carrot. Looks pretty cute right?

I bought my Mrs Claus outfit from here and channelled this scene from Mean Girls. Sources tell me that I may have ~~tortured~~ treated my guests to my own five renditions of the dance later in the evening… Luckily I didn’t kick the stereo into anyone’s face ala Gretchen Wieners.

This snowman pop is a classic Pinterest fail. Click here to see what it should look like.

These cupcakes were also inspired by something I saw on Pinterest and were delicious.

Pretty much everyone agreed that the best costume came in the shape of a Swedish hot tub, constructed and worn by my friend Lauren. She also blew bubbles for ambience.

How creepy do all the people in ski masks behind me look in this photo:

As usual everyone made such an effort with the costumes, which I really appreciate. We had the Jamaican bobsled team, snow men and women, an ice queen, snowboarders and many others. Bec and Elly won the prize for the most confusing costumes of anyone at the party. Bec, a candy cane, was repeatedly mistaken for Raggedy Anne and people thought Elly, a snowman with a questionable carrot nose, was a penguin.

It was a fantastic night. After Nautical Nonsense, 90s, Childhood Heroes and Winter Wonderland (all in the last 6 weeks) I think I’ll put away the costumes for a bit and just be myself. My old, almost 30 year old self.

Posted in Misc | Tagged Birthday, Costumes, Fancy Dress, Party, Winter Wonderland Party | 2 Comments

Perth eats

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Bec

Some of my Kalgoorlie based Perth friends like to accuse me of hating Perth. I don’t hate Perth! It’s just hard to see its uniqueness when people describe great new restaurants and bars as ‘very Melbourne‘. Why not just go to Melbourne then? Where my loved ones are. It also doesn’t help that a trip to Perth inevitably involves a one hour flight at the cost of $400 or a seven hour train ride akin to taking a stroll through the fiery depths of hell.

Anyway. These are some food snaps from my most recent trip.

No word of a lie the Gordon Street Garage has been described to me by someone as ‘very Melbourne’. It was very cool. And the coffee was great.

The food was ok. No Proud Mary though.

For lunch we went to Madrid in Claremont. The reviews on Urban Spoon are fairly average but apparently a new chef helped whip things into shape back in March. I thought it was tasty.

Jordan getting his fork into pork belly and scallops so fast it’s just a blur.

From memory this was a braised lamb mini taco. It was delicious.

And this was a baked cannellini bean thing. Also tasty. Sure it was a bit pricey for what it was but that’s the same story for everywhere in Perth. Not very Melbourne at all!

I’m feeling a bit homesick because a few friends are off to Melbourne. I just paid $650 to change my flights home from Samoa to go via Melbourne in October. So I’ll get my fix soon.

Posted in Food | Tagged Food, Perth, Restuarants | 1 Comment