Baking Adventures: Scones

Last weekend when I was procrastinating from studying, I decided to satisfy my craving for baked goods by making scones! I love warm fresh-out-of-the-oven scones with beautiful jam and freshly whipped cream and unfortunately so many 'High Tea' places just don't get the scones right, mostly because they're too busy concentrating on the dessert aspects.

Anyway I went for a simple Bill Granger recipe (because he is awesome and he is the King of simple cooking) which substitutes cream for butter so you avoid having to rub butter into flour. It was so simple and within 30 minutes I had fresh scones! (Well...maybe a bit longer because I took a while to get all my ingredients together because I was getting distracted).

Straight out of the oven

With requisite jam and cream :)

Apologies again but the next few weeks my posts will be few and far between as I'm ramping up to what will hopefully be my last exam (!). Stay tuned for my newest NAP shoe purchase though...ordered them on Friday so they should be here by next week!!

WIW: Shoe of the day

I've been a bit lazy with posting snapshots of things I've been wearing, partly because it's been freezing cold here in Sydney and I've been staying in a lot but also because on the shoe front I've been wearing my decollete's to death!

They've become my basic black pump work shoe and despite the steep arch and angled toe box, I've become really used to wearing them! I sanctioned myself a 'Louboutin-free' day last week so I decided to wear these flats instead on a day I was doing a fair bit of walking/running around:

Ferragamo 'Varina' bow flats

But you know what? They're still fairly new and were more uncomfortable than 10cm heels! Insane!

So I was straight back to the decollete's the next day. But today I decided to wear an oldie but a goodie - a classic black block heel with a twist. A friend at work remarked "Oh the chunky heel are back in fashion are they?" I don't really mind either way, in-fashion or not they're insanely comfortable and in my opinion a classic mary-jane never goes out of style!

Bally 'Iliane' mary janes (excuse the bad photo - my computer won't let me rotate it!)

Here's a photo wearing my decollete's - I was shopping at Marcs and ended up buying the plain but practical-for-work LBD that I was trying on in this photo (almost 50% off too!)

Met Ball

Apologies for the lack of posts lately - this will unfortunately continue for the next few weeks as I have just under a month to study for my huge and important exam in mid-June. Somewhere in between all of that, I'm also trying to organise my holiday which is straight after, so life is busy busy busy!

Anyway, I'm loving all the events that are on at the moment. Between the Royal Wedding, Cannes Film Fest, and The Met Ball, there has been plenty of pretty pictures to look at. Love!

I loved celebrity watching and looking at all the amazing outfits from The Met Ball, this year honouring the one and only Alexander McQueen. In the last few weeks, I even made sure to wear my McQueen skull scarf in honour of all the McQueen related events!

I didn't love a lot of the looks this year unfortunately, but I did think the following celebs looked stunning.

Taylor Swift in J.Mendel

I love J. Mendel - absolutely exquisite couture which is uniquely clever but still so...refined!

Dakota Fanning in Valentino

Ashley Olsen in vintage Christian Dior

Okay, so maybe I have a bit of an obsession with the Olsen twins and Christian Dior (New Look, anyone?) but this look is just pure simple elegance. A bit of cleavage, and those sleeves. I don't even think I have the words to describe how much I love this!

Jennifer Lopez in Gucci

And finally, just because I thought she looked cool (though I don't know who she's wearing)...

Janelle Monae

Now I'm really excited to see the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty Exhbition at The Met when I visit NYC!

One of the exhibition pieces

All images thanks to Getty.

Kobe Jones, King Street Wharf

I love Japanese food and you just can't get past great Japanese with a twist. I'd only ever eaten the set menu at Kobe Jones but recently I went for a 'quiet-night' dinner where we just felt like eating good food and not being rushed out the door. As always, the view over King Street Wharf is fabulous at Kobe Jones and the service and food matched were top-notch.

Of course we ordered the Number 1 special sushi which was full of flavour and quite a big serving.

Number 1 special

We also ordered the Green Tea Salmon special which was cooked to perfection - not too overcooked, but not too undercooked - and had a smoky flavour which complemented well with the creamy sauce. Plus the wasabi mash - to die for. I love me a good mash, but this was seriously amazing. I <3 wasabi! We ordered some other dishes too but I unfortunately was starving hungry so didn't snap a photo before we started devouring it!

And what's a meal without dessert - we chose the Anko, a green tea creme brulee with red beans!

Yum yum yum. Makes me think it's about time I make some again...the last time I made creme brulee at home was for New Years Eve! A friend cooked dinner and I brought dessert (I mean when else do I have an occasion to use my blow torch?)

My homemade Creme Brulee

RAFW 2011

So another Rosemount Australian Fashion Week is over and as usual, I haven't had the time to follow all the showcoverage as much as I would have liked. In years gone-by I would sit at home eagerly awaiting the coverage of all the shows, but I no longer enjoy the luxury of being a university student with much more free time!

Luckily I have a friend who attended the shows and kept me updated with what she liked and didn't, but for now just from my early browsing I've seen some stuff I'm excited about. I was particularly excited to hear about the return of Toni Maticevski and Alice McCall - I still regularly wear Alice McCall and even 2-3 years later many of the items get comments.

Anyway, to the looks I loved.

Carl Kapp - loved his use of bold pop colours in flowing breeze off your body silks. I like the sophisticated draping in this look (though the colour isn't as 'wow' as some of the other items)

Alice McCall - love these grown up looks with the geometrically inspired sheer overlay pieces. She does cute everyday wearable clothes so well and as a Uni student I loved wearing those items, but I love how these items are still wearable for me now as a working girl. I loved so many of the other cute flirty dresses, but they are definitely 'weekend' outfits for me now so less practical.

Toni Maticevski - I love these items for their bold simplicity with a point of difference. There were of course the frou frou items which were amazing for their creative genius, but not for everyday wear (see below). I remember when I worked at Myer in the International Designer fashion section, the head of the department would see his amazing sculptured pieces looking sad and unwanted on the 75% off sale racks and encourage me to try them on. Once on, the pure corsetry and magnificence just made you feel like you were transforming into a red carpet star. I feel like these items would do the same!

Toni Maticevski

Lover - Liked a lot of the Lover collection actually, but a lot of the lace pieces seemed remiscent of past seasons. I love the pants/blouse combo for it's Parisian chic feel.

camilla and marc - Finally, camilla and marc delivered with a directional collection that felt polished and 'designed'. I say that because as much as I loved a lot of their past collections, they always felt overly borrowed or inspired by international designers. This collection feels very Miu Miu-esque (which is probably why I liked it), but I really liked the block colour shift dress in that first pic particularly.

Rachel Gilbert - Can't get past the silhouette of this ball gown. I'm not usually a big fan of Rachel Gilbert, but this is exquisite.

There were so many other great pieces too, but I'm sure a lot of them we'll just have to wait and see what they look like in real life and on the rack. 

Life in Photos: April

I'm enjoying what I like to call a 'me' weekend, which pretty much involves chillaxing and enjoying staying at home. It's great for these colder winter months too! Unfortunately I've also had to do some study and typically the brightest most beautiful weather has arrived this weekend which makes it really hard to study. In my procrastination though, I've been looking at the many photos on my iPhone all the other random photos I take all the time. It kind of reminds me of how hectic April was!

I can't remember when this arrived - I think sometime in April. The complimentary net-a-porter.com magazine full of beautiful beautiful pictures.

Brunch at Cafe ish - yummy congee and soft shell crab omelette (I love soft shell crab!)

All you can eat ribs at Tony Roma - I seriously fail at this, I couldn't even finish my one plate!

I finally made it to Zara last week! It was nice to see it open, though I unfortunately didn't see anything I wanted to buy. Plus I'm saving for my holiday so I have money to spend in Zara/H&M etc in the US. I walked past again at lunch time on another day and this was the stupid line.

Paella at Miro tapas - this was for 2 and we still struggled to eat it amongst 4 (though we did order some other tapas as well). How colourful and awesome does it look? It tasted just as good too!

Is it weird that I love staying at home on a Saturday night and rewatch The Hills while blogging?

Holiday Wishlist

So on the weekend I visited the shops and so almost walked away with....

an 11'' MacBook Air!

But why didn't I? Well I decided to save my money because instead I finally took the plunge and booked my holiday to the US and the Caribbean! Woo! It's seriously coming up so soon and while the airfares weren't expensive, they certainly weren't cheap.

So besides organising everything else (my To Do list, my "must visit" list), I'm also thinking of my Holiday shopping wishlist. With the AUD being so great, it really makes it so tempting to buy up big while I'm away, but to be honest I can't think of anything I really really need. There are always things a girl will want, but I'm trying to be good with saving and only buy a one or two big things from my wishlist, and the rest will be workwear and practical clothing shopping (like from H&M, Zara) or anywhere that has big sales on at the time.

At the moment by two big wishlist items are the laptop above (which I may buy in the US if it will save me lots of money) and a gorgeous everyday ring.

I have my eye on the following which I'll probably never get (but a girl can dream, right?) but I think I'm going to wait till I get there and see what strikes me as being absolutely beautiful and unique. I'll hit up the vintage stores, but otherwise, any other suggestions?

Tiffany & Co Platinum and Diamond channel band

The Royal Wedding

I'm a little behind with blogging about this, but it's been a busy week! I was originally going to spend Friday night at home watching the nuptials, but ended up having dinner with some friends. Fortunately, our dessert place had the big screen poised on the correct channel so we ate our sweet treats while critiquing the event of the century.

My first thoughts: I was generally underwhelmed, but I did love going home and watching back the arrival of all the guests and seeing the wonderful display of millinery and some of the fantastic outifts. I think that was the most exciting part of it.

I won't comment too much on the dress, because let's face it, everyone has been passing their two cents. Love love love McQueen, but I didn't get the reaction I thought I would to the dress as I thought it was elegant, but very safe (which is fair enough given the huge pressure of being a Royal bride and the necessity to be conservative). Though the dress really shouldn't be associated with McQueen so much as Sarah Burton.

Anyway, on to the things that excited me most about the wedding. Seeing all the wonderful hats! I feel for poor Beatrice and Eugenie who are used to getting a lot of slack for what they wear, especially at the wedding. I agree on all points that Eugenie's Vivienne Westwood dress was ill-fitting and perhaps not the best choice for someone who had thousands of options avialable to her, but I thought Beatrice looked fantastic (in Valentino Couture).

Princess Eugenie and Beatrice

Of course what I love is that both wore Philip Treacy millinery. I didn't personally love Eugenie's (too much going on) but it was still a stunning piece in it's own right, but Beatrice's structural neutral toned masterpiece was wickedly creative. I understand why people didn't like it - perhaps too fashion forward for a wedding like that - but it was stunning. Big thumbs up from me.

And of course, who didn't love Victoria Beckham's ensemble (topped off again with wonderful Treacy). Even Becks himself looked fabulous in Ralph Lauren (love love love it!)

On the topic of millinery, like many other fashion critics I also loved Miriam Gonzalez Durántez turban style headpiece. It was a daring and difficult look to pull off, but she had the dark features, red lips and poise to make it look fresh and absolutely fantastic. I wish I could wear the look as well as she did!

I would've done more of a shoe related 'critique' but besides noting the huge number of Louboutins in action (yay!), I didn't see any fabulous shoes which made me go wow. It does make sense though, given everyone mostly went for demure and elegant so block colour pumps were the big pick of the day.

Finally, a few more shots of other Royal family attendees. I couldn't help but post this shot of Queen Rania. She looks graceful with a fun pop of colour but still wearing her beautiful blue sash (I love when the European Royals wear all their medallians, ornaments and sashes).

Queen Rania

Another of my favourites, Zara Phillips was unfortunately looking a bit dowdy (in my opinion), but I think it was more to do with the heavy weight of what looked like a duchess satin and the high neckline.

Now if my favourite Royal, Charlotte Casiraghi, had attended the wedding I would've been even more excited to see what beautiful creation she would be wearing but alas she was keeping a low profile as she likes to do and so I haven't seen any accounts of her attending.

Oh well, for now life goes back to normal but every girl will once again start daydreaming of the day they might one-day meet their Prince Charming.

Images thanks to Getty and Zimbio