Picasso Exhibition: Sydney

Before I left Sydney, I visited the Picasso exhibition at Sydney's Art Gallery of New South Wales. I'm lucky enough to get great deals through work so of course I spent a beautiful day wandering around the exhibition and enjoying the beautiful Summer weather.

The exhibition is fabulous - it's really quite expansive for an International collection - and it is a great retrospective of Picasso's life and the different phases of his artwork.

Anyway, you can't take photos inside, but one thing you can take home with you is this awesome creative home craft project:

All the images can be punched out easily and you can try your hand at something arty and structural using the inspiration from the artwork. My sister and I had a little competition to see what we could come up with - this was mine.

It was really fun being able to put all the pieces together and see all the different things you could come  up with, and especially see how differently my sister's turned out!

If you get the chance, you just must visit the exhibition! It's running until 25 March 2012 :)

First Ladies of the US

So I visited the National Museum of American History which is one of the Smithsonian museum. It is a small but fun museum filled with modern popular culture kind of stuff.

My favourite section by far was definitely the First Ladies section which showed beautiful gowns, accessories and official tableware of some of the American First Ladies through the last century.

 This was definitely a highlight of the collection on display - Michelle Obama's dress from the inauguration ball. They say this is the defining moment for the President and his significant-other in terms of taking on the Presidency and for the ladies their choice of gown is of course very much scruitinised!

This is Michelle Obama's Jason Wu dress which is just stunning.

 And her shoes - Jimmy Choo!

And then there is the spectacular showing of official china which each First Lady gets to specially choose and design. Nancy Reagan's is beautiful:

And then they have other dresses from inauguration balls, special functions and the like. Most of the famous First Ladies are represented in some way.

This is Lady Bird Johnson's stunning ensemble. The exhibition says she wanted to choose something timeless and this definitely fits the bill. Decades later I can still imagine a Hollywood movie star wearing this on the red carpet!

Mamie Eisenhower's evening gown is in real life quite vividly glamorous in a very traditional way. Beautiful!

And this, of course, personifies Jackie Kennedy's elegant simplistic style.  This was from a State Dinner and is really quite intricate but still has a sense of standing out.

And don't you just love this - Nancy Reagan's petite little skirt suit set. She must be a tiny lady in real life because this was so petite!

Which is your favourite dress from those above? I think mine is Lady Bird Johnson's and of course Michelle Obamas. It just has an ethereal modern, but still timeless appeal.

Karl for net-a-porter

I think it is SO typical that the one time net-a-porter.com holds an event in Sydney, I am not even there to be able to join in!

But let's just say, I am really excited for this!!! I can't wait to see the range on offer...

Are you going to be buying anything from Karl for NAP?

Snow in the US!

So yesterday night was the first proper snow since I've arrived in the US and it is just picture perfect! Seeing all the trees topped with a light white covering is just so beautiful....though I am learning quickly the perils of the snow.

I avoided driving because I was scared of the icy-ness, but instead I had to suffer through slippery hard to walk on footpaths and let's just say I'm majorly missing my Burberry gumboots which are happily sitting in my wardrobe back home in Australia!

Anyway I thought I would share some photos:

These are taken on my phone at night so apologies for the quality! It was still snowing when I took the second picture :)

Meanwhile, I totally heart Whole Foods, so despite the icy snowy mess outside I hauled myself out of bed to do some groceries. Australia needs Whole Foods!

Environmentally friendly bags, of course!

I love these dark chocolate Almonds that I buy by weight - they're amazing and great value!

Of course I'm drawn to the cake section - I wanted to try all of them, but I settled on just one...

A mini chocolate cheesecake. Perfectly bite-sized, it definitely is rich despite being deceivingly small! And it was only $2 :)

Ms G's

I know I'm in the US now, but I've still got a backlog of Sydney things I wanted to post about! Before I left, I took a visit to Ms Gs in Sydney's Potts Point (well really, Kings Cross, but to be fancy everyone likes to say Potts Point). I had been meaning to go and try it for a while, though knew I had to be prepared for Asian food at slightly high price points.

The food definitely doesn't disappoint, however is pricy considering you can get similar traditional Vietnamese fare for half the price. The point of difference is definitely the more fusion flavours and the awesome cocktails and cool setting.

The menu

Bubble tea encasing for a cocktail!

Not to mention, the food and menu is very reminiscent of New York's Momofuku. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed my meal and am quite a fan of what Dan Hong has done in being able to add a cool hangout restaurant to the Sydney mix, but this is definitely one of those places you go only once in a while. Here are a whole lot of pics!

A seafood fresh summer noodle salad of sorts

The famous 'banh mi'

 These did taste really good, but at $6 a pop, definitely not cheap! And weren't amazing for that price either. You can get a whole pork bun from a Vietnamese restaurant for that price!

Egg noodles

Oops forgot to take a photo earlier - remnants of the steak tartare. This was awesome! But I love steak tartares if they're done well. This had a spiciness with asian flavours like fish sauce cutting through.

And onto desserts!

This is the famous 'Stoners delight 2.0' deconstructed doughnut. It looks interesting in the picture, right? But to be honest, the hodge podge plating matches the weird flavours not quite working for my tastebuds. Some may like it, but not for me.

And the pandan chiffon cake dessert - as seen on Masterchef! I was reluctant to get this, after all its just pandan chiffon cake, something you can buy in bulk at an asian grocer but this was perfection. Light, fluffy, at the perfect slightly warmed temperature with amazing coconut sorbet on top and sago to go with it. I couldn't fault it!

Golden Globes Red Carpet 2012

Being in the US means I can watch the E! channel Golden Globes red carpet live! How novel!

Anyway I'm obviously still yet to see all the arrivals but I just needed to post straight away with some of my absolute faves:

Charlize Theron
I love her, she always looks flawless and stunning and she just looks so ethereal today in Dior Couture and archive Cartier jewels. When I heard she was wearing Dior, it really did not surprise me because I love everything Dior. Kelly Osbourne just voted Charlize as her favourite of the night too!

Frieda Pinto
So I don't really like this look for the Globes, but I like this look as a general wearable option for everyday people. Prada really has chosen a fabulous fabric and colour for simplicity and elegance.

Elle Macpherson
For a bit of Aussie goodness - I love how Elle always looks effortlessly chic. Not an amazing unique gown (I mean fishtail has to be the most 'done' look at awards shows) but she looks great, as usual. I just heard she's wearing Zac Posen which makes so much sense - that fishtail corseted cut screams Posen.

Claire Danes
In J Mendel - simple monochrome but she looks the best I've seen her in a while! The back was amazing.

In general it seems like a lot of stars are wearing Reem Acra, including Madonna - I don't love the outfit on her, but I feel like the dress would have looked off the hook on another star. Don't ask me who though, I just have this feeling! (Sorry can't find a picture at the moment!)

I will keep updating as I see awesome outfits!

#13: Louboutin Corneille 100s

My year-long reign of the 'Shoe Subscription' competition winner is almost up and I'm sure the new winner is soon to be announced. I am so excited for them! And with that, I have been frantically trying to think of the other must-have items I need to add to my wardrobe. I absolutely adore my classic black Louboutins but seeing as the ones I wanted weren't available I just snapped up these when they came up.

And thank god I did because they sold out pretty quickly!

The 100 height has and always been my favourite but this heel is much finer than others, which makes it more of a special occasion black pump methinks.

But I love the asymmetric toebox that gives some awesome toe cleavage. Again this is my sister modelling.

Mmm nothing like a sexy red sole!

A visit to Costco!

Costco has been open in Sydney for some time now, but seeing as I don't live close I only recently visited for the first time with a friend who failed to tell me for ages that he had membership!

Anyway, it was quite an experience. I'm glad I had lots of time because between eating our giant pizza...

(Yes, that's right, we were one of those fools buying the giant 18 inch pizza for $16)

...and walking through all the countless aisles of mass produced bulk buy items, we practically spent a whole afternoon there, and that's considering I'm a fast shopper and actually bypassed lots of areas where I couldn't be bothered looking in detail.

In general, I think there are definitely things that are cheap there, but you have to be wary of simply buying anything and everything because the bulk buy aspect can often mean you just end up being wasteful in terms of spending and never using the items you buy.

Here's some of the cool things we did buy:

Gyoza frozen and then just steamed - a pack of 40 cost under $10 which isn't spectacularly cheap but these had full prawns (quite sizeable too!) and were uber tasty. Such a great 'lazy' dinner and relatively healthy!

Frozen raspberries - I think it is a 2kg bag for $5 or something? I can't quite remember but they are really great to have handy for summer desserts such as this mini pavlova below. I usually make my own meringues but I've been so busy that Coles brand mini-pavlovas had to do. I whipped some cream and added some vanilla essence and topped with the frozen raspberries and fresh fruit and voila! The juice from the frozen raspberries makes an awesome instant raspberry coulis too! This is actually my sister's pavlova piled up...I ate mine before remembering to take a pic.

Our giant pizza...

So all in all a fun afternoon - but definitely not helpful if you're trying to be good and eat in moderation! 

US of A!

Apologies for not posting since last year! I had meant to post a Happy New Year post but I flew out to the US literally just after so I didn't get the chance. So now I type this from the East Coast and life has of course been hectic hectic hectic but I wanted to post to say "yep, I'm alive!".

I'll post properly tomorrow hopefully, but for now, a few photos :)

Back of the White House illuminated at night :)

Snow snow snow!