I'm lovin' it

Country Road

Is this dress just divine or what? I love the print and the shape of the sleeves.  For those of you with enough disposal income, you can get it from the new collection at Country Road for $199.  It is 100% silk which actually puts me off slightly as it would probably crease horribly (am I starting to sound like my mom?)

It would look great over coloured skinnies in the summer but equally good with brown legs and bright shoes.  I might go and try it on, just to see if it looks as good in the flesh.  I won't buy it, of course......

Seasonal dysfunction

One of the biggest advantages to living in WA, apart from the weather, the easy going people and the beaches is the fact that we're exactly one season behind the UK.  Ergo, you can buy all your clobber in the UK sales, get it shipped over here and look pretty cool on a pretty slim budget. 

Fashion in WA follows the UK pretty closely so I can guarantee that all the bright colours seen for S/S11 in the UK will be hitting the shops over here quite soon.  In fact, I saw a bright tangerine silk tee in Target that I have my eye on for Summer.  Witchery have a bright yellow clutch appearing in stores too.

So go have a shufty at ASOS.com and see what bargains there are to be had to see you through spring and summer, particularly as they ship to Australia for F.R.E.E!  Cool, eh?



Collage made with photovisi



New threads

I wonder if that should be "thread" when you've only bought one thing?

Out of all the shops over here in WA, I think Witchery is probably my favourite.  It's overpriced and sometimes a bit pedestrian, but the quality of the clobber is just divine and it has some really great timeless pieces that kind of "nod" in the direction of being fashion forward.  This season's stuff in Witchery has been all about nudes and neutrals with loads of grey, camel and khaki.  All of which suits me just fine as I find it a bit of a struggle to wear anything bright (more of which in a later post as I WILL be attempting some colour blocking for S/S11)

A couple of weeks ago via email, the lovely Witchery offered a $20 reward for the first 5,000 people to fill out a survey.  I obviously had a crack and was duly rewarded on my loyalty card - woohoo!

I hotfooted it down to Joondalup and purchased this very versatile little skirt for the princely sum of $29, reduced from $109 (see what I mean about being overpriced?)

Bloglovin' - here I am!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

For those vaguely interested in my ramblings you can now follow me on Bloglovin' - though for some reason it hasn't updated with the new Blog name yet.  Bloody technology.

I feel so dirty :(

Please forgive me, followers, for I have sinned.  I have succumbed to the lure of the boxed cake mix...... it wasn't for me, honest, it was for the kids to keep them busy this morning. It worked for all of about 7 minutes, then they went back to torturing each other - and me.

Smartie pants

Is it just me, or does everyone elses' cookies spread horribly and end up wafer thin?  It doesn't seem to matter what recipe I use, they're always exactly the same. EXCEPT for today -woohoo!

Today, I used a Nigella recipe - why I didn't search for one of hers first as they're always successful,aren't they?  It seems to have a pretty high flour content so the dough was "rollable" rather than "spoonable".  This seems to make all the difference, plus I rolled it into balls then baked them once they were really cold.

I didn't actually have enough smarties so used some hundreds and thousands pressed onto the dough and also some freckles chocolates.

This is the recipe, taken straight from Nigella's site, though now I've re-read it, it's not one of hers at all, but one of her fan's recipes!  How funny, just shows how rubbish I am at cookie making, huh?

Smartie Cookies

Ingredients

345g (690ml) plain flour

5ml Bicarbonate of Soda

3ml baking powder
2ml salt

250g butter (or block margarine) softened

300g (375ml) sugar

1 extra large egg, beaten

5ml vanilla extract

2 x 150g Smarties

Method

Makes around 24 big cookies

1. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and set aside.
2. Cream together butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, beat in egg and vanilla extract.
3. Gradually beat in sifted dry ingredients to form a stiff dough. Stir in one box of Smarties.
4. Roll dough into large walnut sized balls and place on un-greased baking trays. Leave plenty of room to expand!
5. Press three or four Smarties into each ball.
6. Bake at 190 degrees, 12 to 15 minutes until pale golden brown. Leave on trays 2 minutes and remove to cooling racks to cool completely. Store in airtight tins
7. Scoff (ok, I added that bit in)

A change of direction

Don't get too excited, it's nothing earth shattering in the slightest.  We're not moving to the other side of the world again or anything like that.  Nope, I've just decided to take a different course with this blog.

I'm sure the 2.5 people who actually read this are mildly interested in this news but I've kind of come to the conclusion that not many people are actually interested in the bumps and scrapes of my kids or the ups and downs of our household. Soooooo. I'm renaming the blog "Cupcakes in my Closet" - cute, eh?

It's going to be a kind of lifestyle/baking/fashion blog obviously based around WA.  I'm going to be writing about the things that interest me and to hell with the rest of you.

Keep following if you're vaguely interested in such things, hopefully there'll be lots of nice photos to look at and the like.