cliche but fun things to do to beat your boredom & blog awards!

 

Beautiful watercolour paintings by Valerie Chua

♥ Make an artificial flower head wreath. Lauren did a beautiful tutorial here.
♥ Make a little garden. Head out to your nearest nursery and purchase some buds or seeds and get your green thumb on!
♥ Stay inside on a rainy day and watch Father of the Bride {just like I'm about to do}
♥ Try your hand at water colour painting. Look for inspiration from Peter Rabbit, Robert Best and Quiet Girl.
♥ Learn to read tea leaves and predict the future!
♥ Host a high tea. Make macaroons, use your best rose china, make pretty handmade invitations and wear your girliest frock and gloves.
♥ Get lost in an exciting book. I recommend Nicolas Sparks, C.S Lewis, Robert Louis Stevenson or Agatha Christie.
♥ Find a pen pal! Perhaps someone you have become good friends with over blogging. Make them feel special but making or purchasing pretty stationery and including little bits and bobs in the envelope. Perhaps a few scrap-booking stickers, some lace, glitter or pressed flowers. You can buy the sweetest stationery here.
♥ Make a floral suitcase or some handmade tea bags. You could travel and drink your tea in style.
♥ Buy a cork board and a few magazines and collage your dreams and inspirations. Hang it over your desk so you can look up at it every so often.

Lovely DIYs by Elsie.

Hello, dear bloggers! I've been a trifle busy lately which sort of explains the lack of exciting posts. I hope this one will make up for it though and give you something fun and inspiring to do. I promise I'll have another outfit post up by the end of the week. Onto other news, I've won two blog awards! The wonderful girls, Carina and  Emily passed the Versatile Blogger Award to me, thank you! So, the rules are as follows:

1.) Thank the person that nominated you, and give a shout out on your blog to them with a link to theirs. 

2.) Share 7 random facts about yourself. 

3.) Send the blog award to 15 other bloggers who's blog you love and appreciate, and let them know they won the award. 

Random Facts about moi:

I am a stickler for a clean room. I absolutely cannot function if my room is a mess. 

I have a severe phobia of cockroaches. Particularly flying ones. Ew!

I'm such a Grandma when it comes to interior decorating. I love antiques, doilys and floral quilts.

I love smells. Fresh baked cookies, clean sheets, new clothes...*sigh*

My favourite materialistic item is my bottle of Miss Dior Cherie
Handwritten snail mail is so much more special and exciting than emails

One day I want to own a little book-store like 'The Shop Around the Corner' in 'You've Got Mail' the movie.

I tag: Lauren, Rachel, Elyse, Alexandra, Isabella, Leney, Sookie, Kyla, Mackenzie, Desirae, the tea drinking english rose, Agnes, Claire, Emily and Mabel. 

katy potaty's fabulous fudge!

Hello blog friends! Introducing a new friend of mine, Katy Potaty. She has made a sinfully delicious fudge that is perfect enough to wrap up fancy for your dear Grandmother or share at a high tea. Enjoy and don't forget to enter her wonderful giveaway, you can win 12 nail polishes!

There are no words to describe the sweetness of this fudge. It's as sweet as Maria - who has allowed me to bring my culinary happiness over here. It's creamy, unlike the Crumbly Honey-Caramel fudge I made the other day (which I totally forgot to blog about, oops!), and so so smooth.
Ok, gather all these things. By all, I mean less than five ingredients. Yup, that simple!

1 can sweetened condensed milk - (hello there gorgeous, come to Katy!)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups white chocolate buttons
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pan

**You can switch this recipe around as much as you like... change the white chocolate for milk or dark or a mixture, swap the vanilla for orange or cinnamon or mint or kahlua... mmm... throw in some chopped macadamias, whatever you like!**

Butter the bottom and sides of an 8 by 8-inch baking pan. Line the pan with a sheet of baking paper, allowing 5cm to hang over the side.

Enjoy, and do me a favour and share this with your lovely friends like Maria! For more delicious (and easy!) recipes, visit my blog! 

hobbies, waterfalls and silk dresses

Cotton On top, thrifted dress/skirt, gifted hat, Equip pocket watch necklace. 

The past few days have gone by so quickly, I've been spending most of them enjoying hobbies while my Mum was away in Darwin. We also went to the library on Saturday (favourite place), and I borrowed out a few Vogues, some Nancy Drew mysteries (who can resist a mishap in River Heights?) and some ballet encyclopaedias. I love reading about the different ballets and the various costumes! I've also been browsing esty, ebay and amazon like crazy for vintage treasures. I'm looking for a pretty cameo necklace, a nice full-skirted dress and perhaps an Mulberry Alexa-lookalike as I mentioned in my last post.

And, I can't believe how hot it has gotten here, Summer has obviously come early in Australia (why am I not surprised?). We're going to 'the fairy forest' later this week to swim at the waterfall. It's so lovely, the little lake is hidden inside a forest near where we live. I will most definitely be taking photos, it's too pretty not to share!

I love this outfit combination. The silk skirt was originally a dress with flutter sleeves, but I experimented and hacked the top off! It worked out perfectly, contrasting with this sheer top.

And how do you like the changes I made to Avenue M? It's a little more welcoming now that readers are not bombarded with an unnatural amount of pink floral. I hope you have a happy Monday and there's still time to enter the give away!

Lots of love, 

Maria
p.s: Fashion Thrill is having a giveaway to celebrate her achievement of 300 followers! You can enter here.