Walking in Marilyn Monroe

I was feeling colourful today and so reached for the most colourful item in my hoard of clothes. These tights were my mothers but I have now adopted them, same with the belt and another that says 'ROCK' that I have lost in my room somewhere. What art student doesn't want a pair of Andy Warhol print tights with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean in bright glory on your legs?

This is another one of those times that I find myself wishing I had a plain black dress or skirt to pair with these tights. This is the only black skirt I own and its a bit short for my tastes and isn't a true black. However, one must wear black or white with these to let the effect speak more, so I had to go with what I had.

My wardrobe is a a TARDIS and I go to Narnia under my bed...

Clothes have a great tendency to pile up on the floor in my room. One of the main reasons for this is the sheer clothes/wardrobe space ratio. Which is not at all proportionate or fair. And yet I keep buying more clothes. Each time I clean my room and restock my wardrobe I become more and more impressed with it's TARDIS nature. My mother has no idea how I managed to fit it all in this time. In all honesty I am not sure either.

I am a terrible hoarder. Of all things, not just clothes. I struggle to remove things from my posession, as I always think, what if I need this later?! Past experience has taught me that if I get rid of something I will indeed need it at a later point.

Besides there is a particularly amazing joy in owning this many clothes (I have drawers stuffed with things that don't require hanging, like pants, tshirts, long tops, pyjamas and jumpers). Quite frequently I stumble accross things I forgot I had and it's like buying something new all over again!

I must say though, there are 2 items that I have been looking for for many a year. A simple black skirt and a simple black dress. I do not own a plain dress or skirt. This is something of a failing when you consider that if I have nothing plain everything else must be patterned.

this...

goes into this...

to equal TARDIS
(keep in mind you cant see every item as they get a bit
lost being all jammed in like that haha)

Hayden and the Earth Hour

I've been told that Earth Hour is a worldwide thing so presumably you'd know what I'm talking about when I talk about my escapades during this year's dark hour. If not, as you may have guessed it involves turning off all the lights and all the appliances and sitting in the dark for an hour, which is actually quite fun usually. You sit around in candlelight glaring at any neighbours who are not participating (a completely pointless exercise obviously, as they wouldn't be able to see you normally, let alone squinting from your dark house).

This year my sister mother and I camped out in the living room around my various scavenged candles that I managed to find in my room cleaning efforts of today. We ate cheesecake and I lay on the rug listening to the Remember Me score and Hayden on my mp3 player and making shadow puppets on the walls. Over this next year I'm going to learn more so that next year's display can be more impressive haha.

Hayden is a recent and completely random discovery of mine. I went into one of my favourite clothes/music stores and saw that half their music stock was on sale for $1o or $15. I selected a few known artists that I wanted and then collected ones with album covers that I liked and asked the lovely man at the counter to recommend me one based on this. It worked wonderfully. Who says you can't judge things by their covers...although that's usually only said about books, so maybe it doesn't apply to cd's.

'In Field & Town' is Canadien artist Hayden Desser's 7th album and has a lovely soft Indie sound. My favourite song, by lyrics alone is called Lonely Security Guard:

Oh so lonely security guard, he looks so mean from afar,
but when you get up close you'll see,
he could not hurt a flea.
He stands there in the heat,
looking straight down at at his feet,
and with his hands and an old receipt,
he makes a swan so real it breathes.

Oh so lonely security guard, can make you cry with a business card
can make a cricket from a parking ticket,
can make a bird from some thrown out words,
But he cannot control this herd,
'cause he does not look up when he should.
He relies on the people's good,
a big mistake in this neighborhood.

Oh so lonely security guard, didn't notice me at all,
so I grabbed the first thing I saw,
and walked right out the front door,
But he had just made a paper sword,
and threw me right down on the floor.
And everyone standing near that store,
witnessed a one-sided war.

Origami Security guard, he looks so mean from afar,
but when you get up close you'll see,
that he's no cup of tea.

Red, Red, Red

It's been over a year, but I've finally made the move and decided to make my hair more red again. The actual reason was so that I could go as Ginny Weasley to a 90's themes 21st party but I already had the dye. Its just a semi, a natural one that smells so much better than actual dye and is a lot easier to handle. It takes 3 packets to do my hair, so it's quite an expensive venture, so obviously I don't do it very often.

This is perhaps not the best picture, it looks kind of brown here, but it was a really bright day so we had to try and strike a compromise that showed my hair but didn't wash me out into a white blur. I really want a decent camera.
Oh well, I am going overseas in December and I plan to break the bank for one then. I haven't decided what type I will get yet.

St Patrick loved apple tarts, did you know?

Ok, so I have no idea if that is true =P In fact I suspect it is a complete lie. But this is how I ended up spening my St Patrick's evening. Baking apple tarts and cupcakes and eating yoghurt with chopped strawberries. Quite a delicious evening actually.

I make these tarts quite often, I just play them by ear and use whatever I have handy. They are great for a quick spur of the moment dessert.

If you wanted to make one of these or a few small ones they are very easy and take no more than 20 minutes and that's including cooking time.

You will need:
Puff pastry squares/sheets
One apple per rectangle (about half an apple for a tart that is 1/4 of the pastry sheet)
Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Honey
Apricot Jam
Sugar
Boiling water
Melted butter
One greased oven tray

The last few things are up to you. Really you only need the pastry, butter and apples.

Grease an oven tray (I always grease it because I find that pastry just adheres itself to the baking paper we have) and set the oven to moderate or 180 degrees.

Trim the edges from your pastry as they will be a bit dry and crusty and you want nice puffy pastry tarts. Cut it either in half or in quarters depending on what you want and how many people you have to feed. Place on greased tray so you don't have to move it after assembly, because that would be extremely difficult! Use a fork and lightly prick down the centre of the tart where the apples will go. Lightly brush the whole square/rectangle with melted butter

Take the apple and cut it into reasonably even and small slices, and cut out the core parts and lay them in a row down the centre. Brush a bit of the melted butter on top and now you just add whatever you want. Personally I add cinnamon and nutmeg and then I put a bit of boiling water over a teaspoon of sugar to make a weak syrup and carefully pour it over the apples.

Bake until the pastry has puffed and is turning a bit brown then take it out and you could brush the tart with either honey or apricot jam while it is still hot.





Happy day of the Irish x

Remember Me

Last night I decided that I wanted to see a movie before going to uni today so I set about finding something to see that obviously fit in with my time frame and tastes/interests.

Movie wise I am a very big fan of strange American Indie films that end up being more about the characters than about any discernible story line. Of course I also love the character stories that have the added bonus of a great story line, but it's not essential. Generally I have a dislike for commercial American movies and cheap comedies. For the most part I like foreign movies, especially from France and the UK.

Now that you have a bit of background about the types of movies I like, I will tell you a bit about how I like to see movies. I like to see them on my own, I like to browse around the night before and go in the next day or later the same evening, with no more knowledge of the film than a trailer or brief blurb, or even the knowledge that I like one of the actors in it. I like to keep things a secret.

So, last night I noticed that Remember Me was playing and I couldn't remember what that was, so I Googled the trailer. In the back of my mind I was aware that Robert Pattinson had been working on another non Twilight related film but I wasn't aware that it was finished let alone out in cinemas already. I am a little hesitant to admit this but I am a Robert Pattinson fan, this stems not from Twilight but from my status as an incredible a Harry Potter fan. Being the HP geek that I am when the dvd for the Goblet of Fire was released I dutifully watched all the special features including a 'guided tour' of the movie making process by the 3 foreign Champions. This sparked a great fondness for both Robert and Clemence Poesy. While I am strongly of the opinion that Twilight was a bad move for him career wise, I still like Robert. But I do understand that many do not.

So I rounded up the money and went to see it this morning, knowing next to nothing about it except that there was a somewhat romantic theme to it and it was apparently set in 2001. I went in hoping for a bit more than a sappy romance and was pleasantly rewarded.

However here is where I enter a grey area. I am not sure whether I found this movie sort of amazing because I like Robert or because it really was good. I also think that having no prior knowledge of the movie helped. But I will say that for me the performances were quite good and convincing. I have always been of the opinion that it is easy to portray happiness, or to play a villain but that it is difficult to convincingly portray proper sadness or melancholy and rightful anger. For me this was done pretty well, Robert was convincingly melancholy, but with reason, and it played on the whole feminine notion of wanting to fix things. So I spent most of the movie wanting to hug him.

Unfortunately reading last night that the movie was set in 2001 I spent the last 20 minutes of the film worrying because my sad movie had suddenly turned happy and this could only mean a sad ending and I had a gut feeling about where it was headed. I was right, but also surprised even though it was what I predicted. It was a pretty gutsy choice of ending, one I think people have been too scared to touch on. And I appreciated so much that it ended well...right. Sad movies that suddenly end happily ever after in a thoroughly unconvincing way annoy me. This is part of the reason why I favour foreign and Indie movies. I would rather an ending that was consistent with the film even if it was sad or unconventional.

I will say that when the film ended the 20 or so people in the cinema sat in silence for about 10 minutes before filing out without so much as a squeak. Surely its a good thing that they weren't all clamouring to complain and ridicule it...

So to wrap up this rather long winded vocalising of opinion I enjoyed Remeber Me and it left me contemplating once more the real life stories that people out there have.

Highlander

In other news I also have a new vintage skirt. I wore it to uni today because I am so in love with it. It probably looked completely frumpy with my chunky boots that I borrowed off my mother. Unfortunately the university is retarded and we are required to wear fully enclosed shoes into a computer lab for digital photography. Heaven forbid a pen should fall on our foot. A computer certainly never would because those things are chained in tight, and the mouse barely reaches around the computer, let alone to the floor. Oh well.

I imagine it might look a bit less frumpy with my new sky high stiletto ankle boots which I did end up getting from Zu Shoes. See my previous post about Evanna Lynch.

I am not sure whether or not to take up this skirt. Leaving it so long is a teeny bit 'grandma' but that might be what I like about it. And to take it up would take away from the lovely vintage aspect and leave me with 'Catholic school girl.' Which I used to be, so I have no desire to revisit that in my every day wear now that I am 3 years out of school.

I don't know.

Oh and this is Pocco. He likes photos and cameras and people being outside.

Baker Of Honey Cakes

I have a new recipe book, which I quite frankly adore. To be perfectly honest I think I purchased it more for the photos and imitation fabric pages within it than for the recipes. It is a beautiful book. However, the recipes are delightful and organised by colour! What more could you want.

I immediately wanted to try this recipe for a number of reasons. One it's a honey cake and that, to me conjures up images of Winnie The Pooh and bees and delightful sweet things. I do not think Pooh bear would have eaten this one though for it is quite strange.
The second and third reasons go together. The first being the picture and the second being the fact that the cake contains rosemary. In the picture the cake is beautifully iced with lemon icing and decorated with tiny purple rosemary leaves. My rosemary (or rather my friend's rosemary) did not have any flowers but it looked pretty good all the same. There was also a tablespoon of finely chopped rosemary leaves inside the actual cake mix. My mother was quite concerned when I was making it that the cake would not be 'cake like,' for neither of us had ever heard of a cake containing rosemary.

But I have to tell you it was amazing! Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of the final product before it was all eaten but I am sure I will make it again one day and upload the recipe from Tessa Kiros's book Apples for Jam.

My beautiful new book

lovely and fragrant ingredients

all good things go in pots