Welcome To Clermont, Part 3

Hello there lovelies,

Last weekend I took my new 50D out for a walk through town. I hadn't had much of a chance to take it out before last weekend, and I felt like I really needed to get reaccquainted with Clermont. It's been a while since I last wrote about our big move, and I'm still feeling really all over the place about it. Is it strange to feel like I don't have a home anymore? Not home as in a place to live, but a place where I feel like I belong? The small town life lost its' sparkle quite quickly for me, and now I just miss being in the city. The town itself is beautiful, but I don't really feel connected to it. I don't feel like I belong here. At the same time, I feel removed from Brisbane - by more than just distance. I don't know how to regain that feeling of "home", so I guess for now I'll have to be content with thinking that the town I live in is beautiful.

Until next time, xo.

On Slowing Down, Taking Your Time & Rest

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You've all heard the old saying, "slow and steady wins the race". Often I think that there is more truth to it than I like to admit. I tend to race ahead and chafe at the bit. In high school I was always reading ahead, looking ahead and thinking ahead with my work. Sewing often frustrates me because of how long the process can take from marking a pattern to finishing a garment. I can't remember the last time that it took me longer than a week to finish a novel - usually it takes me less than a day. In my worklife I tend push hard & take on more projects than is practical because I can't stand leaving them for someone else. Sometimes I find it hard to sit through the entire length of a movie without looking up the ending on Wikipedia. I'm known for trying to make it through difficult exercise sessions when I'm sick, working on complex projects when I'm so tired I can't concentrate and having trouble asking for help or a break.

Being a compulsive "pusher", and suffering from depression are two things that don't really mix. It is literally impossible to do both of them at once. Something has to give. I've learnt that sometimes it pays to go slow. Sometimes stopping to catch your breath can be the difference between burning out & powering through to the end. Deep, slow breaths do wonders for making you less anxious. Doing one thing at a time can be the difference between getting everything done, and getting nothing done. Sleep is never wasteful - in fact, it is impossible to function properly without enough of it. When you feel like you're treading water and going nowhere it's ok to ask for someone else to share the load. It can actually be fun to sit back & relax, and leave worrying about how things are going to turn out to someone else.

Taking care of your mental health is just as important as taking care of your physical health. No human can push themselves on, and on without mental & physical rest. If you feel like you are doing too much, then do a bit less for a while. Chances are that some of the things you feel need to be done right now, really don't. Chances are that some of those things aren't even very important. Sometimes I feel like I have to be everywhere at once and I have to do everything at once. Perhaps you feel that way sometimes too. The fact is, I don't and you don't. There's nothing wrong with taking your time. Slow it down, chill out, have a rest - both your mind & body will thank you for it.

Snapshots of March

Hello there lovelies,

March has been one hell of a ride! We lost The Boyfriend's Nana, and both of us have been battling feeling pretty homesick for Brisbane, having trouble sleeping, getting sick, and feeling generally out of sorts. We also managed to pay off one of our long-standing debts, buy both of us a new camera, got to spend a week alone for the first time in a few months and went on a few nice photograghy outings.

I wore quite a few nice outfits that never quite made it to the blog. This dress I bought from Modcloth before Christmas was one of them. Here's a few that did make it.

We spent lots of time with our beautiful animals this month. Squeak, the little black cat has been harassing us for attention - and as any cat owners will know, when they harass, you listen. Homer, the big black and white dog always loves cuddles, and Bow (the little fluff ball) is a big sook.

Along with buying a Canon 50D for me, I also order a cute package of things from Modcloth, was shocked to discover that I now own three pairs of heels, and bought a few things from Jay Jays that unintentionally turned out to match perfectly.

Along with writing for the blog, I spend my spare time surprising people in my house hold & taking random photographs of them. Yes, this does include myself. How has your March been? Has it treated you well?

Until next time, xo.

P.S. Just in case you missed them, here are my favourite posts from this month: Fat Girls Can, How To Make A Statement Necklace From T-Shirt Scraps, Fictional Style Icon: Blair Waldorf, Hey It's Ok & How To Remix The Same Dress Five Times.

What I Wore: The Back-Dated Edition

Hello there lovelies,

Sometimes, instead of posting them all at once I like to save my outfit photos for a day when I'm struggling to post my usual content. Today is one of those days. I've been quite upset all weekend about The Boyfriend's Nana, so I didn't get my usual weekly post preparation done. I don't want to talk about it too much, but her health is steadily declining & all that can be for her now is managing the pain & keeping her comfortable. This outfit makes me happy, because it was worn a few weeks ago, before any of this happened.

Outfit Rundown:

Beanie: Jay Jays, $10
Necklace: DIY by me (I even wrote a tutorial).
Owl Shirt: Op-shopped, $2
Singlet: Stolen from The Boyfriend
Jeans: Target, $39.95
Shoes: Ornabella's, $15

Those are my two gorgeous dogs helping with that last photo. The big black-and-white lad is Homer, and the fluffy tail belongs to Bow. They are always confounded by what I'm doing with the camera & can't help but investigate. The dogs help with the outfit photos, the cats help with the DIY photos - that's just the way things work! These shoes are both my first clothing purchase from Clermont, and the third pair of wedges that I bought last month. I'm rather enamoured with them, and I'm probably attempting to pair them with everything in my wardrobe, including my pyjamas.

I hope you're all having a great Tuesday!

Until next time, xo.

The Joke's On You

The first time I watched through Season 4 of Gossip Girl, something made me really angry. It wasn't the the numerous plot holes (I'm cool with those), or the fact that one of the characters can apparently send text messages from prison (his prison obviously just has really good cellphone options), or the fact that everyone on the show falls in and out of love quicker than a normal person can pee. It was this one line, that came out of Blair's mouth in passing that was the culprit: "Needy dogs are the perfect cause. And they're so much cuter than the babies with cleft palates that you were going to give the money to."

That made me furious. I actually saw red. I felt like throwing things at the television, writing sternly worded letters to some writers, and perhaps even tracking Leighton Meester down & slapping her for having the audacity to agree to saying the line. It took me a long time to sit & think about whether my reaction was justified. It certainly hurt me to hear that babies with clefts are somehow less attractive than puppies, but I'm fairly certain that no one wrote that line to hurt me personally. I'm fairly sure that it wasn't necessarily meant to be hurtful at all, but was merely meant to be a joke - even if in bad taste - coming from the mouth of a particularly bitchy person.

That got me thinking even more - is it ok to joke about disfigurement? The hours that I've spent crying about why my face looks different to other people's & the years that it has taken me to accept my face suggests that this isn't a topic for humour. But, we seem to joke about everything else on television. Whole shows hinge on jokes about people being fat, or stupid, or nerdy, or unfashionable, or ugly or somehow different to everyone else. Where do we draw the line? When is it ok to joke about the traits of a person, or their appearance, and when does it become offensive?

I was certainly offended that someone would joke about a condition that has profoundly affected my life, but I don't know that most people would have even noticed the comment, let alone remembered it. Is is an offensive comment just because I was offended? Is it just a stupid joke that shouldn't get me so butt-hurt if someone else found it funny? I don't think I should have to accept these kinds of comments. I think they further the idea that people born with a cleft lip and/or palate are disgusting, ugly and somehow less than other people.

I suppose in the end, all I can say is this: I was born with a cleft lip & palate. There's nothing I can do about. I couldn't change it even if I wanted to, and it really offends me when people make jokes about it. People will say these things, and worse, and sometimes even try to take pictures of my scars on public transport because they think it's somehow funny, and other than getting really pissed off, there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. Living with this can be hard, and ill-placed jokes like these just make it harder.

On Bullies & More Thoughts On Bullying

I've already written about my thoughts on bullying, but somehow I can never seem to exhaust what I feel I need to say. As well as re-watching the second season of Glee, and getting teary over the bullying storylines all over again, I've been doing a fair bit of reading about bullying lately. In particular, I found the An Earnest Attempt to Humanize Bullies series at Rookie mag very interesting, and I think that these articles said a lot of things that need to be said more often. I completely agree with the sentiment that popular media should focus more on how bullies are human, just like everyone else, instead of making them into some kind of villainous caricature. But, by the same token I think more conversations need to be had about the victims of bullying, and how they are just like us as well, just as human.

Sometimes I think people like to pretend that there must be some extenuating circumstance for why a person gets bullied. We like to pretend that the victims must have done something, or said something, or provoked the bullies in some way. Either that, or we like to pretend that bullying behaviour isn't serious, or is somehow acceptable because "if someone is going to go & be all different like that, they better get used to it." I don't think that there needs to be a reason for bullying to occur. I think that sometimes, people are just mean. But, I also think that their behaviour can & does have serious consequences, which we shouldn't make light of. I don't think we should be perpetuating the idea that the victims of bullying are somehow other to us, thus the behaviour is acceptable.

At the heart of bullying is the idea that the victims are somehow other. That their otherness makes them somehow less than us, somehow more deserving of the nastiness & cruelty that we have to express. I think that it is this idea of otherness that we need to combat. We need to spread the word that the people who bully, and the people who are bullied are the same people. We're all the same people. Something I've noticed about Glee is that so many people can relate to it. So many people can related to feeling like they're at the bottom of the heap, and everyone is out to torment them. People seem to feel a special affinity for particular bullying stories on the show as well. The Kurt/Karofsky story line makes me cry every time, and Kurt is the character that I wish I was in high school, but the one character I really relate to is Shannon Beiste. I think most of us can say that we have felt an affintity with a bullied character in some form of media, at some time or another.

All of us who have been bullied should stand up & own our victim status, just as those who have bullied should stand up & own that. If you were bullied and the experience slid right off your back, stand up and own that. If you were bullied and the experience still influences your life now, stand up and own that too. If you are being bullied and you feel like the experience will ruin the rest of your life, stand up and own that. People need to be shown that the victims of bullying aren't caricatures anymore than the bullies are. We are not other - we are just like everyone else, and we deserve to be treated with respect.

Until next time, xo.

On Moving Forward & Letting Go

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Moving forward is hard. At some point in our lives we all experience something, or get attached to someone that we just can't let go of. No matter how hard we try life becomes complicated, and sometimes we try our hardest to hang onto those complications because they mean that things don't have to change. Sometimes - most of the time - it's easier to cry ourselves to sleep, or to replay a scene in our head in a million different ways, or to just sit & wonder, "what if?", than it is to pick ourselves up and move forward. Advice columns & agony aunts make it seem so easy, but letting go can be one of the hardest things you will ever do.

Of course, it may be easier for things to stay the same, but if they do then things never get better. We never stop crying ourselves to sleep, or running through all the ways that things could have gone, and we could take up forever with our wonderings about all the differents paths that we could have taken. If you're in the process of letting go & moving forward, then I only have one main suggestion: be kind to yourself. Cut yourself some slack, go a little easier on yourself this time. You may know that things need to change, but there isn't any way that they can all change at once. Take some time to do things that make you happy, even if they aren't necessarily moving you in the right direction. Even if you just change one little thing at a time, in the direction that you want to go, you'll get there in the end. It might seem like everyone around you is getting there faster, but remember life isn't a race. You're entitled to move at your own pace, and work through whatever is holding you back at a speed that suits you.

As a secondary suggestion, I would say this: don't torture yourself. Sure, if you'd done that one thing differently ten years ago then maybe your life would as perfect as you're imagining that it would be. Chances are that isn't the case. Chances are, you'd be dwelling on some other past event that would have most certainly made your life perfect if you'd done things differently. Don't beat yourself about about what could have been, or what you should have done, or the way it was meant to be. You can't do anything about your past, but you can work with now. You can decide that "now" will be better. You can decide that today is the day that you let go of your past, and move forward.

Until next time, xo.

Holiday Happy Snaps

Hello there lovelies,

I am still exhausted from my whirlwind trip to Sydney last weekend to see Love Never Dies, the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera (have I ever mentioned what a freak I am for The Phantom of the Opera?). Despite having an apparently quite dismal opening season in London & earning the pseudonym "Paint Never Dries", I absolutely loved it. I may or may not have cried.

Anyway, this means you get subjected to more phone pictures of my holidays! I went to Sydney with my dearest Mum, a few of her friends & one of their daughters, and let me tell you, those ladies know how to cram a lot into a weekend!

We arrived on Friday afternoon, and spotted this amazing typo on the shuttle bus to our hotel from the airport.

This is the beautiful lobby of our hotel building. We stayed at the Season's Harbour Plaza on Sussex Street, which was pretty damn good & nicely within walking distance of everywhere we needed to go.

We went out to dinner in Darling Harbour, had a few wines, then headed over to King's Cross and looked through a few adult shops. In one of them we encountered a very enthusiastic & professional salesperson who offered to show us demonstrations of all the products. We also had men trying to escort us into their strip clubs in King's Cross by telling us that their club was the only one where you saw more than boobs.

On Saturday morning we were up & going by 8am. Lucky I love these ladies, because I am totally not a morning person. We made up for it by getting a great breakfast (& coffee!) in Darling Harbour, and then heading over to the Chinese Gardens. Unfortunately for us, it poured down rain at the Chinese Gardens, but we did get to see some traditional Dragon dancing.


I wore a maxi dress, knotted into a shorter dress over my faithful red jeans & a jacket. I loved the weather in Sydney! If I wore a jacket anytime in Summer in Queensland, I would die of heatstroke.



Afterwards, we headed to Paddy's markets for some shopping. I bought a fairly psychedelic top/dress, and an owl necklace which I inexplicably forgot to photograph.







Of course, we had to go over to the Powerhouse Museum for the Harry Potter Exhibition. The Powerhouse is amazing! I can't wait to go back & have another look through it. The Harry Potter Exhibition was also amazing (although smaller than I imagined). My favourite part was looking at all the costumes - particularly Hermione Granger & Luna Lovegood's gorgeous dresses.

As it turned out, once we got to the Powerhouse all the early sessions for the Harry Potter exhibitions were full, so we ended up wandering back to our hotel to wait for our session. We went back through Chinatown, which was awesome. I liked it better than King's Cross because the shady looking characters were only trying to sell me chinese food, instead of prostitutes.

After our wander through Chinatown, a few plates of nachos, and a costume change, we headed back to the Harry Potter exhibition, and straight onto the Capitol Theatre for the show afterwards.


We had a few drinks afterwards, got told to move along by a security guard, and had big greasy slices of pizza for dinner in the middle of the night. We fell into bed around 1am, and then Mum & I were up again at 8 to race to the airport. All in all, it was a fabulous weekend & I can't wait to get back to Sydney.

Until next time, xo.