Button it

If you're smart (and I'm sure you are) you'll have gathered I have a bit of a thing for Etsy. By bit of a thing, I think we all know I mean a serious obsession. But then can you blame me when people like Beanforest and the Calamity Collective are pumping out badges and magnets with witty, charming, and just plain cool quips? Just check out this bunch:

And that's just the first couple of pages.
I think this one's my favourite, I giggle every time I think about it:

My life's not quite that exciting at the moment, but if it ever was I'd totally wear this badge.

Bit of a show off

Darling mother and I went to the local show yesterday. Having grown up in small towns, shows to me have always been about the animals - livestock, equestrian events, sheep dog trials - and a lot less about naff games and deep-fried, over-sugared snacks. I believe we spent a total of three hours wandering the animal exhibits and about twenty minutes elsewhere. Those twenty minutes were thoroughly wasted. The three hours, however were not.
I took Darling father's camera and managed to snap a few shots of the more photogenic creatures. I say creatures because the two-legged locals were very much unphotogenic in comparison to their fury friends. But then, it's hard to look as cute as this little fella:

I'm not sure about this haircut or the bib, but maybe I'm just not fashionable enough:

And this little lady had me itching for a packet of Jersey Caramels. Is that wrong of me?:

 

I've got a crush on you

I've got a crush on a lifeguard at my local pool. I swim three or four mornings a week, and whenever I catch site of him I push extra hard in an effort to impress him. This morning he held the door open for me. I squeaked out a thankyou and fell that little bit more in love with him.
Then I came home and fell in love all over again, but this time for the Banana bread I baked last night:

I found the recipe on Butter Sugar Flour the other day while drooling over her baking exploits. Luckily my family is a huge fan of bananas, and often buys far too many to eat all at once. Enter "the prefect opportunity to bake banana bread". I changed the flour in this to wholemeal for a little extra healthiness and replaced half the chocolate with walnuts because my mum demands nuts in her banana bread, but I reckon it would be just as tasty, if a little naughtier, with just the chocolate.

Butter Sugar Flour's (BSF) Chocolate Banana Bread 
250g Plain Flour
2.5tsp baking powder
big pinch of salt
125g dark or milk chocolate, chopped
1tsp vanilla extract
1cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
4 large, very ripe bananas, mashed (BSF reccomends not using any more than this or it becomes to stodgy. I tend to agree, it is definitely a bread, not a cake, so it's quite dense)
1. Preheat oven to 200C, and grease and line a bar tin.
2. Sift together flower, baking powder, and salt. Stir through choclate.
Mix together eggs, sugar, vanilla, bananas then combine with dry ingredients, being carful not to overmix.
3. Pour into pan and bake for 40mins, until golden brown and skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

Or, if you're impatient like me, cut a slice and eat in straight away "just to check it's cooked properly".

Peace for the cost of a ring

So, i'm pretty sure I'm in love with everything in imooi's Papernstitch shop, but this ring is probably the piece I will yearn for whenever I put on a pretty dress next summer:

 It's called the 'peace ring' and is made from polished stainless steel, with a rubber/resin inlay. And I love it. Problem is I'm also falling madly for the red 'mosaic ring', direct from their website:

 And if someone could buy theses and send them my way I'd consider a trade for my firstborn:

Ok, so I wouldn't really trade a child for jewellry, but I would be your best friend forever.

Monday must haves

Along with bikes, balloons in any variety are a bit of an obsession  of mine, especially ones this pretty:

This is a linen print from Spread the Love's Etsy store. She designs the doodles herself and then prints them on all sorts of different canvases. I'm a little bit in love.
I'm also much loving these stockings from Post:

Even though I hate Twitter, I love birdie motifs. And I think these would be fun to wear out to a club, even if it was just to tease the boys.
And speaking of teasing, Foxglove's postage stamp jewellry has been teasing me for weeks. In fact, I even dreamt about these little darlings last night:

They're resin and sterling silver cuff links made with a Chinese postage stamp from the 1960s. I think these would look super cute with a power suit and a sexy pair of heels. Or maybe as a gift for a special boy...if I had one.
And a gift for the baby who has everything? How about this:

E Ria Designs has an incredible collection of personalised sterling silver, gold, and vintage brass jewellry. They're all very simple pieces, which makes them perfect for any age, boys and girls.   

Fanta Pants

Last night two of my favourite Darling friends likened me to Botticeli's Birth of Venus:

They claimed, in all seriousness, that my hair was luxurious waves of copper-gold, or some such frippery. Now, I can't deny that the resemblance to venus in body is possibly there - Miss Venus certainly wasn't all skin and bones - but, being a redhead, I had difficulty believing her beauty or mine, lies in our shared hair colouring.
That said, I've spent most of the morning trolling sites devoted to redheadedness, feeling an homage to my fire-headed sisters and brothers is deserved.
You see, us redheads are a special breed, a race of our own, if you would believe Jonah from the hilarious Chris Lilley's Summer Heights High:

Doug: How is it ok for you to bully Ben?

Jonah: 'Cause he's a Ranga.

Doug: A what?

Jonah A Ranga sir. 'Cause he's got red hair. Orangutan, that's what we call him.

Doug: And does that make it ok for him to be bullied, because he has red hair?

Jonah Well, people are racist to FOB's...

Leon: To us.

Jonah So, so we can be racist to Rangas.

Doug: But red-heads aren't a race, Jonah.

Leon: But sir, there's heaps of them. They're everywhere.

Taken from wikiquotes

 
But we're also, it seems, a thing to be sacrificed, feared, and revered. Throughout history people with red hair and green eyes were said to be witches, warewolves or vampires, the Greeks sacrificed us to the gods to create fertile land, while a long line of esteemed leaders in history - including Queen Elizabeth I and the Celtic Queen Boudicca - were redheads. 
Botticelli, Modigliani, and their fellow artists throughout the centures have painted their fascination with flame-hair, the colour 'titian' deriving itself from the painter of the same name who often coloured the locks of his images in shades of red and copper. 
Literature delights in redhead rogues and burnished beauties also. Lucy Mongommery's Anne of Green Gables bemoans her tresses, stating "you'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair...People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble it is". Mark Twain believed that "while the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats". 
And even facebook can't deny a strange obsession with our kind. There's the Humans Against Redhead Extinction (HARE), The official Hug a Ranga Day page, and even a fella willing to legally change his name to Ranga (apparanlty he went through with it). 
Even with all the nicknames - carrot top, ranga, ginga, ginger, fanta pants, firecrotch, gingernut, just to name a few - it seems that everone either wants to know us or wants to be us, and who can blame them when we have the propensity to look this good:
 

1. Aussie Actress and Borat's wife, Isla Fisher. 2. The ever-handsome actor, Damien Lewis. 3. Prince of Gingers, Prince Harry. 4. Timelessly beautiful actress, Julianne Moore.
Of course, I have to acknowledge the most famous redhead of them all, the one and only, Ronald:
 

And the Legend who allegedly declared, "once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead" - Lucille Ball:
 

And, just in case you still haven't got enough fire in your life, and you think us bloodnuts good enough to eat, you can buy our sauciness in a bottle to slather on all sorts of things.
 
 
  

The flipside of Easter

Easter has always represented a bit of a mind-fuck (excuse the french) for me. See, easter is all about the birth of new life, specifically Christ dying and rising again. But it's also represented by the birth of spring - eggs, bunnies, spring flowers, etc. The thing is, on my little scrap of the earth, as I'm sure it is for most in the Southern Hemisphere, it's nowhere near Spring right now. And so I find myself - as I do at Christmas with the snow/blinding heat paroxism - finding easter's acoutrement of all-things-spring somewhat ironic. And then I find this little gem and have to take a photo, because apparantly even the mushrooms are getting into the swing of things:

It looks like an egg, no?
I snapped that yesterday, while wandering around my Uncle's farm in the mountains behind the area I spent much of my childhood. I also stumbled across this perfectly framed glimpse of the endless hills ambling along the horizon:

This year easter is a little less ironic for me, and not just because of the mushroom. With the rains we've had over the last few months, and the fires of last spring, these hills are greener than I've ever seen. They've found new life in the last moments of summer and, with that, brought new life to a once dead valley and all its flora, fauna, and peoples. The easter message - from death springs new life and hope - seems to resound around this place, even without spring on the doorstep.

"Candy Mountain Charlie! Candy Mountain!"

Look what I did:

Ok, so I should say look what Darling Cousin and I did, but still. Look! We spent about 3 hours tonight and a couple nights ago, and produced over 250 (!!) chocolates. Some of them are a little sad looking but most are cute as a button. Oh, and the little chocolate cup ones are filled with caramel and nuts, so they taste like snickers. Yum!! Ah...only problem: I'm now completely over chocolate, and have no idea what to do with them all. Anyone want some?