When all is broken



"Let me be your wings

Leave behind the world you know

For another world of wondrous things"

 This beautiful picture (and words) is via ilovedoodle which I found through my amazing friend Miss V. It's specially for my beautiful Wabi who has a cracked heart and a broken wing.
Please don't despair - I know it hurts, and hearts are the hardest to repair - but I'm here, and my wings are good any time you need to fly.

Everything's apples

Do you have any words that just make you happy? You know, the kind of word that, every now and then, you'll just think of and smile, or you'll say and all of a sudden the sun is shining a bit better. My friend Wabi and I recently discovered a shared love for the word biscuit. Not only does it make you think of delicious treats, it just falls from the mouth in such a lovely manner, and looks ever so lovely on a page. Maybe it's a word nerd thing, or just my special style of crazy, but I've also got a thing for the word pumpkin. Then there's snickerdoodle, spanakopita, and foie gras.
Now before you say anything, no, it's not just a food-word thing. I also get a tad excited by the idea of defenestration, discombobulation, and borborygmi (although it's not very sexy). And how much fun are shenanigans?! Then there's my fondness for words in other languages. How much prettier is Lumiere than "light"? And tempo freddo sounds more like a jazzy treat than cold weather.
But my all time favourite word is simple: apple. In Indonesian it's apel, German is apfel, and even the completely different French pomme sounds delightful. Say it out loud in any of these forms and you get that reverberating hummm that's so satisfying in a word, and a mouth shaped a little like a kiss. In fact, a some-time model friend once told me they use the saying "black apples" to get that purfect sexy pout. Then there's memory formed from that scrumptious word! The juicy crunch as you bite into one, the slurp of juice from your chin, the sweet, fresh smell that tickles at your nose. I love eating them, cooking with them and bathing in gels that smell like them as well.
And now I have a new apple love. It's called Shabby Apple - yep, this was just a round-about way of introducing my new fave store. But it's totally worth it! Let's see...there's the sweet stuff for the little ones:

The juicy tips and tricks for making your pear-shape pervalicious, as well as a blog. And of course, crisp new styles in forgiving and flattering cuts for all us ladies desperately seeking ways to hide our not-so-sexy bits:

Oh, and did I mention that each item of clothing comes with it's own story? Fashion and Fiction all at once - it's too perfect! Plus the Shabby Apple girls, Emily and CK, are all about creating wearable clothing for girls of all shapes and sizes (hurrah!), while also supporting the empowerment of women everywhere (double hurrah!). AND they ship internationally (can we just give them the Nobel Prize for Fashion Fabulousness already?)!

Check 'em out, promise you won't be dissapointed.

Wonderful waste of time

I'm supposed to be getting my butt into gear and organising my very own Etsy store, but first I figured I'd do some 'research'. By research I mean, trolling some of my favourite Etsies and falling in love with them all over again. Oh, and how I love Timeless Vixen! Everything in her store is amazingly lovely and amazingly far out of my budget. This makes me sad, bad doesn't stop me dreaming about how pefectly summery I'd feel in this:

Or how much better my work ethic would be in this lovely dress/jacket combo:

And I just know all the boys would be swooning with such a sweet bit-o-sparkle:

Donut touch my cake!

So I innocently wandered onto Citrus and Candy earlier this evening, thinking to have a bit of a browse and drool before dinner. And that's where I fell victim to her cooking wiles, overcome with the desperate need to bake her Apple 'Donut' Cakes. Dear Lord! If I am to ever commit a crime so violent it leads me to death row, I will be sure to ask for these as my last meal.
The recipe calls for buerre noisette, or brown butter, which gives the cakes an incredible moorishness. When they come out of the oven they're rolled immediately in cinnamon sugar, hence the donut reference. The sugar combined with the beuatifully crisp top is absolutely the most perfect smile-inducing moment. And the apple - well it's a fruit, so that makes them healthy, right?
My mother, who usually complains that my baked goods are too sweet, sheepishly asked for a second one and gobbled it down like a little girl with an ice-cream cone.
I somehow restrained myself to one. Well, I tried to...      

Too cool for school

Two posts in one day. Hurrah!
This is just a heads up for you to check out an awesome blog. Style Rookie is an incredibly witty, intelligent, and rediculously cool blog all about fashion and fun. And the coolest bit. The writer: fourteen years old!
Dear Tavi, if you ever read my blog, I think you're awesome. Can I be you for a day?

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.

Check this out:

stunning, gorgeous, amazing. Just incredible right? Now take a closer look:

Yep. That's right my friends. It's made completely from cotton thread, wire, and more than 14,000 tampons, and it's 5m tall. I found it on one of my favourite design blogs, The Mogg Blogg, and just had to share. It's creators (the blog, that is, not the tampondelier), Joy and Janet, scour the design world for the 'fugliest' and craziest design ideas and display them for all the world to see.