Dinner Date in Carlton

Can't believe a year has passed since the last Valentine's, since those lovely cookies that Jon's mother baked for me for Valentine's. If you read my valentine's post last year, I would proudly say that we didn't resolve to just giving hi-5's only, we actually went out for a nice dinner at some restaurant in Carlton! I'd say that's 100% my dearest's efforts. He made the reservation, drove us there and paid for the meal. Thanks sooo much hun! You rock!  

No presents, coz we decided to save. No cards, coz he left it at home and I was worse, I didn't even get one coz the shop I wanted to go into was closed for refurbishment and I didn't wanna spend 5bux on a card in Coles. So I bought some raspberry friands so we could celebrate three years being together.  That plan, however, fell through as my two horrible sisters, tired from a full day at work, ate both up!  

The interesting thing was the thought of one of them eating it, I won't name which one,  did come to my mind as I intentionally placed it at the corner of my bench top. Maybe it was God warning me bout it. But I took a chance coz I vividly remembered I said to myself, what are the chances of them spotting this brown bag here, piled on top of a bunch of stuff already? They'd be so hungry they'll just have dinner straightaway. So I placed them right there and without another thought, got upstairs to get ready. 

Guess I should have at least told my mum to keep an eye out for it. When I heard one of them running up and shouting "OMG are those friands yours????". I already knew what happened. My sister kept apologising after knowing that the friands were for that night itself. She felt so bad about it that I didn't have the heart to be annoyed any longer so I just told her to finish it. The other sister just capitalised on this opportunity and ate the other remaining friand.

So that was the short and tragic tale of my friands, which I never ever got to taste.

Anyway, I haven't done an outfit post for a long time so here's what I wore for dinner :)

 

Black mini dress worn as a top and belt from Supre, H&M maxi skirt, Bardot tribal necklace, clutch from Gina Tricot, black platform heels from Urban Originals

Spiky Snow

Didn't know snow could look like this...

Taken when I was taking a train to Gothenburg somewhere around mid Jan this year. It was my last trip to Gothenburg from Borås by bus :(

The texture and form of the snow stuck on branches really surprised me!

An Enchantail

Top- Bottom: 
1) Story Board
2) Mood/ Colour Board
3) Print/ Graphics Board
4) Styling Board
  
These are the story and mood boards of one of my print projects, which I named 'An Enchantail'. This range was targeted for newborns to toddlers. Initially wanted to make this a range for little girls but the end result of the screenprinting process produced a rather unisex result, which turned out quite nicely. 


Helen Dardik is unlike any other illustrators that I've ever seen. Her works are so awesome that I found myself kept going back to her work for inspirations. Sanna Annukka from Marimekko had also made her mark in the inspiration of this range. 


Photos that are featured here were entirely acquired from external sources that are not referenced here. 


You can see some of the swatches from my range here :)!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Loving all these cute things from ban.do specially for this particular day of the year :)

Quirky and awesome!


 

Monki + Weekday + Sale = Love

Made a last trip to Gothenburg about five days before I left Sweden, for good. Yes, I'm back in Melbourne alright, at a city where I experienced a temperature difference of at least 30-40 degrees C  overnight from Sweden. 

So anyway, during my last two weeks in Sweden, I've indulged myself in fashion blogs reading, many which are not tagged here on my blog, and that was how I stumbled upon Monki and Weekday.  As strange as it is, my friend, Kristin, actually did bring me to both shops when I first arrived at Stockholm. Maybe I was too caught up in exploring the city that I paid little attention to the items in store, apart from the obvious- H&M and Zara. With five days remaining in Sweden, I knew I had to check these shops out.

 

Weekday on Södra Larmgatan

Awesome nude coloured, asymmetrical sheer shirt I first saw on the other Weekday shop on Kungsgatan. On sale, it was reduced from about 300 or 400kr to 100kr = AUD15. 

I tried. I loved. I bought. Got another one in black. Why not, since shirts like these would have cost maybe about AUD70.

On sale Cheap Monday jeans on a huge table. All jeans about 60kr, which is AUD9. A pair of full priced CM jeans is AUD90. I was really, really excited!

Tried on this leather (perhaps a faux) jeans. Looked hideous. Not fitting at all.

Yup, CM jeans that have gone on sale for at least 2 weeks and still a variety of sizes in stock.

Contemplated about the weight of my luggage I had to lug home to Australia. Thought about how I already had enough jeans. Saw that none of the jeans really quite appealed to me. Finally thought about what my friend Glenda said once, "You don't actually save money in a sale, no matter how cheap the item is, as you still have an outflow of cash from your account". So true I thought, and I'd spent enough. So...I walked away. 

Yes, I walked away from 9bux Cheap Monday jeans. Ah, it was the right thing to do but still agonising a little over this decision. Still can't get over the price.

Exterior of the shop on Södra Larmgatan

Södra Larmgatan, Weekday on the left row and Monki on the right. Cool idea of the hanging jeans.

Monki rocks! Bought some really cool asymmetrical top and maroon, oversized boucle yarn. Both for about 60-100kr. Got a small black purse necklace here too. This is the shop to go to for affordable, cool and arty garments and accessories. 

The other Weekday shop on Kungsgatan in Gothenburg

Ugh, I've been trying to post this post up for at least 4-5 times but my Firefox kept crashing. 

I'm lazy to type now. And this post is missing a photo as the internet connection (as well) is crawling and freezing at the same time. 


So I may just leave this till next time!

Elin Kling for H&M

It seems like just really recently that H&M just launched her collaborations with Lanvin. But this Spring 2011, H&M will again launch a new collaboration, this time with Swedish Elin Kling. Elin is a the first fashion blogger in the world to do a collaboration with the gigantuan chain label. She's won several awards for her blog and and web-TV show. She's also worked as a fashion editor, head stylist for Swedish Idol and now is the fashion director of her own fashion magazine. 

Hope they would have launched the collection earlier, since it's only available in Sweden. :( :(

Boo Australia!! Many countries have H&M, even China has them! My Chinese friend was shocked when she heard that Australia doesn't have H&M. What a bummer. Sloooooow!

Anyway, here are some photos of the collection from Elin Kling's blog.

My absolutely favourite from the collection

So beautiful!

Elin wearing her own dress

All photos taken from Elin Kling's blog

For more photos of the super wearable collection, click here!

Hope you're having a good Sunday! I'm off to Knalleland near my place now!

Sincerely, Jules

Stumbled upon this awesome Californian girl's blog called Sincerely, Jules

Love her somewhat minimalistic yet oh-so-chic assembles in every outfit. Love her makeup/ hair, everything! 

Do check her out! 

My favourite outfit- Comfy clothes with statement necklace, simple wedges, great, natural make up with tie dye hair

All photos above from Anarchy Street Blog

Spanish Food Log #2: Paella

Okay, I know that I should probably follow the chronological order of my trip to Spain, but I can't help jumping around since the focus of these post and the one before this is about food.

So again, I'm taking you through the photos taken in both Madrid and Barcelona within the same post. Topic? Paella, baby!

First, we'll be stopping over at Madrid since that was our first stop and also where we had our first paella. 

Day 1 was spent on travelling from Borås to Madrid, arriving at the hotel near Atocha Station past 10pm. Here's to Day 2, photos taken right before dinner. 

Was mad hungry, as Jing kept dragging me from attractions to attractions, ALL ON FOOT and disallowed me to take a break or ice cream, as it was getting darker and she wanted to take photos of the attractions. So I didn't bother remembering where we were going exactly. All I was thinking of was food. So don't ask me what the name of this square was.

 Can't tell you the name of this place but I can most probably show you on the map, it was near some main shopping district, just a street after the square aboce. I only just went into Zara and another shop. Came out empty handed.

I was starting to make a fuss by this time. So I chose a restaurant quickly on the main shopping road. Here's what we had.

 My small glass of aloe vera tea that cost me about EUR2-3 and there wasn't much in it at all and I was quite thirsty. Didn't taste that extraordinary either. Interesting glass and filter, though.

Our first croquette in Spain, ON THE HOUSE! Woohoo!! Kind hearted waiter gave us some of these to try. The outer layer was thin, fried to a golden brown colour with a slight crisp. The insides were rich and creamy, with bits of bacon within.

 Our main star of the night, mixed paella to share, consist of both seafood and chicken pieces. Let's see, seafood included mussels, clams and calamari. It took about 15-20 minutes to cook.

Close up of my portion. Squeeze in with some fresh lemon juice, mmmMMmm! 

The first plate was awesome, but when you have second/ third serving, it starts to get a bit...blugh. So would definitely go for smaller portions next time. 

Had been craving for ice cream the whole day. So decided to have some after the paella. Here's 2 pieces of pancakes, 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream with a large dose of chocolate sauce. 

The pancakes were literally saturated with the chocolate hence I didn't finish them. 

Jing had her dessert first, before the paella. Just a normal ball of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.

My verdict of the experience? Probably just 6.5/10. 

Paella was nice but too much of it really would make you feel sick. When you're feeling a bit sick of the main meal and your pancakes come to be a bit too saturated with chocolate...just doesn't do anything but make you feel even more sick and stuffed. 

Here are some quick snaps after dinner, along the way back from city centre to our hotel.

The same square as the first 2 photos, but now in night time. 

 A bar we passed by that I thought looked quite cool, called Glass Bar.

 Reminded me of Stamford Raffles featured in Kiasu comic books that I read when I was younger

 They came out for a quick show! Many paused and took photos, like yours truly here.

Night view of a night in Madrid, near some fountain roundabout, where we took a right turn to go back to the hotel.

Now!

Fast forward to the Day 5, to Barcelona and to our last meal in Spain before our flight back to Sweden at one of the restaurants a few streets past Placa de Catalunya. This time I chose whichever restaurant that looked slightly funkier. 

Loved the vintage deco on the wall by the entrance!

 Cola-Cao...wonder what that was back in the Spanish 50s or 60s  

 A snap of the bar, whilst sipping on my cafe latte and waiting for my food.

I had paella again. But this time, it's pasta/ noodle version, called Fideua. 

Here it is!!

My fideua, served on a wide, deep-soup metal pan, with a small side dish of white, garlicky, savoury cream.

Here's a close up of my first spoonful before it was gone. 

Honestly, this tasted really close to Malaysian fried bee hoon/ vermicelli, with a slight lemony tang! I was quite surprised. Never would I have thought that I'd get something as close to home as this when I'm over in Spain. It goes really well with the garlic cream that I was given. Was really yummy. Loved every bite!

Would give it a 7.5/10!!

Hope you enjoyed this post! Still more to come!