Today I am reaaaaally excited that my favourite band, Why?, is coming to Australia and playing the Annandale Hotel on the day I come back from Launceston (16th December). Eeeeeeeee! I texted Paige straight away and we are organising going. I am beyond looking forward to it. I actually downloaded their new album today before I found out they were touring here. Of course, much encouragement in you checking them out :) One of my favourite songs is 'The Hollows'.

Last night my mum came to stay, she said we should go out for dinner and after wandering around for a while we decided on my favourite pizza place called Crust. We got a takeaway vegetarian supreme which features such delightful ingredients as grilled eggplant, marinated artichokes, baby spinach, boccochini, pesto aoili and we got stuffed figs on top as well. It was dreamy. Once you have one of the pizzas from this place you can never eat a mediocre pizza again. I said something about Baileys and the next moment we'd gone halves on a small bottle. I always get asked for ID, but I guess the trick is to go into bottle shops with your mum and you won't get asked. We spent most of the night just talking and laughing and drinking Baileys on ice and munching up awesome pizza. I feel like getting one right now... mmm...

I walked past one of the newsagents up the road from me today and it said it was having a closing down sale and stationery was 50%! Sadly, there wasn't too much that caught my eye except some cheap ink and air mail envelopes, but I think I'll go back and stock up on writing utensils tomorrow.

I'm thinking about heading down to Sydney tomorrow night to see some of my best friends from high school's band Caleb Skips Chemistry play the state finals of the uni/Tafe band comp. I always enjoy showing my support.

I've probably mentioned before that I am a compulsive nail biter, really bad, all my life, but as C has stopped smoking, I am matching him in not biting my nails. They're still pretty short, and I'm only just getting used to doing things that require nails that I couldn't do before! Like opening things! Here is a photo of (small) progress. I think it's been like, three weeks. Revlon Red is pretty much the only nail polish I own/buy;





On a completely different topic here is some post related stuff I'm coveting;


^ Uhhhmazing prints from Art&Ghosts you can get printed into postcards (via Decor8)


^ I Love Mail badges and This and That Stationery Set from Assembly of Text.


^ Stitchable Europe postcard, for, y'know, whenever I get to go to Europe + Hemline Stationery Set.


^ Found paper pack and a book called Handmade Hellos.


^ Typewriter tape and Landscape stamp set.


^ Vintage labels and Russian colouring cards.

I made this postcard yesterday out of an index card and some canceled stamps;



Also, I've been working my way through this list of the Top 100 Australian Women Bloggers which features some amazing bloggers, with a special mention to the 1 spot held by Pip from Meet Me At Mikes. There are some very clever Australian women.

Now I'm considering making mashed potato, pumpkin and kumera with sweet chili sauce for dinner (I'm feeling lazy) and powering through the 3rd season of Dexter, which C's sister in law gave to me today. I went to pick up C's niece from school this afternoon and walked her home. It was sweet.

Til tomorrow :)

Ps. Another of C's post office photos. I want to post my letters here!

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^ + (last night I caught one of my cats in the bathroom sitting and staring at it's reflection, Ps. I ♡ My Little Fawn!)



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The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

My sister and her friend Rokia are staying with me tonight. I filled them full of food and then we watched The Breakfast Club. Today I had to go in for a meeting with my job finding helper person and then I had lunch with my mum at a really cute place in the mall called 'Sprocket'. I bought some more henna from Natural Tucker and went to Blue Star Elements and bought some postcards and stickers. A nice day it was;



^ all by Cavallini Papers & Co.

Today I also got a lovely little postcard from C and he bought me some stamps I'd been looking at on Ebay, what a sweetie;





He's also been taking a whole lot of photos of the buildings in Launceston and took a photo for me of the huge post office building in Evandale and suggested that for only $700, 000 we could live in and run the post office there;



I also got this lovely postcard, with amazing stamps last week, I can only assume it is part of the Benevolent Postcard Society, but I might be wrong. Lovely nonetheless;





I love American stamps, they're so colourful and there seems to be such variety. Australia has very little range when it comes to stamps, images of kangaroos and mountains can only be so interesting for so long.

Ps. I think my newly spruced mailbox brought me more mail than usual today, I hope it keeps up this week :)

Iiiiiiit's 3am. Tonight I went to the Lass O'Gowrie, which is one of my favourite pubs in Newcastle, to celebrate the 21st birthday of one of my best friends. I had a really nice time. Paige lives in Sydney so I don't get to see her too often, but I always enjoy her company. I bought her an issue of Hi Fructose magazine, which is a really interesting art magazine. When she opened it she said "there are lots of paintings of creepy children" and I knew she liked it, ha. I got it from the comic book shop in Newcastle earlier in the week with my friend Doug. I couple of weeks ago when I went in they had a copy of the Hi Fructose Collected Hardcover Book for $60 which looked really awesome;



I only got to have a flick through the book (and the magazines) but I the images inside were amazing. Here are some of the very cool magazine covers (I got her issue 11, the second image featuring a Mark Ryden painting. He's preeeeetty incredible);





Also, yesterday my lovely little copy of Good Mail Day arrived and I read most of it in one go and then finished it off later on before bed. It's quite lovely. My only criticism is that it's quite US focused, but I totally understand that as the writers are both American and their post experience has been almost solely with the USPS. I'll write a proper review of it sometime and scan some of my favourite bits. It's very cute.



Earlier today I walked up the street and went into this hippie shop called Enigma where I have been admiring a lovely wrap-around tie-up red striped floor length skirt (I can't take a photo so I have to be descriptive!) and I haven't taken it off all day (except currently I'm typing in bed and wearing pajamas). It was a bit of a splurge, but it's really lovely and made out of thin fabric, so it should be nice and breezy for Summer, afterward I went to Aldi to buy some flour and sugar to make a banana and strawberry loaf with the very overripe fruit I had sitting in my fruit bowl. I also bought some cheap blueberries and blended all the fruit together in the mixer and it was so sweet and delicious. I baked it all up and it's very tasty. When I got it out of the tin I sat it on the 'clean' chopping board to cool (no cake racks here) and then realised that the chopping board must have still had some garlic on it, which made the bottom of the cake taste awful! I'll either have to cut it up or just overpower that flavour with ice cream and C's homemade caramel sauce. Mmmm.

While I was away earlier in the week I went just two days without checking my Google Reader and came home to 260 unread blogs! I have way too many subscriptions and I should probably cut down sometime soon. I think it fosters bad blog reading habits when you just subscribe to a million things and then try to get through the Google Reader feed as quickly as possible and don't actually get the time to go to the blogs you enjoy and take in new things and leave comments and such, so tomorrow I think I'll dedicate some time to sorting that out. I hate having to delete subscriptions to blogs, but I'd prefer to limit myself and enjoy reading blogs than feel like it's a chore.

I have a REALLY boring mailbox. It's badly painted with what looks like dark green left over house paint, some of it has been left white, it is of a very simple lift-up-with-a-slot design and the numbers I believe are written on in lead pencil! It definitely doesn't look like a place where fun mail would hide, so today I spent a whole lot of time trying to unscrew the rusted screws that held my mailbox to the front fence. On C's brother's instruction I ended up spraying it with WD40 which loosened the rust and eventually I reefed the thing off. I spent the half hour before I had to go out cleaning, sanding and applying the first coat of bright red enamel paint to the box and then tomorrow I'll do another and then try to screw the thing back on. Having a happy mailbox I'm sure will mean more happy mail. I'll try to take a picture of it when it's all freshly painted and screwed back in.

I've been calling C once or twice a day and texting him much more and I miss him so much, but I'm not going to count the days or feel miserable, I'm just looking forward to him being back. It sounds like he's having a lovely time and I can't wait until we both go down to Launceston in November/December.

Aaaanyway, I am so so so sleepy *yawns*
Goodnight little spoons :)

Aloha,
I had a long list of things to do today and the last on the list (and the most important of course) was to write an entry, but I was so busy I didn't get time, but everything else on the list is crossed out, So, I'm just writing to say that I made up a new header kind of thing - it's currently a very low res version and I'm just testing it out to see how I like the layout of things, so it's likely that it will change, aaaanway. Will write tomorrow :)
Sweet dreams,
B.