Hello nature!

Last week we had a few super sunny days, the kind where you can almost pretend it really is summer already, so some friends and I decided to take advantage of this and go on a bush walk (two days later my butt and legs still hurt haha). Only one of my good friends is particularly fit (one of those fitness crazy people who decide to make a job out of working out), so we decided to pick an easy track and do a 3 hour return trip. It turns out even the easy tracks have a gazillion steps, hence the sore muscles...

That super muddy part is actually the walking track which we had to walk around!

Ooer big tree!

Behind me is the Okura River

A perfect shaped resting palm

Argh look at those stairs!

Our turning back point was the Dacre Cottage which is a tiny cottage originally built around 1850 (although it was re-built in the early 1980's). We couldn't actually go inside the cottage, as due to vandalism it is now completely locked up. It's right by the beach and surrounded by farm land and bush, it would be amazing to live here (well, maybe in a slightly larger house haha).

More steps (can you spot my friend who likes fitness? hehe)

Made it out in one piece! Without falling in the mud!

 My dress is a 1970's one I've had for ages but have never worn before, the colour kind of puts me off. And please excuse my very unsightly sneakers! They're very old ones from when I played netball in high school, and I'm so glad I decided to wear them since the track turned out to be so muddy and slippery.

Do you have any nice walkways near where you live?  There are quite a lot around the Auckland region, I really think I should check some of the others out too!

xx
Lucy

Vintage Textile Fair purchases

As promised, here's what I bought this year at the Vintage Textile Fair!

 This beautiful rayon vintage dress!  Below is a closer picture so you can see the print (it's pink and blue, two colours I can't seem to get enough of lately).

 These amazing 1940's heels

And a pair of green gloves (as you know, I love green, so I couldn't not buy these!).

The coat in the background was purchased at last years Vintage Textile Fair, and is one I wear very often in winter. You can see it better in this post and this one as well.

I'm so excited about my (slowly) growing collection of vintage!

Have you bought anything fabulous lately?

xx
Lucy

Celebrating my sisters birthday

Hello!

Firstly I just want to tell you (as if you haven't figured out already) how AMAZING my older sister Malayka is. She's my sister and one of my best friends. We have always had similar interests and tastes (even when she was living overseas), and a similar temperament too (haha). She has great style and taste, has her own online shop, and is in the process of expanding this into a retail store! I happen to think she is the bees knees, and I'm sure you would too!

I know a lot of my followers are also followers of my sisters blog, so you already know what we got up to for her birthday over the weekend, but I have a gazillion photos and wanted to share some with you!

Firstly on Saturday we went to a fashion exhibition called Fashion at War, which was in the Devonport Navy Museum. It was small but very informative, I recommend you check it out if you're in the area (it runs until Sept 11th). Afterwards, we went up North Head, which is a volcanic headland in Devonport, riddled with old military tunnels. I've actually never been there before, so it was fun to explore! (This is a very picture heavy post by the way)

I got a new haircut.. The big hair was achieved simply by running my fingers through it a few times!

 And of course it wouldn't be a birthday without our traditional flourless chocolate birthday cake.

 

I hope you all had a splendid weekend, I highly recommend exploring new places as a weekend activity, it's heaps of fun!

xx
Lucy

P.s. I'm glad you all love leopard print as much as I do!

Leopard print

I don't know if I've told you this before, but I absolutely adore leopard print. especially faux fur leopard print! I also adore deep green colours, so you can imagine my excitement when I found this coat when on a thrifting mission not so long ago.

It's a touch too big for me, but I don't care, it's green, has a leopard faux fur collar and is reminiscent of a 1940's military style jacket. I'm sure this will become a regular item that appears on the blog because I love it so much!

How do you feel about leopard print?

xx
Lucy

P.s. You may have spotted me at the vintage textile fair over on my sisters blog, a post will be coming soon on my purchases from there (which I am super excited about!).

Super easy delicious Thai noodle bowl

I have to admit that I'm not the greatest cook.. Baking I find easy, but cooking is a whole other ball game, and if I deviate too much from recipes, or try to invent something totally new, well, the results are often barely edible (I once even caught my man trying to discretely put his dinner in the trash).  So when I came across this ten minute Thai noodle bowl recipe over at the Gluttonous Vegan I was very excited. I adore Asian style broths (and soups, and other warm mushy comfort foods heh), and I have often made a similar dish to this involving miso, but this one is much simpler. And even more delicious!

It's also a good recipe with there's not so much in the pantry, I just used whatever vegetables were left in the fridge, in this case it was carrot, broccoli and spring onion, and because this has become my lazy day meal, I added tofu but didn't fry it first, just added it to the broth at the same time as the other vegetables. I like it best with rice noodles (which I also just cooked in the broth), a bit of extra soy sauce, and to garnish, sesame seeds and fresh coriander/cilantro, yum!

In case you missed the earlier link, the full recipe can be found here. (scroll down a bit, the recipe is there!)

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

xx
Lucy

Breakfast outdoors

Ok well it was more like breakfast on the front doorstep, but outdoors sounds much nicer!  Malayka (my sister) came over for breakfast, and we figured we'd better take advantage of the amazing sunny days we've been having this past week.

Sadly the concrete in front is actually my driveway, and directly opposite is the carport, but lucky for us only one of my neighbours left the house in her car while we were breakfasting (I live in a unit, it was a little bit awkward).

Either way it was nice!  And to all of you who have yards or private balconies, I am rather jealous!

xx
Lucy

The Wintergarden

 Well, I kind of dropped off the face of the blogging world for a month, but now I'm back and feeling a little re-energised, so we will see how things go with this whole posting on a regular basis thing!

Yesterday I visited the Wintergarden in Auckland Domain. Auckland Domain is the oldest park in the city, with the Auckland War Museum situated within the park. The Wintergarden is made up of two huge glasshouses, which were built in 1913, and opened to the public in the early 1920's!

Isn't the lilly pad above strange? I wanted to touch it but it was out of reach!

I took so many photo's it's hard to not post them all! So here a just a few more featuring the band rotunda, and the dress I was wearing under my winter coat.

        Coat: Vintage

Dress: 1970's bought in Melbourne

Bag: Thrifted

In other news, my camera broke at a rather wild (drunken) party several weeks ago, so now I have a new camera which I am still playing around with... It's a better version of my old camera so I'm happy! (although it'd be nice to have a fancy-pants camera one day too)

Hope everyone is well in blog-land, it's good to be back.

xx
Lucy