I wrote a while ago that I might alter the sleeves on this dress, but I actually don't mind them like this. Gosh I love Modcloth.

I have some more bits of news:


1. I got an email from Manikinn to let me know about their opening sale - 20% off their online pieces until the 7th of October! I am particularly loving this, this and this.


2. I have a tumblr now! I thought it might be updated more frequently than here, but my internet is capped so it has been slow this week. Anyway, my tumblr is called My Peggy Sue and can be found here!


3. I am going to Melbourne in November, hooray hooray hooray! Boy and I will be staying at The Cube apartments for two weeks and I am sooooo excited. If you have any suggestions for fun things to do in Melbourne please let me know!


4. I am thinking about getting a new layout, how did you all get/make yours? Any help would be much appreciated.



And now I am off to make some meatballs and watch the Hey Hey It's Saturday reunion (on a...Wednesday?).


x

The major points of my week:
Monday: I went to see the uni counsellor, because I've been having some trouble keeping up with all the work. She said that one of the best things to do was to drop my working hours, so now I'm working two days a week until the end of the semester. Hopefully this will also lead to more posting!
Wednesday: Presentation at uni, and I got some new makeup from MAC (proper review coming soon!)
Friday: I went out for my gorgeous friend's birthday! We went to the Subi Hotel (which was really nice, awesome design and fairly cheap cocktails) and to the Sapphire Bar (which had a ridiculously strict dress code, lots of girls in not a lot of clothing, and some baaad disco tunes going on). Forget to take an outfit photo because I am silly.
Sunday: My mum and dad came up, we did a lot of housey stuff, and visited family. Then Boy and I went to see Up, which was amazing. I think that Pixar will be very happy come Oscar time. I love being enchanted by movies, it makes me feel like a little kid again! It was brilliant and you should all see it.

If I had to choose, I would pick Romance Was Born as my all-time favourite Australian label. Although their range is a little out of my price range (although I am planning to snag a piece when I go to Melbourne in a few months!), I have two pieces from their range with Sportsgirl - a dress and a top with the most adorable fabric. I will get around to taking photos of them sometime, I swear! It is a deliciously kooky label, with quirky fabric and fantastic detail. Vogue called their latest collection "when Neptune and nanas collide", and who wouldn't be intrigued by a review like that? Here are the pieces that are currently on my wish list (from their SS09/10 collection, so a few months old, but has been one of my favourites of the year)...

Hello! I have been a bit absent from the internet, here is the rundown of my week:

Monday - Uni, where I was still not able to get an interview for my radio broadcast unit
Tuesday - Work
Wednesday - Thought I had a lecture at uni, so went down there - it turns out my tutor was on strike that day (about 5% of the tutors were, I thought "What are the chances MY tutor will be?". Apparently, pretty good) so I went to Garden City in the mood to buy things but walked away empty-handed
Thursday - Work
Friday - Me and Boy's two year anniversary! We went out to dinner at Red Cabbage, it was really delicious. I had crab, scallop and nero linguine for entree, and some kind of beef and chilli pasta pie for the main course. Then we came home and watched a Russell Brand stand-up DVD. Pretty perfect night as far as I am concerned. <3>
Saturday - Went to Boy's sister's for a yummy curry dinner and stayed over. She is having a 90's themed party so a good proportion of the night was spent in a FRANTIC DANCE-OFF to 90's disco music. I am still deciding what to go as, I really want to go as a Power Ranger but have no idea where I would get the costume.
Today - Have spent the day watching Rome, and tonight Boy and I went to see (500) Days of Summer, which I loooved (as I suspected I would, but it is rare that a movie actually lives up to my expectations!). I was meant to go with my girlfriends last week but was way too stressed about uni work to be good company. This is what I wore. But I felt a bit lame, like you know how people go to Harry Potter movies dressed as Harry Potter?:



Here are some things which will be arriving in my letterbox very soon! I am working on getting a PO box because some people have asked about sending things. Hopefully on Tuesday it will all be done!

A while ago, I wrote a piece on floral dresses. The lovely Good Girl Gone Blog wrote and asked for ideas on how to wear summer dresses in fall. Well, I am trying to get the good summer pieces early this year, but the weather has not yet come along for the ride, so I feel her pain of trying to make summer dresses more winter-appropriate.

I whipped up a few Polyvore sets to help start the inspiration...


Bring the dress into winter by pairing it with a gorgeous tan coat, lace up booties and some fantastic accessories. I'm sure you all know that hats are imperative to keeping warm in winter (and keeping cool in summer - it works, somehow, well I suppose so anyway) - make yours especially cute and bow-ified.

So there are my suggestions! I think my other, more general tips would be:
♥ There are very few dresses that won't be able to go transeasonal. A cute floral dress (of which I have many, so I can consider myself something of an expert :P ) can be made more winter-appropriate with just some tights, black ankle boots and a black cardigan. A long sleeved dress can be worn with strappy leather flats to make it look more sixties bohemian than Russian winter elegance.
♥ Be careful of fabrics. Wool obviously will be hell in summer, but surprisingly people still wear a lot of polyester in summer - it just doesn't breathe, people! It also starts to smell quite quickly in summer, so be warned! Likewise, be careful of dresses with lots of floaty layers in wintery weather unless you want to be continually trying to keep your skirt from blowing up and away!
♥ This is going to sound really schoolteacher-y but make sure you always have some form of sunscreen on in summer (well, ideally all year round)! I wear moisturiser with SPF 15 every day, because I would much rather buy a leather bag than have my face look like one!
♥ If you can make your dresses work season to season it will save you SO MUCH money. I usually think "OK, this dress for summer, this dress for winter" when really, a lot of them can be worn all year round. Even a maxi dress can be worn comfortably in winter if you use your noggin!

Hope this has helped!

x

You wouldn't think I would leave you without photographic evidence of such a day with such perfect numerical order, did you?

This is what I wore out to dinner with Boy. It was $13 steak night at the Como Hotel, which we usually go to. I took it as an excuse to wear one of the dresses I picked up in my vintage haul a few weeks ago.


It hasn't been a very exciting few days for me! One of my units for uni is stressing me out in a MAJOR way. It's my radio unit for journalism and we are meant to organise interviews, record them, edit them and write them up in four hours. The first week was fine but for the last two weeks NO ONE has agreed to be interviewed. Once they hear that you're a student journalism then any interest they have flies out the window. It is extremely irritating! It has just been a shitty couple of weeks in general.

How has your week been going? Better than mine, I hope!

x

p.s If you have linked my blog, first of all, thank you! Second, I bought a domain, so please change your links to http://www.gininateacup.com/! To celebrate my move to a little, paid-for patch of internet, I thought it would be kind of nice if everyone - from lurkers to regular readers - made a comment with your name and your blog, so I can link it! Thanks guys!

I thought I would hate it, but I really like all the tribal influences that were seen in the Spring '09 shows (and have finally trickled all the way down to Australia). Way better than boho, the tribal influence is making leopard print sexy, not skanky; brings leather, (faux) fur, beads and feathers together in a surprisingly fabulous way; and makes the costumes from the Broadway production of The Lion King look like haute couture.

Style.com thought that Louis Vuitton's Spring 2009 show had a Parisienne feel, but with all the orange and crazy shoes and leopard print details, I thought it had more than a hint of a fashionista on safari, and so it's my main inspiration for this particular aesthetic.

Wondering how to inject some tribal chic into your look?

♥ Use earthy tones. Don't go for fluro orange like those silly rave kids - use a beautiful burnt orange tone worn back with browns, blacks and creams. If it's worn properly it can look quite chic.
♥ Stack on the bangles, chains, rings and beads. I think I have championed this idea before but wear two stacks of bangles on each arm for optimum effect. Rachel Zoe calls them "excessories" for a reason. Wear them in gold, wood, ivory, and multicoloured beads. I have at least three huge animal rings that fit into this aesthetic perfectly.
♥ Feathers are fantastic. Little feather capelets, feather cap sleeves and feather skirts are popping up all over the place and... ahem... flying off the shelves.
♥ The crazy shoes seen at Louis Vuitton will not go away anytime shoes. The higher and more crazily embellished they are, the better. In Australia Siren are doing the poor lady's version of some of the runway shoes.
♥ As will always be advised on Gin in a Teacup, use leopard print sparingly. The bags in this show use only a few panels mixed back with bold colours and I think that is the key - to make it a finishing touch in your outfit and not to take any attention away from the clean, ready-to-trek-the-safari look you have going on.
♥ Go natural and earthy with your makeup. If you're wearing an orange top and a cream skirt, don't try and match your makeup by making your eyes bronze and lipstick brown and whatnot. Likewise, this look may call for a beautiful tanned bod but please don't make your skin tone orange to match the colours.
♥ Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Well, not so much bears, but you get the idea. I know in Diva especially there's lots of African-animal-inspired jewellery at the moment, and I am guessing that soon, any of your friendly neighbourhood chain stores will have shirts featuring the likeness of any number of wild animals (but please don't buy the leopard print WHAT DID WE JUST DISCUSS PLEASE PAY ATTENTION).
♥ Some particular pieces I would look at buying are some flattering shorts in cream or khaki; a burnt orange dress paired with a pair of leather, beaded shoes; a crisp white shirt; a beige trench; a feathered headband; some leather cuffs, gold bangles and animal rings, worn all at once!, and some leopard print accessories.
♥ Obviously, only wear this look if you're really feeling it. Don't feel pressured to buy a whole menagerie of tribal clothes if you really are more of a English-rose kinda gal. But, if you're willing to experiment, don't go crazy or it could have more of an Island of Doctor Moreau effect than anything else you may have hoped for.

Hope that has helped, my African Queens!

x

[EDIT: I just realised that this is my 200th post! Hooray! Thanks everyone for following, reading and hopefully enjoying my little old blog!]

I saw this on A's blog (shut up, vita) and it made me pretty fired up so I thought I would write a post about it here. I tried to resist the whole MasterChef phenomenon for AS LONG AS I COULD and then I got really into it and disconnected the phone whenever it was on and yelled at Boy if he tried to change the channel/talk to me/breathe loudly when it was on. ANYWAY, Julie was one of my early favourites and I was really happy when she won. Sure, I guess there was some of that Australian-mum-done-good hype going on, but that didn't stop me from shedding a little tear when she won (bye bye, credibility).

So she got a deal writing for Australian Woman's Weekly and her photos turned out... like this:

Now, for those of you who don't know, Julie usually looks something like this:

I guess to echo the point that A. has already made, why do magazines feel the need to make this beautiful, talented woman into someone practically unrecognisable? It reminds me of all the fuss over Therese Rein when she lost weight, I read that some magazines were saying that "now she will be able to keep up with Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni". She's an amazing businesswoman who is worth millions of dollars (without the help of her husband) and yet the Australian media went nuts over photos of her in a gym.

As you all probably know, I want to be a journalist when I graduate, so I guess Photoshopping is something that I will have to get used to seeing all over the place. It also might be pointless me writing about it, since next week I will probably feature some ad or a photoshoot or a promo photo where the model's ever last imperfection (and last five pounds) are probably eliminated. I just think that when people have achieved so much and are already inspirational, why do people feel the need to pressure them into losing a few extra kilos, or to Botox their foreheads, or to completely change who they are?

What do you think?

Love your non-Photoshopped blogger,

x

So, like I mentioned in my post yesterday, I am on a ban from letting any more floral print enter my wardrobe. I have waaaay more floral dresses than I know what to do with! I feel like a horticulturalist!


Sadly, this means that none of these lovely dresses will be entering my wardrobe soon. But, I thought that I would show them to all of you so you can inject your sartorial choices with a little flower power...