Lots of Lovely New Arrivals

Oopsies I didn't post yesterday because...I made another choccy cake and vegged out in front of the telly. Not a good excuse, but an honest one. Anyway today has been flat chat with lots and lots of new goodies, and tomorrow will be much the same (Sooki Baby, So Sooki and Indy C and Munster hopefully all online by EOD tomorrow!). Over the last few days, this is what's come in:

Allira Yum Cha Brooch, $25 Limited edition of 100, and each one is carefully numbered. Pretty spesh for just $25!

August Street Piscean Pants, $49.95 A new label which you'll see a whole lot more of in the coming weeks, these pants are flatout awesome. Comfy. Khaki. Casual. Cool. Oh did I mention comfy?

Living Doll Bree's Combat Dress, $64.95 Fact: Bree is a lovely lass who works for Living Doll. Fact: you need this dress. It's too cool for words. Except those words, obviously.

Living Doll V-Neck Tshirt Dress, $19.95 Under $20 for a really really comfy, throw-on-and-go dress that you can layer, wear to the beach of your 'kinis, or just laze around in after a few too many frozen daquiris. Oh summer, how I've missed you.

Living Doll Between The Lines Maxi, $59.95 If you haven't already got a maxi dress or 3, get this one. Universally flattering and easy to wear, plus it has cute plaited straps. Love!

Lucky 13 Caterpillar Dress, $99.95 The print is cute, the back is even cuter. Plus, Aris' shoes here look amazing so if you've got a similar pair, I highly recommend going for this look, right down to her bright blue toneails!

Street Style: London Fashion Week

It doesn't really get cooler than London. Not just weather-wise either: it's the kind of place where anything goes and following the pack just doesn't matter. Check out some of the looks off the catwalk for some new season inspiration (note to self: must buy more long skirts!):

Pics: Face Hunter; Style Scout; Harper's Bazaar; The Sartorialist

Bargain!

I had one of those stars-are-in-alignment shopping days today. I just kept finding awesome stuff to buy! Everyone had sales! Things in Target kept scanning up at lower prices then the tag read! After a haul which included several cute dresses for little miss - which could've been alot more but I restrained myself - a lovely baking book, some useful storage and bargains galore at Diva, who had just started markdowns; I arrived home to a cool little pressie in the letterbox. My chain store buys were still fabulous, but this little thing was a bit more special. Etsy seller Maya's Kalupi makes cute colouring wallets in a whole host of adorable fabrics. They're perfect for throwing in your handbag when you're out to dinner or anywhere else that a little person might need to be amused (ie: everywhere).  They even come with crayons and a notepad! Ours was a sunny yellow with ladybugs all over, but if fairies, apples, rainbows, trucks, or owls are more your thang, there's lots of those too. They're finished with an elastic button clasp, but the best bit is that they are just US$9.50 each. Which is like $9.95 Oz buckaroos at the moment. And for an amused child plus the warm and fuzzy feelnig that comes from supporting independent designers, it's by far the biggest bargain of the day!

Fairy Tales Are Grimm Indeed

There's a reason that many fairy tales and nursery rhymes were written by the Brothers Grimm. They really are quite terrifying (the stories that is. I'm sure the bros were fond of just chillin' by candlelight and chewing on their quills). The weird thing is, they mainly get creepier the older that you get. The idea of Hansel and Gretel living in cages and stuffing a witch into her oven brings on a mild case of claustrophobia nowdays, but as a kid, all I thought about was the gingerbread house. Yum.

Taken in context, you could really read alot of fairy tales as old school stranger danger education. Don't wander around in the woods and talk to witches, or, er, cross-dressing wolves. In today's version, Little Red Riding Hood's old man just chases the wolf away, and doesn't cut him open and get Granny out and then happily feast on black forest cake next to a corpse spilling entrails. I know - soft! But the modern version is a bit like the end of Silence of the Lambs...the wolf is still lurking around, somewhere, waiting for a sequel. At least the first version finished him off, fair and square.

Today Tonight "exposed" a nursery rhyme that was sitting happily in the pages of a book in a primary school library, but rather disturbed a little girl who read it as part of her classwork. It basically involved a girl drowning her baby brother in the bath. Horrible, yes? A friend of mine just pointed out that we happily hand-clapped to it in primary school without a second thought. Not sure which is more disturbing - the rhyme, or the fact we didn't notice the macabre undertones. Or is the most disturbing thing the fact that kids of the 21st century do pick up on such things?

Now for once I do prefer the Wiggles' more sanitised version of this particular ditty. But it got me thinking about how we're making things complicated for the poor little buggers for no good reason. Take Baa Baa Black Sheep. Now there's a verse about a white sheep and a rainbow sheep too, because to have just a black sheep as the different one is somewhat racist. But a kid would just see a black sheep. A sheep with black wool. Simple. We're teaching them unneccessarily to be PC when they already are inherently so. They don't think that a kookaburra living "a gay life" is a homosexual bird, they think he's having a good old time singing away in his tree. Which he is. Until we tell them otherwise.

So maybe we should tell them the original versions of these fairy tales, because like a big game of chinese whispers (are you still allowed to call it that?) one day the stories as they were, as pieces of history, will be so diluted and altered that they'll have lost all significance. It's part of the magic of childhood to let your imagination run away with you, to scare yourself silly, and/or believe that you could grow a magic beanstalk in your backyard or have a handsome prince awaken you from a hundred year's slumber.

Ultimately, despite the creepy bits in fairy tales, good always triumphs over evil, and it's important for kids to understand that both forces exist. We shouldn't erase them or colour them differently and hope they go away. As adults, we can make judgements on things. As kids, we simply see and enjoy them as they are. We did, so why can't our kids?

Better than Treadmills (involves puppies)

It's been a long couple of days, what with our mega sale and all, and all I want to do is sink into the couch and chill out. And watch awesome clips on You Tube such as this one. OK Go's latest viral hit has only been online for 2 days but over 2 million people have viewed it (or, a few people have just watched it alot). If you though the treadmill clip was awesome (it was/is), this one is possibly even better, because it involves moveable furniture and some gorgeous canines:


And for those of you into stats, apparently it took 124 full takes to perfect, and the final version is take number 72. Love it!

Street Style: New York Fashion Week

If only every week was Fashion Week (actually, it nearly is, somewhere around the globe). There are no wrongs at Fashion Week - the bolder, the brighter, the more outrageous = the better! The only thing you could do is blindly follow popular trends - Fashion Week is a time to make your very own statement:

Pics: Refinery29; FaceHunter; Harpers Bazaar; The Sartorialist; Elle

Do You, Have You, Would You Tip?

I don't. I detest the practice in the same way I detest people who wear ugg boots when they go out shopping. While scoffing dessert on the couch this evening, I watched a segment on The 7pm Project about tipping. Most Aussies dislike it as much as I do, though apparently it's us Gen Y-ers who tip the most frequently. My partner does it more often than I'd like, a habit he seemed to pick up when we were living OS. But stingy ol' me would rather look at the bill, and pay that amount, despite my growing notice of death stares from wait staff on the till who wait expectantly when they swipe your eftpos card.
"So...the full amount?"
"Well, take 50% off if you like," much forced laughter while I try to guess the amount in the tip jar on the counter and avoid looking at the slightly miffed waiter. I wonder if thyey'd give me a prize for guessing correctly, like those 'how many jelly beans in the paint jar" competitions?

It seems that the tips we give, when we do give them, are pretty stingy anyway. I thought the general rule was 10%, or to at least round it up, and the average tip that most of us give is between $10 - $20. The general attitude is that our workers get paid accordingly depending on the industry they work in, unlike in, say, the States where tips can form a large part of your earnings for a shift . If I was in the US, sure I'd tip. I did it in Europe and the UK, not that I was very happy with most of the service we got, nor the shithouse exchange rate (this was about 5 years ago), but it's the culture in those parts of the world, and when in Rome...(eat dinner in a restaurant where a man is happily re-tiling the floor next to you, apparently).

But shouldn't we try to keep a culture of tipping being for exceptional service? Not as an expected add-on? I don't know if tipping makes people work harder in order to earn better tip, or if it makes them slacker because they know that etiquette means they will  get x amount, regardless. Really, customers shouldn't have to foot the bill in order for workers to get a fair go - it's up to the employers and regulating bodies to provide a fair working environment in accordance with their industries, surely?  But mostly, tipping sucks for the customer because we all fell asleep or doodled formal dresses in our maths classes in high school, and can't really be bothered working out how much extra we have to pay in order to save face at the end of a meal/haircut/hotel stay. Admit it, that's a large part of the reason I we avoid it...!

Do you tip regularly? Do you think it's a good practice to have in place?

Fair Shake of the...Ketchup Bottle?

Remember the uproar over the whole Vegemite/cheese spread hybrid? And it wasn't just the shit original name that pissed everyone off, but the whole concept of taking something so near and dear to us and then mutating it into something really very tasty. I mean, into something we didn't really want. Heinz are launching this ad sometime this week - and it's all about the ketchup. Yep, the word that everybody else in the English-speaking western world uses. Ketchup. No! It's sauce! Dead 'orse. Fair shake of the ketchup bottle? I don't think so, even if it may have prevented K-Rudd from mercilessly blasting our eardums with his infamous catchphrase.

Nothing wrong with the ad in theory, it's just that we have never called it ketchup, and why would we? Technically, it's a sauce. And as a side note, my mum is petrified of it. Seriously. It's pretty funny.

What's New: Little Shop Of

The other day I bought a pair of little pink heart shaped earrings for the grand total of $5. A small little lunchtime purchase, but it made my day just a bit brighter (...perhaps I need to get out more, or find a new lunchtime hobby.) Anyhow, the point is, it's the little things that can often go a long way, like these teeny cutesy earrings just in from Little Shop Of - at just $12.95 a pop, mind you! There's also some gorgeous pendants and amazing brooches for pinning to your lapel, your satchel, or any other item you might have that ends in -el.

(black or blue)(black or white)

Pendants, $25 each

Sustainable Bamboo Brooches, $22 - $25 each

Street Style: Use Your Head

Ever noticed how the most fashionable people don't actually follow trends? In fact, they pretty much always wear the opposite of mainstream looks - and if you think about it, that's how new trends are created. One look I love but can never pull off is hats. I love the idea that once upon a time people wouldn't dare head out to do their shopping without a nifty hat perched on their 'do. And in summer (shade) or winter (warmth), it just makes sense. Yeah that's right - fashion that makes sense! The cool kids on the street are whacking on all forms of floppy, knitted, floral, turbaned and embellished headgear, and turning what could easily be a mainstream look into something that's definitely their own:

Pics: The Sartorialist, Style Scout,  Stylesightings,  Street Peeper, Face Hunter, Altamiranyc, Chictopia

Hi Blog, These Are My Excuses

Hi Blog. I'm just writing to say that I can't fill you in this week; I have the sniffly beginnings of a full-blown cold creeping up upon me. I'm trying valiantly to swallow cups of green tea, but it tastes like poo so I have a steaming mug of Milo here in front of me instead. My nose tickles, my throat is calling out to the pack of Soothers that is just out of reach in the high cupboard in the kitchen which I can't get to without a chair. And I can't be bothered getting a chair because that would entail moving, and my body is starting to ache. The thought of flicking through street fashion blogs or new stock writeups or even rantings on the rude, permed woman in Kmart the other day just makes me want to pull my doona over my head and snuggle down where it's warm and soft, and nothing else. Frock You has got lots of new stuff coming in this week, but I don't think I can evenb raise my head to look at it, let alone attack the cartons with a stanley knife and go through the counting, QC'ing, uploading and storing process. So, I'm sorry for being so boring and having a big red ugly dripping nose, but it can happen at this time of year. I promise to write again next week when hopefully my head feels like it contains something cerebral instead of something made of cotton wool. And why can I never find any hankies when I need them?

Love from Kat xxxxx

Office Time Waster: InStyle's Styling Skills Game

US InStyle mag have a nifty new game on their website, which is oddly addictive and guaranteed to waste many office hours. It might also leave you feeling like a ensemble-y challenged hick (or a smug fashionista who ticks all the right boxes). Basically, you have to complete the given outfit with the choices to the right, and you then get a brief rundown on why your choice was correct or otherwise, plus the option to 'shop the look'. As it's a US site the looks are all Fall/Winter, which almost m,akes you hope for the weather here to stay cooler for just a bit longer...almost!

(Found courtesy of GirlWithASatchel)

Ridiculous Product Of The Day: Season-Scented Washing-Up Liquid

I had an exciting 60 seconds in the cleaning aisle at Coles this afternoon, seeking out some dishwashing liquid. Should be simple - something that doesn't smell offensive, and just cleans my pots and pans. I was rather astonished to find, amongst the pedestrian lemon/lemon-lime/orange-antibacterial varieties, that Palmolive have released a line of washing-up liquid that's scented like...seasons. As in, "summer breeze" and "winter warmth". Winter warmth? Like, smoky wood fires and asthma-inducing fog? Summer breeze - sea air and fresh grass clippings? Or perhaps a different kind of grass clipping that wafts over summer music festivals?

The thing is, no kind of cleaning product that claims to be "fragranced", actually smells anything remotely like lemons or oranges or even lavender. They just all have the reassuring scent of chemical disinfectant. Oh, how we love inhaling those toxins - but how sparkling clean our benchtops are! You know what else made me pause and reflect? That ad for hand wash where the kid won't stand still for "long enough" to wash his hands "properly", but luckily this particular anti-bacterial cleanser works in just ten seconds. So he's free to run back outside and dig for grubs asap. Now, have you ever counted the seconds when washing your hands? I'd be willing to bet most adults don't even suds-up for ten seconds. Not the one-mississippi, two-mississippi time keeping method anyway. So the chance of kids even reaching 4 seconds is a fairly big ask. Now, mothers around the country are not only wondering at the bad over-dubbing on the ad, but also at how their kids must be running around with disgusting, miniscule germs wriggling shamelessly all over their hands - and all the soap that must have previously been used in vain. Pointless scare-mongering, I tells ya!

Anyway, back to Palmolive. Either the people who's job it is to come up with new and exciting scents for cleaning detergents were running really, really thin on ideas, or they wondered in a crazy, mad scientist Willy Wonka kinda way if they could really bottle the scent of a summer's day. Or, perhaps they thought that if they make their liquid a slightly different colour to the usual and package it appropriately - oranges and red and autumn leaves for winter, which incidentally would in fact be autumn and not winter; and pink and purple flowers for summer, which is actually more like spring if you think about it -  they could convince people of dubious olfactory abilities that they really are whiffing winter warmth when they wash their crockery. To be fair, I didn't smell either, as I probably would have been politely escorted from the store if I had tried, so maybe they really are amazing, Heston-Blumenthal-of-the-cleaning-world creations that have the ability to awaken and alight your other senses, as well as give your glassware sparkling shine. But maybe they're just another useless product that we don't need, but subconsciously kinda want to try in the vain hope they might be better than regular Palmolive. At least they aren't completely useless products - they will clean your dishes, after all - unlike these:

An icecream cone that turns the icecream for you. WTF?!

Baby wipes warmer. Presumably it also dries out your wipes so they're not too wet.

Electronic spin the bottle. So, in effect, you don't actually have to spin the bottle.

Light up slippers. Perfect for lighting up the few millimetres in front of your toes. And annoying everybody else.

Hamburger holder. Though you do have to hold the holder.