Jewelry Storage

Following on from some previous blog posts on storage, I was prompted to blog about my jewelry storage when I put my new CC Skye bracelet away.



It's has five drawer compartments and more storage under the lid.






The first drawer has these little individualized compartments and I store my rings and some earrings here.



I store my bracelets in the second drawer with the longer separators.



The third drawer has wider separators so I store some of my thicker bracelets, cuffs and a few necklaces here.



The fourth drawer doesn't have separators so I store my necklaces here.



The fifth drawer also doesn't have separators so I store more necklaces here.



In a previous blog post, I purchased the Cloud 9 curling wand and was given a Wella Thermal Protector for free.



I used this yesterday morning and I don't like it. For me, it made my hair greasy and that meant that I had to was it again today (I wash every second day).

Today I'm wearing black Pilgrim pants, silk top by 7 for all man kind (purchased in NYC), Witchery blazer and Mimco heels.

Swimwear shopping

I had a great weekend chilling out at the beach house with my family and it's nice to catch up with them over good weather and food, and I returned home late last night.

T and I spent the weekend apart, he traveled into a country town to be taught some tricks of the trade in machining on the Saturday and on Saturday night, he and two of his other friends rode their motorbikes to his Phillip Island beach house for the night. T returned home at 2pm yesterday and had the cleaned the house by the time I got home.

This morning on my way to work, I was going to do a quick blog post outlining my weekend and my outfit of the day. Unfortunately, I got a bit sidetracked by an email I received. JETS swimwear sale. Say what?! Perfect, I haven't purchased new swimwear in, like, a year and a half. I tried this summer, I really did. I usually love Seafolly but I wasn't loving anything from their range this summer. The Seafolly pieces that I did like, were the exact same style and cut as the ones I had, just different colour. So I gave up...until now.

By the time I got to work, I purchased two pairs of JETS bikinis.The first set is the Coastline wide band tie black halter with ruffles in the indigo and white colour. The RRP is $79.95 and I picked the top up for the sale price of $35.99.

JETS Coastline Ruffle top

The matching bottoms are the Coastline ruffle tie side bikini pant in the indigo and white. RRP is $69.95 and the sale price is $31.50.

JETS Coastline ruffle bottoms

I also picked up the Riveria Chevron striped Bandeau with piping in Maritime. The RRP is $119.00 and purchased at the sale price of $53.50.

JETS Riveria Chevron Bandeau

The Riveria stripe one tie side bottoms in Maritime have a RRP of $74.95 and they were purchased at the sale price of $33.70.

JETS Riveria bottoms

Whilst we are on the topic of sales, I headed out onto Smith Street to pick up some lunch this afternoon and I did a double take as I was walking past one of the jewelers. They too had a sale and the CC Skye pieces that they had on display caught my eye. I couldn't help myself....

CC Skye

 

CC Skye Double Wrap Woven Bracelet

 

CC Skye Bronze Double Wrap Woven Bracelet

The bracelet was on sale, reduced from $350 to $99. I couldn't NOT buy it. It's gorgeous and the reduction was over 70% off. Well, that's what I keep telling myself to make me feel better about spending the cashola.

Today I am wearing a pencil skirt from Cue, aboutthislabel top and my new Tony Bianco wedges.

I did my nails and got a tan

Two days on the beach and I got a pretty decent tan. I get the sweetest feeling of satisfaction when I pull the edges of my bikini and the colour difference is vey noticeable. The icing on top of the cake is that first shower after a day on the beach and the realization of bearing that heat, was worth it.

I went into a store on the strip to buy a straw hat as I forgot mine at home. There was a little OPI display there and a few OPI's being sold for $20 a pop. The lovely young sales assistant who attended to me with my straw hat sale took a look at my nails and asked if I was wearing OPI and colmplimented me on the colour.

This morning I did my finger and toe nails with a colour from the Touring America collection.






I have the whole Touring America collection and this polish is one of my favorites. The polish is called Road House Blues and it's a solid dark blue polish with gloss.

Excuse the messiness of my application. When I do my nails, I generally don't mind if I go outside the lines, I use the 'scape the excess polish of my skin in the shower' method, to tidy up.

Make up storage and I'm at the beach house

I'm always curious as to how people store their stuff. I like for my things to be orderly and stored well. Following on from my earlier posts on storage re: shoes and nail polish, some may be interested to know how I store my make up.


The make up is stored in this Train Case. It's a Napoleon Pro Train Case. I have had it for a very long time, perhaps 8 or 9 years. The black part on the exterior has faded slightly in that time. Quite possibly due to sunlight or alternatively, from spray and wipe. I acquired this baby from a friend who was a make up artist at the time and working for the Napoleon brand as a make up artist. I'm unsure if they were sold to the public but I recall paying around $100-$150 for it, back then. At the time I wasn't sure if it was over priced as I didn't come across anything like this in make up storage.


When open, there are three rows of storage on each side and the dividers can be removed and attached for the size required.











Can you tell that I love MAC?
The picture with the blushes has 10 blushes, a blush stacked on top of another - I consider the compartments to be generous with the depth. In another picture with the 4 eyeshadow pallets, there are three pallets stacked together. I have pretty much a full set of brushes in a bag. The bag used to sit in the centre compartment but I have recently changed that to the bag living next to the train case, for ease.

Early this morning, I drove to the beach house for the weekend. I haven't had the opportunity to come down at all this summer until now. As a teen/early twenties I used to stay down here for most of the summer. It was usual for me to commence school for the year with a killer tan. As I have gotten older, I usually either take a week off or I just come up on the weekends. I prefer to save my leave until the cold weather arrives and jet off to somewhere warm.

My beach house is located down the Mornington Peninsula way in a suburb called Rye. Now if anyone from Melbourne knows about the Peninsula, they will know that every man and their dog either has a holiday house in Rye or their Nonna/insert family member does. Over the years I have been to gatherings or BBQ's where the house has a zillion beds in the house and you would be lucky if the house was a four bedder.

My beach house is nothing like it! When I was 18 my parents purchased a block 5 minutes from the foreshore and built a single story, four bedroom two bath house. My parents have the intention of moving down here once they retire. I remember at the time of construction, walking through at frame stage and exclaiming it was small - the size shocked me as I grew up in a huge house (60 squares). In hindsight it was a godsend as cleaning up before leaving would take no time. We all have our own bedroom (parents, brother and I) plus a guest room. Each bedroom only has one large bed too (no bunks in this house, lol). My parents throughout the year will come down every weekend and for most of summer.

I have so many fond memories of Rye and the rest (Sorrento, Portsea et al). My parents would always give me a week on my own and during that week, the house would be absolutely jamming. The boys would bring the boat and jet skis, they would go fishing and we will be BBQ'ing snapper for dinner. We would go to the Portsea Pub for drinks and then swing past the Conti (Continental Hotel). So when my week alone was up, we would then crash at whoever had an empty beach house i.e best mates nonnas, so on and so forth Those were good times.
I have uploaded some pics below that I had on my phone, from those good old days.


In the alfresco area. My mum is such a European - check out all her pot plants in the background! What you can't see are her flowers in the garden and the biggest veggie patch ever, bigger than the one she has at home. We have bore water here with a whizz banger electronic irrigation (watering) system. We had it installed way before water restrictions were implemented though and mum is into gardening so she has the seasonal fruit and veggies growing.


My girls bought me a portable iPod speaker system one year for my birthday so we would kick back on the beach listening to tunes. It wasn't long before people would park their towels near us!


The above photo was taken in 06, before a big night out to the Portsea Pub and the Conti.


Yup - crazy, crazy times were had at the Conti!

OPI fail (for me) and how do I store my shoes?

Last night, I took the hot pink nail polish off and felt that I wanted a light pink on my hands and feet instead.
I prepped my nails as usual and wanted to use Pink-ing of You. I purchased the Princess Mini's a while back and Pink-ing of You is part of that set.

OPI Princess Mini's

OPI Pink-ing of You

  It looks like such a beautiful colour in the bottle and on the OPI studio app but I was really dissapointed with it. The consistency was all wrong, I did three coats and it still did not look good at all.
 I woke up this morning and was about to tidy up the edges of my nails of polish and my nails were ruined. I think quite possibly it was due to the polish being too thick and it probably didn't dry in time. I have never had this issue with my other OPI polishes and I wonder if it was due to the mini? It is much more awkward to put on compared to the full size brush. So I had to quickly remove the polish this morning before I left for work.

Three coats of OPI Pink-ing of You

Nails ruined this morning.

At lunch time, I had to pop down to Safeway on Smith Street to pick up a few things. From there, I figured it wasn't too much further to walk to the Tony Bianco Outlet as I wanted to check out what they had. Much of the shoes are on sale in the Smith Street store and there was a further sale (20% off I think).

Tony Bianco Salena Peep-toe Wedges

Tony Bianco Moscow Ballet Flats

The Tony Bianco Salena Peep-toe wedges were originally prices $129.95 and as you may perhaps see on the sticker, they were reduced to $60.00. Then, at the register, they were further reduced to $48.00. The Tony Bianco Moscow Ballet Flats were originally $99.95 and you can't see the sticker price in the photo - so they had a reduced sticker price of $80.00. At the register, these babies were further reduced to $64.00. So all up, I purchased two pairs for $112.00. I was very happy with that.

Whilst we are on the topic of shoes, how does everyone store their shoes? I originally had them stacked in the wardrobe in one of the spare bedrooms and I didn't like it that way. Not all my shoes fit in that wardrobe. I have asked T if he can build me a shoe shelf, something that I can stack my boxes on. He said he would do it, but I know how crazy busy he is and his priority is building the workshop, so it will be on my/his to do list for at least the next 12-18 months. For now, this is how I'm currently storing my shoes.

Shoe Storage

The boxes in the far left contain my sandals and many of the sandal boxes contains two pairs per box.

Boot Storage

These are my boots. I do have a few of those boot boxes and I can fit at least three pairs of boots in each box. In winter, it was a pain to get the bottom pair of boots out as it meant that all the contents had to be tipped out. Instead, I just used my adjustable shoe stand to store my boots and I'm much happier with this system.




In the hallway, we picked up this sleek shoe storage, which T put together and bolted to the wall. My sneakers and thongs live in there and most of T's shoes.

Ikea Shoe Storage

Today's outfit:

Silk and lace top purchased in NYC, Country Road knee length shorts and Tony Bianco Wedges

Add caption

 

In case you haven't noticed, I love wedges. They are almost like a heel and are oh, so much more comfortable. The above photos were taken prior to the application of make-up. I then added this to my outfit.

It's a head band by Lady-Jayne I think and it was recently purchased from Priceline for about $12.00.

Phillip Island and I'm apparantly IT!

Thanks to the lovely Mez at Domestic Divinity, she has tagged me in the blog game - tag.

Today I have my first few followers.....yay.  I'm hoping to give it a few more days before I play the blog game tag, and I'm also hoping to gather a few more followers, so I too can do some tagging.

Last night after work, we made our way down to T's family beach house at Phillip Island. It has been the first time that we have driven down there as all the other times I have been, has been on the back of T's motorbike for the Moto G.P.

We woke up early and made our way to Cowes with the dogs for a big breakfast at one of the cafe's there, and a walk to follow. I must have been half asleep as I failed to catch the name of the cafe that we were at. Both T and I ordered a big breakfast and the dogs were sitting by our seats hoping for some left overs.

After breakfast we went down to the beach at Cowes and all along the beach there were signs that dogs were not permitted. I wasn't used to this as my family have a beach house down the Mornington Peninsula way and dogs are permitted on the beach during certain times and on lead. As it was Australia Day public holiday and a little bit busy down there, we were not game to  break the rules. We ended up leaving Cowes for Corenet Bay.

Alex loves to hang his head out of the car window

At the beach were were at in Coronet Bay, there was a beautiful horse at the beach and in the water. The water was quite warm today even though the weather was a top of 23 degrees. My dogs ran around the beach and went for a swim and then rolled around in the sand once they were wet. I felt sorry for T as he would need to give his car a good vacuum after today.

Rain rolling around in the sand after her swim

Alex trotting out  of the water after his swim

Alex with about a kilo of sand on him

Rain with a kilo of sand on her

                  

Following the walk and swim on the beach, T was driving and on our way home, he made a sharp turn off the highway and detoured into a Deer Farm.

Venison Farm on the Bass Highway (I think)

Bambi

Unfortunately for Bambi, T wanted some venison steaks for dinner tonight. I had to giggle in the store as T went Deer hunting last year, after being told that the place they were going to had deer everywhere. He spent two nights roughing it up in thick bushland and he didn't see so much as a deer.


Last Saturday, I had gotten eye lash extensions for the first time. It felt really awkward at first, they feel a little heavier when wet compared to the natural eye lash and in addition, at times I could feel them stuck together and the glue. I have not used mascara all week as recommended by the beautician, and let me tell you, it felt odd doing my make up sans mascara. During a meeting on Wednesday, I was sitting next to my manager and caught her staring at me a few times. At the conclusion of the meeting, she asked if I had my eye lashes done, as she notied that they were rather long. I don't know what to make of that.
I have noticed that some of them have fallen off, especially in the area near the outer eye. I have had to stop myself from relieving my eye of itches  too, and that let me tell you was rather hard for me. I think I will give it another go with refills and make my final decision following that.

I have been cooking up a storm using my Thermomix. I often forget to take photos of my dishes but I did remember to take photos of the dinner I prepared on Monday night.

Steamed Flathead with steamed vegetables.

The steaming was done with the Thermomix and the sauce was cooked in the Thermomix also.

Dough kneaded in the Thermomix and the bread freshly baked.