I actually previously hated the 07 Office Suite for Mac set, I found it to be slow and Word never shut down properly for me. I’ve been using various Microsoft products for Mac for 7 years now and the difference between the programs then and now is pretty extreme! You can imagine when Nuffnang asked me to review Mac Office 2011 I was full of both apprehension that it might be better and dread that it might not be. I was pleasantly surprised so yay!
The main difference I noticed using the ’11 version is that everything is faster, had fancier graphics and is more Mac designed rather than just being Mac compatible which is what the older ones felt like. Windows is really pushing the cloud mentality so there is also the option to connect everything online and get extra templates etc. The templates still look like Word templates though so you need to inject your own creativity. Over all they are definitely an improvement over the last lot, the speed difference alone is reason to upgrade considering how much time I used to waste waiting for Word or Excel to open.
You know the one thing missing from this though? Clippy the office paper clip! Sure he was a little enthusiastic but I feel it was a feature that could have been improved on… Like you know if it had been a mini version of me. That would be a pretty sweet improvement in helping me write blog post I imagine it would be so advanced it would be pretty much like having a personal assistant. In fact let’s view the conversation in the eyes of the new Clippy and me on a typical morning here…
Early morning at Violet’s house:
It’s amazing what a difference tea can make, sometimes it can completely change your outfit and apply make up…
Of course saying it and actually doing it are pretty different…
But see that’s where the Office helper would come in!
Even computer programs need to occupy themselves so mine took up knitting.
Are you listening Microsoft development team?!?! So really what this post has made me realize is that I don’t want a new computer program I want a personal assistant. Or a cloning machine… Or a holiday? Yes ok a holiday.
So as a blogger what can you use the new Office suite for ?
Excel
• Excel is great for tracking stats for number junkies like myself.
• I’ve also seen wardrobes catalogued through here like your own at home poupee!
• As much as it sucks budgeting is an important part of my life so keeping track of every penny is important!
Word
• Obviously good for drafting blog posts now that most WYSIWYG editors have an insert Word button which will strip all of the non- HTML friendly formatting out. It’s good to have an offline copy of posts just in case you ever lose things too.
• Drafting fun things like media packs. If you make things with a lot of text in programs like Photoshop then it’s a good idea to draft first in Word so you can spell check. There is nothing worse than sending something really important out to a bunch of really important people and realizing you spelled your own name wrong.
PowerPoint
• I suppose you could put together a super awesome slideshow on how great your blog is…
MSN
•Keeping in touch with blogging friends, though these days I prefer email so I don’t feel guilty if I can’t answer straight away.
Outlook
• Email obviously is good for getting blog notifications and everything else!
You can also drive a Windows PC from your Mac now which I imagine would be useful in some situations.
This post was sponsored by Nuffnang and Pictionary
For more information on sponsored posts please click here.
I’m an only child so growing up board games were never my favorite pastime. It’s kind of hard to play them with one or two people-me and my mum. James however has 2 siblings so he grew up loving them and his love has forced me into many a game of Scrabble!
So when Nuffnang contacted me to test out the new incarnation of Pictionary I was well… apprehensive. I’ve never played Pictionary before so I don’t really have anything to compare it to but I took it along to our romantic getaway at the Langham to see if we could have some fun. That’s what happens on romantic hotel getaways right? People play board games? Uhuh. Well this is what happened…
Yeah I didn’t say the extra imagination I had was actually any good…
Of course we totally read the instructions. James and I were Team Awesome and Shakespeare and the apple were Team Not As Awesome. The game was fast paced and full of smack talk. Some of the clues were very hard, we considered switching to the children’s deck of clues.
So the idea is that you roll the dice, move your piece and then pick a card. You have to draw the item on the card with the corresponding colour for your partner to guess. If you do it within the time limit you get to roll again. There are several versions of the game but this seemed the simplest to me XD
Unfortunately we are both very competitive with short tempers.
It’s all done in 60second time limits but considering we were the best, most awesome Pictionary players ever that didn’t bother us!
Who knows what James was trying to draw there! Try and guess in the comments if you want, I bet no one gets it mwahaha!
We would definitely never let a game effect our relationship…
Luckily, when you’re playing with fictional opponents you are pretty much in control of the outcome…
And we were very gracious winners.
For some reason everyone left after that… noooooooooo idea why.
So competition time!
Here’s what regular-people-non-scary-competitive-Pictionary is all about…
– Quick sketches and crazy guesses
– You don’t need to be Picasso to have fun! The worse you draw the more fun it is.
– You can play anywhere, anytime
– Fast-paced game of imagination, comical drawings and players’ ability to interpret them.
– It will transform your next family get together into an uproarious occasion where anyone has a winning chance.
– Kid-directed clues/cards make the game more accessible to a wider audience and levels playing field for kids ages 8+ playing with their parents
– Fun, vibrant and engaging family game play experience.
– Game play is collaborative, social and engaging for everyone involved
If you want to win your own copy of Pictionary so you can have heartwarming family moment just like ours all you need to do is guess what James was trying to draw in his picture. The winner will be selected on creativity. Click here for the Terms and Conditions.
Here’s his picture again incase you forgot:
Good luck everyone and I hope your board game experiences aren’t as traumatic as mine 😛
Mother’s Day is coming soon, here in Aus it’s on the 8th of May this year so only a few weeks left to think of things to get. I’m quite a bad daughter, I usually forget about these kinds of things. I don’t really celebrate holidays and Mother’s Day changes every year so it’s hard to remember!!
This is my Mum by the way… She didn’t like the photos I took of her so I’ve made and artistic representation of her for this post.
She’s been on the blog a few times but now she’s also come to live with us for a little while. I feel a little sorry for her, we haven’t lived together since I was 17 and back then she didn’t have to deal with all of my blogging related quirks. Back then it was my artwork littering the entire house and she put up with tripping over paint pots and picking up random comic book layout pages from the floor… Now she comes home from work to find the entire floor covered in nail polish swatches James is photographing for me and the bathroom overrun with make up and lighting umbrellas while I shoot a video and bits of lace or craft supplies everywhere. Don’t even get me started with the diamantes… It is impossible for James to make it through a week in our house without having to pick diamantes out of his feet. At one point when I was doing a lot of deco commissions I used to call James Diamond Foot Jimmy XDSo yes… Back on point, I’m not the easiest person to live with so she probably deserves something better than I can afford for Mother’s Day.
Our conversations are usually fairly sarcastic and nonsensical, and the one about Mother’s Day went something along the lines of this…
Of course, after this conversation Nuffnang let me know about the new competition from Magshop!!
Here’s the information:
Currently Magshop are having a big sale on selected titles just for Mother’s Day and if you purchase a subscription on the selected titles you go into the draw to win a trip to Italy. There are lots of different titles to choose from and a magazine subscription is the perfect gift for your mother – they are relatively cheap and will last the whole year.
Besides having discounts on selected titles, people will have a chance to win a unforgettable trip to Italy.Now that would probably be a good Mother’s Day present!
Subscribe now to Madison Magazine or to one of the fashion magazines and you could win a trip of a lifetime to Italy. Lots of others are on sale so there is a magazine that matches everyone’s tastes.
Much better than tech support lessons anyway haha! So what are you guys doing for the holiday, do you all have special traditions?
Before I get into the special outfit post of the day I just wanted to put in a little announcement. I’ve been nominated for the Sydney Writer’s Centre “Best Australian Blogs Competition”! Very exciting 😀 I’m not sure the category I’m up for but as well as the regular awards I’ve been nominated for the People’s Choice Award!
If you would like to vote in the awards (not just for me, there are lots of other amazing bloggers nominated too) just click the banner below to be taken to the form. If you want to vote for me I’m on the 3rd page of blogs under V for Violet ^_^
So yeah I just wanted to say thank you to all of you reading this because when I started this blog years ago I had no idea the awesome places it would take me or the wonderful people I would meet, so THANK YOU for reading!!!
Now on to today’s outfit post! This is a special version of this too because the outfit was a huge surprise ^_^ You remember last year when I held the One Day in Paradise competition for their 1 year anniversary? I found a beautiful Jesus Diamate dress and debated with you guys in the comments and on Twitter whether I should buy it. Well last week a package turned up in my letterbox. Turns out Marie (who is the incredibly sweet owner of One Day in Paradise) sent it to me as a present *_*I just about had a heart attack when I opened the box!!
So ruffly and pretty!
I wore this outfit to meet Thomas and Sakie who are lovely bloggers from Japan. So happy because I finally got an excuse to try Max Brenner too XD Photos of that to come in the next edition of snapshots.
This is the kind of dress you just want to spin in XD
Totally love it, can’t wait to try out different ways to coordinate it!
Thank you so much to everyone who commented and entered the competition! I really appreciate all the support that you guys give and I’m so happy to be able to give something back 😀 I will be replying to everyone’s lovely comments this week and fingers crossed this will be just the start of the competitions open to international readers ^_^
Thank you for reading! <3
*Edit* As was luckily pointed out by Aimiya in the comments, there has been some confusion in the ordering of the comments. When I counted the entries and picked the winner, I went to the bottom of the post and counted the comments from there down, then paged backwards until reaching the end. I made the mistake of assuming they were in chronological order in the same way as my old theme. I was completely wrong and so while Jessica’s comment appeared as #1, it was not actually the first comment posted chronologically. That comment belonged to Mai from portraitofmai.blogspot.com. No one’s fault but mine, I should have been more vigilant in checking the dates of the comments and I completely apologise for that. To resolve the situation fairly I have decided to give both girls the voucher prize, one donated from One Day in Paradise and one out of my own pocket. That seems like the only right thing to do. Again sorry everyone for the confusion and thank you to all of you that entered and commented! */Edit*
Finally a competition open to international readers too, I hope you all enjoy it ^_^
One Day in Paradise is to date Australia’s first and only local Lolita store and they celebrated their second anniversary this past weekend 😀
While I personally no longer wear Lolita fashion I do still enjoy seeing it on others and I know that lots of my readers wear the fashion so when Marie (the owner) invited me along I was delighted to see what they were doing!
Early that morning Marie came over and I helped her out with her hair, she really enjoyed my tutorial on over the head plaits so she borrowed some of my flowers and I tried out the style on her. This proves that even those with short hair can try it because Marie’s hair is barely shoulder length!
The store is located over at 248 Johnston Street and shares a shop with Visage and Vicewho sell mostly gothic clothing. Make sure you go type the suburb as Fitzroy into your GPS when you go otherwise you’ll end up walking like 10 extra blocks because there is a second 248 Johnston St in the next suburb over XD Yes ok I am speaking from experience on that one and no it’s not fun to walk the 10 blocks in the middle of an unseasonal storm especially when you’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time on your hair and make up for a party only to have it completely ruined by aforementioned rain!
Once you see this in the window though you’ll be ok:
Inside the first room might be a little bit of unfamiliar territory for the sweeter Lolitas 😉 Keep going up the back of the store though and you’ll spot a trail of arrows leading towards the frills!
Follow the arrows…
You might feel like Alice down the rabbit hole at this point but you’re almost there!
The further you go, the pinker it gets XD
And you made it safely!
Now before we get to the party, here’s some info about One Day in Paradise:
They sell both new and second hand brand and off brand items
They ship locally within Australia and internationally
The store is open to the public every Friday and Saturday (other times can be arranged by appointment only)
They stock JSKs, OPs, accessories, shoes, socks, magazines, wigs and pretty much anything else you could think of.
While they specialise in Lolita clothing they do also some times stock Hime Gyaru pieces too 😀
So on to the party!
The place was descended on by about 30 Lolitas so all of this yummy food was gone in a flash! Hot tea on tap and everyone was very happy ^_^
It was a lovely setting for everyone to chat and meet/catch up with each other.
Of course with that many like minded girls in one place there was a whooole lot of shopping to be done XD
I didn’t get a chance to do any shopping because I was busy being behind the camera interviewing all the girls for a video about the store which is at the bottom of the post ^_^
Of course when I spotted a Jesus Diamante dress at the back of the rack I had to play with it at least XD Think I should go back and get it?
Completely unrelated but I totally also wanted this awesome leopard print shower cap XD
There were lots of girls meeting for the first time…
And of course lots of old friends…
There was even an artist sketching people ^_^
At the end of the night Marie gave a little speach thanking everyone and outlining her plans for the new year.
I got to catch up with Stephy, the owner of Visage and Vise^_^
And of course Marie! I wanted to steal her dress so badly because it was just lovely!
You can see the rest of the photos in the slide show below…
Up for grabs is a AU$100 gift voucher to One Day in Paradise to be used by the end of January 2011. This giveaway is open to everyone including international readers!
This competition is now closed!
What you need to do:
-Be a follower of this blog (either by Google Friend Connect or RSS and yes I will check this)
-Leave a comment saying what on their website you would spend your voucher on.
-Please use a valid email address!
This giveaway will be open for 7 days until midnight Melbourne Australia time 29th January 2010 and the winner will be picked at random.
I can’t wait to see what you all would pick, good luck everyone!
Illustrator. Strong tea, knitting, watercolours, and making a video game called Moonlight in Garland. Living with her adorable husband Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
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