I can’t believe how far behind I am with my snapshots posts, I still have photos from months ago! Bad blogger XD
Recently I got to visit Bernard’s Magic Shop. I have wanted to go here since I was like 13 and completely obsessed with becoming a magician. I walk past it all the time but never had time or a reason to go in until I needed a new deck of cards because James and I decided to learn to play poker.
I didn’t get any photos inside because I wasn’t sure if I was allowed but I did hear the story of the original Bernard. He was a man in the 1920’s who wasn’t a magician but he had insanely good luck all the time. Two of his magician friends wanted to start a business together but they wanted it to have good luck so they included Bernard!Yay new cards…
I’ve been having weekly lunches with the lovely Fashion Adjacent recently and it’s been nice to get out of the house and away from the internet once and a while.
On the way through David Jones after one of our lunches I spotted a Christmas tree (seriously already?!) which was totally my taste though, it’s covered in candy and cupcake themed cosmetics 😀
*adds to Christmas list*
Let’s see… what else recently? I ate 3/4 of a gigantic chicken parmigana… no I suppose that’s not so interesting unless you’re me or my stomach.
Also after lunch one day I got my arse kicked by Miss Melody at Mario Kart. I’m ashamed at my lack of Mario skills now, clearly I need to spend a couple of months brushing up again.
Or I can just pretend I won like this and no one will ever know the difference…
WINNER!
They had displays of the Nintendo timeline at that EB too so I pined over my original Gameboy
I also got to play Kirby’s Epic Yarn which was ridiculous fun and I totally want to buy it for myself now… it has levels made of embroidered cake! EMBROIDERED CAKE!
I V-Logged the whole thing too so I’ll edit that soon too.
And what random post lunch visit to EB would be complete without chest bumping Mario?
I visited Illamasqua for the launch of the Theater of the Nameless collection.
James volunteered me for the transformation and this collection was inspired by 1920’s ladies of the night >_<
The end result:
The collection and a very handsome photographer:
The lovely make up artist who did my transformation.
They had their new BB Cream there as well which was exciting. I’m really interested to see what this one is like.
All of the MBBE girls chatting about the collection.
And me getting my eyes done.
Lastly I leave you with me trying to remain in frame with the Pudding Cam phone app, clearly it didn’t quite go to plan 😉
Hope you all had a good week, I’m going to try to make some more plushies tonight!
After my deco project involving him, I’ve been posting daily on my mobile blog about my silly Tamagotchi’s life. I’ve been bad at keeping up with it but I’m starting again tomorrow so I thought this was a good time to catch up anyone who missed his first few days of life 😉
It’s *very* tongue in cheek but this was the first week in Hat’s life just in case you wanted to follow my journey into electronic parent hood 😉
Day 1 with the Tamagotchi.So you guessed it… I’m a mother now 😉 Some of you probably saw the Tamagotchi deco project I did on the main blog, well I thought you might also enjoy seeing a day by day account of my failing to care for an electronic pet. I am notoriously bad at keeping things alive. I couldn’t even keep our plants at our old house alive, we have burried quite a few cacti and bonzai trees. That’s right, something that can survive going from 30 above in the day to 30 below at night couldn’t survive me… So let’s see how this goes XDBefore I could hatch my little electronic baby I had to decorate it’s room for the big arrival. Much care was taken to use only the best cheap crappy diamantes, only the best for my baby 😉 Most parents have at least 9 months to prepare, I only had a few hours due to my impatience and wanting to go out to dinner. A responsible tama-parent I am not.Of course by the end of dinner the glue wasn’t dry so I gave in and decided to wait another night. Clearly this was going to be a long labour.
Look forward to Day 2 when my new baby finally hatches.
Day 2.
The big day finally arrived, my tamagotchi arrived and I was the proud owner of some kind of spotty alien egg. The actual birth involved a delicate medical procedure of removing the plastic tag that had broken off using tweezers and setting the date/time. This prolonged the birth for around 10 minutes more as I couldn’t remember the date and had to frantically search for my phone.
After that ordeal my bouncing baby alien arrived, it’s a boy! I may or may not have reset a couple of times trying to get a girl then eventually given up in frustration at having to listen to the fricking beeping of setting the damn date/time every reset. I may have then remembered that this is an electronic fictional alien and seeing as I’m giving it a personality I can change it’s gender using only the power of my mind…
It’s a boy girl! 😀
So it was time to choose a name.
Much thought went into a suitable name. Due to the limitations on the birth certificate it could only be 3 letters long. I decided to go the celebrity route and pick something completely ridiculous awesome. I kept it unisex so it could withstand any future mind powers. He She kind of looked like a hat… so please welcome Miss HAT to the world 😀
Day 3.
Today was a time to visit the family and introduce little Hat to the world. We took a tram to visit Auntie Kim and were lucky enough to get there just in time for her to welcome Hat’s cousin to the world. Hat was quite jealous because his her cousin was much fancier than himher and had a colour screen. He even looked cooler. I mean Hat just evolved into some kind of turnip looking thing whereas her cousin is a freaking ninja.
I think I’ve Hat’s developed some kind of inferiority complex which may require years of counseling. It probably doesn’t help that I considered renaming her Turnip because she no longer looks like a hat. Oh well, these are the challenges we face in parenthood 😉
Day 4.
All Hat ever does is eat. I feel like a walking salad bar/button presser. I don’t even know what kind of food he’s eating, a circle and a rectangle? It looks like some kind of pork bun? And a candy bar?
I feed Hat a lot of circles out of laziness, I figure I should save the rectangles for treats. Don’t want to spoil the child. Especially when I already feed him instead of playing with him to make him happy. Trust me, no one wants to listen to an alien throwing a tantrum. Especially not fellow restaurant patrons. I guess this is the “Terrible Twos” right? *so grateful for the mute function*
Oh yes I am indeed a fantastic parent. I’m pretty sure they’ll write epic songs about my parenting skills one day.
Day 5.
Hat seems to have evolved into some kind of grumpy old lady wearing a hat… I guess life does imitate art?
I think he she hates me. I’m pretty sure it’s because he she’s school age and the other children are teasing him her for having such a ridiculous name. Such is life with an eccentric mother though. I’m sure this is the part where he she would shout something along the times of “I NEVER ASKED TO BE BORN” and storm off. Unfortunately for him her and (maybe me) all that comes out is BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP BEEEP BEEP BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. It has pretty much the same effect though.
If you want to read more about Hat’s journey into being a horribly rebellious teenager just go take a look at my mobile blog… clearly I have too much time on my hands 😉
Celina and I were invited to the grand opening of the Chadstone Armani Exchange flagship store last weekend. To be perfectly honest I didn’t really know what to expect because #1 the only thing I knew about Armani was that I couldn’t afford to shop there are #2 I didn’t think I was really their target audience. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised on both accounts though so it was a good reminder that you can find awesome things in the places you would least expect!
The store was set up with a DJ, giveaways, live models in the window (more hilariousness on that later) and staff taking polaroid photos for shoppers as keep sakes.
Here’s a little video I made of the event, more photos etc below!
One of the two DJs called “The Backhanderz” setting up.We maaaaay have monopolised the polaroid people just a little bit…Just a little bit… 😉As I mentioned I was surprised how many of the clothes I actually really liked. They had an entire nautical themed range which was really pretty and had I been out shopping regularly I probably would have missed it from my own assumptions.
The prices were also very much not the high end luxury prices I was expecting, they were actually around that of department stores like Myer/David Jones, eg. men’s t-shirts were $50, dresses between $140-240ish so I imagine it would be fairly affordable for those on an average income.
We were each given gift vouchers to spend in store and I had a hard time deciding what to take home because the whole store was 20% off too XD
Celina and I both ended up liking the same dress and for a change she chose the white and I chose the black!
With super cute Gemma from Torstar, she had a really nice nautical-ish jacket with gold buttons! This was the best photo out of the few we took so of course it’s the only one where my hair was backlit into blending into the sign >_<
Anthony Callea was there to promote his new single, he was runner up in Australian Idol in 2004 so everyone in the store was extra excited. I didn’t watch Australian Idol but he was very friendly and accommodating to take photos with us including some more polaroids!
Ok yes I have a complete obsession with polaroids! I think photo booths and polaroids are the best even idea ever!
In the end, I chose this beautiful red quilted purse with my voucher, with the 20% off it came in around $70 so I got James a tshirt with my left over. I *love* this purse so much! It holds everything but is still tiny, it’s like a freaking tardis! I’ve been using it as a clutch all week, I’ve never used a clutch but that’s how much I like it!
James’ wardrobe is a bit sad at the moment so he bought another 2 shirts with his voucher. The ones he picked were very much his style: plain! They are made of that thin cotton that drapes very sexily so I’m very happy with his purchase 😀 😀 😀
Celina bought a jacket which suited her perfectly and I’m sure she’ll post some photos soon which I’ll come back and link to!
It was a fun event to attend, the staff were all hilarious and actually looked like they were having fun which was a change from a lot of the retail shops I’ve been to recently. You could tell that they were genuine and actually enjoying themselves rather than just being helpful because it was their job so next time we head to Chadstone I won’t feel intimidated going in!
From what I saw, Armani Exchange is a bridge brand, luxury at prices which aren’t ridiculous and it was a really good introduction to the kind of brand I’d never thought would be my style but apparently has pieces that fit into my wardrobe perfectly. Who knew!
So thank you very much A|X, thank you to Torstar for inviting us and that you for the staff who made the day really fun to be at!
Now I bet you’re wondering about those live models I mentioned huh? They were hilarious!! They were set up on a beach scene in the window and spent the day lounging around being generally good looking. Celina and I went to take a photo outside with them and the boys decided to be funny!
Doing my best vogue, clearly he was very impressed XD
Sorry dude, I think I like what I’ve got at home better 😉
I’m not sure my two arm candy accessories quite match my outfit hahaha!
So funny, the model girls were cracking up! I love when people share my silly sense of humor 😀
Hope you all enjoyed the photos as much as I had fun being in them!
So about a month ago James got a new camera and he’s been obsessed with it ever since XD The photos are so nice so I thought I’d use the first few days worth for today’s Snapshot post. They are so pretty I didn’t want them to go to waste!
He got it a few days before his Mother Came to visit so we had fun showing her around town. She was here to see Love Never Dies but we ended up doing a lot of shopping… unless James’ Dad is reading this in which case all we did was sit quietly and NOT spend any money ;D
Sandwiches at Grill’d are apparently made by angry pirates 😉This was the first photo he took with it, so far all of his nice cameras have all had me as their first photo. So sweet of him even if I’m always not dressed up or prepared when they arrive!
The man himself in our current favorite bakery! It’s called Cupcake Family and they do the BEST macarons.
See look at these deluxe macarons, they are like heaven! The one on the left is strawberry cheesecake and there are actual cheesecake icing/strawberries/crumbly base in the middle. Zomg so delicious!
Me eating a cake pop from there, I guess this kinda counts towards Food Friday huh?
The decorations are so cute too, it made me want to fill my house with photo frames of cakes 😀
We wandered past the Hope Toun tea rooms too. They always have the most delicious things in the window, I really want to go there one day!
We drooled at the cakes but it’s always so packed and I’m pretty sure you have to book in advance. It looks like proper traditional high tea though, so pretty *_*
More wandering in the prettiest arcade, I could spent days in there just taking photos of all the little details.
It was super rainy that day so I was really glad I wore a hat! It was only light while we were walking around and you could totally spot James’ Mum was a tourist because she was the only one on the street huddling under her umbrella!
Of course on cold days when I forget my umbrella I can always steal James’ hat 😉
Obligatory shot of the Melbourne Central tower thing that I think every tourist ever has taken!
This is my current favorite busker: Ninja Magic! Pretty self explanatory, he does magic tricks dressed as a ninja 😀 He seems like such a nice guy, always so friendly!
Beautiful shoes we spotted, I want to get James some super fancy wingtips but he hates shoes that are even remotely pointed so I might have to diy some for him 😉
Puppies need no caption other than OMG CUTE!
Apparently this is the face I make when I take photos of said puppies!
Someone yarn bombed the Bourke St Mall! Such a cool idea 😀 By the time I saw it, a lot of it was already falling apart but still totally awesome!
More random test shots that turned out to be quite pretty:
Later that week we went for dinner with Kim, no clue what we were laughing about but apparently it was pretty funny… so pretend I captioned this with something hilarious.
Some beautiful cupcakes we saw in the Lincraft display window. No clue why they were displaying cakes and cupcakes in a craft store window but oh well!
And a beautiful pink drink… because I like pink drinks… Ugh I’m hungry again >_<
Apparently there’s going to be a lot less of the horse and carriages here soon because they’re passing a law making it harder for drivers to get the licenses… or something. I probably should have paid more attention to that news story XD /fail
They’re very pretty but to be honest I don’t think I would miss Swanston St smelling like horse crap all the time. It’s not easy to enjoy bubble tea when all you can smell is horse poop XD
And on the way home ^_^ My hair is getting so long! I think it’s time I gave it a trim! I don’t think it’s been this long since I was 14! Speaking of which I’ve started adding in some other pinks to the mix so I’ll have to review the new ones I’m using and show my new technique!
Bonus shot:
This is what I looked like when I got home after all of that and went back to work for a bit hahaha, super glamorous 😉
I think I was about 2 minutes away from falling asleep on the computer haha! Thanks for taking such… flattering photos James 😛
Here are the rest of the photos from that couple of days, there were so many I didn’t want to post all of them!
I’ve been cutting back on going to events or, you know, out much at all lately. Mostly because from all the work trips we’ve had to do this year (and more coming up >_<) I feel like I’m constantly behind on things. When Celina invited me as her plus one to a jewellery store event I couldn’t really say no… shiny blingy jewellery = yes please haha!
So off we drove to the Chadstone Secrets Shhh store to see their new refurbishment and collection.
So I hadn’t actually heard of Secrets Shhh before the event, the idea is that it’s moderately priced jewellery which have simulated stones. So very pretty, fancy stuff but not so expensive that I couldn’t afford to shop there :DBling!
And so fancy in fact that there was a guy there serenading us with his guitar…
The new collections that we previewed were super colourful…
My favorites were still the pearls and pink bling though!
I had way too much fun trying things on…
We even picked out engagement/wedding rings hahaha no pressure James 😛
Look at these gigantic earrings, my hair is everywhere but they’re still so big they shine through *_* Great photo bomb by Celina hahaha!
The backs were little hearts, so cute!
Miss Photobomber tried on some really pretty bracelets:
Also, this is the best reaction ever to my nails, how cute is she?! All of the staff working were so sweet and accommodating to let us play with things! I didn’t get a photo but she had gorgeous make up too, her eyes matched the necklace she was wearing!
My absolute favorite photo of the night, this is the lovely owner, she was telling us about the philosophy behind the store, that beautiful jewellery shouldn’t cost the earth.
She also told us about some of the past customers including a real Princess who bought out half the store *_* I’m so jealous!
I was also way too amused with the idea of this wall, it’s made of magnet tiles so you can change it as often as you want! I WANT THIS IN MY HOUSE!!
So yes, awesome night! The jewellery was so beautiful and it was fun to see such beautiful jewellery in prices that I could actually afford 😀
They gave us gift bags and the owner was so nice to give James one too, it was such a lovely thought!
Inside were these beautiful blingy earrings, a special jewellery travel bag and the best thing ever: CHOCOLATE! Oh yes, bling and chocolate are a very quick way to my heart hahaha!
Thank you to Secrets Shhh and Torstar for putting on such a fancy and lovely event and thank you to Celina for inviting me!
Now for a complete change of pace, a few weeks ago we spent the day out with Kim to go to a huuuuge yarn store near her place that was having a sale… but mostly so I could play with her beautiful kitties!
Oh yes, yarn, kitties, bling and chocolate in one snapshots post haha!
I wanted to take them home with me ;_; Totally the first cats ever that actually loved playing with me too, I think they can all sense I’m a dog person hahaha!
They were so cuddly!!
We had breakfast at a cafe near her place and played with our tamagotchis. Kim only just got hers so we activated it and it became Hat’s younger cousin 😉
The yarn store was awesome, I’ve never been to one that big before!
For the fellow knitters, enjoy the yarn porn 😉
My favorite thing that we saw was this tangled ball of yarn advertising that it needed a good home and a pair of patient hands to untangle it XD I find untangling yarn to be SO relaxing so I was very tempted!
Afterwards we went wandering to some other little boutiques and ended up in a button store.
By the end of the day I was totally regretting wearing those shoes XD So pretty but I already had blisters from the day before and this didn’t totally help!
So many cute things to buy in that area, it was hard putting it all back! I did end up with a couple of balls of yarn which is terrible because I’m just adding to my stash while I try to get rid of it *_*
One last kitty photo for the road ^_^
What have you all been up to this week? Something fun hopefully?
Now there a hell of a lot of ABBW/IMATS posts going up, with 85 bloggers attending it’s not surprising. Everyone has already done the hauls, goody bags, event run downs much better than I could so rather than that I’m just going to tell you about our weekend snapshots style and show what we actually got up to. Enjoy ^_^
For an overview of the whole weekend crammed into a video here’s my V-Log from the event and do keep reading for the longer and much more anecdotal photo version below ^_^ Seriously, it’s a massive post because I’m cramming 3 really busy days in here so you’ve been warned!
It’s been a really long week. Last weekend James and I visited Sydney for the second time and it was just as busy and stressful as the last time we were there on our relocation drive to Melbourne. This time we were there for the Australian Beauty Bloggers Weekend to visit the International Make Up Artist Trade Show. James and I had quite a bit of debating leading up to the event as to whether we would be going because of the costs, over the last few months almost every single piece of important work technical equipment we own broke: my computer (fan broke), his computer ( power supply literally exploded), his camera (mirror thing shuddering) and the list goes on. It was very expensive having to replace everything and considering we have never actually just taken a non- work holiday/trip in the entire time we’ve been together (we have always been trying to save for a house) I really wasn’t sure I wanted to spent our savings on something else work related. But the time came, some things beyond our control happened, favors were begged, borrowed and given and things were booked. So off to the airport we went last Friday.
Me being classy in a face mask the night before and my nails:
And the whole airport thing didn’t quite go to plan. In fact for a lot of the weekend it felt a bit like we were in one of those old 3 door British comedies and John Cleese was about to burst in from somewhere!
We arrived nice and early to the airport because of my travel paranoia and it was a good thing too because Jetstar didn’t bother to tell us during online check in that our flight was actually a connecting leg of an international flight so international rules applied. Ok for James, he has a drivers license, not so much for me as I only had my 18+ card which isn’t good enough to get on an international flight. The only other thing I had on me was my ambulance card so I spent a while arguing with the official until he let us through. In the end he said immigration on the other end of the flight would deal with it and I was left with the distinct feeling he was just screwing with me because I was so upset ugh. On international flights you are also only allowed 10 liquids and gels per person in the cabin and of course to save space we were only taking cabin luggage so I had to go through my whole make up kit and decide what was needed. I was so lucky not to have to dump anything as I could give it to James but I saw others behind us who had to chuck things!
Cute plane lunch box they were selling at the airport:
Stressful yes but at least we were at the airport and about to leave yes? Well our lovely travel buddy Celina had been told a completely different time to be at the gate and then got stuck in the immigration line with a billion other people. After frantic texts we finally got to meet each other on board the actual plane but with no sign of Shizuka who was also on the same plane but still in customs *_* we didn’t discover she had managed to get on in time until we were landing!
So we waited for take off… And waited… And waited… And as it turns out waited for around 2 hours because someone had loaded 2 bags on to the plane that didn’t have an owner so it was a security risk and they had to go through everything one by one. Did I mention we were traveling with a very loud obnoxious group of footballers/some sports team and cheerleaders? After they finally found the bags two virgin blue planes decided to park behind us so we couldn’t get out. The captain was piiiiissed! So we got in thoroughly shaken up by the turbulence and a couple of hours late but at least we actually made it in one piece!! Everyone I spoke to on the weekend had their own travel horror stories including completely missed flights and some that were a lot worse so I think we got off lightly!
When we got there:
The rest of the weekend. *cough* SOMEONE *cough* told us it was 29 degrees and to dress appropriately so none of us bought jackets!
From there we caught a very expensive taxi to the hotel and were very underwhelmed by it too XD seriously for the amount of money we ended up paying for the Novotel I was not happy with the level of service at all. It’s by no means a cheap hotel but there was no breakfast, no complimentary wifi and some very surly staff. The room itself was very nice and definitely enough for the three of us but it was little things like the concierge not arranging taxis when we asked but instead telling us to wait outside in the cold/rain in case one showed up.
Shizuka, Celina, James and I wandered across the river looking for some lunch but we took so long getting there that we settled for ice cream, I’m pretty sure ice cream is one of the most important food groups!
Some gigantic whale things:
Staying classy at the fountain:
After suitably stuffing ourselves with ice cream and wandering back to the hotel we plugged in to get some work done before dinner. The internet at the hotel was ridiculously expensive and only allowed one connection at a time so no on-the-road-updates from me and very little work was done XD
Jerk sea gulls waiting to steal icecream.
James was pleased with his healthy lunch…
We did early registration for the weekend so got to say a quick hello to everyone and take some of the gift bags back in the room so we didn’t have to carry them. Dinner was another comedy of errors, our taxi driver spent the entire trip telling us stories and jokes of different ways to murder his insane mother in law *_* Yes seriously. He was joking of course but some of them were very descriptive!!
Colour changing fountain found while looking for dinner.
We had been planning to go for dumplings and bubble tea at some place which as it turned out closed super early on Friday night. In Melbourne the CBD has late night shopping on Friday but apparently Sydney isn’t the same >_<
So we wandered for a good chunk of time (a lot of which involved stopping at Zara) but everywhere we found either couldn’t take all of us or had a line out the door. So after some debating the decision of KFC was reached 😀 That’s the thing about beauty bloggers, we do love our junk food. In fact, other than the Maxted Thomas Gala dinner I don’t think I ate one nutritional thing the entire weekend hahaha!
So dinner was had and we headed back home to the hotel to help Tina prepare the Face of Australia gift bags.
You’d be amazed how quickly 10+ girls can unbox and pack 90 or so gift bags!
After finishing Celina, James and I were so tired so we went back up to our room for some much needed sleep.
DAY 1 OVER!
We woke up bright and early Saturday morning and James headed out to pick up Mcdonalds breakfast while Celina and I got ready. Seriously between the who of us I think we brought almost enough stuff to stock a whole make up store 😉
First event on Saturday was IMATS itself so we walked across the road to the convention hall and met up with everyone else.
I was so glad that we didn’t have to get up early for registration on Saturday, I always have so much trouble sleeping when I’m not at home. By the time I got home I was pretty much a zombie.
IMATS was really interesting, probably not exactly what I was expecting in size but still really interesting.
With Pretty Random and her friend who’s name I didn’t get, her blue hair streak was EPIC! Of course the only photo I got with them was completely blown out because we hadn’t set up the gear yet >_< I look like some kind of adorably vengeful ghost haunting them!
I wanted to talk to more of the stall holders but it was so busy. Inglot has 30% off (so prices were almost what they are in the US) but getting service there was pretty much impossible with the number of people lined up! There were some aweome special effects booths as well, they were my favorite part:
The prices on everything were really good though, Illamasqua especially had huge discounts. There was a lot of really cheap brushes too which I was very tempted to get.
We did a lucky dip at the *** place and then went to visit the Royal Langnickel suite. Hoooomygod it was awesome! They had set up a chill out area for the ABBW attendees upstairs where we could kick back, have some food and relax. There were manicures and all kinds of other fun services too, hell by this point they probably could have cut my fingers off and I would have still been happy to just have somewhere to sit 😉
With Gilded Nails, she was so sweet and she’s about to go on her honey moon!
I really want to go back to IMATS next year with a big budget to stock up on things and more time to actually look at the events going on.
We went back a bit early so we could pick up some things from our room and then it was down to the Beauty Directory event. I took copious amounts of notes in all of the events so if anyone actually wants them just let me know and I’ll type them into something more coherent 😉
The Beauty Directory panel started off with mini talks from a couple of the brand representatives and evolved into a panel discussion on various topics like what PR expect from beauty bloggers and what bloggers can expect from PR. I couldn’t actually see what was going on because we were right at the back but I still took a lot of notes. The last part of the this was a table discussion where each group was given a question to answer. We were lucky enough to have one of the co-founders of Beauty Directory at our table: Janet Hayward. She was really lovely and it was great to get to know her a bit as we discussed our best and worst experiences when dealing with PRs.
Celina and I with Janet.
We then had a two hour break to get ready for the Maxted Thomas gala event so more primping and getting changed back at the hotel. This was favorite event of the weekend because it allowed us time to socialise with not only the PRs but also the other bloggers. I made it my mission to not be so timid and actually interview some of the bloggers and also PR reps. You can see some of the interviews in my video. Let me know if you enjoy it because I have heaps more that I didn’t have room to put in so maybe I’ll make a sequel!
There were several brands at this event including Nivea, Coty (who deal in a lot of high end perfume brands), Burt’s Bees, Remmington, Orly and Sebastian. The idea was that we could actually talk to the representatives for each brand and they could recommend products we might be interested in etc.
I thought this was such a good format because I took away so much more information that I think I normally would. It was pretty squishy with that many people trying to talk to the brands but totally worth it. My favorite part was the Nivea photo booth, seriously whoever came up with that idea needs a promotion because it was SO much fun and I got to take away photos with my friends so very happy!
Didn’t know we were getting a photobooth that night so James and I stopped at a completely different one during the day XD
We were treated to a fantastic dinner with some *very* attentive wait staff (seriously with the amount of wine offered I swear they were trying to get me drunk 😉 ) and got to learn a bit more about Maxted Thomas itself. The whole weekend I felt like royalty *_*
I was lucky enough to interview one of the owners Ian Thomas so check that out in the video too! I was so nervous interviewing people as I’ve never done it before but I muddled through and I know next time I’ve got so many points I can improve on. In fact I was so nervous when the actual film crew who was there asked to interview me, I froze up a bit and probably made a bit of a fool of myself >_< Oh well!
Maxted Thomas also announced a competition wherein whoever writes the best post on the weekend will win $2000 travel vouchers. When they said that I was so excited because as I mentioned before, James and I have never really been on a *holiday* together, we always just go places for work. So if this posts wins I think I would want to go to Japan with him via Singapore and Malaysia to visit friends or maybe visit all of you guys in the USA, I don’t even know, there are so many cool places we could go! What do you guys think? If I came to your town would you come meet up with me?
One of the best moments of the night was being asked if I would come and meet the head chef because she loved my hair 😀 So cool!
We headed back to the hotel and luckily got a taxi right away because the downstairs of the Establishment turns into a club at night and it was pretty full of partying people. It was raining really hard when we got out too so we were all FREEZING in our lack of winter clothes, then we realised that the taxi had taken us to the wrong hotel! >_< seriously, why would they build two Novotels by the harbour!?!?!
DAY 2 OVER!!
So on our final day we packed up our bags and checked out very early that morning. We left our bags at the desk and headed upstairs for light breakfast and the first seminars.
The first event was for Alpha H skincare and it was hosted by Karen from The Morning Show’s advertorials. Again I took a lot of notes so if anyone wants them just let me know and I’ll publish them here.
After that the MBBE girls helped out with setting up for the Face of Australia event again. This one wasn’t so much a talk like the others but a make up class.
This is my favorite of the new looks:
We got to see the new look books coming out and we got to see a couple of colours in the new range (OMG I want Malibu Barbie) and try the look that make up artist *** was doing on Briony ourselves.
Testing stuff out:
We had mirrors, tissues and little brushes and the range in the goodie bags so it was really awesome that you could follow what was happening on the big screen and do it too.
The last event of the day was the key note speaker, Bahar Etminan from Rescu.com.au (not linked because it keeps throwing me a malware warning when I try to visit). Phew was this an interesting note to end on. Controversial is probably an understatement! Twitter was going absolutely nuts during her speech *_*
While I personally disagreed with a lot of points she made and I think perhaps her talk wasn’t really well targeted to her audience, it has been discussed to death so I’m not going to go over it again here. The only thing I want to say is that making judgments about what other people do on their blogs is completely pointless because in the end the reader decides, if people don’t like it they won’t read it. Making a distinction between certain types of bloggers and others makes me feel like high school again. Why waste time and energy getting mad about something that doesn’t effect you when you could do something constructive with yourself? Honestly sometimes events make me think we should all spend less time talking about blogging and just get on with the actual doing of it ^_^ That’s what my goal going forward is anyway!
There are a bunch more photos but this post is getting pretty epic already. I’m still waiting to get most of them from James so I’ll probably do a second gallery style post.
So that one went a little bit over time and we headed off to the airport! We decided to go very early because we weren’t sure whether all of the giftbags would put us over the baggage weight limit *_* Very luckily we managed to juggle everything around to avoid some fines and thank you Celina for letting me borrow a suitcase!
The flight back was just as eventful, even being so early we almost missed it because they changed the gate at the last minute but didn’t have it over the speakers >_< We were sitting at the gate at take off time thinking “Hmmm are we boarding soon??”, finally Celina asked someone and we found the correct gate right up the other end of the airport. Celina can fun FAAAAST when she needs too haha! So borded safely and on a flight that actually included dinner we were happy to relax for an hour or so. I have to say, after the debacle with Jetstar I will never fly them again, I’ll pay the extra and go with someone else that includes food!
Hilarious plane safety thing, honestly does anyone even own a Furbie anymore? And who carries a walkie talkie?
By the time we got home I was about ready to fall asleep in the car. It was an amazing weekend. A huge thank you to Kimmi and Jacie for putting it together, thank you to the sponsors for being so generous, thank you to James for being awesome and Celina for being a great room mate.
Also thank you to everyone who came and said hello! I was pretty tired the whole weekend as I was just getting sick so I didn’t get to say hello to everyone I wanted to but I’m sure there will be more chances soon. Thank you everyone who we met for making us feel so welcome. Even though Sydney seems to hate me, I totally want to come back anyway 😀
It was an amazing weekend and I hope you all enjoyed the photos and videos. Now I want to hear from you guys! Where would you go if you won the $2000 travel vouchers from Maxted Thomas? I know it’s a long shot considering some of the other amazing posts but if I did win where should I go? Would you like me to come visit your town? If I did, where would you take me? We could have tea parties all over the world, that would be SO much fun!!
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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