Gardening for adulescents

A few months ago, the boyfriend and I came home slightly merry and in an attempt to get to my side of the bed, I ended up falling into the shelf and knocking my most newly acquired cactus to the ground. The little cheery mexican style pot that it resided in smashed into millions of pieces and since then, it has sat naked in it's plastic pot, looking more than a little neglected.

Every week, I'd look at it and think that I must stop at Homebase that night and pick up a new pot for it and of course, I'd forget or it would be raining or so on and I wouldn't.

Today, I went on a crazy cleaning mission to finally sort out the afore mentioned shelves and of course, in the course of cleaning I once again came eye to spike with the cactus. I admit that once again the Homebase promise came to mind and was equally swiftly forgotten until I sat down about half an hour ago to watch TV and bag up all of the stuff I'd set aside for the charity shop. One of the larger piles was of old jewellery from my teens, amongst them plenty of brightly beaded plastic bracelets and suddenly, a craft project was born.

I fished out an old candle jar that I'd previously thrown in the bin and started figuring out that this indeed could probably be made into a new plant pot. And so, below is a step by step photo guide of my re-potting adventure. I apologise for the crappy quality of the photos, my camera battery died so I had to use my iphone.


the unwitting victim


candle soon to be plant pot



the work station (for reasons beyond my understanding, blogger has decided to rotate this photo)


a work in progress


taa-daa!

And so, there you have it. The cactus has a new home and I have a new use for some kitsch old bracelets. Hurrah!

Can't change your spots

As I mentioned on twitter, I really shouldn't have gone to Topshop. What started off as a tipsy wander around with the mantra that I wouldn't buy anything ended up in a serious bank account bashing. One of the things that I bought was this printed dress with a leopard on it.



As we all know, I'm more than partial to a little animal magic so I fell irrationally fell in love with this straight away. The print goes all the way round with a tail and all on the back and for £18, it's recession friendly too. Unlike the rest of my purchases but more on those another time.

Hopping on the band wagon

Since we'll all agree that I've been pretty crap at updating, I've left all integrity/dignity/what ever you want to call it behind and hopped on the twitter bandwagon. Click here to join the adulescent twitter cult.

My new love

Remember the bag I fell in love with? Well, two weeks ago in my desperate quest for one, I started scheming about how to get my hands on one. First, I called the PR to see if there was any way I could get one. That turned out to be a dead end so I was back to square one and so, I did what any handbag-lust crazed girl does and turned to Ebay.

Someone, somewhere must really like me because lo and behold, within twenty minutes of scouting out the UK and US sites, I found one in California. The opening price was $400 and there was a buy it now of $550. Jumping up and down, I made my boyfriend email the woman right there and then (I love ebay but have no account of my own for precisely the dangerous temptation it would bring). I will spare you the long winded story but needless to say, I won and the bag finally arrived on Thursday, just in time for my trip to Berlin as you can see from the ode to Susie Bubble photo above, taken in my mum's amazing apartment.

Farewell, old friend.

So, tonight we say goodbye to a part of British music history as Astoria plays host to it's last ever gig before being bulldozed to make way for Cross Rail, a new rail line that will allow people to get from Essex to Maidenhead a little faster.

I feel a particular sadness in that as a teenager growing up in London, Astoria and Mean Fiddler were an intergral part of my social life. Whether it was going to gigs or blagging our ways past the bouncers at Club X on weekends, I spent a many a night at the great venue. It is even the place where I got my first ever concussion at a Less Than Jake gig sometime around 2001; I got clocked on the back of my head by a full can of beer that had been lobbed from the seating area during a bottle fight.

And I know that they're building a new music venue to replace it but the new venue will be around 6000 capacity whereas the entire point of the Astoria was that it was a relatively intimate venue of 1600-2000 where you could go and see small bands and big bands alike. And I'm sure that the new venue will have state of the art facilities and loos that actually lock but it won't have the spirit of this rickety old place.

And so it is with heavy heart that I bid you adieu, fair Astoria. May you rock on in peace.

'09 and feelin' fine.

It's been a while since I last blogged, sometime back in mid-December. It's not that I haven't wanted to blog or not had anything to blog about, it's just that I couldn't find whatever is in me that makes me blog for a while. And I really needed to clean my room before my boyfriend dumped me among the piles of clothes.

But rest assured, I shall be back to it very soon, armed with news, pictures and anecdotes. In the meanime, go check out a couple of these blogs instead:

- The Things Laura Likes - does what it says on the tin. Lots of clothes. LOTS.

- Wanderful - A boy, a girl and a chihuahua named Mister travel round America in a Tab.

- Daddy Likey - Winona writes hiaku about chlymidia, shoes and everything in inbetween.

oh yeah and lest I forget, Happy New Year!