Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, Auckland! For 175 years young, you're looking mighty fine. Of course, celebrating your anniversary with a public holiday tomorrow means I didn't forget (and thank you for the generosity!) but I was taken by surprise when I heard the fireworks booming across your city centre from the waterfront. I scampered out into our hallway and along the narrow corridor to the little window overlooking our carpark and an epic view towards your skyline. I managed to catch this image with my iPhone, never the best in low lighting, it doesn't do you justice. Many happy returns.

Life, Lately

Hi! Wow, how the heck are ya? If you are reading this, mazel tov! You win most dedicated reader. It has been a lifetime since my last post but today, as I lurk inside my apartment festering with a throat infection, I decided to do something I've been thinking of for months and resurrect the ghost of this old beast. So what's the deal?

Well, I got married. Moved islands, from small-town mountain life to the "big smoke" city of Auckland. We started new jobs - usual life stuff. Plus some fun in between; spending the first few days of 2014 in a teepee on Waiheke Island, sun worshiping at Laneway Festival in January, a trip to see my family in England in May, revisiting Queenstown for my sister's wedding in November....

Here's photographic evidence from Instagram:

The day I married my love. It rocked.

Honeymooning in the Cook Islands. Take me back!

Hello, new home.

Summer adventures

Went through another drawing phase

Last year's Christmas lights were impressive

Waiheke put on a good show

At the beginning of Laneway Festival (pre-sunburn)

Lorde, the night after Laneway

More weekend adventures

Burgundy, France with my parents. That view though!

Home on the range

Spending time with this little firecracker

Queenstown sister ties the knot

Merry Christmas, all!

(Not pictured: months of readjustment to city life, personal dramas, fears over career paths & life choices and other petty worries. Nothing out of the ordinary, but life isn't all plain sailing despite how social media often portrays it.)

The final nail in the blog coffin was due to one little thing (and please nominate this for Most Pathetic Excuse award): I got an iPad. I switched to the iPad around the time of my last post (about bums and farts, always a good way to go out!) and it was a nightmare to keep this blog going on it. I'm lazy at best, but man does it seem confusing blogging in iPad format! Does anyone have any tips or apps they use?

I can't say that I'll just pick things up where they left off - still on that iPad, yo! The husband's at work while I'm off sick today so I'm using this opportunity to spread my grubby lurgy paws all over his keyboard. BUT you can know that when I do post it's because I'm passionate about it. There'll be no pressure to create content for 7 regular features a week, ha!

I'm very active on Pinterest & Instagram if you want to see the latest. I hope someone out there enjoys checking in here as much as I enjoy creating these little posts :)

A x

like mother like daughter

I've just finished watching Grey Gardens (2009). I know this film isn't big news - or even new - but I think my viewing experience was heightened due to having just watched the mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011) a few weeks ago. Both are by HBO and there are more than a few similarities between the two works, although the main roles are reversed. I thought I'd write a wee bit of background on both films, for no other reason than I enjoyed the themes played out in them and the complex relationships between mother and daughter - if you've seen either film and enjoyed it, then I highly recommend the other.

!SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't seen these films, the synopses I've added below will contain spoilers

First, I saw Mildred Pierce. It is adapted from a 1941 novel by James M. Cain. This new 5-part HBO mini-series focuses on Mildred, played by a weary, determined Kate Winslet. The show, set between 1930s and 50s, opens on Mildred's philanderous husband walking out on her and their two daughters. As a result of which, Mildred must find a way of maintaining her family on her own in a world dominated by men, and gets a waitressing job before working her way up to opening her own restaurant. Her eldest daughter, Veda (in her grown-up years played by Evan Rachel Wood), is a precocious, wilful child who puts on airs and looks down upon her mother for working. Mildred meets a rakish man-about-town, Monty (Guy Pearce) who she falls for, but whose pockets are very shallow.

At the beginning, I didn't think Veda was going to be more than a cameo role, the focus of the piece being on her mother, but slowly Veda's spitefulness creeps in and robs her doting mother of everything she loves, one way or another and often unnoticed until too late. Mildred strives to win her daughter's affection throughout the entire series, until a step too far proves too much to bear. Ultimately, Mildred's life comes full circle - her business has been taken over and she re-marries her first husband, more out of mutual loneliness and friendship than any real passion. Both of her children are for all intents and purposes dead to her, and the last scene shows the couple moving back into the house they used to live in when the series first began.

Now onto Grey Gardens. The original Grey Gardens was a 1975 documentary by the Maysles brothers, following the daily lives of "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale (the aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis) after the fall from "riches to rags". The 2009 movie is based upon the true story, and even the costumes looks faithful to the documentary. It opens set in 1975, with Big & Little Edie being filmed in their home in East Hampton, called Grey Gardens, by the Maysles brothers for their documentary. The film centres on their codependent relationship, and alternates between them being filmed in 1975, and their past up until that moment.

The mother, Edith (Jessica Lange) is seen early on in the 1930s to be a bit of a wild card, singing with men and dancing at parties - her straight-laced husband is sick of her "unpredictability" and carelessness with money while many were struggling through the depression.

Edith's daughter, Little Edie (Drew Barrymore), shows signs of being as eccentric and forthright as her mother. Her father sends her off to New York in a desperate bid to get her married off. But Edie will have none of that, and only wants to be an actress. Her father walks out on her mother, and after Big Edie's long affair with her pianist comes to an end, she is left alone at Grey Gardens. Mother manages to manipulate Little Edie into coming home, and this unhappy situation causes her hair to fall out, something that we gather has happened before in her youth as she suffered from alopecia. With just the two of them rattling around in Grey Gardens, without any income or the help of maids that they are accustomed to, the house quickly deteriorates. Big Edie becomes mostly bed-ridden and forms a love of cats, letting them breed and roam over the house, whilst Little Edie yearns to escape and often fantasizes about re-starting her career, but Big Edie always finds reasons for her to stay.

BEFORE

AFTER

From lovable eccentrics, "true originals" who burst into poetry and song at any moment, they become the stereotypical cat ladies: hermetic, negligent, codependent and slightly delusional. Eventually the health authorities are informed, and try to evict the Edies on the grounds that Grey Gardens violates every health and safety code and is unsuitable for human habitation. There is a scandal in the news that Jackie Kennedy Onassis' relatives are living this way, and she pays $32,000 for the house to be made habitable - including men hauling away 1,000 bags of garbage. The documentary film of '75 became a cult success, Big Edie died a year later and Little Edie finally left Grey Gardens to go to New York, finally passing away in Florida.

Some images of the real Edies from the 1975 documentary:

If you got this far, well done! You deserve some sort of medal. If you can stand to read a teensy bit longer, while Googling images for this post I came across a piece of writing about the documentary that I thought countered my description of the fiction film rather well. I haven't seen the documentary - I hope to, but I know my experience of it now will be altered by having seen the re-visioning first.

riding into 2012

Happy New Year! And while we're at it, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah & Joyful Kwanza! You guys, I have no excuse. I'm not going to patronize your giant brians with pathetic reasons for my absence, because there are none. I was enjoying all those other amazing blogs out there far too much and just didn't feel the need to blog myself, and that's okay. But I did still feel that niggling guilt, and the longer I stayed away from here the worse it got until it snowballed into some kind of elephant in the room: "just write about anything!" But I don't want to do that, so I waited until I felt ready to come back as I knew I would.

I had a great time away, though, and I hope you did too. It's summer here, and it's been a stunner - in fact I'm hoping for some rain soon for our poor parched grass. But I'm not complaining, I've been soaking it up in bucketloads and practically feeling all that life-giving vitamin D seeping into dem bones of mine. Other happenings: I started a new job - which then closed down for Christmas (and doesn't reopen for another 2 weeks!), drank too many mojitos, ate a lot of barbeque and realised it's now less than a year until I get married. Holy crap.

But enough about me. What's a post without pictures, right? So you don't feel robbed, and because it's totally apropos of nothing, check out these bitching Kenyan bike taxis!

Photos by James Mollison for Colours magazine, via DesignTripper

they don't make 'em like they used to

It's December guys! Vera-Ellen & Bing Crosby in White Christmas, via the sphinx & the milky way

This place is gathering cobwebs, apologies pals. No excuses.. well, leaving one job and finding another has been a wee bit stressful, but I'm settling in now and past being able to use that lame excuse of an excuse to stop me from blogging. I hope you've all been in tiptop shape, I've missed you.

harper smith

Harper Smith takes sultry fashion images. Found via Honestly WTF.

I can't believe it's October already, and that I've let this place gather dust for the past month! In my defense, I've been working more than average, while looking for a new job for when my current one comes to an end in four weeks time. But that's no excuse is it?

I had the whole weekend off, and today was the most perfect weather. Alex & I had planned to go to Cromwell Farmers Market, but it was so goddamn nice that we turned the car around and came back home to fire up this summer's inaugural BBQ. A couple folks came round and we had ourselves a nice feast, Felipe even brought his popcorn making pot and made something very moreish. Long live summer!

etre et avoir

Brian just wrote about a Welsh documentary set in a rural community, and although I've only seen the trailer for it, sleep furiously reminded me of another documentary that I love and haven't seen for years.

Etre et Avoir (translated meaning To Be and To Have) is a French documentary shot in 2002, surrounding a rural primary school's only teacher and his kids, who range from 4-11 years old. The pace of the film is lingering, not rushed and it paints a wonderful portrait of the tiny community, and the kids make me grin. I went to a tiny school myself when I was little - there were 4 girls and 1 boy in my year, and 35 pupils in the entire school. We had one teacher for the youngest 3 years, and another (head) teacher for the top two years. How cosmopolitan!

If you're in need of an antidote to cynicism & sarcasm, watch this movie.

mini break

Hi, my name's Amy and I'm a Bad Blogger. Apologies for the slow going folks, but I just haven't felt like posting much lately, other real world things have been distracting me, like birthdays, work and plum wine!

I don't like posting for the sake of it, I hope that someone can be inspired or educated by something they find on here, so I hope you'll bear with me for a couple days more before normal programming resumes. Until then, here are some blogs by bad ass ladies who never cease to inspire me.

Miss Moss / For Me, For You / Fieldguided / Scout & Catalogue / bigBANG studio / Hilda Grahnat / What Possessed Me

Happy reading!

a pinch and a punch

Happy March, guys! Did you see the Oscars? They didn't show them here in New Zealand! Gasp. But they did show Live From The Red Carpet, so I got to pass judgement on everyone's fashion choices and sound off to my patient boyfriend about who's had surgery, and who really shouldn't be wearing that colour tsk tsk... But the highlight by far was Cate Blanchett who ROCKED this Givenchy dress. Hot damn.

past present

Somehow I've never seen Nina Simone perform before, even thought I own two of her albums, and I didn't know she played her own accompaniment (shameful!) Nina makes singing look effortless, she makes piano playing look effortless... the two together are incredible.

Found via the ever-tangental & inspiring even*cleveland, who also posted this Virginia Woolf quote:

What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time.

V. Woolf

josh brolin is a nice guy

Josh Brolin talks to Lynn Hirschberg of Screen Test Films about his first movie experience, his film Milk, Oliver Stone & George W Bush. Watch other actors monologuin' on YouTube here.

via iconology

tree of codes

I'm always excited when I hear the name Jonathan Safran Foer mentioned. He writes boundary-pushing, sometimes difficult books that never fail to capture the imagination. I read his first book, Everything Is Illuminated, years ago and consequently watched - and loved - the movie. Eugene Hutz, lead singer of balkan gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, is genius as Alex in this film.

Everything Is Illuminated trailer. In case you haven't seen it, fix it!

Jonathan Safran Foer also wrote a moving novel entitled Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close. His writing style is refreshingly different and very raw, and this tale of a young boy whose father was killed in 9/11, stole my heart. Now to the point of this post! Jonathan Safran Foer (man that's a handful to type) is releasing a new and brilliantly unique book, Tree Of Codes. This book promises to be mind boggling.

Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer - Public Reactions from Visual Editions on Vimeo.

The man himself explains his inspiration....

You can order it here.

across oceans

Woah nelly. Love this photo Tenements, Hong Kong by Arthur Meyerson (taken with Leica M6). Read an interview with this photographer and Leica enthusiast on the Leica blog.

What I really wanted to tell you about is the long time love affair I've had with the photography of world-renowned photojournalist Steve McCurry. His blog is spectacular, filled with his beautiful, insightful images of humanity and often updated with outtakes and thematic posts. I love the way he juxtaposes his photos in different groups to alter their meaning slightly.

Ali Aqa, Bamiyan Province

Rabari Magician

And while we're here, I'd like to mention Lily's year-long move from Joshua Tree California, to India. Lily's doing an artist residency in Kerala, while her husband completes his work there. I've read her blog for a while, since she was back home in America, for her wonderful photos and the stories that accompany them. But bigBANG studio has really taken off now that she is having daily adventures and once in a lifetime experiences in India with her husband, learning Hindu, going to a Jaipur wedding and having drinks with Judi Dench and Bill Nighy!

art for heart

Everyone has heard about the devastating floods in Queensland Australia, and there are some great initiatives out there to help raise funds to repair the damaged lives of those affected. The Queensland Flood Appeal is auctioning off artworks here, and the takings will go some way in helping recover. If you're feeling generous or would like to help out, then place a bid and maybe win a piece of art while you're at it. Artist and illustrator Catherine Campbell is taking part, I found out about this over at her blog.

what the heck?

Surprise! I just found out that the dates of the zodiac signs have changed this year. It must be true 'cos Wikipedia says so (tongue in cheek here). Although I stay a Pisces (aw, man! I can't even swim) for a lot of you, this means your personalities will spontaneously change and relationships fall apart. Hm. Good thing I'm not a Zodiac nut, other than to bemoan my status as last of the signs and scaly of persuasion. My man will be especially bummed to switch from Aries to Pisces as 2011 is meant to be the Year of Aries, but I hope he'll find consolation in the arms of another fish (me) ... that sounded more romantic in my head.

Your new alignments, people:

Capricorn: Jan. 20 – Feb. 16

Aquarius: Feb. 16 – March 11
Pisces: March 11 – April 18
Aries: April 18 – May 13
Taurus: May 13 – June 21
Gemini: June 21 – July 20
Cancer: July 20 – Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10 – Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16 – Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30 – Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23 – Nov. 29
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29 – Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17 – Jan. 20

(via familystyle)

Update: It turns out the dates only change if you follow Sidereal, or Hindu Astrology. I'm no astrology nut so don't even ask me what the differences are! I'm not even sure this changes anything - what is that man with the toy talking about? So in conclusion.... Astrology sucks. Your life may have just changed inconsequentially. Or not - I've no idea who's right or wrong, the world is flat and made of cheese, yay!

Now astronomy, that's a good game.

rock on

Happy New Year y'all!

Here's to a rocking 2011. I wish you all happy trails & puppy dog tails, whatever that means :D

Apart from my man's iphone alarm failing to wake me for work (we are y2k11 victims, gasp!) nothing momentous has happened, there has been no lightning strike to the brain that has made me want to take up alpaca farming or re-evaluate my life (much). So I'll be continuing on with programming pretty much as usual, except that I'll try to, y'know, be more consistent and interesting and stuff. And I'll hopefully be expanding and evolving into more awesome things, time allowing. Softly, softly!

So let's kick start the new year with a sweet piece of travel, food and culture all rolled up into one nigiri...

Jen of Oishii Eats and husband Dylan booked a last minute trip in December to go to the Fuji Rock Festival 2010 in Niigata. Japan has to have the best festival food, although it has a lot to live up to when compared with the oyster tent and 200-strong whiskey bar I experienced at Connect Festival 2007 in Scotland. Jen's photos make me want to go for the food more than anything. See her post here.

eat drink and be murray

Merry Christmas from New Zealand. I miss my family & friends a lot during this time of year, but artist Elliot Quince's 2010 holiday card pays a neat wee tribute to my current home. So wherever you are: stay warm/fire up the BBQ/be merry! xx

and now a public service announcement

AKA: an almost-cheesy-if-it-wasn't-adorably-earnest motto from Mr. Roald Dahl himself.

(P.S. Why isn't he a Sir? Roald should have totally been knighted. And we should have totally been on first name terms.)

found via booooooom!

it's almost that time

There's less than 2 weeks til Christmas left! I feel weirdly guilty, like I should be in my normal state of numb panic, running around buying gifts and arranging to see people. But what little seasonal stuff I had to do this year has kinda been sorted out already... that can't be right, can it? I'm ignoring the fact that I have to produce food for people on Christmas Eve, as the perfectionist in me usually succeeds in making me feel defeated before I've even begun. But I did a test run of my mum's brilliant Tunisian Orange Cake recipe and it was *awesome*. So bring it on. If you need a little Christmas organization, then print off these adorable free gift tags, created by Amy Moss and available to download over at Eat Drink Chic.

oh yeah, it's december

Happy almost-Christmas muffins! How could I forget we're less than a month away from ConsumerFest? Maybe it has something to do with being surrounded by long sunny days and people sunbathing (and impressive resulting burns) in New Zealand. This will be my second Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere, and I'm still not used to it. News from home is all about how many feet of snow my family is experiencing right now, and the best way to defrost olive oil (okay, so that one is only because their heating is off while they rebuild). I miss the snow, the coziness and the long dark nights spent watching movies by the fire. But I also love being able to wear a t-shirt and eat an ice cream here on Christmas Day!

image of necklaces made by cheri messerli (i'll take one please, santa)