Our Inaugural Annual Christmas Party

Hello all!

For our 19th birthday the other week, we threw a Christmas Party (of course). We are planning on making our Christmas party an annual event. Considering that this is our final year of being official teenagers, this will be a great tradition to go in to our twenties with. Christmas parties are not just work events, they are a great way of getting together with friends and celebrating the holiday.  

So, with the help of Pintrest, a couple of our parent's wedding presents and $2 shops, here are a few photos of our celebration.

Our Pimm's Punch was a great hit with everyone! 

Homemade Peanut Butter, and Hazelnut chocolate truffles

Shout-out to Alice for making peppermint chocolate bark. It was delicious!

Of course, we needed something savoury, and this mix of popcorn, pretzels and Christmas M&M's was popular. Especially when the night ended in a viewing of Love, Actually.

You cannot celebrate Christmas without some festive bon bons! Also, we had our Spotify playlist filled with hours upon hours of Christmas music in the background to set the mood. 

Gotta love this chalkboard from Typo which you can purchase here.

The night was wonderful spent with our lovely friends. It also ended with us watching Love Actually and playing a Love Actually drinking game. #wildnight

Merry Christmas! 

Once: A New Musical

When the Melbourne Theatre Company's (MTC) 2014 season was announced last year, Claire and I were excited beyond belief to hear that MTC will be bringing the new, Tony Award winning musical Once to Melbourne. In November, along with our good friend (and go-to Musical buddy), Miriam, we attended the Wednesday matinee of the show with the usual elderly matinee crowd, (AKA our people!). My breath was taken away by the beauty of the staging and set (and perhaps, also, because of Tom Parsons, the actor playing the leading man, 'Guy'). There my have been some major swooning coming from all three of us girls throughout the show. 

The show is called 'Once: A New Musical', and rightly so. Yes, it has that title because it did open on Broadway in 2012. However, the experience of watching this show was something I have never experienced with a broadway show before, and that is something that makes this musical new and refreshing. Of course, as musical theatre fans, we love a good spectacle as much as the next show-tune belting fan. There is something about the intimacy of the show that for once in our lives, makes us feel like a part of the show.

I have been obsessed with the soundtrack (both motion picture, and Original Broadway Cast recording) for quite some time now. So much so that I must admit, I started crying during the first song. #classicgrace. The songs are filled with so much emotion! I have listened to this soundtrack on rainy days, before I fall asleep, on days where I have felt down, or even just as the perfect background music while on the public transport commute to Uni. Walking in to the theatre, I had no idea what to expect from the storyline - I only had the songs memorised.  

Turns out that Once is set in Dublin, and is a story about a man about to give up his music and a Czech girl who convinces him to continue. Cue a heart-tugging and refreshing story orflove, loss, passion and music. Truly amazing. Our love is real. I could go on forever talking about each scene in detail and the journey of my emotions, the perfection of the cast (did I mention that they play all of their instruments live on stage?!), but I believe I should leave some mystery and leave you hanging until you go see the show for yourselves. Walking in without having much of an idea of what I was about to witness just added to my experience.

Tom Parsons and Madeleine Jones are flawless in the lead roles of Guy and Girl

Once: A New Musical by MTC is currently running at the Princess Theatre (our favourite of the heritage theatres) until the 1st of Febuary, 2015. For the month of December, Once is having student rush tickets (can I get an amen?!) which means if you go 2 hours before the show, with a valid student id you can purchase tickets for $40. Hella. yeah.

-Grace

***(GRACEFUL AND CLAIRE DOES NOT TAKE ANY CREDIT FOR THE IMAGES USED IN THIS POST)***

Twin's Day Out: Christmas in the City

Hello all!

Another Christmas post! (Don't worry guys, there are only 10 days until Christmas, and soon they will be long gone)

So, there are two things Grace and I love more than life itself: Melbourne and Christmas. And the best thing ever? CHRISTMAS IN MELBOURNE. Christmas in any city is wonderful, even for young adults! So, on the morning of our 19th birthday, we took our good friend Alice and headed into the city for some Christmas cheer and everything we did was free/cheap. Hooray!

First stop: Christmas Square! Each year City Square on Swanston Street turns into a beautiful Christmas park. It's absolutely free, in the heart of the city, and my gosh, look at that tree!

Grace (left): high-waisted shorts and sheer shirt both from Savers.
Canvas shoes from K-Mart.

Claire (right): Dress from Cotton On, brogues from Salvos.  

Naturally, as the common/basic white girls we are, we love going to Starbucks for holiday themed flavours, and of course, the Christmas cups. Sorry we're not sorry!

Since Christmas is in the summer here in Australia/Melbourne, Claire's favourite is the gingerbread frappachino. The gingerbread flavour is mighty strong, and it tastes soooo good.

Grace isn't much of a coffee drinker, but since there aren't holiday flavoured teas, she tried the peprmint mocha frapachino (peppermint, her favourite)
Grace's sunglasses are from Rubi Shoes

Town Hall looks like a christmas present and we love it so much. The building itself is beautiful and one of our favourites in the city. This just takes it to a whole new level. *heart eyes emoji*

We were delighted to see that the Myer Christmas Windows were actually Chritmassy this year (just like they used to). The Christmas windows are free! The lines get quite long, but as not only tall people, but as young adults, you can pretty much just walk behind the lines and look over their heads. This year is Santa Clause and the Three Bears. We always knew Goldilocks was actually Santa (wait, what?)

The Myer Christmas Windows are an institution, and as kids, our parents or school would take us into the city and see them every year. Now that we live here, we take ourselves!

Department stores are always super christmassy in their decorations, and Claire believes that there is just something with the shiny white floors, the bustle of people holding numerous shopping bags, the touch of Christmas paraphernalia everywhere just screams Christmas and makes her super happy. We blame Elf  and every other movie with a department store ever. 

Myer also has the Giftorium! Which has a bunch of great Christmas ideas (if not a little pricey) obviously, but we love looking at the Christmas trim shop for decorations, and the gift-giving vibe is just awesome. there is also a Christmas miniature train ride and photos with Santa available for kids!

And lastly, every 15 minutes, from 9pm until 11pm each night, the town hall has a stunning christmas light show! We went Saturday night with the parents and it is truly beautiful. 

We hope you enjoyed this post. You can also see our Christmas in the City adventures on our amazing friend Alice's YouTube channel madasalice! Which we will link here when it is uploaded. Also, please check out her channel! She has just started her own youtube channel and is doing VLOGMAS! Hell yeah.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Apartment Christmas Decor

Hello all!

As you can tell from our Christmas tree post, we are obsessed with Christmas, and we couldn't wait to decorate the apartment all jolly and get into the Christmas spirit! So here are some ideas you can use to decorate your own place or room.

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Christmas Bunting: kikki.K $9.95 | Yellow Candlesticks: Bought by Grace's roommate, Teagan, most likely from Ikea. | Orange Vase: Op Shop | Flowers: $1 each at a cheap store

We watch The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon each night at 7:40pm on ABC2

Table Runner: Purchased a few years ago from Spotlight | Christmas Mugs: Spotlight last year, $5 | Tealight, Holders and Red Glitter: Ikea | Notebooks: Typo $16.95 (the gold one can be purchased here) | Santa Tealight Holder: Op Shop $2 | Paper Santa Hat: Purchased last year from either Big W or a cheap store?

Christmas Cat Cushion: Grace got this from an Op Shop from our hometown last year. we love how the tree is made up of cats! It is becoming a new Christmas tradition. "The Christmas Pillow". 

3m Holly Garland: Big W $5 | Christmas Aprons: Big W | Mason Jar Mugs: K-Mart $2 | Paper Santa Hat: Unknown

Advent Calendars are essential. These Cadbury Wishes calendars we got on special at Coles for $3.50 and proceeds go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We hanged them on top of the calendar's next to the Christmas tree.

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We had so much fun decorating! A lot of this stuff we grabbed from home, such as the table runner, paper santa hats and our Christmas mugs. As you could see from our post about our christmas tree, we are going for a silver, red, white and gold theme with bits of green here and there. Our Tree at home was aways so random and busy and eclectic and we loved it s much, so this colour co-ordinaion/colour scheme is new to us. But we have found that by having a colour scheme, it makes decorating a whole lot easier and can tie the whole thing together.

We did all of our decorating on December the 1st (aka Christmas 1st!) and that night we had a group skype call with our parents and older brother at home, who were decorating their tree, and then added our Mum's side of the family who were all together and we revealed our trees and "christmas" around our homes to each other. It was all so crazy because we love Christmas so much and everyone was excited and it was just wonderful. We can't wait to travel and spend Christmas Eve/Day with them! Skype is truly an amazing thing.

Leading up to Christmas, we will be doing a range of Christmas-themed posts, as well as a few "regular" posts here and there. Kind of like a "Blogmas". So get excited for that!

I hope you enjoyed this post. Let us know your favourite part or if you have any questions in the comment section below! Also, if you have anything you'd like to see us post about, let us know and we'll try and organise something for you :)

Until next time.

Stay Fabulous!

-C  

Our First Christmas Tree

MERRY SECOND OF CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY! 

Yes, the month of December has temporarily been re-named 'Christmas', because for us, Christmas is a month-long festivity. Yesterday was the First of Christmas, and it is possibly the third most Christmassy day next to Christmas Eve and actually Christmas Day itself (obviously). As you can tell, we are very much Christmas people. As December 1st was getting close, we were very excited to purchase our first Christmas tree, deck the halls and unleash the Christmas all over my apartment. Luckily, my housemate (that is not Claire) is also a fan of Christmas, so this is one very merry household indeed. 

So here is our Christmas tree! We decided to go with a silver theme with red and gold accents, and it is safe to say that we are pretty happy with it.

Stay tuned for more Christmas-themed posts throughout the month of December.   

Our tree is the 6ft Jardine Christmas Tree from K-mart ($22)

A few years ago, our mum bought a set of baubles especially for our family cat, Julian, to be represented. When each of us moved out, we all took one with us. 

We also managed to grab all of the Christmas tree decorations we made throughout our childhood (and teen years). I love the sequined one that I made, which you can see hiding in the back.

We are obsessed with this white and gold bauble from kiki. K. ($9.95)

Of course we also needed to include our favourite Disney Princess! This plastic bauble was only $2 at Coles.

Feel free to share with us what your Christmas trees look like! Graceful and Claire is now on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Check out the links on the right hand side of our blog and give us a follow to keep up to date on our lives. 

- Grace x