An Important Announcement...

Hello our beautiful Graceful and Claire readers, 

I know that we have been pretty absent so far this year, and that is because things have been changing in our lives. Well, not our overalls lives, but our blogging lives. In a decision that is both sad and exciting, Claire and I have decided to end our blogging relationship as Graceful and Claire, and instead pursue our own blogs. 

If you do not know already, Claire started her own women of stage and screen appreciation blog, Cause a Cine, last year. After a small break with her side blog, we decided that it is best that she focuses wholly on Cause a Cine, because it is destined for great things (in my totally non-biased opinion). As the great Ron Swanson so wisely advises, "Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing." As Claire will be whole-assing Cause a Cine, I could not be running Graceful and Claire without the Claire of it all. Therefore, I have decided to pursue my own blog, The Aussie Prep! 

The Aussie Prep will be slightly different than Graceful and Claire in that it will be primarily a preppy student fashion/lifestyle blog. AKA, there will be more talking about fashion on The Aussie Prep than on Graceful and Claire. It is about my own personal style, and I am very much looking forward to sharing it with you all!

We hope that this news has not caused too much disappointment. We have loved the time we spent on Graceful and Claire, and we will never forget it. If anything, G&C helped us get used to the ropes of blogging, which means that our own individual blogs will be better than what we have done before.

We hope to see you over at Cause a Cine and The Aussie Prep. We would love you have you.

Stay gold,
Grace.

Inevitable moment of reflection | Happy New Year

Hello darling friends,

It's that time of year again when people often look back on the year that has passed as we head into a new one. I will admit that I am often guilty when it comes to reflection and feeling nostalgic for the past. This year, incidentally, I caught myself thinking a lot about high school, and feeling nostalgic for when I was still a teenager, and the trivialities of those years. What? High school had it's great moments, but University fits me better. Why am I missing it? 

These feelings came largely in this past month or so as we neared closer to my 20th birthday. Probably because hey, I'm in the twenties now, there is no going back. I have officially left my teenage years.

I wanted to keep this short and sweet, as I'm sure y'all be seeing enough of these 2015 reflections in the next couple of days. One day soon I will share the thoughts I had leading up to my 20th birthday, but for now, let's just reflect on the year. 

A lot has happened this year, but then again, when has there ever been a quiet year? The start of this year I declined an offer from an arts school to continue my bachelor of arts degree, but I was left with this big empty space and question mark concerning what exactly it was that I wanted to do. This empty hole was a bit scary, but now, as the year comes to an end, I am happy to say that I am feeling pretty confident on my path.

This year I decided on my media and cinema studies double major, I joined the student musical theatre group at Uni (and have become a committee member for 2016). I have met some amazing, life-changing friends who I think will be friends of a lifetime, and have grown more and more with my old and dear ones. With volunteering and passion, my eyes have opened up to a whole new world of possibilities of film festivals, and embracing feminism, which I strive to learn more and more about everyday.

This year I went on my first vacation without the parents (or older siblings) to Sydney, finally went blonde, officially moved out of home, and finally found a job that is perfect and wonderful and more than I could have ever hoped for, as a casual retail position. 

This year, as described by Grace the other day, was a bit of a transition year. We learned more about ourselves and discovered new things as we "came into our own." Coming into our own is a phrase we use a lot, but really, every year you come into your own more and more as you learn new things about yourself, and as the people you meet and experiences you have shape you. 

I am learning everyday, and I, once again, cannot wait to see what the future brings,

Have a safe and fabulous new year, and of course,

Stay gold. 

C xx

Merry Christmas

Hello lovely readers,

It is CHRISTMAS EVE! Who can believe that we finally made it? We would just like to wish all of our readers a very merry Christmas, and of course, a safe new year. We are both looking forward to tomorrow. We love any day that we catch up with all of the family, but Christmas Day has that extra magic to it that makes the day more special. 

This December has been a bit of a weird one. While we have fully been embracing the festive season, with our constant listening to Christmas music and watching a large number of Christmas movies (and lets not forget Vlogmas), we didn't feel the anticipation of Christmas as much as we usually do. Is this because we are older now (officially in our 20's!), and we have been busy with work? Who knows, but we will be enjoying this time spent with family just as much as we always do. 

Tonight, we are going to be sleeping over at our older sister, Ally's, place with our brother. Our plan is to chill out, eat pizza and watch Christmas With the Kranks. Possibly with a sneaky cider in there too. We definitely deserve it! Our brother still lives in our hometown, which means that we don't see him as often as we like to. So being able to hang out as the four of us siblings before the hustle and bustle of Christmas lunch tomorrow will be great.

After Christmas Day we are back into work again, but we are definitely looking forward to things being less hectic (fingers crossed!) as we move in to the new year. 

Stay gold,

Grace and Claire. x

Our Favourite Christmas Movies

We are officially in the week leading up to Christmas! Obviously this means that all of our festive-ness goes into overdrive for the next 5 days. During the week just gone by, and into this week (obviously), we are trying to watch at least one Christmas-related movie and/or tv episode a day. In fact, I have already made my way through the tv guide for this week and picked out all of the daytime and nighttime Christmas movies I will be aiming to watch this week.

We love a good Christmas movie. We tend to watch the same ones every December. It doesn't feel like Christmas without them! Therefore, today we are sharing you our favourite festive films to inspire your holiday movie watching for this week. 

• Love, Actually
• The Polar Express
• Arthur Christmas
• Christmas With the Kranks
• National Lampoons Christmas Vacation
• Eloise at Christmastime
• Elf 
• The Holiday
• New Girl Christmas episodes ('The 23rd', 'Santa', and 'LAXmas')
• Glee Christmas episodes ('A Very Glee Christmas', 'Extraordinary Merry Christmas', 'Glee, Actually', and 'Previously Unaired Christmas')
• The Santa Clause, The Santa Clause 2, and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause

Special mentions: (AKA, movies we watched for the first time this year!)

• Miracle on 34th Street
• Nativity!
• The Night Before (NOT for kids!!!)

What are your favourite Christmas movies? We would love to hear them!

Stay gold, and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Wrapping Ideas

Hello lovely friends!

Christmas is just over a week away (ho ho homygoodness) which means there is still time to get your Christmas shopping done and there are presents to be wrapped! 

One thing we love about Christmas is being able to give wonderful presents to the people in our life that mean the most of us. 

We LOVE wrapping, but we never have a lot of people to shop for, so we like to get creative and make the most of it. At the start of the month Kikki-K had a 20% off for members sale and so we went to town on their wrapping paper, ribbon, and red and white twine. 

We also got some decorative gold bows from Spotlight and gift tags from Big-W. 

(This post is in no way sponsored by Kikki-K, we just love their wrapping paper!)

ONE.

Candy Canes are a great way to add a little something extra to your wrapping, just by sliding in behind the ribbon, or weaving in and out of some twine. 

Get some use of out your cut-offs by making a band of a different wrapping paper to go around the middle, under your ribbon. It add's some great layers, and adds extra reinforcement to hide the gift, as white paper can be a bit see-through at times. 

I really like this one, which is just red and white polka dot paper, with a gold gift tag slid underneath some red and white twine, which I wrapped around the present a few times. I then added a small piece of the OPEN ME ribbon from Kikki-K and a candy cane, for something just a little bit cheeky and fun. 

TWO.

If you have a few little things to give someone, instead of wrapping them all individually, a great idea is to put them in a box. 

We just got boxes form the $2 shop that fits all the items, and wrapped the boxes to make a nice matching and festive gift. (of course, we just love to wrap things and any excuse to wrap more is a good one. You can also just leave the box as is, if you wish.)

Unfortunately, we forgot to show you HOW we wrapped the boxes, but there are some great tutorials online, or you can wrap it like any other box-like present, and either fold the sides like I did (bottom photo) or just wrap it like contacting a book like Grace (top photo). We both did the lids in different paper to divide up the colours and also it just looks super cute, oh my goodness, I am obsessed. 

You can then stack the box on top of another box like we did, or you can leave it as is with a cute ribbon tied around it or even some twine. 

We had some trouble with the gold bows, but we just used a hot glue gun to secure it to the ribbon/twine.

THREE.

Some people like to make round gifts into bon-bons, but Grace wanted to try something a bit different.

 So, with a bit of difficulty, Grace was able to stick down the ends of this tube, and for a simple touch, she wrapped some twine around it a few times and added a gold gift-tag. 

FOUR.

For our last one, I went for a gold theme, with this white and gold tree paper from Kikki-K, gold ribbon (also from Kikki-K) and gift tag. The result is clean and classic.

 HOWEVER, I had such a hard time with this gold sparkly ribbon. The sticky tape just would. not. hold it at the back, and as you can see, it kept drooping rather than staying in place. So, to fix this dilemma (it was frustrating me to NO END), I got out my hot glue gun and just dotted the glue on the ends of the ribbon at the back, as well as on the front and under the gold bow to (finally) hold it in place. 

And there we have it! We had a lot of fun wrapping this year, and I just wish I had more presents to wrap. 

Paper: Kikki K | Ribbon: Kikki K | Gift tags: Big W | Bows: Spotlight (On sale!)

Have you done all of your Christmas shopping? Send us some picture of your wrapping, we would love to see it! 

And on a final note, we would like to mention that Christmas is not all about presents, but spending time (in whatever shape or form) with family, friends and loved ones. 

Have a holly, jolly Christmas

and 

Stay Gold x

Festive Shoes | DIY

Hello lovely friends!

It is December (obviously) and we have been invited to a couple of Christmas parties this year. There is nothing we love more than getting super festive, so when we saw these shoes, we freaked out.

But then we couldn't find them anywhere, and thought they'd be pretty easy to make, and my golly, the so are.

So, if you've been watching our Vlogmas, then you'll know we recently went to Spotlight to get some things to try this out.

All you will need are a pair of shoes of your choice: We went with these gold ballet flats from Big W

A hot glue gun + glue, and some festive pompoms (or any decoration of your choice)

Method: Heat up your hot glue gun, decide on how you want to arrange your decoration, dab some glue onto the decoration and secure into place on your shoe.

Let them dry and HOORAY. You have festive shoes. 

Super cute, super easy and super cheap. 

Claire is going to wear her's to work the week leading up to Christmas.

Let us know if you give this a go, and send us pictures! We'll love to see them.

Stay gold xx

A Pop of Colour | Style

Dress: Target | Sandals: K-Mart | Earrings: Diva (yes, they are that old!)

Hi all, Grace here! 

Everyone always says that to dress like a Melbournian, wear black. Well, black and any other dark colours. However, I very rarely wear all black, or black in general (apart from shoes and jeans) unless I am volunteering at art events. Navy blue is definitely the neutral colour in my wardrobe. I cannot help but have colour! 

However, when I stumbled across this dress in Target last month, I fell in love. This dress works well with wearing the dark colours of Melbourne while still having a Spring and Summer feel to it with the darling pops of bright yellow in the detail with the flowers. It also works perfectly for when Melbourne has its typical cloudy Summer days. You can dress to suit the sky, but still feel like you are staying true to the Summer season. 

I kept the accessorising for this dress to a minimum (shocking for me, I know!), choosing to go with some dangling earrings as my only jewellery to tie in the yellow on the dress, and a black flat sandal. Although a long necklace with a pendant on the end will also go well with this dress. 

How would you describe Melbourne fashion? 

As always,

 stay gold!

x

P.S Have you been keeping up with our Vlogmas? It is a great way to show you our day-to-day life in Melbourne. Be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel so you don't miss out!