Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Wednesday, 23 December 2015

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

Saturday, 19 December 2015

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. 


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

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

Stay gold, and Merry Christmas!

Tuesday, 15 December 2015

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

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

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

Sunday, 6 December 2015

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!


Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Christmas Is All Around

Hello lovely people,

Can you believe that we have made it to December? Every year we always say that the end of the year has come by too quickly, but once we think about what we have done during the year it feels like light-years ago. In case you did not follow us this time last year, we love Christmas. For us, Christmas is like a month-long celebration for our friends and family, to celebrate making it through another year and spending time together. As sentimental people, we definitely love getting into the Christmas spirit.

Yesterday on December first (or as we like to call it, Christmas the First), we put our Christmas tree and decorations up, as is the tradition. My oh my, are we IN LOVE with our tree this year. We decided to choose a better colour scheme than we had last year, and build on what we had to have a silver, gold and pink theme. Are you sensing a theme here? 


As Christmas is in Summer for us Australians, the traditional wintery colours of Christmas did not feel right in our little apartment that always seems to have a golden glow about it on sunny days. 


Basically all of our baubles are from Big W, which are super cheap, or we have taken from our family home tree (there are enough decorations on that for all of us!)



Yesterday we also started VLOGMAS. 
For those of you who don't know, Vlogmas is a thing done by people on YouTube, where you vlog (video blog?) everyday leading up to Christmas, starting December 1st. 
A vlog is when you bring your camera along with you and film your day. We're not sure why we love vlogs so much... maybe because it feels like you're with your friends, and who doesn't love to keep up to date with what their friends are doing?

While we aren't YouTubers, a lot of YouTubers did start out a bloggers. This doesn't mean that we want to become YouTubers (maybe one day?), we just really love vlogmas and have always wanted to try it. Since this blog is about our live as students in the city, vlogmas seemed pretty fitting.

Vlogmas is the greatest, though, because everyone is in the Christmas spirit, and you get to experience/see what Christmas is like all around the world. So it's pretty special.

We hope you enjoy our Vlogmas. Day 1 is down below!


Make sure you give the video a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel to keep up o date with all our videos.


But most importantly: What do you like most about Christmas? 


Stay Gold
xx

Monday, 9 November 2015

Our Summer Bucket-list '15/'16

Hello my lovely friends! 


How about that rain last week? As I was wearing my LL Bean Boots and clutching a red Starbucks cup I was beginning to get confused as to which hemisphere we live in! Now that we have finished exams for the year, we cannot help but get excited for the Summer time, even though Summer is technically a little over three weeks away. 


We have the habit of being all talk and not enough action when it comes to how we want to spend our breaks, and our social life in general. So this year we have decided to actually write a Summer bucket list! Hopefully we stick to it and actually achieve everything the want to do to make sure we make the most of the break and make the memories Summer deserves. 





1. Explore more suburbs



2. Go to the beach



3. Sew at least one thing    



4. Blog more!



5. Eat out with friends



6. Sort out interior decorating of our apartment



7. Spend time with family



8. Go to Camberwell Market



9. Visit a winery



10. Go on a mini road trip with best friends



11. Go to Andy Warhol x Ai Wei Wei at the NGV



12. See The Night Before with our siblings



13. Host a Christmas movie marathon



14. Pet more dogs



15. Read a book a week (Grace) / Watch more movies (Claire)



--

What is on your Summer bucket list?

Stay Gold,
Claire & Grace. 

Saturday, 20 December 2014

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! 

Sunday, 14 December 2014

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!