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

Thursday, 26 November 2015

Graceful & Claire Turns 1!

(source)
Hello all!

It has been ONE YEAR since we launched Graceful & Claire! And what a year it has been. 

We'd like to thank everyone who has read our little blog over this past year. Your love and support means the world. It makes our day when we bump into people we haven't spoken to much over the years telling us how much they enjoy reading our blog. We love that we have been able to share our lives with you all.

As we go into our second year, we are excited to bring new posts and content (And actually use our Instagram account more), starting with more style posts and can't wait to share with you something else we have been cooking up... all will be revealed soon (but a few of you already know. Whoops!)

We have also done a slight re-design. As the year has gone on, our vision for the blog has slightly shifted, and what better way to celebrate a year than a new header?

Along with our celebration, we will be updating our About posts, since some of our answers have changed (Claire is now a proud Hufflepuff, not Gryffindor and Grace has added Girl Meets World to her list of favourite shows) so be sure to check them out.

Once again, thank you so so much. 

Let's bring on a fabulous year two!!

As always, 
Stay gold.




Saturday, 21 November 2015

Baseball Chic | Style
















Hat: General Pants Co | Top: Factorie but no longer available | Jeans: Cassie High Waisted 
Bag: Colette (similar) | Shoes: Dotti (Similar) | Earrings: Sportsgirl | Necklace: Lovisa


Hello lovely friends!

We are back with a style post for you. I have been obsessed with my baseball hat for weeks now. If I'm not at work, I am most likely wearing it. It's effortless, and cute, and great for when we run out of dry shampoo. 

This is a great transition outfit for spring, especially with the rollercoaster ride that is Melbourne weather. And who doesn't like to wear all-black from time to time? It's chic, cute, and this outfit is so effortless.

While the top is no longer available from Factorie, you could easily replicate with any black crop top.

Stay Gold,
Claire

Thursday, 12 November 2015

The Domestic Playlist


Hello lovely friends!

We believe that music definitely has the effect to change the mood. We dedicate (almost) every Saturday morning to cleaning our apartment and doing our grocery shopping. To enjoy ourselves more while we dust our shelves and clean the bathroom, we usually get one of our computers out and blast some music. It is even better when it is a sunny day and we have all of the windows open letting the fresh air in.

This playlist I first made as a smooth driving tunes mix that would satisfy both our parents and us when I am in the drivers seat (yes, we are 19 and still on our L's). However, I discovered that the mix also works well with cooking and cleaning. I added a few songs, and now we have the perfect domestic task playlist filled with many old and new tunes for easy listening, and dancing around singing into your broom. 

WARNING: There is a lot of adult contemporary on here. 




 




What are some of your favourite mixes or playlists?


Stay Gold,
Claire & Grace x
--

p.s What? you can embed Spotify playlists?! Well this is just a game changer.

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. 

Tuesday, 3 November 2015

WHERE HAVE WE BEEN?!

We're back!


 My oh my has it been a while since we have made a post. We are truly, terribly sorry about that. Trust us when we say that over the past two months we have been thinking about this little 'ol blog and coming up with new ideas to make it bigger and better. It is just that our lives just got way too busy during the last weeks of semester that we couldn't fit in anything else but study, work and volunteering. 

However, have no fear! We finally made it to the end of the semester. I finished on Monday, and Claire finishes tonight. This means that we have four, glorious months to get this blog back up and running. We have plenty of exciting things planned, so stay tuned!

Before we get ready for our second year of Graceful and Claire, we need to catch you up on what we has kept us so busy while we were away.

Enjoy! I will see you again soon. 
(I promise)


The sun finally came out and this photo was taken just to commemorate that. 


We went to our first Uni Ball together! Unlike other student society balls where you actually dress all fancy like, us Arts students prefer to have fancy dress. The theme was 'Please Don't Stop the Music', which of course we took to mean *Mrs Darbus voice* 'Please Don't Stop the Musi-cal'. Taking advantage of our new hair colours, we dressed up as Elphaba and Glinda! Classic Grace and Claire.



Since we moved to Melbourne, we have decided to make it a tradition to see at least one ballet a year. Last year we saw the contemporary ballet Chroma (which was amazing!). This year we decided to go more traditional and see Sleeping Beauty with Miriam and Elektra. It was a truly beautiful night, and I am so glad we got to experience it with some of our closest friends.


Claire was Publicity Manager for a uni student production, which mean organisng the photoshoot and all other publicity. Emails on emails on emails.  
This was a behind-the-scenes shot she took while the Facebook cover photo was taken. 



This semester I started volunteering at an art gallery, and it has been one of the best things to happen this semester. I am extremely grateful for the experiences and connections I am gaining. Plus, the free pizza and wine leftover from the bar after an opening always goes down well. 


What a beautifully candid typical-uni-experience photo of Claire and her two friends working on a group assignment on the lawn. The photo is so typical it needed to be included. 



(Side note: I got glasses! Yep, over the weeks I could read my lectures less and less until it got to the point where it was ridiculous. I don't need to wear them all the time, but without my glasses my vision is analog, while with them I have HD vision. Who would have thought?!)



Oh my word, was this night a goody. As part of the Melbourne Festival, Flight Facilities and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performed together for a concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. It was our first event at the Bowl and it totally looked different from watching Carols by Candlelight every year. We have loved Flight Facilities for years since we discovered the RAC remix of Crave You and found out that the original was so totally our style. Also, the MSO has had a special place in our hearts since the days when we played musical instruments. Together, it was purely magical and atmospheric. It was hands down the best musical experience of my life so far. (Sorry Taylor Swift).


(such lovely faces)


Once again typical of Arts students, in week 12 the Arts Student Society at our Uni held a Week 12 Carnival. We spent an extended 2-hour lunch break standing in various lines to score as much free food as we could, and even took part in the face (or rather, hand) painting on offer. 


This photo was taken at opening night of the show Claire worked on! The guys is one of her good theatre friends, Peter, who is amazing and has helped keep her as sane as you can be when it comes to theatre. Looking fab.  



What is the point of finishing an essay if you cannot share it with everyone via your snapchat story? (Featuring my glasses I probably didn't need to be wearing to make me look smarter).


Not the best photo to document the experience, but in between Claire's show opening and swotvac, Claire volunteered at the Girls on Film Festival! If you know Claire personally or saw this post back in April, you will know that Claire is very passionate about women in film, television and theatre. Also, after her volunteer gig at the Melbourne International Film Festival in July, Claire has been hooked onto the film festival bug. So this opportunity was basically a dream come true. One of the says she volunteered was an event called Girl Germs which was kind of like a fete for young feminist babes. Two Riot Grrrl bands (the Girl Fridas and Miss Miss) played, there was lots of glitter, DIY badges, zine, derby girls, a nail art station, you name it. It was a magical experience. this photo is the merchandise table Claire was stationed at. 




At the start of swotvac we went home to visit the parents, watch The Great Australian Bake Off, and get our hair done. However, essays stop for no woman and with a week until Claire had two essays due and one not even started yet, we had to utilize every moment. Including trains and hairdresser appointments. (It was very productive)




Claire was nominated the a student theatre award for Excellent Offstage! She didn't win :( but she was the only publicity manager/assistant stage manager nominated, so it's basically a win.
Claire was also (on the same night) appointed to be an officer in the committee of her student theatre group for 2016! Yay Claire!


(Claire has been busy) 
Back in July/August, Claire submitted a piece calling out the lack of female representation in one of her cinema studies classes to the women's department magazine at Uni at last week it got published! How great is that illustration?


Halloween was this past weekend and what is more in the Halloween spirit than realising that you had absolutely no food while it was pouring rain outside and you don't have a car? So I donned my loved Bean Boots and trusty bright yellow IKEA umbrella (similar linked) and trekked down to the grocery store. We also ducked into the local video store to hire some festive family movies to watch while we wrote our essays.

Stay gold,
Grace.


Sunday, 20 September 2015

Our Spring/Summer Wishlist 2015





check shirt | anchor shorts | tan sandalsshirt dress

These upcoming warmer months, I am looking forward to exploring my blue and white with a splash of colour (I'm feeling pink for this season, perhaps some mustard yellow, too) palette into my S/S wardrobe. The pyjama set from H&M are to die for! The only thing that could make them total perfection is if they were monogrammed. I also refuse to let go of jelly sandals as the shoe for Summer. They are such a classic! I am planning on keeping the trend going with jellies in black, white, and maybe pink too.

In case you have not noticed, I like to keep things classic in my style, with a few surprises here and there. The shorts, also from H&M would look perfect with a button down, while the neon pink cross body will be my go-to bag for day adventures.

The blue and white dress is definitely my splurge item. I was walking past French Connection when I saw the most beautiful dress in the window. Automatically I walked inside the store to have a closer look, and guys, oh my word was it amazing. French Connection is actually really appealing to my aesthetics at the moment. The dress is a bit out of my usual price range, but I know that I will definitely get my wear out of it. So it is totally a valid investment, right? 






This combination of items are making me hearteyes all over the place. 

This season I am feeling a lot of white with my blue denim high-waisted shorts, black shoes, and I am determined to make the swing dress work for me. I am such a mid-20th century aesthetics kinda gal, (60s and 70s I ADORE) so I am 100% here for the return of the 70s right now. Bring me all the bell sleeves!


We had a ball creating this post! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. As the new seasons come in and when Uni comes to a close for another year we are excited to start creating more fashion/style posts for the future.

What trends are you looking forward to rocking this Spring/Summer?

Stay gold,
G & C