Summer, You Make Me Happy

Last week Tom and I decided to head down south to Margaret River. It's so nice to get away for a bit, even just for a few days, and Margaret River is truly one of my favourite places in the world.

On the way down we stopped in Busselton to stretch our legs, and while we did contemplate walking the jetty, seeing as it's 1841m long (the longest wooden piled jetty in the Southern Hemisphere) and it was a crazy hot day, we decided to save ourselves from sunburn and leave that for next time. 

Instead, we had a lovely little stroll along the beach, while indulging in some delicious Simmo's ice-cream. 

Tom can be such a little kid sometimes and gets very excited about ice-cream - you can tell from the giant smile on his face that he was pretty darn happy about it! :)

I had the Orange Choc-Chip flavour and it was soo good! 

Ahh Summer... blue skies, beautiful beaches, sand between you toes, melting hot days and scrumptious ice-cream to cool you down ...

Life doesn't get better than this! 

Lots of Love

Lauren

xxx

Top - H&M

Shorts - Cotton On

Hat - Sportsgirl

Bag - Jigsaw

PS - A bit random, but I found a pretty cool time-lapse video of melting ice-cream. It's quite hypnotic! 

The Liebster Award

The other week I was lucky enough to be nominated for the Liebster Award by not one, but two lovely bloggers - Chloe from Chloe Marie and Rachel from Where She Goes, so thank you so much!

The post would be a little bit lengthy if I answered all their questions, so instead I've picked my favourites from each of them. Hopefully you guys don't mind!

A little background - I did a bit of googling, and apparently "Liebster" is a German word meaning beloved/kind/dearest/sweetest,  and the The Liebster Award is a way of giving newer bloggers, or those who maybe haven't had as much recognition as they deserve a little bit of love. It's a great way to find out more about them, as well as a great way to discover some new blogs to read!

The Liebster Award rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and link them in the post

2. Answer the questions provided by your nominator

3. Nominate 11 other bloggers, all with under 200 followers, and link them in the post also

4. Create 11 new questions for your nominees to answer

5. Notify all your nominees through a form of social media, such as leaving a comment on their most recent blog post

Okay - let's jump into the questions!

1. What's your favourite thing about blogging?

I'm not sure about what my absolute favourite thing is, but I just enjoy the chance it gives me to be a little more creative, and I find the whole blogging process in general really fun. I like coming up with different ideas, taking photos, putting posts together and just making my little corner of the internet as pretty (and hopefully inspiring) as possible.

At the moment my blog is mostly my "style diary" and very outfit-post heavy because these are the easiest and quickest posts for me to put together, but I have so many different ideas that I'd like to include on here (recipes, beauty, more general lifestyle content) so I really need to make the time to blog more!

2. If dying your hair had no effect, what colour would you go?

Pink! (but probably not all over, just the ends!)

3. If you could share one piece of advice, what would it be?

Be kind to people and try not to judge anyone... you never know what's going on in someone else's life. This is something I've particularly realised lately.

4. Summer or Winter?

Summer... always summer
Everything's just that little bit easier, simpler, more relaxed and generally just more fun!

5. What are your goals for 2015?

There are a few but the main one is to not let worrying about what people think stress me out and stop me from doing what I want to do.
I also want to read more and learn at least one new song on the ukelele (a recent hobby). There are others but I don't really feel like putting those on the blog right now :)

6. If everything was free for a day, which five shops would you visit?

A tricky one, but off the top of my head - Tigerlily (they have such beautiful pieces), Mecca Cosmetica, Country Road, Kikki.K (I am a stationery nerd!) and Chanel - I don't think I'll ever own a Chanel bag, but maybe if everything was free?? hehe... a girl can dream :)

7. Favourite hobby?

In the past few years blogging has worked it's way up as one of my favourites, but if I had to choose just one it would be reading. There's nothing more relaxing than curling up with a good book and getting lost in another world. I used to constantly have my nose in a book but I don't read nearly as much as I would like to these days!

8. What's your favourite book?

It's way to hard to pick just one so I'm going to list off a few that I've loved and that are sitting on my bookshelf - Harry Potter (of course), The Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody, An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, The Silent Shore by Ruth Elwin Harris, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman. I recently finished reading  A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness and that was pretty good too!

9. Favourite Album of 2014?

Taylor Swift's 1989

10. Who is the most important person (or people) in your life?

My family, Tom (my boyfriend) and my best friends (stereotypical answer, but it's true!)

11. Where in the world do you want to visit?

There are so many places, but I think the next place I want to visit is Scandinavia

My Nominations
(I mostly went off Bloglovin stats so I'm sorry if you have more than 200!)

SoInspo, Beauty Inside Art,  Spice Up Your Beauty, Diaries Of a Sunflower, In The Dress Up Box, They Call Me Tania, By Emmanuella,  Ohh My Elle, LBBSTEPH, A Cup of Jessicated Coconut, Nicole Coltman,  

My Questions:

1. Why did you start blogging?

2. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be?

3. Favourite TV shows?

4. What cheers you up if you've had a really bad day?

5. If you could only eat one type of food for the rest of your life what would it be?

6. If you could meet anyone (dead or alive), who would it be?

7. A quote you love?

8. Your guilty pleasure?

9. What song best describes you and your personality?

10. What is your favourite post that you've written? (and link it if you can)

11. If you could have one magical power, what would it be?

Also  I just wanted to mention that I got the picture up the top from the beautiful blog Stylish Sunrise. I didn't nominate her because she just recently did a liebster award post but I wanted to mention her anyway! Also just a quick mention to Lizzy Hearts who nominated me for a Liebster Award ages ago and I never had the chance to do it!

Lots of Love

Lauren

xxx

My Style Diary - Black, Gold and Gingham

Hello hello :)

I hope you've had a good Monday - I'm officially back to work tomorrow and I keep fluctuating between feelings of dread at the thought of jumping into a whole new year and excitement to be getting back into things and being an actual functioning, productive human being again! I really have no reason to complain (I've had a good long break), but there's always a bit of sadness at the end of holidays. Ah well...

Anyway, I thought I'd share with you these photos from Thursday.
Funny story - on Thursday night I was all ready to  go out for dinner with two of my friends who I haven't seen in ages... I was just walking out the door when I texted one of my friends saying "See you soon!" to which the reply was "Errr...it's next Thursday??"

D'oh!!!!
Silly Lauren!

At least I had a chance to take some blog photos... and now I get to look forward to dinner with them this week :)

Happy Monday!

Lot's of Love
Lauren
xxx

Top - Kookai

Skort - Zara

Heels - Country Road

Bag - Mimco

Watch - Calvin Klein

My Style Diary - White Lace, Denim Shorts

Can you tell what my favourite outfits are yet?

A white (preferably lacy) top and denim is always my go to, and I could quite happily live in variations of this all year round. This beautiful one from Forever New has been a staple in my wardrobe for years and has somehow hardly appeared on the blog. Not sure how that happened but I think it's a sign I have far too many clothes! 

Streamlining my wardrobe is actually something I'm in the process of doing right now. I'm in one of those phases where clutter has just been overwhelming me and I really want to just cut down and simplify everything! I've been reading a lot of blogs about minimalism lately, and although I'm sure I'll never be a "true minimalist", I do really like the idea of it. 

I'm planning on writing a few posts about this at some point so I'm sure you'll hear about my progress soon enough!

Lots of Love

Lauren

xxx

Top - Forever New

Shorts - Zara

Sandals - Therapy Shoes

My Style Diary - Cold Shoulder

The cold shoulder trend is one I've never been hugely fond of. Not to say that I hate it, it's more that I always thought it was a bit of a weird concept - hello burnt shoulders and strange tan lines!

When I saw this top on Asos a few years ago though, I fell in love with the gorgeous colours and pattern so decided to give it a try. It's been one of my favourites ever since and the cold shoulder style adds a bit of interest and makes it a little different.

To be honest I would probably get more use out of it if it was just a regular t-shirt but we can't  always have everything perfect! :)

What do you think of the cold shoulder trend?

Lauren

xxx

Top - Asos

Jeans - Siwy

Sandals - Therapy Shoes

Bag - Trenery

My Style Diary - The dress that didn't quite make it...

Heya :)

I have a bit of a backlog of photos to go through at the moment so today I actually have some to share that were taken before Christmas!

This is what I was planning on wearing out to dinner with friends, but typical Lauren ended up changing at the last minute, so this dress never quite made it out the door! I have this annoying "fear" (that's not really the right word for it... "dislike" might be a better one) of being overdressed, so I always tend to err on the more casual side (it's my comfort zone). Sadly though this does mean that some of my more fancy clothes don't get as much use as they should - definitely something I'm going to try and rectify this year! 

This cute little dress from Dotti has had it's fair share of outings though, I just don't think any of them have actually made it to the blog yet!

I hope you've had a lovely Sunday :)

Lots of Love

Lauren

xxx

Dress - Dotti

Heels - Zara

New Years Eve Picnic in the Park

The perfect way to ring in the New Year - good company, a delicious picnic and one of the most stunning views in Perth.

Today I have a double outfit post as my friend Emily was kind enough to let me snap a few photos of her.  I love her outfit and the slight French feel it has (particularly appropriate as her gorgeous boyfriend Francois is actually from France!)

There must be something about French shoes too as both our sandals happen to be from there. Mine are so old I actually don't know what brand they are, but Em's are from Les Tropeziennes and were apparently "all the rage" when she was in Paris in the summer of 2012 - Em spent a whole year living there on exchange - the lucky thing!

We had a really relaxing New Years Eve eating far too much food and just chilling out in King's Park.

Though I would love to spend New Years in Paris one day, I think we have to agree that 

when you live somewhere as beautiful as Perth, there really is no place like home :) 

I hope you had a great New Years Eve (I know this is a little late!)

Lots of Love

Lauren

xxx

Emily's Outfit

Top - Marks and Spencer

Cardigan - Marks and Spencer

Skirt - Portmans

Sandals - Les Tropeziennes

My Outfit

Top - Marcs

Jeans - Siwy

Sandals - From Paris

Necklace - Colette by Colette Hayman

December in Pictures

Here we are again with my little monthly round up.

There were (as there usually are) good and bad parts of December, but as I've said many times before - the thing I love about Instagram is how it allows us to capture the good times so that looking back can bring a smile to your face :) 

I hope you had a fabulous December and a great start to 2015!

Lauren

xxx

My Style Diary - Murder Mystery

Hello!

For my first outfit post of 2015 I thought I'd share a rather glamorous outfit that I wore for a Murder Mystery dinner party about a week ago. It was a really fun night with friends, and something a little different to your usual dinner party. The game we played was "How to Host a Murder - The Last Train From Paris", which you can check out here if you're interested.

My character's suggested costume was something "frilly, flowing and dripping in jewels" so I thought a sparkly top, long flowing skirt and a statement necklace would be appropriate. I love costume parties as they are a great excuse to dress up and pull out those pieces that you don't always get a chance to wear in everyday life. This sequinned top has been waiting patiently for the perfect occasion, and it finally had it's chance to shine the other night. It's one of those "special pieces" that, although it may not be worn very frequently, is always going to have it's place in my wardrobe for night's like this. 

Have you ever attended a Murder Mystery party? 

If not I definitely recommend holding one - they're really fun!

Lauren

xxx

Top - Forever New

Skirt - Forever New

Necklace - Colette by Colette Hayman

Ring - Forever New

Heels - Zara