Mr Smaggle and I have spontaneously decided to head to the coast tonight instead of tomorrow so my New Year’s Eve post is coming to you a day earlier… and is sharing with my daily outfit post. 

* Dress from Tree of Life 

* Shoes from Nine West

* Bangle from Equip

* Men’s watch from Fossil 

* Earrings by Bouvier from Bijoux

* Wheelie bin necklace from Roomy Smaggle

Today I bought a blender, spent some quality time with the Wii Fit and had a few cheeky gins on the balcony with my girl Na. Pleasant day. 

As this is my last post for 2009 lets say goodbye to the past year and acknowledge the things we did, the lessons we learned and how they changed us…

In 2009 I…

* Moved away from my home city.

* Left the nest (the Smaggle house) for (technically) the first time.

* Drove on a long distance trip all by myself. 

* Experienced the first year of my tw0 year long distance relationship. And we kicked its arse. 

* Celebrated three years with my gorgeous man. 

* Was featured in four magazines. February 2009 Cosmopolitan, December 2009 Cleo, January 2010 Cleo and August Bust. 

* Overtook a tram driving in Melbourne. 

* Bought furniture. 

* Completed a Diploma in Engineering in Jewellery Design. Advanced Diploma coming up in 2010. 

* Taught teenaged rapists in a jail.

* Lived with someone who is not related to me or in a relationship with me. And loved it. 

* Paid rent for a full year without going broke/crying/borrowing money. 

* Networked my butt off and got permanent part time work teaching special kids for 2010. 

* Learned to love wine.

* Was sadder and happier than I have ever been in my life. 

* Discovered that all of my problems can be solved with karaoke, dumplings and vodka with apple juice. 

* Realised that, given a space to call my own, I’m quite the homemaker. 

What about you chicken pie? What did you do this year?

As nostalgic and teary as I seem about 2009… I am so freaking glad it’s over. The horrible parts were ghastly. The amazing parts were incredible but scarcer than I would have liked and the rest of it was pretty ordinary and often frustrating. 

See you 2009! Happy New Year angels! Can’t wait to see you back here in 2010. 

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

Etsy

1.Your camera has replaced your face.

2. You self-narrate your day Carrie Bradshaw style

3. You justify buying damaged clothes because ‘it will never show up on the blog’.

4.When you use spell check you realise you’ve spelled ‘winter’ as ‘wintour’. Six times.

5. You’ve taken your daily outfit shot against the same wall so many times that when your friends come over they’re all ‘Oh my god. Is that THE WALL???’

6. When you mention Susie Bubble in a conversation you’re shocked that no one knows who she is.

7. You can’t pose for family holiday snaps without going pigeon toed and tossing your hair across your face.

8. You know your regular readers so well that you get worried when they don’t comment. ‘Hmmmm…. Nadist hasn’t commented on my outfit today. I hope nothing has happened to her…’

9. Your close friends and family have adopted your alias. I must have received at least 5 Christmas presents addressed to ‘Lady Smaggle’.

10. You still miss Style Bytes.

What about you Miss or Mr Blogger? Any strange behaviours you’ve adopted as a result of your blog?

Love Lady Smaggle (…she typed thoughtfully, head cocked to one side, sipping vegetable juice and absentmindedly scratching her left foot with her right one…)

xxx

Don’t you just HATE it when you have a house full of stuff that you just don’t need? And none of your friends want it? And you couldn’t be arsed taking it to Vinnies? And it’s just too good to throw away? This awesome new site (made by Mr Smaggle! Squeal!) Yoink lets you list all your unwanted stuff to be ‘yoinked’ by someone who really wants it! It’s a non-profit site that helps everyone re-use, recycle and embrace green living.

It’s too freaking easy for me to bother explaining how to use it so just visit the site and have a wander. There’s free range eggs, car parts, clothes, kids toys, jewellery… it’s awesome.

So you can give, get, not spend a cent and keep your unwanted items from becoming landfill. It’s like Ebay for free stuff!

The Yoink guys are also a running a competition where if you submit one of the first 10, 000 items you go into the running to win a $1000 Amazon gift card!

Oh and the iPhone application is on its way in January… so you can just wander around your house, take a photo on your iPhone and post it straight to Yoink. Couldn’t be easier.

Please spread the word!

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

P.S. Oh and please do comment and let Mr Smaggle know what you think!

Once again I totally overslept but it was amazing. Spent the day doing some long overdue ‘boring’ shopping. I bought some Wii Fit accessories that I’ve been meaning to buy and a big, black, chunky man watch which is my Christmas gift to myself. Still on the hunt for a blender… I think that will be tomorrow’s mission.

* Dress thrifted in Canberra

* Singlet top from Country Road

* Sandals from Marco Gianni

* Head wrap is actually a belt from a thrifted top

* Earrings from Girlprops

* Necklace made from a coin from Poppy Smaggle

Oh and big huge service win to the gorgeous guy at Raw Sugar who not only took on my princess request for a cold soy latte (NOT a calorie laden iced coffee) but actually replaced it FREE OF CHARGE when he found out that I dropped and spilled it all over the floor at Fossil. It totally made my day. Smaggle salutes you Coffee Cutie from Raw Sugar!

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

P.S Whoa. Here I am wearing the SAME DRESS two years ago with the SAME SHOES. I clearly need to go shopping. Oh and here I am wearing it with boots. Not too shabby for a $6 thrifted dress.

Today I slept in, drank fresh juice for breakfast, made delicious salads for lunch, went for a jog to my parents house and read books. The perfect day to cure the Christmas hangover. We are just about to head back to the Smaggle’s house for dinner and a movie. 

* Dress from… a shop in Clifton Hill in Melbourne. A hippy Tree of Life kind of shop. 

* Cardigan from Valley Girl 

* Cuff from Mr Smaggle’s parents from Paris

* Earrings from Mamma Smaggle for Christmas 

* Shoes from Nine West

How about you? How are you spending your glorious days between Christmas and New Year?

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

Lady and Mr Smaggle on a motorbike from Lady Smaggle on Vimeo.

Lady loves…

* Spending Christmas day drinking wine with my aunty and uncle in their swanky Sydney terrace apartment, playing board games and laughing.

* Eating ham, prawns and chicken on Boxing Day with Daddy Smaggle’s family watching DVDs and eating my body weight in home made Rocky Road ice cream.

* Long car drives eating snacks and singing too loudly. 

* Riding the motorbike with Mr Smaggle on his family’s farm. See video. I am enjoying myself I swear.

* Eating chocolates and drinking coffee on misty Sunday afternoons.

* Mr Smaggle’s mum buying me gorgeous presents from her trip to Paris.

* Doing a three day liver cleanse. I have been drinking vegetable juice and eating salads all day. I feel amazing. 

* Going to the coast for New Year’s Eve. Can’t wait. 

* Having days off to plan, ponder, read and write. 

* Planning to hit up the sales. I’m going to buy a watch, a blender and some pretty summer frocks. 

What about you pie face? Anything lovely to share? How was your Christmas day?

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

* It is impossible to maintain good sleeping patterns while working two six-day weeks in a row. I sleep in far too late on Sunday and ruin my sleep routine for the following week. 

* It is hilarious when someone hits their head really hard on a shelf. It doesn’t even matter if they’ve really hurt themselves it’s still hilarious. 

*  Daily fresh fruit juice, despite it making me feel AMAZING, makes me gain weight. Veggie juice from now then thank you very much.

* No matter how little work I have to do in a day I ALWAYS leave something for last minute. It makes me feel really busy and important.

* Boy troubles will turn a glass of wine with Browny (click here to find out who she is if you’re new) into a bottle of gin, dumplings, dancing to bad 80’s covers and passing out on the bathroom floor. Pre-planned.

* I’m really impatient.

* Checking Facebook ten times in the day when I’m really, really bored doesn’t make anything interesting appear there. This fact does not make me stop doing it.

* Teenagers have no manners.

* Neither do old people.

* I really need a holiday.

What about you muffin pie? Anything fun you discovered today?

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

Etsy

Spreading the love in the blogosphere… just a few little clicky things to distract you from the monster list of crap that you have to do before Christmas day…

* I want to try this DIY.

* Daddy Likey brings us Top 5 Style Lesson’s Learned in Colleen’s Closet. A very grounding article about how to organise your wardrobe.

* The Biege Series photos from Fashion Filler are so very pretty.

* Facehunter does fashion porn Buenos Aires style.

* Clients from Hell is my new favourite blog.

* This is what I would look like if I was really really cool.

* My lovely friend Kate has started her own blog and I took her photo yesterday against the Smaggle wall. Awesome.

* So I’m totally late on this one but I love Swissmiss.

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

Image

A wee little while ago Sarah Von from Yes and Yes suggested that we ‘cross-pollinate’ on our blogs. Dirty. Obviously I couldn’t refuse. I’m over at Yes and Yes spreading my seed today so do go and visit… and stay and read the whole damn thing because Miss Von is a genius. She has fab tips on productivity, postivity and general joy and sunshine. You’ll love her! Oh and I JUST received her super awesome calendar in the mail and it’s flippin’ sweet. Meanwhile here is a guest post that she wrote for yours truly… do we feel special yet? I think SO…

A Story About A Melt Down:
Last year, I spent three months backpacking around South America.  I left America with half-hearted assurance that I’d have a job when I returned and a shaky relationship with my long-term boyfriend.  We’d been together for two and a half years and were quickly reaching that ‘break up or get married’ stage.  The Boyfriend headed back to America after six weeks and I stayed in Peru, sorting out my feelings about him, my job and my life back in America.

April rolled around and I found myself trapped in a mountain town in Peru, unhappily single, facing the prospect of returning to no job, no apartment and no partner.  Instead of hiking glaciers or patting llamas, I stalked the streets of Huaraz stuck inside my head, wondering how I’d managed to make such a mess of my life.

Seriously?  Just writing about that time in my life makes me break a sweat.

But despite the rather epic problems that were facing me, I clung (rather desperately) to the belief that there’s a solution to nearly every problem.  Maybe I wouldn’t like the solution.  Maybe I wouldn’t feel ready to take the steps necessary to reach that solution, but a solution was out there.

And here is how I managed to stop freaking out, calm down and find the solutions to (what felt like) the many, many problems in my life:  I made a list.

I drew a line down the middle of my paper and began bullet pointing all of the problems in my life at that time.
* Might not have a job to go back to
* Don’t have an apartment to go back to
* Not sure if I can afford my own place
* Spent all my money traveling
* Completely ruined by this break up

And then to the right of each bullet point, I began listing all of the ways I could solve these problems.  I listed realistic, probable solutions.  Ridiculous solutions.  Things that would work but I was afraid to do.  Anything that I thought would help.

*Might not have a job to go back to
1. Start job hunting online right now
2. Update resume
3. See if any friends know about jobs
4. Get a temp job
5. Waitress at The Lexington
6. Screw America, just move to Japan from Peru
7. Move back in with parents

Even just writing down all of these options calmed me immensely.  Realistically, I knew that where there’s the proverbial will there’s a way, but for me – and I think for most people – when you’re crushed and wound up and depressed your mind just runs in circles of ever increasing anxiety, in which all roads lead to a van down by the river. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcR7hr4LLQg) It’s important to acknowledge the choices that we have, even if we’re unsure that we want to make them.

How do you deal when you’re having a melt down?

Etsy

* Go wild on pay day. Just this once spend ALL your money on prettiness? Go to your favourite shop and buy everything your heart desires? Buy an entire outfit? Including shoes? Underwear? Perfume?

* Host an evening of only entrees? Invite your dearest ladies to drink champagne and nibble on tiny morsels with no promise of a main course? Perhaps choose a theme of Asian cuisine? Duck with peking sauce wrapped in lettuce leaves? Tiny boxes of Vietnamese noodles? Sashimi? Rice paper rolls?

* Wear high heels EVERYWHERE for one full week? Tuck a pair of ballet flats in your bag for emergencies?

* Pack your lunch everyday? Chickpea and eggplant salad? Roasted sweet potato with sesame seeds and rosemary? A rosy red apple for your snack? A tiny package of nuts and dried cranberries?

* Hi-jack your workmates diary? Leave them cheery little notes on random dates? Scatter the pages with butterfly stickers?

* Rent a movie that you know NOTHING about? Head to the thriller section and pick out one based purely on the title? Watch it on a Saturday night in eating peppermint chocolates and drinking red wine?

* Be divine? Drink a glass sauvignon blanc with your lunch?

* Embrace the beautiful weather? Don’t leave the house without a fresh blossom tucked in your hair?

Be gorgeous!

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx