Dreaming of Vintage Treasures

My favourite outfits of 2023! Dressing up is so fun to me. And I find dresses, coats, boots, sandals, vintage bags, a nice necklace and sunglasses are my go-to items to wear. Thanks so much for visiting my blog this year. See you in 2024. Which outfit is your favourite? X   Title :  Simply the Best  by Tina Turner.

 The last time I'd been to the Collingwood Farm was years ago, on my birthday, in a time long before my blog days. Looking through my old posts, I've just realised that I began blogging in April 2018, so it's been 5 years, how time flies!   My family and I used to like walking around, looking at the animals, vegetables and fruit trees at the Collingwood farm. A few weeks ago, my mum and I returned and enjoyed a walk through the gardens.   I wore my new Kmart dress. I love this style of dress on me, with the square neckline and shirring. And the colour is nice too! I bought another gingham dress from Kmart in the last 12 months, I reckon one of the designers has a thing for gingham like me.   With some brown boots, my vintage fluffy bag, my mum's sunnies and a rose quartz pendant I found at a market, my outfit was complete! Dresses are so easy. Add some cute shoes and a bag, and you're pretty much ready to go.     I loved seeing the autumnal leaves turn...

   Happy Monday! Here in Melbourne, we have the day off for the Queen's birthday long weekend. I've been glued to my laptop this weekend, working on my students' reports, so it was nice to have a break and get out of the house yesterday. My family and I went for a drive to Diggers Rest.      We are people from the suburbs so naturally we take photos by bales of hay when we come across them!  We spotted some cute sheep and adorable lambs, who were a bit camera shy, probably wondering who are these strange people and why are they taking photos of us ?    Right where I was standing, there was actually a small monument dedicated to Harry Houdini, who flew the first flying contraption in Australia in these fields in 1910.   For lunch, we stopped off at the Keilor Pub Hotel. My sister and I were so hungry after all the driving around and both enjoyed our burgers. She had a vegan burger with sweet potato fries and I had a spicy chicken ...

Have you ever read The Catcher in the Rye ? It's one hell of a book.  I discovered it when I was doing a writing course, before I became a teacher. I was the youngest uni student in the class and felt a bit inadequate as I hadn't read many of the great classics that my teacher spoke about with tremendous revere. So what I did was, I'd note the books she mentioned  and then I got around to reading some of them. On that list was The Catcher in the Rye and now it's easily one of my favourite books. I pulled out my old J.D Salinger related books after reading Catcher . As one of the most infamous writers of the 20th century, he has often been portrayed as a reclusive, bizarre person. In these two books, his daughter and ex-girlfriend mostly paint him in a negative light which is always disappointing for a reader. Although, I think you have to be a bit unorthodox to write a book like this. Certainly you have to be a bit mad to understand let alone enjoy this book. If you...

A couple of weeks ago, my family and I went on a walking tour around the city of Melbourne. You may be wondering why we took a tour of our own city. Well, last year when we visited Sydney , we had so much fun doing a bus and walking tour , that my sister was keen to do another walking tour.   I was familiar with some of the places but many were new to me, I'm not really a city girl. It was interesting to listen to the guide tell us the history of different places and he said that often a lot of the good places are hidden away in alleyways. Apparently Melbournians like to keep treasures to themselves!  At the end of the tour, the guide mentioned that at St Kilda beach, penguins come out every evening. We made a mental note to visit. The next weekend, I'd spent most of my Saturday doing work for reports and afterwards, I was really tired and a bit stressed. So my dad announced, "All right everybody, I've got a surprise, we're going somewhere!" ...