This has got to be the cutest thing I have ever seen!

Just take a look at these cupcakes with "knitted" marzipan decorations!
I found them quite by chance on Vegan Yum Yum.
In her very next post, she teaches you how to make them... ADORABLE! And even more adorable seeing as I'm going through a "woolly" phase with my crochet... I love it!

Here's that guy from Perfume.

Okay... His name is Ben Whishaw. He was born in 1980 and is British. He's been a bit of an acting prodigy since he was little, so it's no big surprise to people in the industry that he completely outshone Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman in the movie. They tried their very best to make him look ugly, but YIKES! I think I might be in love! I actually think that I might have a thing for strange looking men. The moodier, the better it seems.
Before Ben there was Joaquin Phoenix, so that should tell you!
And remember that time I was in love with Anthony Bourdain? Weird.

Hey! I've been a busy girl...

Hey bloggers! A thousand apologies for not keeping in touch. I've been busy doing loads of stuff... But that's no excuse! I've been in quite a weird emotional place lately. I put the crochet aside for a while. I stopped reading. I ran out of things to say on my blog, even though I was doing loads of stuff. I even stopped sending my cell-to-blog pics on my other blog "My life in pictures".
What's wrong, who knows?
Anyway!
I'm trying to get back on track, so let me start by giving you the low-down on some of my latest escapades.
First, I simply had to see Perfume, the movie.

If you remember I read and reviewed the book for book club just lately and LOVED it. So when I heard that the movie was out, I made sure I checked it out. Well! Two hours and fifteen minutes, makes for one sore bum, but wow! The movie was awesome! I felt that they managed to stay quite true to the book. I didn't really know how they were going to fit all of that cool literary stuff into a little movie, but they did. (I guess that's why it was that long!) But the best part for me was the lead guy, Ben Whishaw... Good heavens! The protagonist in the book is often referred to as "The Tick", so how they possibly cast this dream boat is beyond me! Sure... He looked a little creepy at times, and yes he was very VERY grimy and dirty, but DAMN! I'll be posting some pics of him... so watch this space!
The very next day I was off to the Arno Carstens concert at the Botanic Gardens. Arno was a bit of a let down, but the company was great and the drinks were flowing, so altogether it was a really awesome afternoon! We were even blessed with great weather on an otherwise wet weekend. Just check out the blue sky above this big fat tree...

A few days later, I was off to book club with the girls. Damn good as always! This time we had dinner at The Ulundi, an Indian restaurant at The Royal Hotel. The food was outstanding... Butternut and feta samoosas, biltong blue cheese and onion marmalade samoosas!! Wow! I took just 2 books this month and DAMMIT I plan on reading them. In fact, I've already started! These aren't my books, but you get the idea... Lots of pages, a cover, etc etc etc...

And THEN I went to my friend, Janet's baby shower this weekend. What a jorl! She was totally surprised by it all and really didn't see it coming! Everyone was so generous with the gifts and food as you can see...

The baby's dad, Wayne, is determined to turn this kid into a rock star like himself, whether it's a boy or a girl. So I bought the baby a baby grow that has the AC|DC logo on it, but it says AB|CD... HILARIOUS! (Damn! How could I forget to take a picture of it! I'll have to get one when baby's actually wearing it. S/he's due in 6 week's time. I'll keep you posted!)

Waiting for the groom...

In the Muslim culture, when a couple is getting married, the groom and other men attending the wedding meet at the mosque to legalise and bless the wedding, while the women wait with the bride at the reception for the men to arrive. In other words, the beautiful bride, in her stunning wedding dress and veil waits for her groom to arrive, and by the time her gets there, they are already married.
Sabrina does this thing were she sits at the kitchen window every morning, looking out over the garden. The curtain falls over her head and shoulders, making her look like she's wearing a veil...
On mornings like these, my mom always whispers to us as she walks past, "Just look at the pretty Muslim bride waiting for her groom...I hope he doesn't let her down!"

ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT SUSHI FOR R99?! I'm in!

Now I KNOW that Tony Bourdaine said you should NEVER have the half-price sushi... But when I saw John Dory's Fish and Grill's latest offer I just had to give it a try:
All you can eat sushi & BOTTOMLESS glass of wine for R99!
Too good to be true, right?
Stale, old fish, hey?
Salmon conveniently "out-of-stock", hmmmm?
NOT A CHANCE!
Last night I had one of the BEST sushi dinners of my life, and it wasn't just the almost free wine and brilliant company! The sushi was phenomenal. The Gateway John Dory's was packed out, - a good sign! I must have had 3 glasses of wine and that was enough. (Sushi is HARDLY filling, so it's easy to get sloshed on a few glasses of plonky wine! Hey... I'm not complaining!) And the salmon was like butter... Divine!
If you're a sushi lover (like me!) then give it a try. It's well, WELL worth it!
Great job, John Dory's!

Check it out! I'm a red-hot INSTANT blogger...

What an exciting weekend this has been, playing with my new cell phone... The instant blogging is fantastic. The first time you select the "blog" function when "sending" a pic, Sony Ericsson creates a new blog for you and smses you the log in details so that you can manage your mobile blog just like you would any other. When logging in the first time, you have the option of keeping the new blog, or sending future blogged pics to any existing blog, if you already have one...
I've chosen to keep the new blog, and here it is! I'm going to keep it as a photo-diary blog, - just a pic a day to document whatever is going on in my life...
I'm still getting the hang of the camera, so I've taken about a million fuzzy pics, but being able to plug the phone into my mac with the USB thingy first thing this morning and copy all my pics across in seconds has completely revolutionised my life!
... Wait a minute... Could it be?... Could I be turning into a techno-junkie!?!!?!

I wonder where I can get a pocket protector...

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian ***

Amazon.com says:

For years, Nadezhda and Vera, two Ukrainian sisters, raised in England by their refugee parents, have had as little as possible to do with each other - and they have their reasons. But now they find they'd better learn how to get along, because since their mother's death their aging father has been sliding into his second childhood, and an alarming new woman has just entered his life. Valentina, a bosomy young synthetic blonde from the Ukraine, seems to think their father is much richer than he is, and she is keen that he leave this world with as little money to his name as possible. If Nadazhda and Vera don't stop her, no one will. But separating their addled and annoyingly lecherous dad from his new love will prove to be no easy feat - Valentina is a ruthless pro and the two sisters swiftly realize that they are mere amateurs when it comes to ruthlessness. As Hurricane Valentina turns the family house upside down, old secrets come falling out, including the most deeply buried one of them all, from the War, the one that explains much about why Nadazhda and Vera are so different. In the meantime, oblivious to it all, their father carries on with the great work of his dotage, a grand history of the tractor.
From the Back Cover
'Outstanding' Daily Mail
'Extremely funny' The Times
'Nothing short of amazing' Daily Express

I say:
I'm one of those people who HATES to see other people being taken advantage of / being hurt by other ruthless people... So this one was quite hard for me to read. I guess that shows how well it's written, - if you "feel" the characters so deeply that you want to SMACK the baddie really hard in the face! This book made me angry and sad, and I didn't get a lot of the "hilarious" stuff that they mention on the cover. I was too busy worrying that the father was going to be okay. I think that I personally am too close to my own mother. If she were to pass away and some gold digger had to try to come in and steal her home, everything that she built and loved so dearly, I really don't know what I would do... I didn't "enjoy" this book simply because the writer is so damned good. It's a simple story. The language is plain. There is no clever b/sh1t going on. Just good storytelling and loads of family drama. A very good read... if you can stand it!

Say HELLO to my leedle friend...

Aren't cell phone upgrades just the greatest!
After tons of drama and some really bad service, my cell phone service provider finally got it together and hooked me up with the phone I've been after for about 2 months now... And here it is: The Sony Ericsson K800i.

With a 3.2megapixel camera, full usb compatibility with my applemac AND instant photo-blogging, what MORE could a girl ask for? If you don't believe me, check out the specs for yourself!
It packs quite a punch for something this small...

The displays are pretty funky...

This particular website is quite cool, because it even has actual pics taken by the camera, so you can assess the quality for yourself. Not bad...

I've been making do with the small 1.3megapixel on my old Samsung, which really more than served the purpose to date, but now I'm chuffed to be able to take better pics for my blog... Those of you with the really cool cameras are probably laughing your heads of right now, but hey! I have no aspirations of being a top-notch photographer, and this little camera fits snugly in my handbag and goes everywhere with me, so it is all I need... Browsing through the manual last night, I see that there is a "Best Shot" function that takes 9 "action" pics with a single press of a button. You can choose the best one of the lot, or save them all if you dig 'em all.
I'm happy! I can't wait to get home, charge it and start experimenting...

Congratulations, Mr & Mrs Gibbs!

That's me at my friend, Kate's wedding this Saturday. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CELEBRATION! The bride looked stunning; the groom was dashing as ever; the decor so elegant and special and the food was out of this world!
The great thing about having your wedding at home, in the garden? No cash bar! You can ply your guests with as much alcohol as you'd like, and not have to worry about the drinks bill later!
Cheers!

Boy...

I'd much rather be lazing around the house today, than at work...
I can't WAIT for this long weekend!

Check out this AWESOME blog!

So... there I was, stuffing around at my desk one day, when I stumbled upon Shorpy, the coolest blog I've seen in a while. Here's how it describes itself:

Shorpy.com is the 100-year-old photography blog that brings our ancestors back, at least to the desktop. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a boy who worked in an Alabama coal mine near the turn of the century. What became of Shorpy? Here's a summary of what we think we know, based on research using census and death records, contributed by visitors to this site: Shorpy -- Henry Sharp Higginbotham -- was born Nov. 23, 1896, in Jefferson County, Alabama, to Phelix Milton Higginbotham and the former Mary Jane Graham. On Nov. 19, 1927, he married Flora Belle Quinton. On Jan. 25 of the following year he died in a mine accident at the age of 31, crushed by a rock, and was buried in Jefferson County. He became a father, posthumously, when his widow bore his child in the summer of 1928. The writer Joe Manning says he has spoken with Shorpy's son but that he didn't want to talk.

The pictures tell amazing stories and I'm absolutely hooked!

Here's where all the magic happens!

My desk... and as you can see I'd rather be blogging than working!
And the view from the glass doors of our office, - the sparkly pool that we take a dip into whenever it gets too hot. (It's Durban, you know! You gotta be prepared for the 40degree summer heat!)

I ADORE rainy days!

... But Sabrina hates them!
She can't wander around the garden, sniffing every blade of grass & "securing the perimeter" against stray cats. She can't perform the most basic of loo-functions seeing as the earth is far to damp and gross to dig into. She can't terrorise the birds, - in fact there are no birds to even look at anyway.
Yes rainy days are sucky for cats!
GREAT for humans, but sucky for cats!

MAO'S LAST DANCER - LI CUNXIN **

Amazon.com says: From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao's cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak-and-dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story, told in his own inimitable voice. Li Cunxin was born in a village near the city of Qingdao, in northern China. At eighteen, he was selected to perform with the Houston Ballet, leading to his dramatic defection to the United States. Li, who has performed as a principal dancer with the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet, now lives with his wife and their three children.
I say: The 2 stars are purely for the story, not the writing! Before he put his amazing story down on paper, Li should have read Stephen King's book on writing, and followed the always-chop-it-by-a-third-no-matter-how-good-it-is rule! This book was about 100 pages too long, and it also felt a little too sentimental and wishy-washy at times. Li is wracked with guilt over leaving China and his poverty stricken family, but no matter how many pages he throws at us, he's never going to be able to change the past. What's done is done. Get over it, Li. Your family loves you for the success that you've made of yourself, and please... No more books! Stick to ballet.

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL - ANTHONY BOURDAIN ****

Publishers Weekly says: Chef at New York's Les Halles and author of Bone in the Throat, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business. His fast-lane personality and glee in recounting sophomoric kitchen pranks might be unbearable were it not for two things: Bourdain is as unsparingly acerbic with himself as he is with others, and he exhibits a sincere and profound love of good food. The latter was born on a family trip to France when young Bourdain tasted his first oyster, and his love has only grown since. He has attended culinary school, fallen prey to a drug habit and even established a restaurant in Tokyo, discovering along the way that the crazy, dirty, sometimes frightening world of the restaurant kitchen sustains him. Bourdain is no presentable TV version of a chef; he talks tough and dirty. His advice to aspiring chefs: "Show up at work on time six months in a row and we'll talk about red curry paste and lemon grass. Until then, I have four words for you: 'Shut the fuck up.' " He disdains vegetarians, warns against ordering food well done and cautions that restaurant brunches are a crapshoot. Gossipy chapters discuss the many restaurants where Bourdain has worked, while a single chapter on how to cook like a professional at home exhorts readers to buy a few simple gadgets, such as a metal ring for tall food. Most of the book, however, deals with Bourdain's own maturation as a chef, and the culmination, a litany describing the many scars and oddities that he has developed on his hands, is surprisingly beautiful. He'd probably hate to hear it, but Bourdain has a tender side, and when it peeks through his rough exterior and the wall of four-letter words he constructs, it elevates this book to something more than blustery memoir.
I say: This book gets 4 stars because I am, at present, madly in love with Anthony Bourdain. The man can do no wrong right now! What can I say? I always get a little neek-in-the-wees when there's a Bad Boy around and Anthony is the quintessential bad boy of the kitchen! It's crazy... I'm crazy... Crazy in lurve!
(Oh yes... The book is also very good. Do yourself a favour and find out where your hollandaise sauce really comes from, and why you should ever have the half price sushi. It will change the way you look at the restaurant industry forever!)

OK! So they're not perfect...

... But they're MINE!
These are 2 of the ±10granny squares that I've already crocheted as part of my homemade afghan project. Also in the shot you'll see the colours that I've chosen: ivory, denim blue and dusty pink. (Ok! I know that granny squares are traditionally made up from the scraps of wool that you don't want to throw away, but this is my first project and I therefore don't have any scraps to begin with! Hence the new wool.) I've started with plain squares for now, just until I get the hang of it, and then I'll attempt some stripy ones, alternating the 3 colours until I have my 6 rows. So far, by some miracle, they're all the same size and seem to be consistent. (Consistently wonky, but still consistent!)
It all started at my friend Debbie Veldman's baby shower, where I was completely blown away by the beautiful baby blankets that Deb's aunt had made for the baby. They reminded me of the baby blankets that my aunts made for my brothers and I 25-32 years ago (which I still have by the way) as well as the beautiful baby things that my mom knitted for us while she was pregnant. She was quite an ace, and I think that she still has some of those things locked away in a trunk along with our white baby baptismal gown. (All 3 of us shared the same one, - a family heirloom. I think it might have been made from white fabric from my mom's wedding dress, but I'm not sure. Don't quote me.)
As you can tell, I'm a real sucker for traditional stuff, - a sentimental old fart, if you will. So the thought of being able to make something for my brothers' children (and my own?) when they/I eventually decide to have kids, really appealed to me. And even though my crochet stitches are a little "tense" and not quite soft/fuzzy enough, my mom has been impressed enough to ask me to make a small blankie for my gran, - just big enough to throw over her knees when it gets a little chilly...
Apart from these reasons, crocheting granny squares is perfect for me, because I never seem to finish my creative projects! It's a running joke at my house that you can often hear me rummaging around in the middle of the night, fiddling with my "project-du-jour", - beading/sewing/creating something! And before long, I lose interest (or get distracted by another sparkly thing) and the project gets thrown in a packet at the back of my wardrobe somewhere. Granny squares are great because:
1. I can do them while I "watch" (read: absorb) tv, so I'm not missing any of my precious tv time.
2. I can complete a square in ±1hour (6 rows).
3. Each finished square feels like a successfully completed project. (There's nothing like tying those final lose threads together securely!) I'll join the squares together eventually but I'm not focusing on The End, or The Big Picture, losing track of the work process like I always do. Now I'm taking it one successfully completely square at a time!
So... I'm not going to ask you to watch this space to catch the progress of my afghan, because quite frankly, it could take years to complete. And I'm fine with that. What I will do is post pics from time to time, to show how the squares are adding up, and to show off how adventurous I might get with the alternating colours/rows etc.
And that's all for today from Carmen's World, where it's hip to make squares!
*giggle*

Bella Ella!

What is it with girls and shoes?
I work with little Ella Potterton's dad, in a converted granny flat at his mom's place. His mom (the granny) looks after Ella for a couple of days every week, so we have the absolute pleasure of watching her grow up and catching all of her antics!
Her latest obsession is shoes... The higher, the better! Seeing as I've fallen down the driveway three times already, I put the heels on hold until we get premises of our own preferably with a level driveway that 2-left-legged people like myself can't do serious damage on! But Jane, our admin/traffic lady is still brave enough to wear her red patent leather wedges every-so-often... And of course, Ella is smitten! She comes in to great us, searching out Jane's heels out of the corner of her eye and nabs them when her dad's not looking. Jane has been known to go the entire day without her shoes, often sitting in meetings with clients with bare feet, while Ella is taking her afternoon nap upstairs, comfortably tucked in, with Jane's red heels still on her little feet...
Her dad has finally resorted to buying her little plastic dress-up shoes for kids but, if you ask me, the ones he chooses just aren't pink/sparkly enough, so you can image my excitement this weekend when I spotted these!
She couldn't wait to put them on this morning when I gave them to her, and has been quite happy klonking around on her grandparents' wooden floors for hours now!
* sigh *
It's GREAT being a girl!

Love and Romance in Kommetjie

This weekend saw the wedding of Nic Kinghorn (the executive creative director at our advertising agency) and Lisna Erasmus (a cool designer and Nic’s lovely lady!) in Kommetjie, Cape Town. Three people from our agency were invited so we decided to make a holiday of it in the fairest Cape.
We flew out super early on Friday morning (Mango Airlines, Dbn-CT return for just ±R500!), had a disappointing breakfast at the beautiful Rhodes Memorial (my Spanish omelet was full of eggshell, - cringe!), bummed around Cape Town for a bit and then braaied and crashed at an old mate’s place. We would have done the B&B thing, but these mates insisted that we crashed with them for the three nights that we were there, and I’m so glad that we did! We were just so comfortable and we had our very own tour guides for the entire duration of the trip! (Thanks Jason and Lea! You guys rock!)
After a good sleep, it was off to The V&A Waterfront for coffee and then to The Goatshed for brunch. What an experience! Fairview dairy has opened up a stunning restaurant and farm shop to showcase their awesome range of cheeses (and a few of the local wines). And boy are they doing it well! Everyone’s favourite seems to be the cheese platter, - R28 for 6 cheeses; R35 for 8 cheeses and R42 for 10 cheeses, served on a wooden cheese board with some preserves and warm freshly baked bread rolls... Yum! They had more than TWENTY THREE different kinds of cheeses to choose from, allowing you to choose which 6, 8 or 10 cheeses you wanted to sample on your board. Seeing as I’m not eating bread anymore, I decided to give the cheese board a skip and had the roasted veg quiche and salad instead. It was a fabulous choice and I was ready to explode by the time we hit the farm store for a quick browse! From there, I slipped away (to Cavendish Square) to find some pretty beads to wear with my dress for the wedding the next day and then it was a quick freshen up for dinner at a quaint pizza place around the corner from Jason and Lea’s place. I ordered the bacon/feta/olives/avo/chili number, - perfection! And so ended day two.
Day three saw me tucking into rusks and coffee for breakfast, basking in the morning sun and sighing over the beautiful view of The Mountain from Jason and Lea’s backyard. We then bundled ourselves into the car and headed off to Sinful for some toasted coconut icecream with a scoop of hazelnut icecream on the side (drool!) and a long brisk walk on the beach at Hout Bay. The little puppies galloping on the shore were just too cute and it took Lea and I way longer than it should have to finish our walk. We kept stopping to scratch behind some furry pup’s ear, or to ruffle their soft fur! Too cute. We then took a lazy drive along Chapman’s Peak and got back to the house in time to get dressed for the wedding at 5pm.
Nic and Lis are quite unconventional, so we didn’t know quite what to expect, except that the wedding would be very special and different. All we knew is that we would have to wear easily removable shoes because the wedding itself was on the beach. If you’re South African, the name “kommetjie” stirs up all kinds of pretty images, and yes, it didn’t fail to deliver. Kommetjie is so small, if you blinked while driving through, you might actually miss it! It’s not a fishing village, - not smelly enough! It’s not just a seaside village, - you’re only 2 streets and a factory or two away from the “town”... It’s all of these things and more, with its sun-bleached wood and walls and powder soft white seasand. They couldn’t have chosen a lovelier place to finally tie the knot, ending an 11 year courtship. The pics on this post are taken from my cell phone so you can’t see very much and it doesn’t do the beautiful bridal party justice at all, but they’re all I have anyway...
It’s funny how my horoscope said that romance was in the stars on Sunday 25th March. What could be more romantic than a beach wedding, under the stars in Kommetjie... Sigh!
We eventually found our way back around the mountain in the dark and settled in for a wonderful, last night’s sleep before we reluctantly had to hop on a plane to Durban.
With a calamari and sushi brunch from Panama Jack’s filling our bellies, we boarded at 3.30pm and were back in Durban by 6pm, where it was already dark and gloomy. Our cell phones hadn’t stopped ringing all afternoon with calls from work and by the time we unpacked and got ready for bed, it was like we’d never left Durban at all...

If you just can't bear to stash your Prada bag under the dinner table...

... then this one's for you!
The very clever people at Luxe Link have designed this elegant little toy to hold your designer bag to the table, while you casually sip on your champagne and tuck into your lunch!
It's just what every fashionista needs. And it's yours for just $45 if you order online, otherwise you'll have to fly to LA and fight Lindsay Lohan for the last one on the shelf! (She's apparently a big fan, if anyone cares.)
I WANT ONE! ... NOW!!

Now THAT'S hot...

Boy!
That Ryan Reynolds has come a LONG way from that silly "Pizza" sitcom...
He's lost his shirt in this pic, and quite frankly, I hope he never finds it!