Greetings from Adelaide

Adelaide - South Australia, originally uploaded by Sandi1947.

So I've made the (sort of) annual pilgrimage back home for the holidays, after some hectic times toward the end of the year - involving dressing as Luke Steele for a work Christmas party, new friends, and taking the puppy on her first road trip.

The past few days have involved hitting up Bunnings and getting a skylight kit and crawling ontop of and inside my parents' roof hooking the damn thing up (photos soon), working and spending time with my Dad, watching far too much cable TV (re-addicted to Chelsea Lately and The Soup), reconnecting with some old friends and ripping a whole heap of my parents' old Readers Digest compilation CDs onto my iTunes.

And so, with these new (old) additions, my Adelaide playlist for 2009/2010 looks somewhat like this :

"Sixteen Tons" by Tenessee Ernie Ford
"Empire State Of Mind" by Jay Z and Alicia Keys
"Percussion Gun" by White Rabbits
"Another Saturday Night" by Sam Cooke
"Mrs Brown" by Herman's Hermits
"Against All Odds" by Phil Collins
"Flower" by Moby
"New World In My View" by King Brit
"America" by Neil Diamond
"Mac The Knife" by Louis Armstrong
"Saturday Night At The Movies" by The Drifters
"Where Do You Go To My Lovely" by Peter Sarstedt

AND I got me some fifty cent Lionel Richie vinyl at a local Salvation Army store. SCORE! But unfortunately, no scores for the apartment just now. Hopefully before I head home to Melbourne we get a chance to get out to the thrift stores, but it seems Adelaide totally shuts down on a public holiday so I'm not optimistic. But fingers crossed, cos I think I can get some vintage billiard balls and some great clamps for making a lamp or two I have in my head. Stay tuned.

O Cliffmas Tree

Our Christmas tree is finally up. I bought this seven foot white tree and white LED lights last year, but left my run too late and was stuck with black baubles. Elegant and modern and monochromatic which worked well in the apartment, but not very Christmassy.

This year we have Cliffmas Tree II, with red baubles, little felt stars and reindeer (courtesy of the housemate) and candycanes. Awesome.

Noel, everybody!

sixty9

I visited a market yesterday, but while everyone drank and talked, made signs and shopped, I instead went for a wander through some of the back alleys going off of where the market was held and found some amazing old buildings.

One day, one will be mine. It will be big and old and have crumbling old bricks and peeling paint and warehouse windows and chain link fencing and old pipes and it will be BEAUTIFUL like this. But maybe not quite so vertical...

In the meantime though, it's fun to wander through back alleys and dream.

Seek Alt Route

Breaking The Golden Rule

*Kicks self*

I saw a painting at an thrift store saturday morning that I really liked.

It was by an amateur artist - a portrait of an old chinese man grinning. Black background, GREAT colours in his skin tone and hat. A beautiful dark, ornate frame. Very VERY BRICKHOUSE, to be honest. And it would've looked AMAZING matched with the John Brack print I bought myself for a birthday present with its similar colours and hues. Just perfect.

But I can't afford money for art. My $1 handmade vase find and $2 Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits vinyl I could justify spending, but not the painting for the price they wanted. But my parents said if I went and got it today, they'd make it part of my Xmas present. Score! So at lunchtime I caught the tram back down to get it - and it was gone.

Audrey's golden rule of second hand shopping (or spying something awesome dumped on the side of the road) : when you see it, GET IT. because it'll be gone later.

*sigh*

Shiny and new

New blog. New start. New concept. New.