Bursts of Colour

Spring is almost here, and I for one can't wait!

I've had a b!tch of a year, and spring heralds the coming of the end!

I've noticed a great look around the blogging traps recently.. bright splashes of colour with charcoals, blacks and navy..

In the spirit of spring colour bursts, I "invested" (:D as if my hubby will buy that!) in a bright yellow leather satchel -down to $29 from asos, with an extra 20% off

My New Cute ASOS Yellow leather Satchel 

The best thing about this particular satchel, is I can probably remove the strap and use it as a bright clutch :)

Can't wait for it to arrive 

Martha Stewart Tissue Paper Pom-Poms

Our lounge room is great {I promise I'll do a renovation special soon} 
We renovated a 1950s apartment that had been relatively untouched since the early 60s - the apartment resembled the inside of a caravan with faux wood panelling and concertina doors.


Anyhoo, there was just something missing above the dining table.  There isn't really provisions to put a pendant light over it, and I wouldn't want to in case we want to move the table one day.


I really like the look of this and due to the reason outlined above, thought I would make Martha Stewart's Tissue Paper Pom-Poms and attach one with transparent thread to the ceiling as we have clever white wood panels embedded with down lights on our ceiling.


I purchased transparent thread ($3), white tissue paper ($1) and got to work.


I love the finished look, unfortunately Hubby doesn't love it, so, it probably won't last long, but it was fun and at least I know I can make this sort of thing for parties and the like in future :)


Check it out!!

Close Up White Tissue Paper Pom-Pom

Hanging over the Dining Table

Red Lips... revisited

From Left to Right: Revlon ColorStay Lipstick #345 Red Velvet, Revlon Just Bitten Lipstain in "Gothic", L'Oreal Colour Riche lip liner in "Always Red"

Awhile ago I was musing over red lips and whether they were for me..


After numerous gorgeous photos of girls on their style blogs with "popping" red lips, and trying a few things, I've found a couple of products that I love.


1. Revlon Just Bitten Lip Stain in "Gothic"
lovely lip stain.. covered with a lip balm layer - great colour, pretty good coverage, but I found it does need reapplication after eating/drinking.. I found it on eBay for around $10 including postage.. bargain!


2. Revlon ColorStay - #345 Red Velvet - I LOOVE this range, and this colour is exactly what I was looking for in a red lippy - it's just the right shade not too orange, not too dark.
And I found it at a clearance outlet for $10 Along with a L'Oreal Colour Riche lip liner in "Always Red" for $7

Checking In

I love gingham.. it looks so kitsch, and so when I saw Kendi wearing this outfit on her blog, I "needed" a similar shirt... desperately!


But where to find one?
I searched eBay Australia to no avail, then found a couple of J Crew Check shirts in the US, but shipping was prohibitively expensive.


Then one happy day, while walking around BigW, I looked in the menswear section to see if they had any checked shirts there... and to my surprise, there was a check shirt - large navy gingham checked, just like I had wanted for $19!


Needless to say, I didn't waste any time thinking about it.. I bought it straight away :D

My Very Own "Kendi" style Check Shirt!

Swimsuit Review: I heart 2 Chillies

(I'm not paid or perked for this, but just wanted to share a couple of my fave swimsuits)


As you might know, I LOOOOOVE reading fashion/style blogs.. and seeing as a few of my faves are in the US, I'm always thinking about summer when it's winter here in Australia; and thinking about winter when it's summer here in Australia.. gaaah!


I guess an upside to this situation is that I have a few bits and pieces ready to go for the upcoming season because I've lusted after them after seeing them on someone else's blog in the US.. anyhoo, I digress...


I just wanted to share a couple of my favourite swimsuits in the interest of me dwelling on warmer weather during the chilly winter day we're having right now in Melbourne town.


I found the swimwear label 2 Chillies a couple of years ago quite by accident.  I was looking for a new swimsuit and the usual suspects like Seafolly were over $100 which was a bit too much for me on a student budget.
2 Chillies is an Australian Brand and RRP is usually around $60-70 for a one piece.. but there's a twist..  They make cute, colourful one pieces that look like a 2 piece from the back.. So there's tummy coverage if you're not comfy enough to wear a bikini, but they're just a little out of the ordinary so you don't feel as though you're wearing the same as everyone else.. and because of the bright colours I don't feel like I'm wearing the "I don't know what else to buy so I'll wear a black or navy swimsuit" uniform.


Of course, if you prefer bikinis, you can find them by 2 Chillies too.


Here are a few of my faves.. {some of them you may still be able to find on Zodee or Trixan Body}

2 Chillies Rosetta One Piece

2 Chillies Sierra One Piece

I've worn both of these a few times and feel secure, the fabric is good enough quality that it isn't transparent when wet and they feel GREAT on.  The Sierra one piece does also come in white with the same floral design, but I don't know how this would fare with regard to transparency when wet after swimming.


2 Chillies - my fave swimwear label - Go Aussie!

Budget Wedding Tips - Part 10: The Cake

Our chocolate mud Cupcakes

Wedding Cake


We were incredibly lucky that my sister in law made our cake for us as a wedding gift.
If you have someone in your life who is talented with baking, this is a great way to save some $ on the wedding budget, and you can ask them to make it as a wedding gift, which will likely make them feel very special (or nervous! :D)


We decided we would like a cupcake tower as opposed to a traditional wedding cake, and my sister in law made our cupcakes from chocolate mud cake {apparently at the time of baking, her house smelt like Willy Wonka farted!}


Each cupcake was wrapped in dark red ribbon and the entire thing placed on a specially made tiered cake tower.  She did a beautiful job and we really loved it.


To save even more, we used our beautiful cake as dessert, and for $1 per head, Ballara Receptions plated each guest's cupcake individually with some cream and berry coulis.. just gorgeous!  This meant we paid a lot less per head, as dessert was supplied by us.


This is the final in the series of 10 posts about our wedding savings.. I hope that some of the things I learned along the way are helpful and can minimise some stress and help a few couples start off married life without a whole big mess of debt hanging over their heads.


Congratulations to all of you getting married - I hope you thoroughly enjoy the ride!!


**Please do let me know if you have any specific questions that I can attempt to answer**

Budget Wedding Tips - Part 9: Transportation

Our Wedding Car - it rained on our wedding day which made for Gorgeous photos

Wedding Transport


As with the theme you're probably noticing in these wedding posts, we wanted something that looked gorgeous and classy, but really didn't want to spend big $ on hiring a guy to drive us in a car then wait around for hours for us.


I looked into the option of hiring a luxury car, and getting family members to drive us to the wedding.


We ended up hiring a couple of Audis from Europcar which was great, because I could book them online, we didn't need to pay any deposit (cash flow when organising a wedding can become problematic when you're constantly paying deposits all over the place) - we just had to pay when we picked up both cars.


We picked up the cars the day before the wedding and organised for an uncle to drive the bridesmaids, and my brother to drive my dad and myself.  The bridal car was hired for 2 days so we could drive away in it after the reception to our wedding night accommodation.


It ended up costing us a few hundred dollars for 2 luxury cars that looked smashing with the white wedding ribbon attached on the day!




**Please note, some car hire companies don't hire their cars for weddings due to past damage in similar circumstances, and at the time we hired from Europcar we disclosed to them they were for a wedding which was ok, but their policy may not be the same now.. please check before you hire**

Budget Wedding Tips - Part 8: Invitations

Wedding Invitations - things I've learned..


I went to town with our invites.. I had a ball!  We had an 18 month engagement, and it was a great distractor from my studies.


Watching my sister and other girlfriends go through the DIY route of making wedding invitations made me realise that it really depends on you as to whether the potential savings are worth it.


If you enjoy DIY, go for it.  But if you're time poor, and DIY is frustrating, I really think it's worth paying to get your invitations professionally made.


I made a layered look cardboard invite, and paid a lot of money only for a few sheets of beautiful printed paper, securing it to the cheaper office grade ivory card I found at Officeworks.
I printed the invitation details on tracing paper - as it was a lot cheaper for a pad of tracing paper than the "vellum" that is used usually.


I wanted to gift box our invites, but couldnt afford boxes at $2-3 each, so I found a template online for boxes and set about making my own with cardboard, a guillotine and a hot glue gun.
Most of our invitations were hand delivered, so postage wasn't really a hassle for the few that needed to be posted in this box.

Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to flip this up the right way!  And it looks a bit butchered when removing the addressee's details - never mind: at least you can get some idea of how it looked

The box our invitations came in, wrapped with vintage style lace and ribbon, with the Addressee's name on a cute handmade tag.

Important bits and pieces to help you DIY:

1. Font: I loved the look of Copperplate Gothic Light in capitals mixed with Edwardian Script -both from Microsoft Word

2. Inexpensive Ribbon: I found cheap ribbon on eBay in bulk from DEclipse-Craft-Garden

3. Card stock, tracing paper, brads (pins to secure paper together) from Officeworks

4. Hot glue gun and glue sticks: from Spotlight or Lincraft

Budget Wedding Tips - Part 7: Flowers

Bridal Bouquet

Wedding Flowers


I love fresh flowers.. but back when we were planning our wedding, it was more important to me to minimise stress and maximise value for money, and we were getting married in summer and I just thought of hundreds of dollars of wilted flowers!


I had always loved Calla lillies (aka Arum lillies) and was intrigued by the idea of using good quality faux flowers as some of the girls on I-Do had mentioned in their posts on the wedding forum.  These lillies were out of season in summer when our wedding date was set.


I found some lovely latex calla lillies (I can't recall where now) which looked and felt more like the real thing than the fabric/silk ones.  I purchased some cream ones for myself, and bright red ones for my bridesmaids.


I then googled floral arrangements and wedding bouquets and armed myself with floral wire, floral tape and began to play with faux flowers, and arranging them.
I learned from reading on the net how to make the ends of the bouquet look professionally made by wrapping them with ribbon, then securing with pearl-head pins.

Stems of my bouquet wrapped with ribbon and beautiful vintage-style lace, hand sewn pearls and Pearl Head Pins

 I researched how to make buttonholes for the guys and wrist corsages for the mums, and a little bit of googling was all that was needed to figure out "How To" for these.


The eve of the wedding
I did buy a $40 deal from a local flower grower which included 6 ivory roses, 6 red roses and a bunch of ivory Lisianthus delivered to my parents house the day before the wedding.  I made the buttonholes, wrist corsages and added a few fresh flowers to the faux flower bouquets the day prior.  I sourced twigs and greenery from the gardens around my house and added these too.


Research on the net indicated that it's never a good idea to put flowers in a regular fridge (apparently florists have special fridges) as they'll look much worse, so being a 40 degree summer day I put them in the garage which was the coolest place in the house.. they did fairly well considering!!

My Dad's Buttonhole

Lisianthus Wrist Corsage

Groom's Buttonhole, Red Groomsmen's Buttonholes

Bridesmaid Bouquet

Stem of Bridal Bouquet

I managed to source velcro wrist corsage "holders" from the US on eBay for a few dollars each and secured the fresh flowers onto them using green floral tape and then added a sheer chiffon ribbon as a flourish.  The mums both loved them and they looked gorgeous with their outfits.


Sourcing Faux Flowers:
I found a great online source at:
eBay Store Flower Land - they sell premade faux flower bouquets and individual stems if you want to have a go yourself


I also found Spotlight and Lincraft to have a good variety of flowers, some better quality than others, but Spotlight was fantastic also for floral tape, floral wire and pins.

Budget Wedding Tips - Part 6: Wedding Attire for Bridal Party

Bridal Party Attire


Before we got engaged, I hadn't really been in a bridal party, but I had girlfriends who had, and heard about how much energy and $$ went into being a part of someone's wedding.
Although there's nothing particularly wrong with this, I felt uncomfortable asking my sister and 2 of my best girlfriends to shell out a lot of money to be in our wedding.


So I set about thinking of ways to make it as easy as possible for them.


The Girls:

My Gorgeous Bridesmaids

I gave up early on the notion that we'd make something they could wear again.. does anyone actually wear bridesmaid dresses again?
I asked each one individually how they would feel about wearing something strapless, and they had no concerns or objections, so I found a two piece pattern and we all talked about colours.  The only one they hated was pink.  After settling on cherry red, we went shopping and found some great looking affordable fabric at Spotlight.


I made two of the outfits and one of the girls made her own as she sews too.
I sourced cute little belt buckles from eBay and we made faux belts; and I found red chiffon and made wraps for the girls too.  
I happened upon 3 pairs of gold sandles for next to nothing and after finding out their sizes nabbed these too.  All in all, each of the girls paid $50 for their whole outfit, and I found great little gifts of gorgeous diamante earrings on eBay and gift wrapped them.  The necklaces were from a great little bead shop in Melbourne Central and were on sale 3 for $10.


When it came to hair and makeup, I had a hair/makeup lady come to the house on the morning of the wedding, but gave the girls the option to use her too, or to do their own, so that they weren't paying lots of $ for this if it wasn't what they wanted to do.


The Guys:

Our Groomsmen

Similarly to the girls, we didn't feel comfortable asking the guys to pay in excess of $300 to hire suits, so just asked them to wear a dark coloured suit they already owned with a white shirt {they weren't even all black, but it didn't matter}.
I found great matching ties and cufflink sets on eBay with bright red and orange, and won 3 of them and we gave them to the guys as a gift and to wear on the day.
Easy Peasy.


I think one of them was wearing a dark green suit, but you wouldn't even know, because when they were wearing the ties, they just looked like they all matched.

Budget Wedding Tips - Part 5: The Wedding Dress

The Wedding Dress

I had SO much fun choosing a wedding gown.  I actually started out with a halter neck gown and then changed my mind and sold it on eBay swapping to the gown I actually ended up wearing.

As with the budget theme you've seen so far, I decided that I'd like a ballgown silhouette, a strapless neckline and either pale pink or champagne colour.
{I found a great resource for researching gowns at The Knot}

So I set about researching dresses on eBay and researching the wedding forums for people's experiences with eBay wedding gowns. 
There were a mixed bag of experiences that people had, ranging from disastrous, to wonderful.
I learned from other people's experience and my own research that when buying online, there are a few tips to stick with to navigate your way through the myriad sellers and dresses:

1. Stick with dresses that are shown in the listing on a dress dummy - as in, not just a picture of a dress on a model.  A lot of listings are stock images and then the seller copies them, so you can't be really sure of what the finished product will look like. 
If you buy a dress that you can see already made in the listing, you at least know to some degree what you will get in the post

2. Don't buy one of the dresses from a listing where the dress is cheap (for example $25) and the postage is very expensive (for example $100).  The reason I say this, is if you buy one of these dresses, and you're unhappy with it, the seller is only required to refund you the purchase price, not the postage, and you may be out of pocket a significant amount.

3. Ask around: check out the wedding forums {I used I-Do} and ask around or look up old threads, as there are some tried and true wedding gown sellers on eBay that people have had great success with.

4. Always buy a true size - many of the gowns are "made to measure" -where the seller asks for your measurements and crafts a gown to fit.  As english is often a second language for many sellers, a lot can be lost in translation, and in my research I noticed a lot of people having trouble with ill-fitting made to measure gowns for this reason.  If you measure yourself according to their description, and then buy the dress that most closely fits your measurements, this is a far safer bet.

5. If you're unsure whether you can get your dress altered (if you lose weight, of if the dress is slightly too big), ask the seller if they can make it with a lace up back.  The worst they can do is say no, and I found the seller I purchased my gown from most obliging - it meant I saved on fittings and alterations closer to the wedding.

My Gown
I purchased both of my dresses {including the first one that I later sold} from an eBay store called Priceless Bridal Store, which looks like it has since closed as I couldn't find it in several searches *sad face*


I loved my gown.. it cost me around $350 including shipping, in heavy champagne satin.  Mum and I took up the hem to fit me, and I modified the neckline from straight to sweetheart and changed the train from flat {I'm not sure of the dressmaking terminology} to more "puffy" and added a french bustle.


One day I'll do a post describing how to french bustle a wedding gown {Please remind me if you would like a tutorial on it}.. it was good fun, and though time consuming, was inexpensive.


Now, the fun part.. some pictures of my gown:

The Gown as shown in the eBay Listing {front}

Side view from the listing which demonstrates the Ballgown Silhouette

Neckline after modification to make it "Sweetheart" and the addition of heart shaped stone and ruffle

French Bustled Train

Close Up of Bodice

Close up of Bodice with Olga Berg Purse I found for $20

Gorgeous Bracelet I found on eBay - what dress is complete without accessories?

Budget Wedding Tips - Part 4 of 10: The Rings

My platinum 3mm comfort fit wedding band; Hubby's Tungsten wedding band

The Rings
These are an investment in our opinion, as we'll be wearing them day and day out and hope to do so for many years to come, so we thought long and hard about what to get.

I went with platinum as with my engagement ring, and you can read about where to purchase platinum rings inexpensively in my post here.  You can get a 3mm comfort fit plain wedder in platinum for around $450.

Hubby decided he would like something a bit out of the ordinary and we found a tungsten mens wedder on eBay - it's a great gunmetal grey colour and he loves it.  Again, on eBay from the US, it was a LOT less than a sturdy alternative metal wedder from Australia.  You can pick up a tungsten wedder for around $100, although we can't remember which eBay store we purchased it from!

The only downside to tungsten is that it's so tough and scratchproof that it's claimed you can't resize it.
Finding the correct size was easy with the ring sizers I sourced from the US.  You can find instructions on purchasing a set for yourself in my post here.

Budget Wedding Tips - Parts 2 & 3: Photography and Videography

Wedding Photography and Videography

Wedding photography &/or videography packages that I saw at Wedding expos ranged from around $1000 up to almost $10,000.
I guess it depends on what you're after as to the amount of the budget you allocate to photography/videography.  We wanted a basic video of the ceremony, nothing too fancy, and some pics to remember our special day.

We got a couple of friends to do both the photos and videos.
Our photographer was a friend who is a professional photographer who usually takes photos of kids, but had done a few weddings and was happy to do it for us for $500 including CDs and some prints and photoshopping.

Our videographer was also a friend who has plenty of experience in videography, who was happy to do the job and an edited video of the ceremony for a few hundred dollars.
This saved us a bundle and means we have memories in picture and movie form to reflect on in the years to come :)

Budget Wedding Tips - part 1: The Reception

Bridal Table Set Up

The Reception:
from my experience, the most expensive chunk of the wedding budget seems to go to the reception.  It makes sense - as soon as the word "wedding" enters a conversation with a vendor, the price seems to increase!  That, and you have a list as long as your arm of people who are dear to you that you'd like to have present.

As with most things wedding-related, it really comes down to what you want.. you can make things as simple, or as complex as your heart desires.
I really wanted to have a sit down dinner with our friends and family at our reception, and we chose to keep the numbers low with 44 people including ourselves.

1. The Food/Drinks
One of my biggest money savers was discovering after a lot of research, that it was less expensive to have a lunchtime wedding reception - almost half the price.  We had our ceremony at 10am, then lunch at 12pm - which meant our guests weren't waiting around for hours for us to leave and have photos and return.  It also meant that finishing up at 3.30pm, we had the evening to relax after a pretty full on day.

The downside is that the photos ended up being a little rushed, but all in all, I think it was probably worth the saving of a few thousand dollars.

We were married at Ballara Receptions who were just gorgeous, very accommodating, and the food and service fantastic.

I guess you could save even further by having a morning tea after your ceremony rather than lunch (for example, at the church where guests bring a plate to share), or by having a cocktail function, where you serve finger food without seating your guests as opposed to a full sit down meal which requires more resources on the part of the function centre.

The Grounds at Ballara Receptions - you can see the chapel in the background on the right

2. Ceremony
A bonus of having both the ceremony and reception at the one venue is that the cost of the ceremony is included in the reception - there is no extra fee for the hire of a church or hall.  Of course, I suppose you could save even more by having your ceremony in a park or at the beach for free!

3. Music
It would have been lovely to have a string quartet, but as this was on a tight budget, we chose to go with a DJ.  We chose the music we loved, advised them of the few songs we really didn't want to hear, and gave them a copy of our wedding dance song (as it was a little unusual).. we used DJs Alive who were fabulous, and very reasonably priced.

4. Table Decoration
The function centre we used supplied table decorations, which we used on some of the tables, and I made my own floral arrangements as well.

Heart Lollypop Bonbonniere

Bonbonnieres can cost an arm and a leg, so I decided to go for something simple and inexpensive and sourced some heart shaped lollypops from a local confectionery warehouse, and sourced cellophane bags and ribbon in bulk from eBay, and attached a little cardboard tag with a love quote to each - this was not too labour intensive, as there weren't too many guests!

DIY Table Centrepieces and Candles

The budget didn't stretch too far for the table decorations, as to us the food and entertainment was more important, so I spent about $6 per table and fashioned a box from cardboard, covered it with chocolate coloured fabric and wide lace, trimmed with ivory ribbon.  The tea light candles sat inside shot glasses!  They were trimmed with faux pearl strings that I attached with a hot glue gun (a DIY bride's best friend!).  Our guests took them home after the wedding.

Next: Part 2&3  Photography and Videography

Furry Sheets

In my student years, for my first degree I rented and lived on Youth Allowance.. skint city..
But I had a lot of fun trying to make the most of what little income I had

I love thinking laterally and trying to find cheaper ways of doing things... it's great fun, and I get a huge buzz when I find an alternate that works even better than the more expensive option.

Now, one of the things that really chews through the budget is electricity and its the age-old issue in winter of being cosy and saving $$
Electric blankets, although they probably don't use a whole lot of electricity compared to appliances like blow heaters, still made me feel a bit funny when I'd forget to turn it off before falling asleep, and I'd wake up in a bit of a sweat, overheated.
But flannelette sheets were the only other known option to keep snuggly in bed.. but when you jump in bed, they're COLD!

Someone on my favourite savings forum Simple Savings mentioned that you can use polar fleece blankets as sheets for winter.. and because they're synthetic, they're warm on contact - as soon as you jump into bed, they're toasty.
I toddled off to the shops to find some polar fleece blankets, and in Safeway found gorgeous luxurious chocolate brown queen sized minky blankets for $20 each.

The current blankets have been in use for almost 5 years now, and I've not looked back.. no more electric blankets here!

Instructions for use: to convert a queen sized flat blanket into a "fitted" sheet, simply tie a knot in each of the 4 corners, and tuck the knots under the mattress.. hey presto!  Use the 2nd blanket just like you would a flat sheet.

Minky Blanket... furry sheets!

Klever Karats - aka Going Platinum (Part 2)

In my last post, I told you all about how we saved a bundle on my engagement ring..

I'm a girly girl, and I love pretty sparkly things, but I wanted to start our lives together financially healthy too, and didn't want to shell out mega bucks for something gorgeous and lasting.. so I hope the info helps someone out there to start married life without super mega debt, but some lovely bling on your left hand ;)

One question that I've been asked several times, second to people asking how I can be sure what I've received buying online is genuine,  is how on earth do you manage to find the right ring size? 
Australian ring sizes are in letters (A, B, C etc) and US ring sizes are numbered with half and quarter sizes.
I bought a ring sizer from e-weddingbands which in itself was free, they just asked for USD$5 for international postage.  This meant I could buy online from the US with confidence.

Nothing to do with wedding or engagement rings, just some beautiful flowers a dear friend bought for me!

Cape Weather

Teddy taking in the Wintry Weather with his Window View

Chilly Melbourne.. it's a typical winters day.. wonderful for chunky knits and warm wooly coats.
I had made a bit of a win on the weekend, or so I thought, ordering a gorgeous camel coloured, hooded asos wool blend cape for only $37. 

Today I got an email saying it was out of stock and they had refunded my money. sad face :(
Only moments prior I had been silently congratulating myself for finding such a great item at such a great price.

The item on sale had been in their petites range, and it was my size, but probably just a little shorter.  The main size range was still for sale, but at $61.

So, I bit the bullet.. $61 later, I've now ordered the same item from the main range (not petites)
I hope it comes!

ASOS Hooded Military Cape

Klever Karats.. aka Going Platinum (Part 1)

When we got engaged a few years ago, I had well and truly done my research about engagement rings (enthusiastic much?)..

I knew I didn't want yellow gold, and that white/silver tones suited my colouring better, but in my research found that the 14K  white gold in Australia is a kinda gunmetal grey colour, and gets it's shine from being Rhodium plated, which gradually wears away and needs to be re-done every 12-18 months.
When I was chatting to a jeweller, she seemed awfully surprised that I knew about this, and offered me a job!  I laughed, and she said "no, I'm serious.. would you like a job here?".

Sigh - can you imagine working with sparkly things all day? :)

So, when I realised that platinum is almost 100% pure and didn't require plating, just perhaps the odd polish to buff out those little wear and tear scratches, I thought that was for us.  Only one snag.. in Australia, you're looking at about 4-5x the price of white gold, for platinum.
I got a quote for a 2mm wide rounded band engagement ring setting with 6 claws (Tiffany-style) -not including the stone, and in 2007 it was >$2000.. whaaaat?

After a bit of research, I discovered that platinum is common-place for engagement and wedding rings in the US, and as such, rings are made en-masse in moulds.  This appeared to be the point of difference.. I spoke to a trusted jeweler, who explained that the reason they were so expensive here is because it isn't as commonly used, so when it is requested, the ring is hand made, hence you're paying for the jeweler's time and expertise.
A-ha!

I researched and researched, and in the end found a platinum setting from eBay seller Pompeii3 Jewelry for around AUD$450 including shipping. 
There was always a chance that it wouldn't be genuine, but as it needed to be modified slightly to fit our stone, the jeweler could verify whether it was genuine for me.

The jeweler put our stone in the setting, and had to melt a little of it to do so, so could definitely verify that it was indeed platinum, win!

So... a beautiful, durable, quality engagement ring was born... for a LOT less.

It was baffling.. I thought getting a ring made would definitely cost more than one already made sitting in a store window, but it was a much more affordable option.

.. How to buy the correct ring size from the US on eBay in my next post..

Budget Wedding Tips

Wedding Planning. It's an exciting time, but I also found it daunting and at times stressful.

Not only do you have the financial burden of throwing this huge party, but you have the psychological transition of going from someone's girlfriend/boyfriend to someone's wife/husband and becoming your own new family.

Starting out without a huge debt from the wedding sounded like a really happy healthy thing to aim for when we were getting married a few years ago, and I thought I'd jot down a few things I learned in case it can help save others from some $-related stress :)

When it comes to weddings, big ticket items (in no particular order) include:
1. Reception
2. Photography
3. Videography
4. Rings
5. Wedding Dress
6. Wedding Attire for Bridal Party
7. Flowers
8. Invitations
9. Transportation
10. Cake

Over the next posts I'll go through what we did to save $ in each area and still get the result that we wanted for our special day.

Wedges!

Mmmmm wedges.
Nope, not the potato variety - shoes!

I have to remember to close my gaping mouth, and wipe the away the dribble when I pass the Santini store window - if I'm walking with my hubby, he has to pull on my arm a little to get me to keep walking.. I LOOOOOVE shoes.

I can't really explain it.. I'm mostly quite a practical person, I don't like to waste, part of me likes being frugal (I've been a member of Simple Savings since 2005!).. but there is something about shoes that calls to me.

Shoe Hooks

I'm only supposed to have as many shoes as I can fit on the hooks on the side of our wardrobe (hubby's rule).. but it's no secret that I have them stashed all through my wardrobe, under the bed, as well as on the hooks..  and these past couple of years I've been lusting after some nude wedges but being a student up until this year couldn't afford the $200-ish price tag for a good quality pair.

Also after being a student for almost a decade, I learned (the hard way!) that it's (generally) better to wait and buy one pair of great quality shoes than to get a crappy cheap pair that lose their shape/don't fit quite right/hurt! sooner.

So it's probably a good thing that I only discovered asos last year! Because we are in "opposite" seasons to the UK, I can buy current season stock for the Australian weather on sale.. and their shipping is free with no minimum spend... but I read a lot of blogs from the US, so find myself lusting after summer gear in my Aussie winter and winter gear in my Aussie summer..

When I found these beauties -nude leather wedges, for AUD$32 with free shipping.. I couldn't believe it!


ASOS Harrison Cross Front Wedge Sandal

Now I just need the weather to warm up.. or I could get brave and just wear them now I suppose :D

A Fresh Start

Thanks to an inspired post by Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim I feel as though Bloss has a new lease on life.. I have plenty to say, and love blogging, but the blog felt a bit lacklustre..

Now I've figured out how to make my own photos pop, I can post much more pictorally of the things I love!

Without further ado..




My Fave Kitty {his name is Teddy}, My Fave Monthly Mag {Real Living}, My Fave Handbag {Zoe Wittner Bag $4 from Salvos Op Shop} and My 2 Fave Remotes {heater and TV!!}