Thursday 29 September 2011

More GLITTER!


Clockwise from top left: Topshop Mary Janes; Madewell necklace; Topshop sequin tee;
 Zara heels; H&M bird necklaceAccessorize heirloom broach
Sparkly moodboard love....

Wednesday 28 September 2011

GLITTER!

Last week I spotted an acquaintance wearing the most freaking AWESOME nail varnish I'd seen in a long time. I asked about it - turns out she was wearing nail polish strips - basically stickers for your nails. So I invested. My nails are not exactly my finest feature - I keep them super short because talons aren't particularly practical for work, plus I have strange, freakishly small, chubby child hands that I don't usually want to attract attention to.

But who cares? If you had nails that made you this happy, you'd want to show them off too!


I've spent most of the afternoon skipping around my apartment muttering GLITTAH!!! to myself like a deranged person, and contemplating what else around me could do with a few coats of multi-coloured sparkle. Eye shadow? Some glittery heels? A full-on glittah-ed wall? Why the hell not...

Tuesday 27 September 2011

The Fear

OK, so here's a fun anecdote for you. For most of this year, on and off, I've been learning how to run.



If you know me, you will know that I am a deeply lazy individual, who very much enjoyed my sedentary, sofa-dwelling lifestyle.

But I have a deep, dark secret. I come from a family of sporty people, blessed with hand-eye co-ordination and excellent lung capacity. My dad actually runs marathons. And as a kid, he used to send me off (in the company of my equally reluctant friend A) to do fun runs. Classic misnomer there. A's brother and my sister, three and four years younger than us respectively, were twice as fast as us (this is no exaggeration). We would puff and pant and whine, and eventually just refused to run any more. And that was how things stayed for the next 15 years...

I always thought those people who said running cleared their heads were hilarious. Of course it does - your mind is 100% occupied by informing you that you are IN PAIN and begging you to stop torturing it.

And then, somehow, in the midst of not the most fun few months of my life, I started putting one foot in front of the other. First in the gym and then, when I got a little braver, out on the streets. I finally reached that magic point (previously my faith in this was about on a par with my belief in the tooth fairy) where I wasn't in agony and my mind really did clear. And those weirdo exercise enthusiasts who harp on about endorphins? Totally right. Damn them.

So. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I entered a 10k. Which is fine, I can run 10k. Slowly. What I didn't entirely notice when I signed up for it (I was multi-tasking, ok?) was that it's on Sunday.

This Sunday. As in six days time. And I really, really don't want a repeat of my fun-run experience. I don't want to be at the back, trailing behind retired folk. I don't want to lose the pure, unadulterated enjoyment I get from running by convincing myself I'm bad at it.*

Which means I need to not be bad. Which would be easier if my back wasn't currently in spasm...

Oh dear. The Fear has set in.

* I'm not good at being bad at things. My tried and tested strategy is just not to do whatever it is I'm bad at, which is why you will never again see me rollerskate, play the cello or attempt the high jump.

Thursday 22 September 2011

Like crack

I'm not even kidding...




New addiction. Sudden onset. Large bag bought to send back to England for someone is being rapidly demolished.

Oops.

Sunday 18 September 2011

On Autumn

One unexpected perk of Toronto: pretty much the only hint I'll see in the next few months of the changing seasons.


I could have predicted I'd get nostalgic about leaves changing colour, crisp cold days or conkers. But wearing a scarf? Those foggy London mornings when you don't want to get out of bed? Realising you haven't worn enough layers halfway through the day, when it's too late to do anything about it? Didn't expect to discover a fondness for those that was certainly never apparent when I lived in London.

Having said that, come February, when everyone else is fantasising about sunshine, I think I'll have the last laugh...

Monday 12 September 2011

Toronto

So it turns out I can't work 16 hour days for five days straight, subsist on fast food/free food and survive on five hours of sleep per night without getting ill. What a shock. Glands are swollen, inconvenient hacking cough has set in, and this evening saw some quite inconvenient red carpet sneezing.

So to cheer myself up, here are five reasons why I LOVE Toronto:

 - The people. For example, there are thousands of volunteers basically running the film festival, and they are all uber-cool awesome folk. (That might not be true. I'm sure some of them are horrible. But I haven't met a single one who isn't lovely)

 - The public transport infrastructure. Hurrah for a city where people don't think it's beneath their dignity to catch the bus/tram/subway or hire a bike*

 - The weather. Real weather. Different-every-day weather. Weather you don't know how to dress for.

 - The movie stars. Obviously I do realise that a) this is just for 10 days each year and b) I live in LA, home to 80% of the acting world, but here you actually see them, they don't seem too scared to head out and explore. Probably because all Canadians are lovely (see above).

 - Canadian celebrities specifically. How did I never realise before that all the best famous folk are Canadian? David Cronenberg? Canadian. Neil Young? Canadian. Ryan Gosling? Both extremely pretty, and Canadian. I rest my case.

*Not only that, but if you're a woman travelling at night, you can ask the bus driver to let you out between stops to make it safer for you. How cool is that?

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Places to go, people to see

From ilovecharts.tumblr.com via Kira Tarabelli on Pinterest
Is it weird that I'm really hoping the weather in Toronto is terrible over the next couple of weeks? And is it even weirder that my reasons for that are purely aesthetic?

No. Good.

I want to wear tights, baby. Not just any old tights, but pretty grey ones with a diamondy pattern going on.

And I want to wear them with my new purple skirt and my cripplingly uncomfortable grey ankle boots. Now I just need Mr Man In Charge of Weather to hear my cry, and respond: "You shall stagger home with blisters after attempting to walk in foolishly high heels, Celia. My wish is your command."

He'll do that in a really deep, booming voice, obvs.

I think the prospect of getting up at 4am to catch my flight may be sending me a little doolally...

Sunday 4 September 2011

Purdy

Double rainbow this evening - and an incredible sunset to round things off!



Which is good, because getting back into the swing of running again after weeks of busyness/laziness/family time is an arduous task.... I'll be in need of some more feats of nature's awesomeness to keep me going.

Friday 2 September 2011

Timely

Right, that's it. No more procrastinating, no more moping around for no good reason. Today is going to be a proactive day, when everything that needs to be done is done in a timely fashion.

There shall be running. There shall be yoga. There shall be lists, and printers, and errands to many different shops in search of boring, but necessary, things.

And if I had anything to do with it, there would be this:


From http://www.musicphilosophy.co.uk/, found via
http://lifeaccordingtocelia.blogspot.com/

Except their shop appears to be closed. Sad face. I NEED a Belle and Sebastian poster for my slightly bare looking walls. Particularly one in happy yellow to match my home-made cushions.