Moomba

The underneath of the Big Top

Enjoyed a spectactularly well rounded day :)
      

My Beautiful City

The day started early (well early for me) because Mum & I decided to
go into town to the Moomba festival! The train was packed because it
was a beautiful public holiday & everyone & their kid wanted to enjoy
it. Was entertained by the most gorgeous little girl on the train who
kept telling me which was the next station. Once we got into the city,
we realised just how many people were in town! We went to go see the
parade floats which were magnificent and very different - ranging from
the Magic Pudding

To whimsical cakes

Flower covered tractors

There were even people dressed as food!

We spotted the King of the festival - Harry Kewell which was cool but
way too many people around so moved on

You can just see him in the center at the bottom

Saw some national costumes

Latin America

Papa New Guinea

Then it was off to the carnival!

It was very child friendly :)

While I didn't go on any ride as the lines were too long, I did play
one carnival game - I tried to win a spongebob, but got a little
nemo-lookalike instead :)

We then went and watched the Moomba Masters- the waterskiing
championship! Enjoyed watching the girls Salom race & saw the winning
run.

Enjoyed getting all the splash photos.

After this, mum and I went back into the city for lunch. We had crepes
in degraves street.

First course: Peking Duck Crepe

Second Course: Sticky Date Crepe

Tasty!

Mum & I bid adieu then and I wandered the streets up to the State Library. I spied a few of the graffiti Em and I spotted last year. My favourite was still there :)

Though these two were very cool too

After I went to study in the State Library of Victoria. After being a good student for a few hours, I met Caroline for a chat in the sun on the grass in front of the State Library then
I showed her how beautiful it is inside!

Best Friends

Study Buddy

We had dinner at Shanghai Village in Chinatown which I love so much.
They have my favourite vegetarian dumplings & pumpkin pastries

1 of 16 Vegetarian Dumplings! This was the other night with other friends :)

I headed home after this but to cap the night off, we went to a nearby
shopping centre to watch the fireworks from the city. The photos
didn't turn out great in a traditional sense but I do love the bokeh
effect that I created :P

The night was finished off with Miss Lou & I dancing in the
supermarket aisles to Born This Way while we bought ice cream!

Look out for a post soon about my Knit Relief auction item and my
article in Lot's Wife :)

Love Miss Moo

Love lit up with sparklers

Everything Girl

I love many different things and which is why sometimes I struggle to give myself one identity on the Internet because I like too many things. This is why I called my blog The Little Cosy Corner, because it's where I'd like to curl up and be creative about many things.

One of my current creative outlets is Cross-Stitching. I love seeing little patterns come to life. One of my most ambitious works so far was a Babushka doll I made for Emily's 21st as we are both obsessed with them. I chose the colours especially for her :) I found the pattern on Cross Me Not - it is my favourite site for patterns because she makes really cute and simple ones that can be achieved in a short time. They are also free and I love how she includes her recommendations for threads. We (Emma, my sister, & I) used a lot of her patterns for making Christmas cards this year.

So here is my Babushka doll :) Took two weeks and I could not have been prouder when I gave it to Emily during my speech to her at her 21st!

xoxo

Melbourne

I am a very proud Melbournian. I haven't spent all of my life here but I think that is what makes me appreciate it. I hear bagging of it at times from those who take it for granted, but it truly is a great city. While it is currently ranked as the most liveable city in the world - which is an INSANE thought because I can't believe it is possible - it's hardly perfect. But for the rest of my life, Melbourne will always be home. It always has been, no matter where I've lived, and it always will be. I will always want to come back to Melbourne. I'm not going to lie, I love leaving her and going on awesome travels, but she has also given me great adventures.

This post started out as a response to the news paper article in The Age that said that Melbourne was the 4th best student city after Paris, London and Boston (and Sydney was 6th - which is awesome for Australia - but take that Sydney :P) and this isn't a comment on what it's like as a student here, the article just prompted me to say how much I love my city. It may not have your souvenir photo scenes such as a bridge or an opera house. It may not have the greatest public transport system. It may not be dirt cheap.

But it does have awesome cafes :)

Little Cupcakes in Degraves Street <3

Overland Track Hike

A few weeks ago I forfeited Facebook, my mobile, and family all for a 80k hike!

Along with Kit (boyfriend), Maree and Chris (her boyfriend), we did the Overland Track hike in Tasmania in 6 nights and 7 days. This is a map of what we hiked :)

We walked the dotted red line :) We started at Roony Creek (where it says Waldheim) at the top and made our way down to Lake St. Clair, walking around the lake on the route shown closest to the lake. If you see the little cross for Mt. Ossa - that's the highest mountain in Tasmania and the boys (Kit, Chris and Mike - our adopted friend who we met on the first day) climbed it while Maree and I opted for an early lunch at the campsite. This is on Day 4 - which I will write about in more detail later.

This is a Vertical Profile of the hike. The Blue words are the names of the huts and we spent one night at each of these huts (so that's 5 nights), though technically we camped near the huts most nights, and we spent one other night camping near Echo Point Hut, which is inbetween Bert Nichols and Lake St Clair visitor centre (so it was our last night).

So that is almost the conclusion of the introduction to our hike: but I should introduce the characters in this tale of 80k (because we added side trips).

 

This is me: Manda. I wanted to show a picture of me in all the gear. So you can see my trusty french braids in my hair - made my life so much easier that way. We did re-do them after swimming a few times but still worth it. You can also see my trusty hat. Two things you should know about me before reading about my hike: one: I get sunburnt. Easily. A lot. two: I get blisters. Easily. A lot. So the hat is preventing the sunburn (especially in the part in my hair that is created because of my lovely braids). Unfortunately, you cannot see my shoes in this photo but they were both my enemy and my ally. While they cause my blisters, they were excellent hiking shoes and I do love them. You can also see my water bottle hanging off to the side. You can't see my platypus/camelback but God, I love that thing! It meant I didn't have to stop to take a drink. Lastly, you can see my pack (with my Goretex jacket on top) - god damn that thing! While it was a good pack, I'm glad I don't need to carry everything I need anymore!

So that's me :)

This is Maree :) She is one of my closest friends and is an amazing lady :) This is her in all her gear which looks very similar to mine - we had matching bottles but she opted not for the hat even though she too had French Braid pigtails! She had to put sunscreen in her part though so I got to avoid that! 

This is Chris, Maree's boyfriend. I couldn't find a photo of him on his own with all his gear on (I haven't got all the photos from the hike yet as we had one camera between each couple and took it in turns using each camera) so I have opted for a photo of him atop Mt Ossa (the mountain I mentioned before that the boys climbed). He was the only one of us who had previously done the hike (he completed a few months prior with some friends) and this meant that he was continually asked about how much longer he thought it was until the next hut! 

This is Mike - our adopted walker! We met Mike on the first day and added him to our gang :) This is him cooking his lunch one day - he had hot meals every meal which meant he had to attempt to NOT light the whole forest alight with his stove. He did try! This is his attempt to look like he has no idea what he is doing. Luckily he did. He was our spokesperson for outdoor gear because he previously worked for Mountain Designs so he knew everything there is to know about what makes up a jacket or could tell what is a terrible hiking boot from a mile away (he was about to do this once - though it wasn't quite a mile away!). He too is from Melbourne.

Last but not least,

Kit - my gorgeous boyfriend. I will say it now - probably could not have done this without him. And I'm not even meaning just because he mostly put the tent up each night while I attempted to tend to my blisters but because he was very patient with me and always let me walk my own pace and played the People Guessing Game (kinda like 20 questions - a game we made up when we went to Healesville) whenever I needed distracting from my feet hurting. This is him in all his gear - you can actually see his hiking shoes - those things never gave him blisters - wish I could say the same about mine! His bag was HUGE because it packed up high rather than wide like mine - luckily he was tall!

So that's all of us! Hopefully I will write up the rest and if I do - please ignore the fact that there were many outfit repeats! 

love, Manda

Shiny

It all started with this photo and two hours later, and over 220 comments....Doctor Who, Dr. Horrible, IT Crowd, Black Books, Firefly, Harry Potter, LOTR and more have been discussed. Rachel has yet to find out that Time Lords are from Gallifrey, but if she finds out from here - it means she never used Google so win!!!!

I better go to bed but this has got to be one of the most epic facebook photo comment thread ever!

This week, my nails are....

Covered in glitter/diamonds!

It looks like there are little jewels on my finger. It's from the Muppets line of OPI nail polishes. It is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. Most unique nail polish I have ever used. Even better when I covered them in top coat polish.

Up until about 3 or 4 months ago, I wasn't interested in nail polish at all - I found it annoying to keep painting it on, only for it to chip off. Emma, my sister, has always been obsessed though, so we have a decent collection. But I have changed my mind! It started when I came back from being in Spain for a week and came back to my apartment in Lyon, France and I just felt like a lazy evening. So I celebrated it with Chicken Caeser Salad, Gossip Girl and pink nail polish:

You can see my toes painted, my laptop and my green chair in my old apartment - I miss my apartment! But ever since then, I've been obsessed. Which has fueled Emma's obsession - to the point where she has a couple shatters, some more OPIs and she just bought 4 from Butter. So much love.

So that's this week's nails!

Summer is in the breeze!

Although it isn't technically Summer for another month here (Southern Hemisphere and all), today was a beautiful 30 degrees Celscius! Yesterday was my last day of exams so I feel like the sun came out just for me! The day was spent with my mum doing a little bit of shopping and visiting two coffee shops - my dog, Harry, was lucky enough to come to one with us as well. But the best part of the day? Swimming in my pool this afternoon! First time in the pool for this year. The photo above is my Jellies by the pool earlier in the day - I love my red toe nail polish! I bought those shoes for .50 euro cents in France earlier this year - one of the best bargains ever, especially since only the day before I had looked online to find them! So I wore them today in honour of the sunshine!

The other highlights of the day were playing ball with Elle (as usual). Below is her face as she is staring at the ball in my hand while I take the picture. She is begging me to throw it with those beautiful brown eyes. While I write this post, she is curled up next to me....asleep!

I will end the post with my favourite photo of the day - Harry at his beach resort/aka our backyard! But doesn't he look like he belongs by a hotel pool?