Luce: Alleged Versatile Blogger

Hello.
I have been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award!

A huge thank you to Rosie who nominated me and whose blog is absolutely brilliant (even though she denies it). Please take a look at her blog, you will not regret it and, in all seriousness, you really should have looked at it already (slackers).

Here are the rules:

1) Thanks the person that gave you the award. 

2) Include a link to their blog.

3) Select 15 blogs to nominate for the award (I managed 4).

4) Tell the person who nominated you and your readers 7 things about yourself.

Seven things about myself:

1. I, as you may already know, live in Australia. I live on a few hectares of land just out of my town of under 10,000 people in Victoria. It's quite a nice spot and is only a few hours from Melbourne. I lived in Melbourne for eleven years prior to my family and I moving to the country. I'm probably going to have to go back to Melbourne for university because none of the courses I'm interested in are available at any of the (couple of) universities nearby.

2. My family has a lot of animals: 4 dogs, 4 cats, 2 horses, 4 chickens, 3 budgies, 3 grass parrots and a Cockatiel named Winston. Winston hates me (he really does).

3. I only have two really close friends - Sophie and Alanah (check out Alanah's blog here). However, I have quite a lot of friends that I talk to on a daily basis (at school, that is). Alanah, Sophie and I have decided (as we are all raging bitches) to affectionately call each other virago, harpy and hellcat respectively - we're classy gals. We also have very strange conversations, particularly Alanah and I. For example, here are two examples of facebook screenshots of conversation between Alanah and I.

-------------------------------------------------------------

4. I am very honest. I pretty much always tell people the truth (or avoid it) even when they won't like the answer. Some people appreciate it, some don't. Even though I usually tell the truth, when I do lie, I am very good. I once tried to convince someone that I wasn't at school one day because I was bitten by a new, radioactive species of spider and that I had obtained powers (basically, that I was spiderman). They actually believed I was bitten (not that I had powers though). It was awkwardly hilarious.

5. I play the banjo and I love it. I got it for my birthday last year (5th of October) and practice pretty often. It's really fun to play. Seriously, if you've ever thought about playing an instrument that was a little different, try the banjo! I had no real previous experience with an instrument but I could read music (which I learnt because we had to when we learnt the recorder in primary school). However, now that I can play the banjo more easily, I just use TAB. For any banjo players out there, check out this, the TABs are free and really good.

6. I love the past. The 40s, 50s and 60s for fashion and the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s for music. This probably doesn't surprise anyone because my monthly playlists always have older songs on them (as well as more modern tunes).

7. I really don't like moths. I don't have a phobia of them or anything, I just can't stand the fact that they always (and I mean always) try to fly in my face or land in my tea or something. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of bugs or anything, I just can't stand moths. Also, in Australia we have really big moths (as well as smaller ones). They are, in all seriousness, the size of small birds. We often have bogong moths near us which are pretty big and our cats try to catch them and eat them. It's really unpleasant.

Note: I just googled 'Biggest moth in Australia' and my god, this is terrifying. Apparently the biggest is the Hercules Moth. They're not found in Victoria (luckily) but they're huge! I'm not putting a picture up because they are that frightening. They aren't the biggest in the world (what?!) but they're in the top 10. 

Nominated Blogs:

Selina
American Dream
Flowy Shirts, Mini Skirts
Mabel's Mind

Thanks again Rosie!

Luce

Playlist: May

Hello.

To start my real return to blogging, I've created a lovely list of very vibey songs that I've been listening to lately. May's playlist is a mix of my favourite older bands (basically Queen and The Smiths) as well as some things I recently downloaded and two songs from the albums I bought on Saturday which I mentioned in my last post. Like always, this list contains some more 'unknown' bands which is always great, I like to think I'm making people more aware of great musicians. In reality, barely anybody actually reads my blog but, hey, I might as well start somewhere.

This is actually a pretty fantastic playlist. I've recently realised that almost all my more rock-ish bands are either a) old, b) male or c) both. I honestly listen to barely any female rock. Probably because there isn't much. Mind you, I still love Hole. If anybody knows of any great lady bands that are sort of similar to Hole, please tell me!

Also, my more electronic/psychedelic music is created by women. Which is great, I mean, they're all magnificent. I guess I'm pretty odd like that. Right, anyway, here's May's playlist. I hope you enjoy it!

Created in photoshop by me - background space image [via]

Please tell me your favourite tracks, I love getting into different music

<< new or old >>

Luce

Updates

Hello there. As you may have noticed (you must have) my blog is now completely refreshed. No more white background, no more pink, no more left column! It's actually a pretty big deal for me. It took me only a few hours to do.

I completely started over, googling blog tips and taking a bit of inspiration from my two favourite design blogs Pugly Pixel and Pinegate Road. Perhaps the most important thing for me when recreating Paint By Numbers was the colour scheme. I had originally used a template from Pugly Pixel (it's a great site, okay?) but it's pink and white colour scheme was getting a bit boring after a while. I decided on a nice light grey background and a simple charcoal, one line header with a coloured shadow and a sort of frame thing (all executed in photoshop). I chose the two green-ish shades because my favourite colour's green and, honestly, I pretty much have nothing green.

After a bit more shuffling around and just changing the link colours and post title font today, I'm really happy with how Paint By Numbers now looks. I hope you do too!

Now, in non blog related news, I finally bought my dress for my school's Debutante ball. I bought it from a shop in a town not too far from us (which is also a lot bigger). It's by Cue In The City and it's like a sort of brocade fabric. It's really dark purple and the floral-y pattern in black. To make it even better, it's in my favourite style, a fit and flare dress, hitting just above my knee. It's pretty damn swish.
Sadly, I can't find a photo of it so you'll just have to use your imagination.

I also bought three CDs today. One of them is for my sister's birthday and the other two I just bought because I'd been eyeing them off for quite some time.

The first is The Rubens self-titled debut album and the second is Nightswim by Owl Eyes. From what I've listened to so far, they're both pretty magnificent. Also, both are Australian which makes it even better! I'll be writing reviews on both of these albums during this week and the next.

The Rubens Deluxe Edition [via]

Owl Eyes - Nightswim [via]

Thank you to my readers who have stuck with me through my little blog update break. I will try to write more frequently from now on. The new layout will be my inspiration. I figure, with a change in scenery (my blog, that is) I will change my habits too, with more regular posting, more interesting posts and more in my posts.

In fact, I think every once in a while, everything needs a bit of a change. At the moment I think I'm changing quite a lot anyway. I guess I'm maturing a bit more and, with that, my tastes are changing too. But change is good. It really is.

Luce