The Importance Of Bedside Tables

(click images for source)

For the past couple of weeks I've casually mentioned to Luke that I'd like to give our creamy white looking bedroom a little bit of a makeover. I've been coveting a particular bed cover from Urban Outfitters that started this obsession with changing things up, and started my new obsession - bedside tables. When we bought new furniture seven months ago, I couldn't wait to decorate our bedsides, but the interest wore thin after we had to wait seven weeks for them to arrive. By the time they came we settled on a ceramic lamp and a wood cut block letter to decorate our bedsides. The last couple of trips to the shops I've been keeping my eyes open for things to make our bedroom snappy and found a couple of neat things so far. I've been browsing pinterest for inspiration and ideas and found so many lovely bedsides. At least 70% of the pictures I've been drooling over feature a fresh vase of flowers, and as lovely as they are I just don't know how practical that is unless your husband is a florist or is constantly super sorry. When I find the particular wooden coat stand that I have in mind for the corner of our room, we'll change everything else.

Everybody Needs Mustache Font

[Click Here, Feel Happy]

Earlier this year I bought a new iMac, and I still have all my music, photos, drawings, designs, documents and fonts on my MacBook. Starting with the funnest thing to update, this evening I started to work my way through fonts. During the five glorious years I had my MacBook I acquired quite the collection of lovely fonts, and some not so delightful ones that I kept in my font book anyway. Rather than just transfer them over because I like to do things the hard way, I spent the better part of my evening looking at my favourite typornography site - DaFont. I found some stellar new fonts, and my absolutely new favourite thing ever - Sanchez Mustache Font!

Weird Customers

This has been an incredibly weird couple of weeks. I've noticed that in my every day-to-day life that there will be intensely hectic periods that last a couple of weeks. And then there are weeks so tiresome a month rolls by without anything to write home about.

Last week I met some incredibly weird characters,  and some wonderfully weird ones. I met a man who was convinced travelling was hocus pocus and that paradise was in front of him. A senior citizen offended by icing sugar. A young man who had his right arm amputated as a baby, and had had the amputated arm tattooed with a giant fingernail so his arm looked like an enormous finger. A man who hates the sound of coffee being made. The funniest elderly man who explicitly hates mushrooms and had happened to of seen an Australian film that my boss had one line in when she did acting as a younger woman. He pointed my boss out at the cafe and cited her line! A man who doesn't eat because he was bitten by a spider. A middle aged (Twins Peak looking) man with no teeth who tries to sell packets of floral sheets for $12 that he carries around with him everywhere. A compulsive journal writer who comes to the cafe and leaves her journal open while she goes to the bathroom and has been known to leave entries on the table. An extremely rude man who just about refused to sit down because he felt table service was not a successful way to run a business. A couple who cut each others meals into bit sized pieces and held hands while they fed each other. And this is just the list that I can remember.

For the past two weeks at work something odd has happened, it is almost as if the universe is shinning a big full moon this way and making everybody around here act odd. However, something awful did happen a couple of days ago that has a strangely fantastic end result. But more on that later.

Start Your Week Off With..

• At This Time Last Year by Gypsy In Jasper
• Snapwords by The Short & The Sweet Of It
• His Home Had Everything by Unhappy Hipsters
• If Your Dreams Aren't Scary by Finding Our Happy
• Esthetician or Aesthetician? by Gentri Lee

Monday again, this past week has just gone by so quickly! And thankfully so as I've been sick for the past couple of days. I am definitely feeling better today, and the sun is out so my Monday so far has been delightful. I have a lot of catching up to do with custom illustrations, replying to emails and housewifey things. So if you've emailed me about button swapping I'll email you back today, I promise! Have a great week!

July Button Swap!

Now + Then: Shy Scout

Hello Tastes Like Love readers!! I am Allison and I blog over at ShyScout - a quirky little lifestyle blog which covers my love for life, thrifting, design, fashion, travel, toy collecting, and just about everything else in between. I am beyond excited to be guest posting today on Tastes Like Love! Lovely Lauren came up with a fun idea for today's post - Now & Then - a mini glimpse at the present and past of her fellow blogger buds.

THEN -

I suppose I should keep this chronological and start with the mini me photo. My "then" photo was taken around the time I graduated kindergarten. My 6ish year old self was a major diva (if you couldn't tell by the pose). I only wore dresses - the twirlier the better. My activities included endless hours or arts and crafts, ballet, and dressing up like my favorite princesses.

NOW -

The present photo was taken for one of my Wardrobe Wednesday posts on the blog last week. While a lot has happened over the years, surprisingly my wardrobe is slowly reverting back to my 6 year old self (dresses fill the majority of my wardrobe and I still love any excuse to dress up). Thankfully(?) the diva-ness has taken a back seat - hence my blogs name "shy"scout. I have almost done a 360. If you were to meet me today I just might be the shiest person you have ever met. It is something I am working on though... I have also refined my arts and crafts skills and currently work as a graphic designer :]

& THE AWKWARD IN BETWEEN -

Let's be real, I went through those awkward years as well. *smacks forehead* I spent too many years trying to do whatever everyone else was doing. Thankfully, I have started to develop my own sense of style. It only took a little less than 20 years to come full circle...

Moral of the story - dress in and do whatever makes you happy and you will feel so much more confident in your own shoes :] Thank you so much Lauren for having me on your blog today. It was fun to look back through old photos and laugh hysterically along the way. I suggest you all take some time to do the same. You just may be surprised at what you discover about yourself.

Psssst!

Start Your Week Off With..

• Staying True To You by Everything In Between
• Country Living by Kitty & Violet
• Toy Dinosaur DIY Photo Holder by Miss Darlingheart
• Vacation Photo Dump by Boringspice
• Judging Books by Sailing To Nowhere

I can't believe how quickly the past week has flown, it just seems like yesterday I was on my way to get my tattoo - which is now super duper itchy by the way! It was such a lovely day here on the coast today, but aside from hanging washing and running a couple of errands I stayed inside watching Veronica Mars with cups of tea, lattes and raisin toast. Have a great week!

A Sunday Evening - Boy & Bear

Sunday evenings are always my favourite because neither Luke or myself work so rather than Friday be 'date night', Sundays are for us. We usually go out for dinner, or to the movies. But this Sunday evening we had tickets for Australian indie band, Boy & Bear. Luke & I bought our tickets months ago and my boss and her gf bought tickets also, but my bosses gf went on a meditation retreat and gave her ticket to Jeremy - who also works at the cafe. It was such a fun evening, Luke made risotto & we all had dinner and drinks at our house before the gig and we arrived half way through the support bands set. I'm pretty selective about catching the support band at gigs, I usually stretch out pre-drinks at someones house before hand, but was pretty happy I got to catch a little bit of last night's support band because they were awesome. I just have to find out their name now! Boy & Bear was absolutely flawless and they played all my favourite songs off their record. It was the first gig I've been to all year and it certainly has made me even more excited to see Jack White & Band Of Skulls next month! 

My New Tattoo

Outfit:

Dress + Bag - Mink Pink / Cardigan + Tights - Kmart / Shoes - Rivers / Necklace - Louvisa

Okay! So yesterday was my much anticipated tattoo appointment that I was completely anxious about as a result of a horrible dream a couple of weeks ago. After I booked the appointment months ago, I dreamt that I fell asleep whilst being tattooed (because that is completely likely to happen!) and woke up with a horrific scene on my arm! I was a bit nervous about this tattoo because I sent a picture to Chris (who also tattooed my babushka) and asked him to incorporate a banner and something in the background to tie the two elements together. The first draft had waves rather than roses and I had a pretty strong negative reaction to it, so he changed it to some roses. The original illustration is by Angelique Houtkamp. When I was thinking about what I wanted to get for my next tattoo I had a picture in my head of an old fashioned looking lady with hair topped upon her head with a hair ship and banner "loose lips sink ships", which is one of my favourite sayings. I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I especially love the small touches of teal.

My whole day was quite pleasant, the weather on the coast was nice enough considering it has been raining for the past two weeks. Luke & I spent a little bit of time together before we went about our days. I got to catch up with my lovely friend Joshua before my appointment and indulged in some Grill'd, the most amazing burger chain ever. There aren't any stores on the coast which is disappointing so it was pretty exciting to have a Garden Goodness for the first time in almost two years! And most importantly, I got to wear my new Mink Pink dress that I bought during the week.

When my tattoo heals I'll take some neater photos & I promise they won't have those really lovely sparkles that the first picture has. Before I dropped Luke to work he kindly photographed my outfit, only my camera was on the sparkle setting for the one photo that he was able to get my whole outfit in! 

Start Your Week Off With..

• Violet's First Birthday Party by Violet Lulu
• A Winter Picnic Guide by The Chipster Diaries
• Nude Parade by Sleep & Water
• Sprinkles Bath Time by Miss Darlingheart
• Dinosaur Best Friends by LoveElycia

It was the long weekend over here and I worked all three days of it, so tomorrow will be the start to my week and I'm most excited because I'm going to get my new tattoo! Have a great little week!

A Movie Date Miracle

I had to work during Luke's day off yesterday, so we had planned to go to the movies in the evening. When I got home from work Luke was being a good husband and cooked vegetarian  risotto for dinner, which we had at the raging time of 5.30pm. Every single time we go to the movies, which are only a three minute drive from our house, we are late. We're those annoying people that get there really late and stumble up the stairs anxiously. And funnily enough, I have a slight fear of getting to the movies late and walking up the stairs looking for a seat in front of everyone, yet we're late every time. So this week we were determined to get there on time, and we did - accidentally. When we were looking at the movie times online we were choosing between two movies with one starting at 6pm & the other at 6.30pm. I got the times mixed up and thought it started at 6pm. We took ages with dinner and getting ready and ended up leaving our house at 6.05pm, and when we arrived we went to take our walk of shame and there was nobody in there! The movie started at 6.30pm, so we were able to cross that off our bucket list! We saw 'What To Expect When You're Expecting', and it was hilarious! Go see it! 

I Enjoy Mondays The Most

I know a lot of people don't like Mondays, but I've started to really love them! For most of last year I hated them because I had a Monday - Friday office job, and the year before that I studied. So its really nice to have Mondays as the day I enjoy the most. I would usually sleep in, but today I had to run an errand for work which got me out of bed early for the day. I picked up morning lattes and when I got home Luke was making eggs for breakfast. We never usually get to see each other for meals, particularly breakfast because we work different times so it was especially nice this morning. I drove Luke to work and came home and tidied our flat and washed a ridiculous amount of clothes. It has been raining on and off here for almost two weeks and our washing was starting to grow legs. I listened to records today for the first time in ages and broke my National record in for the first time! I also worked on a paint chip frame for a friend, and organised my Twinnings tea collection. I like to buy their ten tea bag sample sizes, and they recently had a collectors tin available so I bought that to store all of their different teas in it. I now have so much more room in my tea cupboard for new tea! 

After I finished doing my morning jobs I went to the shops to get some more shirts to wear to work, and some stockings and a new black long sleeved dress that I've been eyeing off for a few weeks. When I got home Luke was on his work break so we had lunch together, and then I dropped him back to work and paid a quick visit to my parents. After I got home I started a custom illustration that I've been really excited to start, and I'm really excited to share it in a couple of days! Luke finished work early and he made dinner while I danced around him singing songs. And to finish my Monday, we watched How I Met Your Mother with cups of tea. I didn't quite cross everything off my to-do list, so I'll have to get onto that this Friday!

Start Your Week Off With..

• Three Tips For Better Blog Posts by Living The Creative Life
• The Saddest Theme Park by Icing & Write
• Ask Elsie + Emma: On Time Management by A Beautiful Mess
• Flocks Of Birds by Kitty & Buck
• Do You Ever Wonder How You Got To Here? by Dance To The Radio
• Reasons I Should Be The Fourth Kardashian by Cheeky Cheeky

This past couple of days I've been really making an effort with my time management after I read A Beautiful Mess's post about how Emma manages her time running a store and a blog. And even though I don't have almost half as many of those types of commitments I still struggle with replying to emails, and reading new blogs while keeping up with old favourites. So if you're feeling similar, I would definitely recommend reading that post! Have a great week!

An Illustration Of Katlyn From The Dreamy Meadow

I'm really excited to share a custom illustration I did this week for Katlyn from The Dreamy Meadow. To read more about it, check out Katlyn's lovely post here. And if you would like your very own custom illustration of yourself for your blog/website, or for a friend as a present send me an email - laurenemily[at]y7mail[dot]com - I'd love to hear from you!