Beautiful you.

I never used to wear jewellery when I was younger but recently I've started to love wearing necklaces, and sometimes the odd ring if I like it enough (and if it fits - stupid giant knuckles!).

I came across the Beautiful You store on Felt (which is sort of like New Zealand's version of Etsy) a few weeks ago and HAD to buy a few things.

I've wanted an octopus necklace for a while now so that was the first on my list. Then I made a list of about 6 others that I wanted and decided I should really cull it back and ended up adding the wishbone necklace to my cart.







Then I found these cute cream flower studs and decided that those were a necessity also.



And while I was at it I thought I'd see if any of my friends wanted to add to my order (save on shipping and all that!). Brit decided on the tea party necklace and Jessamy decided on the rawr means I love you in dinosaur necklace. So cute!



I might do another order and grab the swooping bird, mixtape and origami crane necklaces... one day...

I do love to shop.

I expected to buy A LOT while I was away in Melbourne, Australia. Mainly because I love to shop and buy things all the time. However, this year, I just didn't really find much to buy. I didn't buy a single item of clothing, which is shocking for me!

The thing I spent the most amount of money on was probably macarons.

I purchased a total of 26 macarons in 5 days.
I may have a problem...



Cacao: Salty caramel, strawberries and cream, raspberry and violet/blackcurrant.

Not a fan of salty caramel at all. Just not my thing. Violet/blackcurrent was fantastic. The others were great too!



Cacao: Tangy lemon, short mac (coffee), dark chocolate and passionfruit (ate it before I took the photo haha)

The short mac one was the best out of these ones. The other two were great too. Not sure that I'm a fan of chocolate ganache in passionfruit macarons though. I've seen them paired up heaps and I just find the chocolate too overpowering.



Melbourne Markets: Blueberry cheesecake (x2), dark chocolate, vanilla, chartreuse, expresso, tiramisu and strawberry or raspberry

I don't remember what the actual store was called that I got these from but they are in the deli hall if anyone is going there.



This chartreuse macaron was really intense! Quite strong. If you're a chartreuse fan I'm sure you would love it but it was a bit too much for me and I only ended up eating half of it. It looked really pretty though! One of the most interesting looking ones I saw the whole trip.



This was the blueberry cheesecake macaron and I think it might have been my favourite of the trip. The filling was cheesecake and it was absolutely fantastic. The second one was for Carly (who also had the vanilla one).



Lindt Cafe: Strawberry, roselli, champagne, dark chocolate, caramel and passionfruit

These were all pretty good although I had higher expectations from what I had heard about them.

I also bought 4 from Cafe Vue in the Melbourne International Airport before we left for home, which were pretty good. They were the most expensive ones I bought and they were smaller than the others, but the flavours were good. I had the pistachio, passionfruit, orange and vanilla.

I think overall, I would say that the ones from Cacao were the best. They should be since they won the Best Macaron in Melbourne in 2010.

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Apart from the macaron purchases, the only other things I managed to buy where these:



An adorable knitted owl hot water bottle



A heart shaped ice cube tray from Ikea



Oddly shaped cupcake cases from Ikea



BYS nail polishes (the black with glitter in it on the left is for my best friend Brit) - I sort of regret not buying more of these. They were so cheap and this one shop seemed to have the entire range!

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So that really sums up the non-Soundwave part of my trip. I didn't really get any good photos of any of the bands/shows but I loved every single band I saw and managed to see some of my favourites twice because I saw them at the festival and at their sideshows. Lucky me!