Lavender & Twill : July 2018

Saturday, July 28, 2018

༺ Palm Tree Sky ༻

Here we are in our Moo Baan garden again!

I can’t decided if I’m just being a lazy blogger or the grounds of our Moo Baan are so pretty that it’s only fair to take lots of photos there… Hum.

This look was shot a couple of weeks ago when we had a rare sunny afternoon breaking through all the cloudy and rainy weather.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s still warm here, but the rainy season does tend to keep the sunshine hidden for most of the day.

But you didn’t come here to talk about the weather!!

It’s take me a long time to get around to posting these because one: I’m really busy at the moment, and two: I’m really struggling with my photography again.

Let’s get back to reason one in a little bit, but ugh…

It turns out that taking photos yourself means that even with the *best lens ever* I’m still struggling with lighting issues and all that.

Over the years I’ve been trying to move away from the filtered “Tumblr” style of photography {even though I still really love how it looks} and have been working on creating a crisp, fresh look to my photos. I want them to be pastel and light without looking completely washed out, over exposed or too hazy.

But I don’t know… That perfect look keeps eluding me and while I don’t mind so much how the photos are turning out for my blog, at the moment Instagram is a total editing nightmare!

I used to have good photos compared to a lot of what was out there, but either my editing style is too old school or my camera is letting me down, or.. something… I can’t figure it out, but I’ll keep trying to improve.

In the meantime, I am crazy busy as we chip away at our giant project!

I can’t remember how much I’ve spoken about this before, but one of the major reasons we decided to move to Thailand is so that we could get a decent start on creating our own family business. I will have more to say on it later, I kind of want to write a whole “big reveal” post!

For now, I will note that we are getting closer to launch day. That means I’m working my butt off like a turtle moving a mountain, but we are beginning finalize the first steps, and we are ticking off our mah-assive To Do list which feels pretty darn awesome I must say!!

Creating pretty outfits to wear is fairly low on that list, and currently I want stuff that is easy to throw on and go. I really loved this navy striped tee with the peter pan collar I found at Big C the other day. It’s cute and simple, and I love how this whole ensemble came together pretty quickly thanks to the inspiration!

I don’t often wear full nautical looks, which pretty hilarious as I adore navy, white, and red, and have tons of it in my wardrobe. While it can be typical of nautical fashions to heavily feature those colours, it also relies on certain themes in styling that I don’t wear. Sailor collars, nautical prints, fish, ships, and the like.

I did make an exception for this gorgeous tropical nautical print skirt from Betty Page as I totally loved the little palm trees and crabs and thought it was absolutely perfect for Thailand. Plus, it goes amazingly well with Deer Arrow’s Kurtis the Kraken.

While I don’t really do much nautical fashion, I do have a huge love for nautical themed brooches and cephalopods! Something about sea creatures are just so fascinating, so I’m glad I could find the perfect ensemble for debuting Kurtis on the blog.

Also, I’m kind of obsessed with all the straw hats ~ I was interested to see how this one is black but comes out navy in the pictures. I do actually need a proper navy straw hat though. I’m picky enough about matching that even though the black hat *looked* navy, the fact that I know that it isn’t, bothers me quite a bit! I’m not sure if a girl can have too many hats, so I will happily accept the challenge of finding a true navy boater…

xox,

bonita

༺ ♡ ༻
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Friday, July 6, 2018

༺ Wonderwall ༻

The rainy season has well and truly set in. We’ve been having so many wet days, that sometimes a whole week will pass without sunshine. It feels so weird because all I remember last year was sunshine for most days, then rain for an hour or two.

The Mister reminded me that we were actually in Malaysia this time last year, and it suddenly makes more sense!

I can’t believe we’ve been living in Thailand for well over a year now, but I guess it feels a lot shorter as we did have that five month extended stay in Australia ~ smack dab in the middle of it all.

Despite the rain that’s constantly rolling in, I was lucky enough to get a blog shoot squeezed in last weekend.

It was a bit of a gamble as to whether it would come together at all. It was late afternoon by the time I could head out. The sky was becoming quite cloudy, there was hardly any light left ~ and I didn’t even know where to go! It’s always a nerve-wracking race if you are spontaneously doing a shoot at the end of the day, you’re scrambling to get everything sorted out before the sun sinks, frantically racing those last golden beams as they disappear over the horizon.

I searched google maps for the nearest public park ~ and I found one that was only 3.5km away, but the problem with traffic in Thailand is that it is a little like Sydney. If you hit the roads at the wrong time, the dense traffic and abominably slow lights {It takes 10 minute to get a green light, sometimes even longer if you miss the change due to the backup of traffic. We avoid traffic lights wherever we can, though some are most definitely worse than others!} can mean that it can take up to 30 minutes to get that 3.5 km!

Then I was risking that the park would have any good locations to set up, or not be crowded with people, or actually have a nice backdrop. You know, all those important things ~ haha!

Thankfully, there turned out to be some lovely scenery, and this very pretty house with awesome architecture, although I wouldn’t be going back for the park itself. That turned out to be the corner of a block that was terribly overgrown with grass, and there was a giant shine in the middle, taking up most of the space.

I’m very cautious about photographing shrines, as I want to make sure that I respect Thai culture and not appear like an insensitive foreigner! Which, being a foreigner and blogger can really be the worst combination. Even though it was a super quiet neighbourhood there were a lot of people running past exercising, or walking dogs, and my little venture with the camera out at dusk meant I was the ninth wonder of the Thai locals! Awk-ward!!

And after all that fuss, I wasn’t even sure I’d have enough photos to do this post, as I broke the number one photography rule and went out with a semi-almost-dead camera battery… Which meant that my battery died before I could finish the shoot… naturally.

…Whoops!

I keep saying that I need to buy a spare, and maybe now that I’ve had the worst happen I’ll finally do it? Haha, or it will end up like my camera lens and take me fifty-million years get that done…

Busy as we are at the moment, I have found the time to do a little thrifting ~ second hand and vintage shopping is not really the same in Thailand as it is in other places, but I’ve found some cute pieces here and there. I picked up this lovely chestnut leather purse last year at a street market, I think it might be from the 60’s or 70’s.

My hat I found at a second-hand stall in the shopping centre carpark (!!) where we do our grocery shopping. {Stalls in Thailand are weird, they exist just about anywhere you could think or want to set one up. We even bought a brand new, custom built couch in the carpark!!}

I really loved the idea of pairing them with this repro dress from Sisjuly, as this late 1930’s or early 1940’s inspired frock really felt like it needed touches of 30’s fashion with it. I know that technically the skirt is too short for a true 30’s look, but those sleeves! They are definitely 30s worthy with that glamorous flouncing, and I just love them.

I’m also fond of the sage green fabric. Although it often feels like there is way to much green in my photos of Thailand already, somehow I still find myself wearing shades of green far more often than I ever do in Australia. I guess my love of matchy-matchy even extends to which biome I’m living in!

So do you think my look passes for a 1930’s inspired ensemble or should I stick to the 1940’s and 1950’s? I’ve been eyeing off a lot of 30s fashions a lot lately, and I’ve even bought a stack of 1930’s vintage patterns as well as some of the Simplicity re-releases. As much as I love it, I really couldn’t afford to buy true 30’s vintage, {not that it would ever fit me}, and I’d be terrified of ruining it.

Plus, I’m not sure I could ever get my hair to behave for finger waves. I’m hard pressed to get a decent pin curl set out of it, so in these pictures I just rolled it under for a faux bob. I feel like if I worked a bit more on it, my faux bob could look okay, so I’m seriously thinking of dabbling a bit more in 1930’s styles, hence buying the sewing patterns.

It’s an era of fashion that is calling to me, but I’m a bit unsure if I can actually pull off 1930s properly… There’s no harm in trying I suppose? Or is my style just not accurate enough to make it work? Would you have any tips for a first-timer? …Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough.