Friday Feature: Mayhem, madness, 'mazing macaroons

It's time to fight Friday blues

I miss my Friday Features, in fact I miss my structured blog entries but I refrained from doing them (all the time) as they seemed to constrict my writing. That said, I'm enjoying the fact that it's Friday and while browsing a blog I felt the need to blog about it and realized I could. Under my Friday Features!

Macaroons...macarons, however you want to spell them, I prefer the former as there's something more appealing about the way it looks and fits the actual devilish delight. Would you believe, I actually have yet to have a proper macaroon! And yet I am so in love with them.

It all began with that episode of Masterchef Australia when Adriano Zumbo unveiled his macaroon tower for the elimination round to kill them all...

It was official: I was in love. The macaroon recipe was what did me in. I had conquered the apparently "difficult" red velvet cake and did it all by hand too (although I highly recommend investing on an electric mixer, doing it by hand is primitive and painful. I only did it because it was for Scott's birthday!) and needed a new challenge. So what better challenge than to try out macaroons? Pfui, I'll conquer them too!

Unfortunately it will be a long time until I can make my own deletable delights (alas, living in a residential college curbs your cooking inspiration, I await the day I move out eagerly!) but until then I waste no time in perusing anyone and everyone's accounts of macaroon madness!

From Masterchef Australia runner-up (and University of Adelaide student, yay for pride!) Callum Hann's recipe for Violet Macaroons with raspberries and butter cream which looks phenomenally hard to a more simple version of Violet's (haha, the irony...) Chocolate Macaroons (I highly suggest reading Violet's blog by the way, she's a cutie!) there is an abundance of recipes out there all with horror stories too.

Has anyone tried making these sugary treats? If so, any suggestions?

Suki's fond memories of 2010

What a year 2010 has been! I personally found it to be one of the happier years of my life: I finally went off to pursue a degree after years of waiting after graduating from high school, I discovered a quaint city I fell in love with upon arrival, I have met and gotten close to some very wonderful people who will most certainly be life-long friends, and most importantly I have been fortunate enough to find in Scott a soul-mate and best friend.

Life could not have been more perfect this year even with its downs (the amount of times I have been ill this year has been considerably fewer than other years but the severity of each bout of flu has been terrible!) and I am so grateful that my beautiful parents have provided me with the opportunity to further my education and have been so very supportive and loving at all costs and at every hour I have needed them.

I have lost two very cherished pets: Jodhaa (Jodi), my barely a year old guinea pig earlier in the year and Pebbles, my fourteen-year old cat just this month. However Scott and I have our two adorable hermit crabs, Jackson and Trent, while my parents still have our two remaining cats, Sydney and Prince as well as our beloved still-nameless tortoise. Pets are beautiful additions to a family and I have benefited from all of mine in so many ways and 2010 has taught me to cherish them that much more.

2010 has taught me so much about myself and changed me in a lot of ways too. I was able to become a better person this year and most definitely a happier person for which I am most grateful for. Scott, my family and friends are an incredible support system in my life and they all are too amazing for words. It is them I thank for all the happiness and success I have gained this year.

Enough of me rambling away! I leave you with some photos of this year and a tale of each.

From the moment I arrived, fell in love with Adelaide and university and college life, 2010 has been amazing. I can only thank my parents for giving me this opportunity to study abroad and further my education and my life.

Life in Adelaide has been fun no matter what everyone has to say about the quaint, sometimes slow city. Trust me, after a 1am jaunt to Glenelg and getting a photo with a police jeep life is never unexciting unless you choose to be boring (:

The people I have memories with are ones I hope I know for life, because they are beautiful and like I did with Laura on the engineers pub crawl, there is always much fun to pursue and laughs to have.

Scott is the most amazing person in my life and probably the most important after my family. With him I have experienced so much and have yet to experience more with him. He is the one person I want to go through life with, he is my best friend as well as my boyfriend.

From wind farms...

...To caves (:

And not to forget, some very long car journeys together.

Our tradition is going to the zoos of SA and hopefully in the future we will be able to go to others.

My memories of this year show how much I have changed as a person - me stealing even a candle?! That was unheard of a mere few months prior to me moving to Adelaide!

I have kissed pandas...

...And gotten slushies from my boyfriend when I need them the most (:

I take myspace style photos unintentionally but love the people I take photos with.

My girlfriends are SO important to me...

...And we always get up to no good!

This year has been full of experiences...

And I cannot wait to go through it all over again with Lex as my partner in crime (:

I thank all the professionals I have gotten to work with this year and for the beautiful photos they have given me.

Let me know what your fond memories of this year have been!

In Between: As Usual, A Life Update (P.S. My 100th Post!)

Just a little filler, just whiling away my days

Oh readers, it feels as though every time I get a start on my blog something happens and I get so distracted with real life and neglect to post. I am so proud of the followers (you!) I have accumulated throughout this year and I am grateful my blog has been relatively constant since I decided to start blogging again. I definitely feel like I need to change up some of my posts and will be looking into a new post structure for the rest of this year and hopefully by 2011 I'll have The Suki Chronicles the way I want it to be.

So what has been going on in my world?

Since Pebbles passed away - exactly a week today - I have been trying to keep myself occupied and not mope. I have wonderful memories of Pebbles and she is the last part of my childhood having been in my life for 14 years. We rescued her from a drain in Singapore and from there we took her with us to Hong Kong along with our other cat Jessica and then from there to Sri Lanka - alas, without Jessica who passed away from a tumor in Hong Kong. Pebbles was the old crone in our family and everyday I think of her, missing her usual presence in her usual spots.

Mummy and I have caught up with my Aunt (Mummy's sister) and gone to see a play as well as a jewelry exhibition. The latter added a new lust to my wish list and that is green diamonds which are very, very rare and also extraordinarily expensive but decidedly my new future investment.

And along the lines of diamonds is one of my favorite advertisement tag lines: Mummy says if he cannot afford diamonds then he cannot afford me. So true! Something to consider, ladies.

My grandmother arrives tonight and will be staying here with us for a while. I leave for Adelaide in about eighteen days though and unfortunately due to certain circumstances I won't be attending summer school as planned but instead will be pursuing several job opportunities. I'm not sure where this all will take me but I'm hoping fervently that there will be a happy ending to all of this and 2011 will be a happy year for me.

So I leave you with two looks I forgot to post from last week. Not very exciting but I promise to try to come up with some outrageous looks come next week.

I hope you all are doing well!

Does anyone know what's up with bloggers refusal to rotate?! I'm going to find a way to override this in my next posts! Grrr...

P.S. How adorable is this?

In Between: LOTD And Life Update

Just a little filler, just whiling away my days

I've been a little lax with the posts because honestly life these days leaves me unmotivated and exhausted. My cat, Pebbles, is getting weaker daily and has now come to a point where our vets are starting to say, 'She's not doing so good', and that is the hardest thing to hear. I'm dreading the day when they suggest that we put her down as so she's not suffering; it has been over a week since she has eaten and since last Tuesday she has been surviving off saline, glucose and protein drips twice a day.

If I suddenly disappear, it's because I'm focusing on my main priority: family.

Here's my look of the day for today. Darling Girl Cosmetics always cheer me up because they are such feminine and beautiful colors and the owner of DGC, Susan, is an absolute sweetheart.

I know my eyebrows need maintaining and my skin could do with more hydrating and my hair could be cleaner and my facial expressions could be happier but you know what? I'm not going to apologize for any of that and instead I'm just going to point my flaws out to you, shrug and ask so what do you care? (:

I used Frolic and Plunder and loved how they worked well together. Definitely made me happy as it's a subtle daily look and yet purple is involved but not overbearingly so. Before I felt restricted to only mixing purple and black together...well, black and every color really but thanks to the blogging world and learning more about makeup I'm more open to trying different colors together without playing it safe.

Being home in Sri Lanka this time around is surprisingly relaxing and I'm loving being at home for the holidays. I'm grateful for the time with my parents and of course my adorable critters...

I haven't mentioned this before but we actually have a tortoise! When we first moved into our house two years ago our gardener discovered a tortoise outside our gate with a broken shell. We took her to the vets and got her shell fixed up (that yellow, globby patch on her shell) and adopted her. Much to my surprise she has grown quite a bit since I last saw her and is still as frantic and solitary as ever!

Another surprise: I expected to arrive in Sri Lanka and face over a month of sunshine, humid days and blaring heat but instead it rains daily and we are pretty much flooded daily too! Ironically enough, back in Adelaide there has been torrential rains as well resulting in flooding. Could this be Earth giving us a hint?

I had a lot more posts that I had planned but I really have no motivation to do them unfortunately, stressing out about Pebbles' condition and my university career is just taking its toll on me. Hopefully soon I'll get some posts done. Until then I hope everyone is doing okay.

LOTDs: Forgotten Looks

This is how I intend to strut my stuff today

Here are a bunch of looks that I had no time to post up before and during my exams and so are declared forgotten looks (hence they're edited because I can and like messing around with brightness and contrast). Most products used are Fyrinnae or Evil Shades.

 

In Between: The Last Of Adelaide (For Now)

Just a little filler, just whiling away my days

I guess this is going to be a summary of the past few weeks as well as a sort of end of the year post summarizing life in Adelaide...not that I'm leaving for good, I'll definitely be returning (January 4th 2011 at 7:15am-ish!). Where to start and what to say? This year has been a great one and I've experienced so much and been more open to having fun and not taking life (or myself) so seriously. I can't take all the credit for becoming a more easygoing person and honestly, sappy enough as some people might say it is, it really is Scott who has gotten me more out there. He is my boyfriend and he is my best friend and I'm beyond grateful I have him by my side.

Last month my college had it's big end of year event, the Valedictory Dinner or as it's more affectionately known, VD. What usually occurs is the entire college dresses up outrageously keeping costumes a secret until the actual day and then we have dinner in a formal style...and proceed to get drunk out of our minds. That's usual life at my college! Anyway, my group of friends and I decided to dress up as characters from the Greek legend "The Judgment of Paris" (which, if you know your Greek myths, is what started the war over Helen of Troy).

From left to right: Alex as Aphrodite, me as Hera, Darci as Athena and Arbaaz as Paris and of course, the Apple of Discord with the inscription 'To The Fairest'

I think we did a good job pulling it off and we certainly looked like a Greek mythology with a twist! It was a fun night and it was great seeing what everyone else came as. To name a few (sorry, I don't really want to post up photos!), a group came as a game of tetris while another came as a game of pac-man, there were crayons and army combat figurines, a group came as the full cast of Wizard of Oz (my friend Sophia was the Yellow Brick Road! So creative!), there were Johnnie Walkers and life guards and so many more!

Scott, being a tutor, dressed up with the other tutors along to a fairytale theme. His character? Oh...

...well, he was the forever young! Haha, Peter Pan of course! Too bad he didn't have a Tinkerbell to dust on people to make them fly - I know I would've loved to fly off to Never Never Land with him!

Overall it was such a great night! I'm not sure if my make up is too visible but here's a better shot of it - well, better than the other photos anyway! I really ought to have gotten a clearer shot but oh well.

 

For inspiration, I used Doe Doeere's ice queen look. I didn't do a green lid or "wings" but I did the dots and it looked all right. I was aiming for a peacock style for my eyes and I think what I did was reasonable enough considering my bangs were covering my eyes most of the night anyway. As long as I had the "dark" look of Hera I was content.

The weekend before last (what a tongue twister...), Scott and I went to his Aunt's wedding and boy was that an experience of a lifetime! It definitely was not your usual conventional wedding but I quite liked the fact that it was so relaxed and casual! In the photo we're with Scott's cousin, Nathan, and...er, Nathan's date. I think her name was Stacey? Can't remember for the life of me, I was blown away by her stunning good looks...

Other than that I've been studying for exams, I only have two this semester but I'm not taking it lightly. I finished my psychology exam last Saturday and now I'm preparing for my philosophy exam this Friday. And then I fly back home to Sri Lanka on Saturday, whew! What with all the drama of Qantas flights, I sure hope I don't get too agitated when flying...

Here are some photos from yesterday (Sunday). I got the opportunity to work with an amazing make up artist, Kirsty and photographer, Carla.

  

Kirsty is sooo good at what she does and it was really exciting getting to be her "canvas" for the day!

 

The other model, Carla W., and I. I quite like the look of this shot, I wonder how it'll turn out...

In between shots, the very pale in comparison Scott and I (I look absolutely bronzed to the max! Scott had no chance at competing with my color!)

From left to right: Carla (photographer), Jamie (reflector girl), Kirsty (MUA), Carla W. and me.

Here is a sneak peek of the shots to come - I love Kirsty and Carla's work! They make such a great team and I definitely look forward to working with them again. Yesterday was too much fun, from falling in between rocks to getting sand everywhere and getting abused by the ocean!

And I leave you here dear readers, with some shots of the crabs from today. I've moved them temporarily to their traveling tank as I gave their main tank a good clean out. At first they were a little unhappy over being moved but now they've settled in and are quite content. 

 

 

Trent in a tree, hehe.

And contemplative Jackson, just whiling away his day.