One Two Chi Chi Chi

If you are looking for a deliciously fluffy, full skirted dress, stop by Chi Chi London for the prettiest, flounciest ones. It’s a pastel and floral frock shock but regardless of your day to day style, tell me you don’t want to have a good twirl and bounce in something so fun. I paired my lovely mint dress with some strappy heels but if you were going to a themed fifties party or garden day, some little sneakers would be just brill too!

If you’re interested in this dress, its made of a lovely thick material but something that you will definitely need to have steamed so it floats nicely. I would also recommend looking in the petite section if you were after a dress that isn’t so long. Available on their own site with free worldwide delivery and also Asos!

Dress (c/o Chi Chi London) / Heels 

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Black for the Summer

Happy New Year! I have had a two week break from Style Smorgasbord because I wanted to recharge, reflect and redirect my energy towards the holiday season. Whilst we should aim to improve upon ourselves daily, the first day of the year is always a great ritual of self assessment that demands personal honestly and reinforces humility. Instead of coming up with new year resolutions for 2016, I decided to create a list of 101 things I want to achieve in 1001 days. You can see my list here. 

I would say I am a very excitable person. Thusly, I rarely wear black especially head to toe black. However, I love a good oxymoron and black in the summer is refreshingly that. I received this boater for Christmas and plan to wear it forever. The brim is wonderfully wide and perfectly practical and adding it to any outfit just makes me feel like I am on vacation somewhere tropical.

Hat / Top / Skirt / Scarf

/ Photography Credits – Matthew /

Crochet + Coconut Palms

This is the first post of October which may be a strange thing to remark on but October is an important month for Style Smorgasbord because in a couple of weeks on the day of halloween, this baby turns one! Its becoming a toddler :’) and I thank y’all for watching it grow up with me. I’m going to put a stop on the analogies for now but I have some very cool things in store for SS to celebrate its birthday.

I am constantly floored by my unconscious creativity. Woah calm done kid, you’re not that g8. But seriously, I called this post Crochet + Coconut Palms purely because of my shirt and also the palm tree in the background. Then now, as I am writing out this blog post, I see that I resemble a coconut. Amazing. I always knew white and brown was a strange combination but I always figured it was more reminiscent of a chocolate ice cream sandwich or an Oreo. Its funny how I always manage to connect everything together … must be why I am such an excellent English essay writer or maybe it just means I can fertilise 12 fields with all the bull I used to put in my essays (joke credit courtesy of Yik Yak). Speaking of poor taste, has anyone been watching the Australian Bachelorette? Oh gosh it is good stuff … most of my crew watches it and we all agree that Sam is perfect, most of the guys are forgettable and its pretty obvious who the final 3 are already. I would also like to point out that the wallpaper in the Bachelorette house is beautiful, I think it has palm trees on it. Oh the things I do and do not notice!

Can you imagine the tan stencil you would be able to get if you lay out long enough in this top?! It would be so epic haha. If you’re interested in this top, just go for your normal size. I was worried it would run small so I ordered an M but its a little looser than I personally would like.

 

Top: Dresslink (c/0) / Skirt: Old (similar here) / Wristlet: Fossil

Photography: Matthew / Styling & Editing: Myself 🙂

Bright Winter Things

I was shooting for a Southern Curls & Pearls  inspired colour scheme and I thought it turned out alright. Salmon and coral may be from the same section of the colour wheel but they go together beautifully when broken up with some white and tan. I can’t believe my winter break is over already! It was definitely a fun break and I’ll be sure to create a jam packed July wrap up before August trickles in.

Varsi-Prep

The rest of the garden is brown, wet and sad but then there are these lovely hot pink camellias in the dead of autumn. Always look on the sunnier side kids. Oh, and always wear your clothes back to front because if T-Swizzle is doing it (exhibit a, b, c, etc.), we should all do it too. Pictured here is a very much loved sweatshirt worn back to front, my chiffon collared shirt, the only pair of jeans I really wear, white cons and my good old ray-bans. They call it varsi-prep*. Well at least that’s what I call it! Thank God Its Friday (tomorrow) and have a great weekend!

*As in a cross between varsity and preppy, shoutout to Adela for the inspo x 

My Day on a Plate // January

Smorgasbord can mean a wide range of something but it is more popularly known as a range of open sandwiches and delicacies served as hors d’oeuvres. In simplest terms; I like food. My blog is a representation of me. Food will now be a feature of StyleSmorgasbord. Capeesh? I’m going to try my best to do these every month and make them a reflection of the season I am in. So today’s four recipes are perfect for a hot summer day. These recipes will have a common denominator: they will be fresh, easy, healthy, tasty and very Instagrammable.

I also wanted to mention one of my favourite cookbooks that I’ve been pouring over lately. Clean Living by Luke & Scott is a paleo cookbook that has the most amazing dishes. I think the idea of paleo is so very interesting and although I don’t think I will ever go pure paleo I really like the message the boys talk about concerning how clean eating is sometimes seen as restrictive:

A Breakfast Beverage of Cucumber & Pear Green Juice // Serves ONE // This is a great post workout juice for those who need a quick hit before a hot long day ahead. I usually like to make my juices before I work out, pop them into the freezer for an hour and cool off after my workout with the chilled juice // Remove the skin of a pear, chop it into chunks and then throw it into a blender along with a handful of green leaves (any will do), a few slices of cucumber, several ice cubes and a tiny bit of water so your blender doesn’t break! //

A Light Lunch with Sweet Potato Fritters, Salmon & Avocado // Serves TWO to THREE // I originally saw this in a Paleo Diet Cookbook but it had way too many ingredients so this is my four ingredient adaptation that is a breeze to make with an arm workout thrown in for fun (from intense grating haha!) // Combine a 600g grated sweet potato with one egg yolk together and then shape the sweet potato mixture into a loose round and press into a large frying pan with oil. Cook for three minutes on each side until crispy. Serve fritters with smoked salmon and generous amounts of avocado! //

Beachside Dinner with a taste of Nha Trang // Rolled up food is right up my alleyway. I love sushi and tortillas and sausage rolls but most of all I love rice paper rolls. Served cold, they are the perfect kind of dinner to take on a picnic. // There are so many variations that instead of giving you a recipe, I’m just going to link you to some of my favourites (most of which are East meets West): Garlic Chicken / Chicken & Mango / Summer Fruit / Grilled Asparagus & Chilli Orange Quinoa / Shrimp & Avocado //

Decadent Dessert of Strawberry Greek Pie that isn’t that indulgent // I love baking but at the same time I hate it too so frozen treats like this are the perfect remedy! Although they’ll take a bit more work than a cold scoop of ice cream, your body will thank you later. // Crush a sleeve of digestive biscuits and add a little bit of milk to ‘wet’ the crumble. Then press the crust into a pan. Puree a punnet of strawberries and stir it into 600g of greek yoghurt and then pour it on top of your crust. Add some sliced strawberries on top and freeze for at least 5 hours. Take it out to sit for 20 minutes before serving //

That’s all for my day on a plate! Let me know if you try any recipes and if this is a series that can be picked up in the future!

Summer Kind of Christmas

Some of my favourite pictures are taken on my Instagram and even though a picture is meant to say a thousand words, I have a few hundred more to add in today’s post! I think I’m going to start doing these monthly, just to give my readers a monthly glimpse into what I’ve been up to starting with the above two shots.

Summer time is undisputedly my favourite season but this year, the magnitude of what it embodies has been multiplied by ten because I get to truly experience it all sans distractions. In the past, its always involved catching up with school work, reading for school, stressing to friends about school and staying indoors far too much. However this year, I’ve been lucky enough to finally be done with school (momentarily) and spend my summer by the sea and pool including Bronte Beach (on the left) and Magenta Shores (on the right). I have two and a half months left before summer ends and I intend to spend as much of it as possible outdoors so if you would like to see more of my daily snaps in real time, check out @stylesmorgasbord on Instagram.

I’ve also had a lot of fun creating flatlays to capture what I’ve been up. I finally received my L’s on Monday so I can learn to drive and I’ve also been getting into interior magazines lately, particularly Belle and Real Living. I’m working with WeWork in the new year to share my creative working space so I hope you guys are excited for January 2015 because the general theme will be fresh starts, getting organised and preparing yourself for a kicking year!

One of the ultimate to do things on my bucket list include experiencing a white Christmas. When the weather is thirty degrees, snow angels, ugly sweater parties and hot chocolates topped with cream and mini marshmallows by the fire aren’t exactly practical. That being said, I have enough holiday cheer to rival Buddy The Elf so I still try to make the best of it anyway. So far, I’ve kick started my Christmas Cookie Bonanza with these amazing Lemon and Pistachio cookies; thrown a one person wrapping party featuring me and Pentatonix’s Christmas album: That’s Christmas To Me and decked the halls like a winter wonderland.

Lastly, when I started Style Smorgasbord, I was quite apprehensive about the nature of blogging in this genre. It’s perceived as a bit vain, kind of staged and those who do it are bona fide narcissists who are fiscally irresponsible and live in a world of excess. I didn’t want this blog to define me as superficial. But then I realised I could redefine what kind of blog I am maintaining and my goal is to start integrating other aspects of what I am passionate about into my blog starting in 2015. I think I’ve also grown a lot this year and that has partly been thanks to the internet. It has really opened my eyes to issues that I was previously ignorant of and also taught me about the kind of privilege I am lucky to have and the power I hold to help the less privileged. So to anyone who’s ever thought that fashion is purely superficial, I hope I can prove you wrong.

NIGHT

Now do we have to dress up for the prom?/ Dude I dont think we have the choice/ Yeah it’s the night of all nights/ Gotta look just right {High School Musical 3 ‘A Night to Remember’}

Introducing the formal photos … yeah, high school made me do it. On Monday night I had my year 12 formal which in American terms is equivalent to senior prom. Having been on the formal committee, this night had been a year in the making and it was nice to finally see the venue, decorations, music and food in action. As you can see, the venue was super pretty and I wore a cream-ish strapless dress with a beaded-slash-sequinned bodice, ornate earrings, an Alexander Mcqueen inspired quilted clutch and taupe heels. The food read like pesto pasta for the entree, chicken escallops for main and ‘creme brûlée’ for dessert.  Highlights of the night included the Photo Booth which had a never ending line and the playlist which was pretty sweet 🙂 I know prom has basically become a rite of passage so if anyone feels let sharing, tell me your prom stories!

Photgraph Credits: My Dad and Lisa