Last Thursday night I again went to Cocoon Bar (where I am now Mayor on FourSquare for those of you playing at home) to indulge in a night of cocktail tasting. Organised by the lovely Kimberley of Escapade Events, seven ladies crowded around plates of bread and dip to try out cocktails specially selected for us by our waiter and cocktail specialist, Christian.

We started with some basics of cocktail making and a bit of history. Cocktails date back to 1806 and were at the time described as any type of mixed drink. Cocktails are experiencing a rise in popularity in recent times due to films such as James Bond (martini) and Sex and the City (Cosmopolitan), so it seemed only fitting that the first drink we would try was the super sweet concoction the four ladies of New York prefer.

One of my personal favourites, the Cosmo consists of Vodka, Cointreau, lime and cranberry juice. The technique used to create this cocktail is to pour and shake – and Christian tells us ten times is the optimal number of shakes. The cocktail is sweet and just as I remember it. Fabulous.

Next up we try the Passion Martini, made with kiwi Vodka, Vanilla Vodka, passionfruit pulp, sugar syrup, lemon juice, an egg white and strawberries. While this cocktail smells divine and everyone else love it, I can’t get past the fact that I think it tastes like medicine. I think as a child I was subjected to a large quantity of sugar syrup enhanced antibiotics. This one wasn’t for me.

However I had no such problems with our third cocktail. Paraiso Bliss was a delightful concoction of Midori, Lychee Liquor, orange juice and cranberry juice. This cocktail is beautiful just to look at and it’s almost a shame to drink it. A layered cocktail, the liquor is poured first, then each of the juices slowly to create individual layers.

As we moved on in the evening and the laughs came quicker and faster. Next up was Toblerone, another classic and a fave. It was now I was introduced to Mozart Gold, a chocolate liquor. Practically liquid gold you might say. Together with Frangelico, Kahula, Baileys and thickened cream, the Toblerone tastes like a chocolate milkshake and is deceptively easy to drink.

Finally, Vertigo was our final cocktail of the evening. Mandarin Vodka, Frangelico, Chambord, blueberries, strawberries and sugar come together to create a fruit filled drink with lots of flavour – and the strongest alcohol tasting cocktail of the evening.

Christians best advice of the night? ‘A nice garnish goes a long way’ – When you are paying $15 for a drink, it seems everyone loves a bit of decoration.

You can attend your own cocktail tasting at Cocoon Bar, at $30 a head for 5 cocktails to taste and your own waiter for the evening. It’s a great girls night out and an opportunity to learn a little about what you are drinking, or just have a reallty good time!

From the first weather report on Saturday a week ago, I was shattered. After worrying about it being too hot, Mother Nature did a 180 and predicted a top temperature of 19 degrees, accompanied by a deluge of rain for the first day of the Melbourne Cup Carnival. For my first trip to Flemington, I had no idea what to do. How does one dress for the occasion? What shoes to wear? Did I mention I would be WORKING there?

Yes, finally all those years of volunteering at the Fashion Festivals paid off and I was given the call up last week to work the door at the VIP Marquee for the Myer Fashions on the Field. The role means I get to go to the cup carnival, get paid to be there AND I get to watch fabulous fashion and mingle with the VIPs. Of course, my answer was YES!

Due to my recent spate of unemployed ‘bliss’, new outfits just were not an option so I raided the closest and chose a Basque dress for the traditional Derby Day black and white. Black wedges to combat the wet, an oversized bow on my head and a trusty umbrella and I set off for Flemington on the train – apparently the ONLY way to get to the track.

The Fashions on the Field enclosure is rather beautiful (for a temporary structure!) and I was working in the upstairs VIP room – rather a blessing once the rain started around 12.30pm. It was warm, dry and most importantly, full of fabulous people to watch!

Guests on day 1 included Rebecca Twigley, Kris Smith, Hugh Sheridan, Geoffrey and Brynne Edelsten, Janice Breen Burns and Myer dignitaries. Champagne and canapés were on high rotation and the chatter never stopped, while downstairs fashionistas and misters (celebrating 10 years of men’s fashion on the field) walked the runway.

While my shift passed quickly – slower once I started to feel it in the balls of my feet – it wasn’t long before it was time to pop our own glass of champers. It is true about who you know, not what you know and it was these connections that got my colleague Miss O and I into the prestigious Lexus Marquee for the remainder of the afternoon.

A three story ‘tent’, the Lexus Marquee was all about luxury and designed to make guests feel as if they were in their own home. A who’s who of Channel 9 celebs, Miss O and I drank in the hospitality until the last race, when we made a dash for the train with 80,000 other punters in the rain.

I’ll be back at the track tomorrow for the Melbourne Cup, hopefully with better weather and more fabulous stories to tell!!

Image One: Myer Fashions on the Field undercover area
Image Two: Myer Fashions on the Field launch (Thursday 28 October)
Image Three: Myer Fashions on the Field upstairs VIP lounge and bar

As much as I like to drink, I like to eat, and it seems I am in great company. In her new cookbook, Jane Kennedy tells us how much she also likes to eat and then educates us foodies on how we can have it all – comfort food without the calories!

Like finding Manolo’s on sale, this cookbook is one in a million. Where I once skipped lunch in order to have a piece of lasagne or a hearty casserole, Jane tells me how I can have both – one for lunch and one for dinner – and still maintain my waistline!

Excited? Me too. The book is called OMG, I can eat that? and the tag line is Indulgent food minus the boombah. A winner don’t you think?

Split into chapeters – small plates, soups, piemakins, beef, lamb and pork, chicken and duck, comfort classics, vegetables and dessert, Jane covers all areas of the calories laden foods we love and turns them into easy to prepare, hearty and HEALTHY dishes that you can enjoy day after day.

For the purposes of this blog (short and sweet, you know) I am just going to look at one chapter – my favourite – comfort classics! Pizza, souvlaki, hamburgers, chilli con carne, lasagne and fried rice, among others, are all laid out for you to enjoy, accompanied by beautiful images by photographer Mark Roper.

The beauty of taking the boombah out of these recipes is that in most cases, they are also gluten free! Healthy eating never tasted so good.

Jane’s classic wit is littered through her book and provides a great follow up to her first book, Fabulous food minus the boombah. Available at all good book stores, RRP $39.95

I don’t think I have made any secret of the fact that I like a drink. I’m not really even too fussy about what I drink (actually, I don’t like tequila. Or bourbon. Or whisky. Maybe I am fussy…). I feel the whole experience of having a drink is being with friends or family in a relaxed environment and winding down.

I am mostly attracted to bottles, quirky names and drinks you can share. Of course taste matters but when you are at the bottle shop and don’t recognise any names, the next best bet is to judge by appearance. And I’ve found a pretty wine with a pretty name I want to share with you.

Carolina Wine is described as a Chardonnay which is light, fresh and crisp with delicate fruit aromas – on the palate you will experience uplifted stone fruit flavours with a hint of cashew nut.

Now, I don’t know much about the ‘qualities’ of wine, but that sounds pretty good to me (and I love a few cashews!) so I was pretty sold. But it is the bottle that really got me over the line.

There are six different labels. Six. Like a set. And each contains a part of the Carolina Wine story, which is an interesting and fun take on the wine having its own personality. I won’t rehash the story for you here, check out the website and head to the cellar door to start the journey, but I did want to point out that this wine is from Victoria and we all love a local.

With Spring blooming all around us, this wine is the perfect refreshment while you are sitting in the sun with the girls on a Sunday afternoon. You can even try your luck at winning some (and a bunch of other goodies) on the facebook page at the moment. Think I’ll pour a glass now. (oh who am I kidding, you all know I am writing this, glass in hand!)

Eight weeks seems like a really long time. But it’s not. It’s like waiting for water to boil when you really need a cuppa. Or you are desperate for your grass to grow just in time for that garden party. Eight weeks is always the same length of time. The kettle will always take the same time to boil. The grass will always grow. Eventually.

Eight weeks ago I finished up at my job. Tomorrow, I will start a new one. The time in between has felt immense – long enough to drink endless coffees, attend interviews, catch ups, events, go away twice and blog almost every day. I’ve played with my niece – just four weeks old when I left my job, now three months. I’ve met wonderful people. I’ve taken the time to work out what I want and I’ve spent hours agonising over what I don’t.

Yet the list of people I haven’t managed to catch up with is endless. I never cleared out the spare room at mum and dads, housing my stuff from when I moved over 12 months ago. I never watched all those DVDs I insisted I needed to see. I never read the pile of books I picked up at the op shop, or the magazines starting to clutter my coffee table.

Morgan Freeman once said ‘I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still’ (The Shawshank Redemption) and I can completely relate. He may have waited over twenty years – I have only been waiting eight weeks – but the anticipation is the same. Time is a funny thing. You wait and wait – and when the time comes, it feels like you haven’t waited at all.

I spent all day today in tracksuit pants. I played with my niece, walked in the sun, spent time with my family and pondered on the past eight weeks. I may not have achieved any of the things on my ‘to do before I get a job’ list, but I think I have achieved something much greater.

So tomorrow I will take the next step in my life, starting another chapter and moving forward with a flourish. There is plenty more to come and so much more to learn. Thank you all for coming on my journey, I hope in some way to have inspired you to follow your dreams – with the simple lesson that should you need to take eight weeks, don’t worry. From the other side, eight weeks feels like boiling the kettle.

As my cousin so eloquently put it during Melbourne Spring Fashion Week, sympathy will get you everywhere, and yesterday sympathy got me the plum job of being stylist Philip Boons’ assistant on a fashion shoot.

After tweeting on Monday how I was feeling the misery of eight weeks without work, the fabulous Philip took pity on me and asked if I would be interested in assisting him for the day. I didn’t hesitate. Even If I had a job I would gladly call in sick to spend the day helping out and so it came to be that I assisted on my third fashion shoot.

In more amusing Sarah stories, I first mistook the street name, then misjudged the time to get to Northcote in peak hour and by the time I arrived at the location, was quite sure Philip would be sending me packing. But of course he didn’t and we had a wonderful day.

The shoot was 70s styled and in the spirit of the era, the house, clothes and even the music we played, were all along for the ride. Gorman and Madam Virtue provided the frocks, while House of Baulch at Glitzern, Ghost and Lola and ZOMP shared the love with accessories.

Our team consisted of Natasha Frank, the photographer; Philip Boon, our famed stylist; Rob Mason on hair; Megan Harrison on make-up; Janice, Megan’s assistant; Alice Burdeu (yes, Australia’s Next Top Model winner and all round SUPERSTAR! She has done two Vogue Australia covers, could I BE more in awe??), Melody and Zoe, our models; and ME, stylists assistant. And we made an EXCELLENT team (if I do say so myself!).

I appreciate I have limited experience on fashion shoots, but every single one I go on is bigger and better than the last. I would rather fetch coffee as an unpaid assistant at a fashion shoot than spend more time in an office job that I am not in love with, thus reminding me again why I left the corporate gig in the first place.

So while I am not about to let you see all the beautiful shots we took today – you’ll just have to wait til the mag comes out – here is one that will give you some hints. Thanks so much to Philip for having me along yesterday, for his time and expertise and for reminding me why I decided to pursue my dreams in the first place.

Image One: Natasha shoots Alice in our 70s house
Image Two: L-R Alice, Zoe and Melody pose while Rob (left) and Philip (right) check the hair and frocks (sorry about my finger in the corner!)

Here is a blog about another of my ‘it could only happen to me’ stories. You know how they go – the great floods of January debacle, 7 months to find an apartment dramas and who could forget Dry July? My most recent humorous anecdote begins on a wet and windy Friday night in Melbourne, smack bang in the middle of Spring.

I had plans to meet my editor and friend, Onya Magazines Sandi Sieger, at 6pm for a quick dinner before we headed to ACMI for a screening of Je t’aime… moi non plus, part of a series of films depicting the lives of Birkin and Gainsborough.

The weather worked against me and the 10 minutes it should have taken to get to Fed Square took closer to 40, making me inexcusably late. A quick dinner turned to an even quicker hot chocolate and we entered the cinema, expecting a fashion documentary of sorts.

How wrong we were. To use the words from the ACMI website (simply because I can’t find the words), the film was ‘sexually daring and taboo laden’. Not at all what we were expecting and rather disturbing. After 50 minutes, we walked out (and we were not the first!)

After such an unusual (and unexpected) evening, we headed to dinner, slightly shocked and seriously in need of a drink. Dinner conversation turned to marriage and boyfriends, where I spoke strongly of my fabulous independence and how I had no need (read: this does not mean I don’t want) for a man.

Heading back to the car, recovered from our earlier experience, I noticed something all single girls dread. A flat tyre. (Carrie could have made an entire episode about this.)

History will tell you that the only man a girl can depend on is her daddy (or possibly it was a cult feature film of the 80s), so this is who I called. My dad is a mechanic and I have never had the need for the RACV. Every time something has gone wrong car wise in the past, I lived 15 minutes from my parents. Now I am an hour away. What was a girl to do?

Dad advised (based on my description there was about 3 inches of air left in the bottom of the tyre) I could drive the 10 minutes home, but that would be it – I’d need to change it. Me? Um, not my area of expertise but I’d sort something out! So home I went, thinking of the irony of my previous conversation and how now I was in desperate need of a man.

I called a friends partner, and he didn’t know how to change a tyre either. I considered ignoring the problem and catching trams and cabs everywhere. I nearly asked random strangers on twitter to save me. But in the end (after spending the morning in cabs and 3 different trams) I drove the car to the service station and pumped up the deflated tyre all by myself. For the first time ever. Probably not the last.

This temporary measure got me the 60kms to my parents where my dad happily changed my tyre (it had a screw in it) and then proceeded to fix a half a dozen other things he ‘noticed’ needed looking at.

Those pink ladies were right. The only man a girl can depend on is her daddy. Thanks Dad. 
 

As part of this months Primped VIP team, I got to test some fabulous new products!
My original review as it appeared for Primped, October 2010.

I opened the envelope and the smell of pink grapefruit transported me to a better place. A place where I was no longer standing in my kitchen after a day at work, where there were no bills to be paid, no dinner to be prepared, no cleaning to be done. I was in a tropical paradise, just by closing my eyes. And if this was the result after just opening the envelope, I couldn’t wait to try the new Neutrogena Pink Grapefruit Summer Range of cleanser and scrub.

After the dinner, cleaning and bills were taken care of and it was time for bed, I headed to the bathroom to be indulged. The new oil free range is designed to fight against spots and blackheads but also smell super sweet.  While my skin is actually pretty good in this area, the product claims my skin will look brighter, clearer and be more refreshed – benefits I am not about to say no to.

I started with the Facial Wash, pumping a blob into my hand and rubbing together to work up a lather. The formula foams easily and when applied to the face is smooth and cool, not forgetting that it smells amazing. After rinsing off with cold water, my skin already felt refreshed.

Applying the Foaming Scrub to my fingertips and working them together, I used the product on my face in a circular motion on the T zone and sparingly everywhere else. Again, the product foamed – which I always think makes it feel cleaner – and rinsing in cool water left my skin feeling fresh and light.

After a towel dry and applying moisturiser, I found my skin was actually already quite hydrated and the moisturiser took a while to work in, which I can only attribute to the new products as my skin is usually quite dry after applying water or product.

I used the cleanser only in the mornings, and the cleanser and scrub in the evenings. The products look nice in bathroom – not overly branded and the pink is nice! – and I keep catching whiffs of pink grapefruit through the day, which is just divine. I can’t really comment from an acne point of view, but from a general skincare angle, the products are great – not drying at all which had been my main concern. I recommend you visit this tropical paradise.

Both products are $14.99 and available at supermarkets, chemists and Priceline etc.
 

‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.’
Thoreau

After nearly seven full weeks of unemployment, the offers are starting to come in. After hours spent worrying about interviews, sitting in my car waiting for interviews (cause I always plan to arrive early, just in case) and agonising over how the interviews actually went, I am finally being offered positions that will mean I start to get paid again.

But now I have a new dilemma.

What if the jobs I am being offered are not the dream? What if they tick all the boxes, except one – the most important one? Is it worth taking them now, given it’s been seven weeks, or holding out a little bit longer in the hopes that the dream is still within reach?

I am afraid of taking the job in case nothing else comes along. I am afraid of taking the job in case I am desperately unhappy in a role I didn’t really want in the first place. I am afraid of the unknown.

So I asked for a sign. Something from the great beyond that might answer my questions and make the hard decisions for me. A signal from above that says take the job; or don’t take the job.  Essentially, maybe, a figment of my imagination.

This afternoon I had another interview. A job, that from the company website, I think I am quite keen on and I think I would be good at. But the offer of the other jobs is in the back of my mind. How long can I hold out giving an answer? How long can I wait to hear from the other interviews?

Arriving early for the interview – as I do – I wandered into a gift shop to pass the time. A stand of inspirational magnets, cards and mugs is before me and there in the centre, is my sign.

‘Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined’. Thoreau

I nearly welled up, there in the gift shop. The answers I knew were in my head were clearer, and the knowledge that I again must turn down security in favour of my dreams apparent.

And so my journey continues, with $9 less thanks to my magnet, but with piece of mind and renewed hope.