Weekend Learning's

Swing wild thing, swing.

I loved this weekend. My friends just get more and more awesome. This is what I learned.

• Quote of the Vega Showcase “I’d rather sell my boyfriend than be without my blackberry” that is exactly how I felt that night too. So I went out with the boys. Best idea ever! 
• Second Quote of the Vega Showcase “I would’ve passed if I had done this on canvas.” Sorry Multimedia kids... You’re still sexy... Prrr.
• Don’t ever think ill sit around and wait for anyone. Life’s too short.
• I have wonderful people who I work with. A Hill Billy meets Jersey Shore end of year party, raucous. 
• Sometimes peoples hidden feelings have to stay hidden. (even though they are so obvious to everyone, *bless)
• Somehow I always end up with the handcuffs and the weird parties, don’t ask.
• China Mall, raking in poor people one empty wallet at a time.
• I’m dreaming of a white décor Christmas. I cannot believe it is the first of December already.
• It scares me when people say they quit their jobs because they’d “rather be unemployed and happy than employed and unhappy.” Are you insane? And it comes up SO often. 
• In these trying times your job is your greatest assets! If you can afford to not have a job and puddle your way through everyday... Go play at the traffic please. It is sad and embarrassing especially if you live is South Africa where jobs are so rare. You. Are. Pathetic.  
• I love pool parties in Jozi, I also love being the shade for my friends, anything for you heart.
• There are angels on the dance floor, good to know you were there with us Nyks.
• Driving, singing, eating Mc Donald's, I haven’t done it in so long, its still good fun.
• Throbbing Strawberry is still the best lunch spot on a Sunday. Live music. Sunshine. Wine. Friends. The Japanese mayo you order on the side is even free, that is how you keep your customers coming. 
• I believe in good people. My friends prove they are out there, and no you cannot have them. Mine. Mine. Mine. 

Xoxo

PS. Life is too short to give another minute to anyone or anything that doesn’t make you happy or their number one. Me number two? WHAHAHAHAHA. Moving on. 

I LOVE THIS SHIZ!

1 comment China Mall, Christmas, quote, Throbbing Strawberry, Vega, weekend

Die Hard Designer

ai but its true.

Graphic Designer humor things I find online. They’re hysterical. I found this one {here}. Have a read, its completely true!

• You’ve almost rear-ended the car in front of you because you were analyzing a font on a billboard.
• You get pissed when a free Photoshop brush you download is less than 1000px in size.
• You’d rather study the paisley pattern on your boyfriend/girlfriend’s shirt than listen to what he/she has to say.
• You can use keyboard shortcuts at light speed, blindfolded, but you can’t type a paragraph of text without staring at the keyboard.
• You’ve had “Software Nightmares,” when you’ve been working way too much.
• You consider meals interruptions.
• You’ve learned your lesson and stopped using the word “final” in any file name when saving.
• You clean your keyboard more often than you wash your car.
• You’ve intentionally given up trying to explain your projects to non-designers. (and what you do... “I’m a Graphic Designer...” “So what does that mean” “Im going to get another drink”)
• You see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix.
• You’d rather organize your desktop than your sock drawer.
• When you heard that Adobe was aquiring Macromedia, you had a Design Orgasm.
• When you look at Album art all you see are grunge Photoshop Brushes. (Then you see the album art a couple minutes later)
• You’ve Photoshopped out a watermark for a comp or mock-up.
• You’ve actually paid for a font.
• You’ve totally slaughtered a great design concept because the client thinks he/she knows best. (everyone thinks they are a designer...)
• The amount of words you’ve written with on burned discs total more than the amount of words you’ve read in novels.
• You’ve had to explain to a client that a layered file wasn’t part of the deal.
• You’ve kept a ragged concert ticket just so you could scan it.
• You’ve nicknamed the OSX spinning wheel. (and not affectionately) spinning beachball o’ death (SO TURE!)
• You bookmark a resource more often than you have a fun night out on the town.
• You’ve intentionally overbid a project because you can sniff out a bad client from a mile away.
• You can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
• You have an amazingly huge font collection, and an amazingly short temper.
• If you had a cent for every mouse click, you would have been a trillionaire 3 years ago.
• You have removed the arrows and cleaned up the fonts on a forwarded mail before forwarding on.

Xoxo

PS. I cannot talk when I work too hard because my brain is thinking in pixels and not in words. Love. 

You can't just study it or decide one day you like it... you're born with it.

 

Leave a Comment design, facts, quote

Weekend Learning's

It's been done...

Weekend learning’s have become one of those things I become mildly obsessed with. By Sunday evening I am thinking of possible quotes and images and by Monday morning I’m jotting down notes in my little book. This is what I learned.

• The electricity in the air on a Friday is one thing. The electricity with a storm on a Friday sends sparkles down my spine.
• Making Mix Tapes for special people is too much fun. Decorating them is the best bit... Said the designer in me.
• Photo booths are still mad fun, but I don’t like props, my face is funny enough.
• Trabella still makes great pizza and their salads are not half bad either. The quote on the wall reads “I wish I was lettuce”, love it.
• Kitchen Tea’s are still a strange tradition to me. They evoke a lot of emotions and inner turmoil, shiver.
• Seeing my little cousin Kate in a dress made of dishcloths was an hysterical moment... It was her Kitchen Tea.
• Not Bread Alone is a new bakery in Illovo. Their pies are delish and the have super pretty cupcakes, yum!
• Sometimes a friends surprising (and shocking) news makes you realise that its actually exactly what you always wanted for them... Happiness and their perception of normality.
• It comforting to know that I can lie with you and talk about nothing and the time just flies so quickly that it goes from dawn to lunch and it doesn’t feel like we wasted one second.
• Life is short, live it. Love is rare, grab it. Anger is bad, dump it. Fear is awful, face it. Memories are sweet, cherish them.

Happy week lovlies.

Xoxo

PS. “You were my lesson I had to learn, I was your fortress you had to burn.” Madonna, The Power of Goodbye.  

acceptance...

 

1 comment Not Bread Alone, quote, trabella, weekend

Weekend Learning's

I made this, I credit no one but myself, coco the nut.

Hello. Yes I am bloody well aware it is Friday and I bloody well know it is the next weekend already but I wrote this post on Monday and due to bad net I haven't been able to post so I thought today I might as well get it up and out anyway. So... Here it is! Weekend Learning’s on a Friday, yip its been one of these weeks... Besides there are some points in this post for some amazing people (you know who you are) that just have to be said... love.

A fast paced weekend with little sleep and high temperatures. I spent most of it without shoes and in minimal clothes (due to the 30 degree weather to gutterhead!) This is what I learned.

• The Baron Sandton, no matter what you say about the venue, has really delish food.
• I forgot how sore my feet get when I haven’t gone dancing in a long time. Ouch.
• Norwood has got some seriously gorgeous little antique stores.
• When one door closes, another opens OR you actually turn away from the closed door and realise there were 40 other better open doors waiting for you and you were so stupid to think you only had one door this whole time you almost missed the sunshine... Silly ferret.
• Friends are family you choose. I love my family.
• Woolworths Sparking Pineapple Juice is delicious and refreshing in this Johannesburg heat.
• I make hell of a good braai. Including marinated chops, little corn on the cobs and baby potatoes, nom. Hosting is fun.
• I love that most of the things we ate on the weekend came from my garden, rosemary, lemon, potatoes, corn, spinach, salad... Coco has a green thumb.
• My little pup Louis (1 years) and my Goddaughter Lili (2 years) are the best of friends. Too cute!
• I love it when two groups of friends merge and become one. Birds of a feather...
• My Gran still sits on the porch on a Sunday afternoon, sips lemon iced tea and tells me pearls of wisdom. Wearing shoes is for the birds, a nice man is just a nice man and people with troubles will dump their troubles on me; “The trash can is by the door Dear, its not sitting there looking pretty.”

Xoxo

PS. Friends pick us up when we fall down and if they cant they just lie right down next to us. *love you guys. 

you, I will always fight for you.

 

Leave a Comment baron, friends, weekend, Woolworths

Missibaba

{website}

Beautiful Leather Bird Brooches

There is so much beauty in the world and so much great art, naturally handbags and leather goods should fall into the same category. When I heard that Missibaba had a pop-up store at my favourite spot Hand I put my foot on the pedal.

I’m a sucker for beautiful things. Being a female designer I demand great design in clothes and accessories as well. Missibaba makes this little designer girl very happy. The smell of the leather was intoxicating. I actually recall saying to Shanon (my wonderful friend and owner of Hand JHB) “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Feeling like Alice is Wonder-bag-land I pranced around the wooden bag ‘Tree’ and introduced myself to every bag with loving affection.

“Missibaba is a luxury accessory design label established five years ago by leather aficionado Chloe Townsend. Passionate about South Africa and supporting local industry, Chloe opened her Studio in the heart of Woodstock where she could surround herself with the best craftswomen in the country.

Combining technical skills learnt at the London College of Fashion with an inherent passion for uninhibited creativity, Chloe created the inimitable Missibaba brand. A playground for all things leather, Missibaba continues to experiment with texture and colour continuously pushing the boundaries of imagination.”

I bought me an Aztec. Ladies I highly recommend you invest in one, two, or twenty-six of these gorgeous pieces. Below are some of my next wants but there are many, many, many i want to get there Coco paws on... prrr.

Xoxo

PS. The detail in the handbag is the buying point for Coco. My Missibaba is peach and cream candy stripe, delish.

Zoo Cha-Ching

Kaleidoscope Clutch

The Sgt Pepper (wow)

The Kaleidoscope Possum 2

 

Leave a Comment fashion, Hand, Hand Bags, Missibaba

CocoMo's

Welcome to Movember Miss Portman.

So we’re one week into Movember, lets have a little update. The Movember website says; “On Movember 1st, guys register at Movember.com with a clean-shave face and then for the rest of the month, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Mo Sistas are the women who register to support the men in their lives, raising funds by seeking sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts.

Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November and through their actions and words raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

At the end of the month, Mo Bros and Mo Sistas celebrate their gallantry and valor by either throwing their own Movember party or attending one of the infamous Gala Partés held around the world by Movember, for Movember.”

The social media world has been full of it. Both ladies and men alike have been flooding their twitter avatars and facebook profiles with tash’s and mo’s.

I’ve added a couple of my favourite Ladies, go team Lassie Tash! Read some other articals on Coco Mo’s {here}.

Xoxo

PS. Hey CocoMo, I like it!

ThatNicole

Kate_Els

Coco & Miss Kitty

1 comment moustache, Movember

Weekend Learning's

Top hats, Pearl and The Beard and The Queen of Hearts.

A huge weekend with the people I love. I could honestly end this post right there, but I won't. This is what I learned;

• You can walk a cat on a leash. It might look funny, very funny, but its effective.
• I like when you smile, but I love it when I’m the reason.
• There are signs everywhere. You just need to decided how you’re going to interpret them.
• Stabilising to new medication sometimes becomes harder than expected. Eish.
• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades- King David, Hearts- Charlemagne, Clubs- Alexander the Great and Diamonds- Julius Caesar.
• I love the name Charlemagne, I will use it one day. On that note as well and on Movember, the King of Hearts in the only King without a Moustache.... Fascinating.
• Dancing on grass, under the palm trees and blue skies in the summer heat is one of my favourite things to do. Tropical Parties are the best.
• Sometimes going out with just the boys to a ridiculous trance party to a gay club in town is just enough weird to remind me how fantastic my life really is.
• Apparently I suit top hats, thank you. *Next time.
• O.P.I’s nail polish colour in “Hot and Spicy” is a great coral, orangey colour. It is the perfect Thanksgiving shade.
• I made a lot of good decisions this weekend, and a lot of them had to do with forgiving and letting go.
• I’m loving Pearl And The Beard, specifically ‘Sweetness’. “Sweetness, we see the exact same sunrise, cause I’m drunk, I’m drunk on your love.”
• Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.
• Sundays with all of you make my heart sing, I am blessed, thank you.

Loves please don’t forget to vote for Coco, click the red button and ask all your friends! Voting closes THIS Wednesday! Thank you.

xoxo

PS. "I will dare to just do what I do, be just what I am and dance whenever I want to"- Beverly Williams.

...or ankles... tee hee.

 

Leave a Comment moustache, Movember, Pearl and the Beard, playing cards, quote, Thanksgiving, top hat, weekend

Fortune Cookie

White Rabbit much?

I eat a lot of Asian foodies. So I get a lot of Fortune Cookies. I’ve decided that I will post all my fortunes on Coco. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before... Silly Coco SILLY.

"Trust yourself and anything you do will be right."

Xoxo

PS. Fortunes speak the truth.

Leave a Comment Fortune Cookie, quote

Movember

Which mo are you?

So its mo time again! Yay! There is nothing sweeter than seeing a whole table of men at the bar supporting a tash. Cute. I do not know if it is the fact that I was born in the eighties, or maybe my love for seventies crime fighters or a little bit of crushing on the village people but I love it!

Truly the main reason I love it is because it is for a good cause.

Wiki says: “Movember is an annual, month-long event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November. The event was conceived in 1999 by a group of Australian men from Adelaide.

Since 2004, the Movember Foundation charity has run Movember events to raise awareness and funds for men's health issues, such as prostate cancer and depression, in Australia and New Zealand. In 2007, events were launched in Ireland, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, , Denmark, Greece, Spain, the United Kingdom, Israel, United States and our luscious South Africa. And In 2010, Movember merged with the testicular cancer event Tacheback.”

Get involved, go to the Movember site {here} to help and donate.

I love a good moustache. In fact I did a whole article on the Mo. Read it {here}. More mo awesome to follow!

Don’t forget to vote for Cocobutton for the SA Blog Awards, click the red vote button and confirm the email and its done!

Xoxo

PS. Shady as a lady in a moustache. 

Power to the tash, er... ring.

You can support at any age...

Or any breed...

Even a girl can do it! Anything for my boys.

 

Leave a Comment moustache, Movember