That Blog

The World has definitely changed a LOT in the last year. It certainly has become a far more practical place…have a look at the latest offering from the fashionistas Prada. Which, according to the Gospel aka Wikipedia is “an Italian fashion label specializing in luxury goods for men and women…The label is a status symbol”.

Yip, Gals, I kid you not…what you see before you is the latest range from Prada for 2010. Destructured shopping bags. Practical, yes, by all means…status symbol, not so sure!!?? Maybe if someone catches a glimpse of that little Prada symbol…

The thing I really like about this trend/range is that my Mum bought be something very similar when she went to Japan on holiday last year. I love the little shopping bag and find it VERY handy when browsing the Neighbourgood’s Market on a Saturday morning…but never did I imagine that my Mum was just one step ahead of Prada! Now the big dilemma is do I a) peel the Prada label off that bag I bought at that shop in Dubai a while back and stick it on to the bag and tell every one that this one is a gift from a “special friend” in Milan or b) use an old name tag from school and suggest that my family set the trend and Prada followed. Not sure which will be more believable??

Picture the scene…

You have just arrived at what is being tipped as The Party of the Year, you are in your new, very beautiful (very expensive) dress, looking drop dead gorgeous. You cast your eye around the room to check out the competition and suss out the Manscape, when, a waiter carrying a tray of delightful looking canapes stumbles and before you can say “Dry Clean Only”, you are wearing 14 Smoked Salmon blinis as accessories. Worse still is that you know it is far too early in the evening for lights to have been dimmed enough that people might not see AND due to the fact that welcome drinks are still being served, it is highly unlikely that the average guest will have drunk enough champers not to notice…all you want to do is get in your car, head home, run a hot bath and go to bed and notch this one up to experience, but you decided to be responsible and not drive and the Designated Driver has just spotted the man of her dreams and is going nowhere…plus she seems fairly adamant that salmon is the new black.

Been there, done that?? Well, if it puts your mind at rest…it probably has happened to everyone. Even old Queenie! Look at the absolute STINKER she had the other night at King Constantine of Greece’s birthday shindig…and she had the paparazzi to deal with!!

Not ideal...

First, a fellow guest manages to drop most of their dinner down the  front of her lovely aquamarine frock and then as if that isn’t bad enough, the strap of her evening bag breaks.

"Must get Philip to mend this tomorrow"

I suspect that at some time in the evening, she may have thought to herself “We are not amused”

Anyway, by all accounts (and those accounts were in the tabloids…and who are we to question those) she remained the “epitome of elegance” throughout the evening. Well done Liz…you did better that I would have. I am not sure “epitome of elegance” would have been the words that would have been used to describe me if those things had happened on my night out!!

A friend of mine introduced me to this beautiful sterling silver jewellery range the other day. My first thoughts were that it really is so pretty and different.

There are so many beautiful designs to choose from that I really struggled to choose a few that really showed you what I meant, but these were some of my favourite designs.

A Few Examples of Blackbird Jewellery

Aren’t they just lovely? Just makes me want to go out and treat myself to something new and pretty…

They are created by designer Chloe Essery, right here in a studio in Cape Town.

If you would like to see some more of the designs, you can have a look at their website www.blackbirdsa.com or if you want to have a closer look, they are sold at various spots around Cape Town and for you Jozi readers, good news…you can find them in Jozi too.

Or contact:

Kath who looks after Blackbird sales on 082 7023257 or mail her at info

It seems to be Wine Festival time…and I think I may have mentioned before how much I enjoy a wine festival! Last week it was the Agulhas Wine Festival and now another one…WOOHOO!! Awesome! Another weekend away AND a wine festival to boot!

This weekend, That Blogger will be venturing to The Robertson Wacky Wine Weekend. This is my maiden voyage to the WWW and I am really looking forward to it. The festival runs from 03 June to 06 June and promises to be loads of fun. Wonderful wine farms to visit and loads of great activities organised throughout the weekend. Just have a look at this program to see what I mean (Wacky Wine Weekend Program). I have to say that I am PARTICULARLY excited about the appearance of the Wedding DJs at Arabella Wine Estate on Friday night…I do like to “flick a heel” to the awesome sounds of the ’80s and ’90s!

See you in Robertson!

Not to be outdone by the month of great sport ahead of us, luxury French fashion house Louis Vuitton has put their stamp on the World Cup…specifically on the World Cup trophy carrying case.

Louis Vuitton Case (source: LA Times)

The custom designed leather-bound case was produced to carry the trophy to our sunny shores and was presented to FIFA by Louis Vuitton and Naomi Campbell on yesterday.

The nice thing about the case is that in true LV style, it is subtle and understated and unlikely to catch the eye of any baggage handlers looking to profit from the suitcases of the SWC supporters! Good thinking!!

Despite every effort to stage a mass exodus from Facebook on 31 May, it was a complete non-event for the movement organisers. For every Facebook user who pledged to delete their account as part of the Quit Facebook Day campaign, there are more than 15,000 other Facebook members who didn’t.Only 32,522 people pledged to delete their profile and it is possible that not all of them followed through

Facebook claims that they average 150,000 new members a day, so it is estimated, that based on normal FB signup pace, for every user who threatened to quit, there would have been 4 or 5 new signups.

So it seems that despite the occasional information security blunder, Facebook is still going strong.

Unfortunately, the subject line of this post does not refer to great Greek poets, but in fact to a survey done for a leading US entertainment magazine. In this survey, Homer Simpson was been named as the greatest ever character created for TV and film over the last 20 years!! Homer pipped Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Tony Soprano (The Sopranos) to first place.

The creator of the Simpson’s Matt Groening seems to think that the reason for Homer’s popularity is that people are able to identify with him and relate to Homer because “we’re all secretly propelled by desires we can’t admit to”

The other characters in the top-10 are Rachel from Friends, Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands, Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs), Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and The City) and the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants.

That Blogger and a team of friends, eager to escape Cape Town for the weekend, set off for the Agulhas Wine Festival hosted at The De Hoop Nature Reserve late on Friday afternoon. That Blogger was attempting a whirlwind trip to JHB on Friday morning and due to a dodgy starter motor on the British Airways plane, managed to delay the departure for Agulhas by a healthy amount of time…however, we got onto the road at last and after an easy, uneventful 3 hour drive were greeted by the friendly staff of the De Hoop Collection in the Reception area.

We were shown to our accommodation and given a tour of the house. Wow, what a nice little spot! There were 3 spacious bedrooms, a fully equipped kitchen, new bathrooms and an outside braai area. The ever-patient, Boy in the group whipped up a roaring fire in the fireplace and before we could say “Chardonnay” we were all kicking back and enjoying a glass of wine and relaxing in front of the fire.

On Saturday morning, after a yummy breakfast, we set off to explore the reserve. There really seems to be a good amount of game around and within a few minutes of leaving our house, we had spotted Bontebok, Eland and LOTS of Ostrich! We headed for the beach and to check out Koppie Alleen, the beautiful little cottage that is set right on the beach and nestled in the Fynbos.

Bontebok

The view from the beach was just breath taking…the sea was a beautiful turquoise colour and the beach seemed to stretch on forever and the setting for Koppie Alleen is just magical. I will definitely be returning to De Hoop to stay there!

Koppie Alleen

After all that adventuring, the Team decided it was time to do some wine tasting. We headed back to the main reception and were guided to the hall where the wine tasting was taking place. Some quality time was then spent tasting some of the most wonderful wines from the Agulhas area – including Napier, Elim and Gansbaai. We tasted some incredible wines from the estates Strandveld, First Sighting, Quoin Rock, The Berrio, Jean Daneel, Lamond, Lands End, Black Oystercatcher, Zoetendal and Brunio. What a wonderful treat to have so many awesome estates gathered in one place!!!

Fast forward through a rather disappointing rugby game (for the Stormer’s fans obviously) and it was time to sit down to the specially prepared 6 course dinner in the lovely Fig Tree restaurant. The Chef, Bruce, had carefully prepared a meal that could be paired with wine from the estates showcased at the Festival. What a treat!!

The Team gingerly made it to breakfast back at the Fig Tree restaurant on Sunday morning and whilst the croissants with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs were wolfed down, I noticed that there weren’t too many takers for the bubbly-I suspect that might have something to do with the generous quantities of wine paired with the delicious meals the previous evening!!

The Beach and Sand Dunes

We headed back to the beach after breakfast for a stroll and were lucky enough to spot some Whales in the bay! We were told that in Whale Season, there have been nearly a 100 Whales sighted in the Bay! (We spotted 2…but it is still very early in the season!)

It really was an absolutely wonderfully relaxing weekend, made even more so by the almost non-existant cellphone reception throughout the reserve! Yes, the world did survive without us!

If you are looking for a great weekend away with family or friends, you really should have a look at De Hoop Nature Reserve. There is accommodation to suit all budgets and there really is SO much to do. The De Hoop Collection are also running a winter special of 25% off accommodation in June, July and August

For further information, call the De Hoop Collection on 0861 33 4667 or the Cape Town reservation office directly on 021 405 4587 or email res@dehoopcollection.co.za.

You can also visit the website for more info www.dehoopcollection.co.za

De Hoop Collection

There are so many deserving causes in South Africa that it really is difficult to decide which one you should support if you do actually want to support a charitable cause. I happened upon a great initiative, that donates money to a really wonderful cause and the more you shop, the more that goes to this great cause…can you ask for a better reason to shop?

Habits boutique in Claremont has been working with Noah for two years now. Noah‘s vision is to ensure that orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa have an opportunity to grow up into emotionally, psychologically and physically healthy adults. Their mission is to empower communities with knowledge, skills, strategies and self-confidence to care for their orphans and vulnerable children.

The team at Habits were inspired by this vision and mission and so started a campaign to raise money for Noah. The Noah campaign run through Habits has been so successful, that the Habits team have decided to extend the campaign to this year. This time, they will be donating 10% of the price of all the lace trim stretch cami’s sold up until the end of the year. The cami’s are extra long (which is something I love…I can’t stand it when they creep up over your tummy or above your jeans) and come in a whole heap of stunning colours (including black and white). Lovely cami’s really are a wardrobe essential, so why not buy them from Habits and do something great for the community at the same time? If you don’t live in Cape Town, you can order one of these lovely little essentials on-line from the Habits website.

If you would like to read more about Noah and the wonderful work they do, click on http://www.noahorphans.org.za/

Lace Trim Cami