Sister From Another Mister / Lab Burgers

Ashley is my sister from another mister. We coordinated our outfits unintentionally, but looking back through these photos, I realise how alike we appear! It's probably got a lot to do with the fact that we're both wearing wigs and teeny dresses. Or maybe it's because Ashley is wearing my clothes. For this outfit post, we went on a little pretend picnic in Victoria park outside of Sydney University, after getting up super early (like 7am, haha) to make sure the light wasn't too intense for our photos! I love that I have finally found someone else who will happily sacrifice sleep, comfort and shoot for hours on end just to get the perfect photo. I am going to miss this girl! Annika's top + skirt - c/o Choies (can also get it here) Annika's bag - Thrifted Annika's socks - Cotton on Annika's shoes - c/o Yeswalker Annika's headband - c/o Milanoo Ashley's dress - c/o Chictopia (The White Pepper) Ashley's sweater - Emoda Ashley's bag - Store in Italy Ashley's shoes - Yeswalker Ashley's headband - Claire's in Japan I wanted to talk properly about lab-grown burgers the other day, but didn't have the time because of my own lab-work (I'm not growing meat, but I am doing some pretty cool stuff). You probably heard all about it on the news, though - a researcher from Maastricht University recently let two people to taste-test a $300,000 hamburger patty made from meat he had grown in his lab. Image source: Not an artificial burger but a super cute crochet burger from bottletopboy on Etsy. Why is this such exciting news? The process No animals die in the process of making lab-meat. A small amount of special cells called "stem cells" are extracted from the shoulder muscle of a cow. A "stem cell" just means that the cell has not yet decided what final form it will take - it's a normal process of growing, or regenerating body tissue after an injury. Stem cells can divide indefinitely in this "undecided" state, so after extraction they are grown with nutrients to encourage them to multiply. After you have about a million stem cells, you let them "decide" to be muscle cells by separating them into different dishes and varying the levels of nutrients and signals in the dish to mimic the inside of the animal. The cells then grow into strips of muscle. Bundle them together, and you have your hamburger patty. What this means: Much less animal slaughter and cruelty. As soon as lab-grown meat becomes commercially available and affordable, I know that I will never eat meat from actual whole animals again. I hope that in 100 years time, people will be quite appalled by the idea that we used to slaughter animals for meat. Much less environmental strain. Lab-grown meat will use 55% of the energy of the current beef industry - a huge cut when you consider how large this industry is - and will also only emit 4% of the greenhouse gases of the current beef industry. Much more free land - lab-grown meat will only use 1% of the land that conventionally farmed beef uses. Hopefully, much less starvation. The human population is only going to keep rising and currently 1 billion go hungry every day. More people = more demand for meat, so having a system in place which doesn't use as much land an energy will be easier on the planet, meaning that hopefully we can produce a lot more of it to feed everyone! Another reason to be super excited by science! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Mermaid School

Hey guys! This shoot is one that myself and Ashley Dy are pretty dang proud of, so I really hope you all like it too! This super lovely lady from Candy Kawaii Lover has been in Sydney for the past week, and we have been hanging out for the last couple of days - I've been showing her around my Sydney shopping spots (Newtown and Chinatown), and today we dedicated entirely to photo shoots - as a consequence, we have seven entire photo shoots to share with you guys. This is the first! The unintentional theme of this particular set of photos is "Mermaid School". If you recognise the buildings, yes, it's Sydney University. I wanted to take photos here because this building reminds me of Hogwarts. And you can't go wrong doing a photo shoot at Hogwarts. Annika's dress - c/o Chicwish Annika's headband - c/o Milanoo Annika's bag - Store in Italy Annika's shoes - c/o Yeswalker Ashley's top - Store in Sydney Ashley's skirt - c/o Chicwish Ashley's shoes - c/o Sammydress Ashley is leaving in two days, and we're both really sad because in a perfect world, we'd get together every weekend and take photos and go window-shopping. I'm so happy to have met this amazing person through blogging, though! If you haven't seen Ashley's photos or read her blog before, you can find her here. Much more very soon ;) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

A Perfect Picnic Dress / Dolphin Talk

This dress has the cutest scalloped design on the front of it, don't you think? I thought that it was definitely the right dress to take on a "picnic" (I didn't go on an actual picnic because I'm doing 20 hours a week in the lab right now and have no time for such luxuries :( but it was a picnic-themed shoot nonetheless). I am planning on turning this picnic basket into a handbag at some point! I think I'll attach a pretty strap so that I can wear it as a shoulder bag. dress - Bonne Chance Collections bag/basket - Thrifted cardigan - Thrifted hat - c/o Wholesale shoes - Yeswalker I learnt the coolest things about dolphins today. Not only are dolphins self-aware (this was worked out by doing a psychological test called the "mark test", where researchers put a dolphin in front of a mirror, then put a mark on its back. If the animal tries to see the mark that the researchers have put on it, it must realise that it can see itself in the mirror and is, therefore, self-aware. Great apes and young children also pass this test, but animals like dogs and cats do not.) Image source But it also turns out that dolphins have different, individual names for each other, and can remember the names of their friends for up to 20 years! Their names are "signature whistles", which the dolphins give themselves at the age of 4 months to a year, and remain their name for the rest of their lives. They use it to identify themselves to other dolphins, and use the whistle-names of other dolphins to call them. This is further proof that dolphins use language, and also great proof of their intelligence! I can't wait until we figure out a way to converse with dolphins. Read the article here. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Sailor Earth / Printing Food

The detachable sailor collar on this dress is basically the greatest idea ever (when it comes to clothing). Being detachable, I can take it off and pair it with other t-shirts and dresses if I feel like my outfit needs to be just that little bit more sailor-esque. Of course, any good sailor also needs a map with them. The map print on this bag is pretty funny - it still lists Yugoslavia as a country - but overall it is a damn good bag. It's the perfect university bag because it fits all my books, labcoat and laptop. It also doesn't seem like it's going to fall apart anytime soon (I've had problems with cheap bags not lasting very long...), so I actually really recommend it if you were thinking of buying it yourself (disclaimer: it is a sponsored item, but this opinion is very much my own!) dress - Glitters for Dinner socks - c/o Sock Dreams bag - c/o OASAP shoes - c/o Topb2c (similar) If you've been reading my blog for any longer than a month, you'll already be very aware of how impressed I am by 3D Printing (see past posts here, here, here and here). Well, turns out it's also going to end world hunger. Image source Well, that's the title of this article anyway, although I'm not so sure that 3D printers will ever be so cheap that they'll be a ubiquitous item of household kitchens. Still, one direction that 3D printing is now going into is creating food. This is done by loading up cartridges of tiny organic molecules containing everything you need in your diet, setting a certain combination of ingredients on the printer, and letting it print out - layer by delicious layer. And if you were able to print out all your food at home, it means that there would be a lot less energy put into growing meat (the same proteins could feasibly come from insects, algae or lab-grown meat), and there would also be a lot less food waste because the "cartridges" of tiny molecules would last for 30 years before you had to throw them out. NASA is currently funding the research so that astronauts can have pizza in space. But the eventual goal is to create something that can be used in people's kitchens, and hopefully turn into something that can feed the projected 9.6 billion people on Earth by 2050. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Little Spotty Teapot

I wanted to try and do another "miniature" style photoshoot (see my first attempt here). This is actually my fourth attempt though, not my second... but the other two were so embarrassingly bad, that they will never be uploaded here or seen by anyone else, haha.  sweater - Thrifted cardigan - Thrifted overall dress - c/o Sheinside necklace - c/o Merrin & Gussy socks - c/o Romwe shoes - c/o Sammy Dress hat - c/o Wholesale I wanted to set up the scene with a monochrome object. I found this super cute teapot lying around the house, owned by my housemate Kalynda, and thought that it'd go well with my mostly-monochromatic outfit, as well as contrasting my stripey socks. I then spent hours on photoshop trying to get the angles and shadows right - but I think it mostly worked out, in the end. What do you think? In science news, the first synthetic meat was taste-tested! (I'm pretty damn excited about this. Meat with no animal cruelty = awesome). P.s. sorry for the super short science bit today. I just started working in a lab today and I'm super dooper busy - more on that later ;) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr