The Pineneedle Collective

Sunday, 31 August 2014

When Life Gives You Lemons (or Locks You Outdoors)

Me and Katie accidentally locked ourselves out of her house for over an hour this morning. But rather than get annoyed at this less-than-optimal situation, we had a mini iphone photoshoot in her front garden instead, planning to blog the photos later in the day.

I had been obsessing over Katie's outfit all morning, and I think my repeated "oh my god Katie you look so amazing" was starting to get a bit creepy - so I was pretty happy that I got the perfect excuse to further obsess over her outfit from behind the lens of a camera. Click on over to her blog to see the photos that I took of her, and her amaaaaazing outfit! We actually both thrifted our dresses yesterday (on a trip to the op-shop where we were only meant to be dropping off old clothes we didn't want anymore - oops!)

Making the best out of a bad situation. That's something I'm proud to say that I excel in. Certain events in my early adulthood have taught me to be really good at making lemonade out of lemons. Certainly, one of the most positive things about having a chronic illness has been learning who my real friends are.

Before I became sick I would have told you that I had tonnes of friends - people who I would see every weekend and get drunk, dance and have deep-and-meaningful 4am conversations with. All but a handful of these people completely disappeared when I got sick and could no longer live that lifestyle. From most, even people who I considered to be close friends, I didn't even get a "hey, how are you going?", and that was really, really hard. But this isn't a negative story - I am grateful that I have been able to sort through the people in my life in this way, and make much better connections with the ones who stuck around.

So I feel really lucky. I feel like it can often take people until late in their 20s or even their 30s (if ever) to recognise who their real friends are - to work out who is going to stick by them when the going gets tough. I may only have a handful of close friends now, but they're the most wonderful, meaningful friendships I could have asked for. They're there for me on not only the good days, but the bad ones too.

And that brings me to my point - when life gives you some lemons, juice the heck out of that lemon and make the most delicious lemonade in the world! If I hadn't gotten sick, I still don't think I'd know who my true friends are. And this morning, if we hadn't got locked out of the house, we wouldn't have taken these photos and you wouldn't be reading this post. Lemons are totally delicious!

I hope that you're having a really lovely day,

Friday, 29 August 2014

Eye Can See You

Today, I am just so grumpy. You know that mood where everything has been going a little bit wrong all day, and you've become so grumpy and irritated by it all to the extent where it actually becomes kind of... funny? And you start making jokes about it? (No? Is that just me?) Anyway, part of that mood features me being like "I'm so damn grumpy I'm going to wear black lipstick. Because it's dark like my MOOD" and, of course, deciding that I hate everything. Like smiling and the sun and tripods and self-timers and posing in photos. Hence the reason I am standing like this in front of this bin: "I'm going to stand here in front of a bin because I just don't caaaare."

Yeah I'm totally hardcore.

Anyway I then cheered up enough to get a couple of nice photos of my face and the stuff I'm wearing, which I actually really like.

Dress is second-hand from Katie (who i think got it from Dangerfield/Clear It) | necklace is c/o Eclectic Eccentricity | ring is c/o Ginger Pickle | tights and shoes are super old, so you can't buy them anymore | jacket is thrifted

POST-LUNCH UPDATE: Ok, I think I just had some serious hangry. Because I ate some food and instantly felt slightly less hate for all things. Just a little bit.

Expecting me to do some cute little science tidbit on what's going on in your brain when you're angry? Haha, NOPE. I'm way too grumpy for that right now. Go on, get out of here. (If you really want some science talk then check out all of the science posts I have already done).

Have a good day. Or not. ;)

Saturday, 23 August 2014

A Post of Outtakes

In the age of the internet, instagram, blogs and selfies, it's fairly easy to compose a carefully-crafted version of yourself for the wider world to see. My world appears through a select composite of angles and arrangements, positions and poses, faces and filters.

To the unaware, this can lead to the impression that my life is perfect - that I live in an eternal picnic-world of cute patterns and prints and perfect lipstick; that I never have struggles or stresses; that I never wake up with bed hair or panda-eyes because I've forgotten to take off my makeup the night before.

But life isn't perfect, and it's good to be reminded now and again that everyone else doesn't just roll out of bed at 6am rocking perfect hair and eyeliner.

Besides, some of these photos are just way too hilarious not to share. So, enjoy this post of less-than-perfect outtakes (quickly, before I decide that this is the worst mistake of my life and I take this post down!)

When taking photos, I will inevitably get an unstoppable urge to pull a ridiculous face and completely ruin the photo. Me and Katie didn't even realise that both of us had done this at the same time (in the above photo) until looking at the photos afterwards. And here I am ruining the nice photo below:

Oh Annika... gosh... might I say that you are looking stunning today? Did you do something to your hair? (I didn't even know that my face was capable of doing this; thank goodness for cameras!)

I'm not quite sure what was going through my head when I decided to pose like this...

Again, not the best pose I've ever thought of (...robot girl?):

And, frankly, the next photo just terrifies me a little bit. This outfit clearly brought out the top model in me.

Hi, Annika. That is a good... face... you've got there.

Now I'll share with you guys a few photography tips and tricks. This is how I get all my flawless outfit shots.

There's the flawless hair-flick photos:

The "this is going to look AWESOME" spinning shot:

Then there's the classic "hang on, I can't tell if the camera is working" pose:

Apparently, I also pull a LOT of grumpy faces:

And I am thinking that I might use this as part of my modelling portfolio:

"Oh! This will be a cute pose!" *FAIL*

"The sun has suddenly come out and blinded me" pose:

And the "I'm just looking at this teeeeeny ant" pose:

Good one Annika, that'll make a great photo: because normal people often walk around holding all their hair out at the sides of their head.

Classic vintage pose (aka going to the toilet in the lake):

Elegance:

Okay, I think I have sufficiently destroyed my carefully-crafted internet persona now. Just remember, next time you start comparing your life to seemingly-perfect blogs and instagram accounts - they don't often post the outtakes of life.

I hope that you've all had a lovely week,

Saturday, 16 August 2014

Best Fr3ndz & X-Rays

Me and the gorgeous Katie had planned to spend all of Friday crafting together, when I remembered last minute that I had an appointment for an X-ray, smack-bang in the middle of the day. I was going to have to cancel our craft date - something we'd both been looking forward to all week - and spend the day being irradiated instead. Yay. But because Katie is amazing, she insisted on coming with me on the 2-hour long train trip to the radiologists, to sit with me in the boring waiting room and hold my hand. She even starved with me in solidarity (I had to fast before the X-ray). There is a reason best friends are called best friends - because they are the actual best.

Katie turned a potentially crappy day into a really lovely one, and we even did get to do a bit of crafting in the end - I'm helping Katie to make her very first dress (using my DIY dress pattern tutorial).

These pictures were taken a while ago now, but I think they're perfect for today's post!

Dress and jacket are thrifted | tights are from Japan | shoes are c/o Chicwish (ages old, no longer for sale) | Katie's dress is thrifted (a gift from me!)

Also, in honour of the amazing science and diagnostic tool that is x-rays, here is a wonderful series of gifs by Cameron Drake and Dr Noah Weiss that show the joints of the human body in motion:

The knee cap

Shoulder joint

Wrist and Hand

Human beings have a few different types of joints, including hinge joints (just like a hinge on a door, like in the knee), ball-and-socket (like in the shoulder, which allows wide rotation) and pivot joints (like the one at the top of your spine that allows you to rotate your head in a "no" motion). You don't really think about how they work until you start to have problems (or you are an anatomy student), but when you have a closer look, you can appreciate what an amazing machine the body is!

You can see a few more joints in motion on the IFLS website.

Sunday, 10 August 2014

Oh Mickey You're So Fine + Dorky Video (Get Ready With Me)

Shirt, skirt and jacket are thrifted | socks are from Clear It | shoes c/o Choies (out of stock, ages old) | necklace c/o Ginger Pickle (Eclectic Eccentricity) | badge is a vintage gift from Katie

WHY AM I SO SURLY IN THESE PHOTOS? Clearly I have a lot of angst. However, I'm pretty happy with my mostly-thrifted outfit today, and the fact that I found both this Mickey Mouse shirt and varsity jacket on the same day - score!

I also decided to make this super dorky outfit/"get ready with me" video to accompany this post.

Wait. "What's a 'Get ready with me' video, Annika?" OH GOSH! Have you been living under a rock, or have you NOT spent all your time watching beauty bloggers on youtube?

Tsk tsk.

Never fear, I'm here to educate you. If you haven't seen this particular style of video on youtube before, here is a salient example.

Now watch my video.