a good year

Here are Natalie’s top ten things of 2008. And now here are mine.

But before I do that: thank you so much for reading and supporting Hi There since it launched earlier this year. The blog began as a place for Natalie and I to share things that we loved with each other, but has quickly grown into something bigger and better. We can’t wait to share more lovely and inspiring things with you in 2009!


In the meantime, here are ten things I loved in 2008.

one / ukulele
I got a baby blue one from my Mum for my birthday, it’s beautiful. I can’t play it yet but I’ve named it Twiggy.

two / books
Natalie put this too but if you read this blog, you’ve no doubt realised we both have a deep love for books. Looking back, I haven’t actually read a lot this year (naughty) but I have bought a lot (due to my love of book fairs). Some favourites include Love Story, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Rosemary’s Baby, Less Than Zero, No Logo and a biography of Jackie O called Jackie Oh! (how cool is the typography?).

three / cameras
I’m not the world’s best photographer - in fact I'm really really terrible - which is why I love Polaroids. I bought a Polaroid camera earlier this year; I also bought a Diana but haven’t actually used it yet. R.I.P Polaroid film!

four / music
The year started with a crazily good Girl Talk gig and will hopefully end with a crazily good Santogold performance at Rhythm and Vines. Other 2008 live music highlights? The New Pornographers, Arcade Fire at BDO, Kylie, Cat Power, and um, others I can’t remember. I mainly went old school with my musical tastes this year: The Ronettes, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, Dusty, The Monkees and The Kinks. Basically, if it was released in the 60s, I dug it.

five / hadley freeman
Words can’t describe how much I love Freeman’s writing: she is sarcastic, cynical, clever and hilarious and I wish I could write half as well as well as her. She’s the deputy fashion editor of The Guardian and writes for all of my favourite media: British Vogue, Style.com, New York magazine. This year she released her own book, a funny and interesting style guide called The Meaning of Sunglasses. (I’ll forgive her for ghost writing Victoria Beckham’s style guide; as a freelance writer I know that sometimes you have to sell your soul to make money).

six / home is where the heart is
My appreciation for beautiful interiors grew this year; I’m not sure why. Earlier this year I never thought I would get so excited over duvets, cuckoo clocks, coffee tables, chandeliers and lamps. Photos from The Selby

seven / brunette
Halfway through the year I went from perky blonde to moody brunette. Actually, I was never perky, just blonde. My big change was inspired by Anna Karina in Une Femme est Une Femme, as well as girl crushes Alexa Chung and Zooey Deschanel (all of which have appeared countless times on this blog).

eight / on the box
Good TV this year (on box set and otherwise): Arrested Development. Gilmore Girls. Dawson’s Creek. My So Called Life. Gossip Girl. The Daily Show. The Office. Scrubs. Family Guy. 30 Rock. Um, I didn't realise until now that I watched so much TV...

nine / the joy of cooking

I finally learnt to bake in 2008. I'm a fan of the classics: banana cake, afghans, chocolate chip cookies. Thank you Edmonds Cookbook.

ten / get lost
Aren't road trips fun? This year I went on a whirlwind trip Up North, we visited all the tourist attractions plus a few random places in between. I love the freedom of being on the road, doing whatever and going where ever you want to. You also meet incredibly interesting and weird people, like the sweet woman in the second hand store in Kawakawa who told me I was beautiful and the gorgeous Maori woman at the Treaty grounds who appeared everywhere we went like a Scooby Doo character. Hopefully there will be a road trip or two involved over the summer break.

See you in 2009! xx

this will be our year

We love a list. Especially an end of year wrap up. It's just so...tidy. So, seeing as this is my last thought of the year (um, not literally, just here - there are places to go, people to see, things to do), here are my top ten things of 2008. Thankyou for all your lovely emails and comments and we will be back (with a vengeance) for 2009. Zoe, you're holding the fort from here on in.

one/ discovering beautiful art.

from remembering why i love gustav klimt so much to new discoveries like stefan bruggeman
and his neon lights to the genius of SHOWSTUDIO.

two/ books.

i read some amazing books this year. highlights: revolutionary road by richard yates, dark stuff by nick kent, and anything by michael chabon, joan didion and john fante (the betterer bukowski).


three/ i quit smoking!

ten years of it and i don't ever miss it. yucky.


four/ my bicycle.

it's so great, and it makes me smile every time i see it/ride it. simple pleasures. no matter that i don't know how to fix its squeaky brakes and flat tyre. help?


five/ seeing cute and individual style all around.

I'm over jeans and heels, I'm over rock'n'roll looks, leather, denim, teeshirting (mostly). I want to dress like these girls.



six/ this sounds weird, but being alone.

after sharing a bed for years, it's one of the nicest things in the world to have it all to yourself most of the time, starfish style.










seven/ new music.



this year i've fallen hard for lykke li, born ruffians, bon iver, coeur de pirate, basia bulat, coconut records, girls, the gun club, the duke spirit, beach house, these new puritans, midlake, of montreal and pink mountaintops.

eight/ television (on dvd only).



i hate television with a passion, but over winter i discovered the addictiveness and genius of gossip girl and mad men, with the twin peaks boxset running a very close runner up.

nine/ film festival.


the diving bell and the butterfly. the wackness. man on wire. the darjeeling limited. so many beautiful and inspiring and funny films have come out this year, and when they were, i was unemployed and free to go and see them, and how good was that.

ten/ friendship



scattered across the globe or right here - the most amazing people. new ones and old ones.

merry christmas! x

the birdcage

Hate birds, love birdcages. Empty antique ones preferably. Just look past the caged bird and canary in a coal mine connotations and they're oh so pretty.

electric ladyland

I just finished a feature about girls who play guitar. It's resulted in me perfecting a few summery tunes - I can now play Francoise Hardy's Tous Les Garcons amazingly. Well, it sounds amazing to me. And like anything, if I'm thinking about it, I'll find a million pictures that relate. Check this site out to find the tablature for any song you can imagine. 

davy

We love Jason Schwartzman.

We love his solo musical project Coconut Records.

We love new music.

We love free stuff.

All of which meant we were very excited to find out that Coconut Records' new single is available for free, here. You can also pre-order the new Coconut Records album, brilliantly titled Davy. We're not sure what that's all about, but it reminds us of Davy Jones from The Monkees, therefore it is pure genius.


PS. We're also very much looking forward to Schwartzman's new TV program, Bored To Death. "The Jonathan Ames-penned 'Bored' centers on Jonathan (Schwartzman), a struggling thirtysomething Brooklyn writer with a drinking problem who, after a painful breakup with his girlfriend, decides to emulate his heroes from the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. He takes out an ad pretending to be a private detective and starts taking cases -- solving some and making others worse."

flat white

"Do you like coffee?"
"Only with my oxygen."
- Gilmore Girls

I love tea but I might love coffee more. That chocolately, spicy, smooth flavour, the social aspect of meeting someone for a coffee on Ponsonby Road, the little pick me up it provides, the abundance of choice in taste and type. But fuck Starbucks: I refuse to drink it and think anyone who does is evil. Yes, even you Mary Kate or Ashley (a little over the top, yes, but I finally read No Logo last month and it reinforced my long-standing disgust at the place). I can’t stand coffee franchises (Starbucks, Esquires, The Coffee Club, Gloria Jeans, McCafe, ugh, who drinks there?).

I wasn’t a coffee drinker until I started working full-time, and probably only because I worked around the corner from Caffetteria Allpress. Best coffee ever! Plus the woman who works there, Donna, is just lovely. We used to be sponsored by Caffe L’afarre at Runway Reporter, and they would send us a package of coffee every month, it was a very Good Thing (geddit Natalie?). Then I went to Italy and became even more coffee obsessed (although I like my coffee a tad milkier than Italians do). My fondest memory of Rome is standing at an Italian breakfast bar at a train station with pastry and strong espresso in hand, listening to Italian men talk loudly about who knows what. Heaven.

I like coffee in food too. Here are some yum coffee related recipes:

Chocolate Madeleines with Toasted Almonds and Coffee

Triple Chocolate Espresso Bean Cookies

Coffee-Walnut Toffee

drive me crazy

I love driving, and I love cars. I know it's not environmentally friendly, but it's not in a tearing up the road kind of way. I just like the action of it, and having my own space and music. I don't have a car in Sydney, so I can't wait to drive mine in New Zealand over the summer. It's not an exciting car - what I really want is a 1968 Mercedes SL250 in cream. Please.

cute

It's my last day at work, I'm bored and this picture is so sweet I had to share. Colour coordination! Cameras! High buns! Stripes! Shoes with socks! Friendship! Lots of lovely things all in one photo.
I have no idea where the photo is from but it looks like it could be some sort of catalogue picture for a French childrenswear brand. Or something like that.

maya hayuk

More here.

Normally my taste errs on the moody photography, sombre colour side of things. Not today. Today I like this psychedelic trippy shit from New York based artists Maya Hayuk, the mural embodiment of Yeasayer.