mixtape // december Posted by Helena

Avicii - The Days

Nicki Minaj feat. Skylar Grey - Bed of Lies

Calvin Harris feat. John Legend - Blame

Ella Eyre - Comeback

Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk

Vance Joy - Riptide

One Direction - Where Do Broken Hearts Go?

Lorde - Flicker (Kanye West Rework)

Brooke Fraser - Kings and Queens

Cage the Elephant - Cigarette Daydreams

Olly Murs feat. Travie McCoy - Wrapped Up

Troye Sivan - Happy Little Pill

Neon Jungle - Louder

The 1975 - Medicine

Taylor Swift - New Romantics

Listen on Spotify (minus the Taylor Swift song because she removed all her music.)

dining all'aperto at la svolta Posted by Helena

Everything at La Svolta was delicious. I ate it all! That’s enough of a review, right? Okay, probably not. Read the full one over at The Modern Con.

I can personally vouch for the beef and tuna tartares, prosciutto with deep fried pizza dough (just as yummy as you think it is), the seared tuna and the chickpea and capsicum salad (how can chickpeas be so yummy with so few ingredients?). A special mention must be made to the Nutella pizza. The base was some kind of combo of puff and chewy pastry and the Nutella was so thick it stuck to the roof of your mouth. Heaven. Seriously.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s the best Italian I’ve had since I visited Italy and was raving about it for days afterwards. I’ve already told my friends we’re adding it to our Must Eat At List. It had a really nice atmosphere and nursing a glass of bubbly, I ended up making friends with the other ladies at my table. In fact, we’re going to brunch next week!

My new friends are: Sandra and Stina from Klaus and Fritz (Stina is also gold and grit photography) and Olivia who's probably the most famous Instagrammer I know and her sister Steff

La Svolta, 3-5 Cecil Place, Prahran and 450 Hampton St, Hampton.

perfume making // mpavilion Posted by Helena

This year's MPavilion has been designed by Australian architect Sean Godsell. It's a meeting place and also a host to a free four-month program of all manner of talks, workshops, performances and installations from October to February.

MPavilion is an architecture commission for Melbourne and each year for the next four years an outstanding architect will be commissioned to design a temporary pavilion for the Queen Victoria Gardens, opposite the Southbank Arts Precinct.

I went to the perfume make meet with Briony Wright from Odelab. She talked to us about the history of perfume and then we got to play with some of her scents to make our own perfume! Mine is aptly titled The Helaylay and is a mix of patchouli and citrus.

mixtape // september Posted by Helena

I'm listening to so much girl pop at the moment and it's the most fun to rock out to in my car while on the highway. If you ever see someone singing overly enthusiastically while eating a piece of toast and sipping tea, that could very well be me.

I've also included two of Many Things' songs because they're great and Mikey's amazing and Hayley from The Jezabels sang vocals on Chains and it's heartbreaking beautiful. I'm also listening to One Direction's new free song Fireproof on repeat (not available on Spotify though). I've read a lot of people saying it's like The Beach Boys and John Mayer, but all I hear is Fleetwood Mac!

listen on spotify: fourzerofive - 2014 september

Allday - You Always Know the DJ
Angus & Julia Stone - Heart Beats Slow
Charli XCX - Boom Clap
Ella Henderson - Ghost
G.R.L. - Ugly Heart
Iggy Azaela feat. Charli XCX - Fancy
Katy Perry - This Is How We Do
Many Things - Chains
Many Things - Dear One
Neon Jungle - Louder
Nicky Night Time - Everybody Together
NONONO - Pumpin Blood (Belarbi Remix)
Northeast Party House - The Haunted
One Direction - Fireproof
Rizzle Kicks - Tell Her
RÜFÜS - Sundream
Savoir Adore - Dreamers
Taylor Swift - Shake It Off

two door cinema club in new york Posted by Helena

Dream gig! Two Door Cinema Club performing in Central Park. I've seen them live in my three favourite cities - Melbourne, London and New York, and I got to see them with two of my best friends. Special memories!

ballin' good time at smithballs Posted by Helena

Photograph by ALP Photography.

I was lucky enough to attend the launch of Smithballs for The Modern Con. Check out my write up here.

mixtape // april Posted by Helena

I've definitely not been giving my little corner of the internet as much love as I should, so I'm going to start a monthly playlist. Given that my musical taste doesn't really change much from month to month, this is going to be a challenge! It will also make me look for new music because I won't let myself share the same songs from the month before. Listen on Spotify here.

There's quite a lot of artists who have been around for a while, but I've only just discovered them recently. I am completely obsessed with Ed Sheeran's new song though. Play SING from the rooftops!!

link it // links Posted by Helena

Well I just discovered this post buried in my drafts. Here's a whole bunch of links from ages ago that I thought were cool...

• Jess has a (not so new now) website - truthbetold 
• 90s theme songs a capella
• Rookie's Ask A Grown Man with Ezra and Chris from Vampire Weekend
• The Pixar Theory 
• Chorus from Macklemore's Same Love is a whole song
• Emma Block has designed some gorgeous greeting cards for Madison Park
• 318 corgis on a beach
• 27 gifs that perfectly capture the 90s
• Melbourne vs Sydney fashion feat Jas from Friend in Fashion 
• 21 WTF moments from 1D's Best Song Ever
• Sad music is good for you
• 15 TED talks
• Super cute dog Goldberg machine
• What kind of social sharer are you? Unsurprisingly I'm a Hipster Sharer.

friends on instagram // ulrich Posted by Helena

If you've followed my blog for a while, you know I like to gush about my friends and how ridiculously talented they are. So I decided to start featuring some of my friends' Instagram accounts. To kick it off, here's Ulrich's account. Every time he posts a photo I seem to like it, so I figured it was a good place to start! Follow him here: @ulzzz.

music // laneway festival 2014 Posted by Helena

Laaanewaaay! Well, it was a darn tootin' boiling hot in Melbourne. We arrived just after lunch to make sure we didn't have to stand around in the heat for too long, but it was still a case of sweating-while-standing-still unless you were in the shade. Thank goodness that Melbourne heat goes away when the sun sets. As I predicted, I bumped into so many people I knew and got to see friends perform - yay!

My housemate missed out on a ticket before it sold out, so we were on a hunt to find her one. At the eleventh hour (almost literally since it was about 10pm the night before), I put one last post on Facebook to see if anyone was selling one, and got a message from a friend in London who happened to be touring with Savages and they had a spare guestlist spot! Needless to say I made her pay for my food and drinks alllllll day!

So we saw Savages, Cloud Control, Chvrches (well I saw a couple of songs before going to Cloudies' signing to catchup because I couldn't get in touch since everyone's phones didn't have reception), Haim, Lorde and The Jezabels. I was so stoked that none of the artists I wanted to see clashed. I would have liked to see Vance Joy as well, but I wasn't that committed.

My friends also did an hour DJ set at the official after party, and the super nice Laneway driver guy picked us up, then said we were going to be doing a swapsie - we'd be getting out and Haim would be getting in. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head and I had to restrain myself from asking for a photo. So I got out of the car to have Baby Haim smiling at me. Mini swoon.