I was recently invited out on a date. So I asked him what he had in mind. “Dinner somewhere nice and a movie. What do you want to see?” Yaaaaawn. That’s not a date. That’s a comfy, lazy, early Sunday night with a best friend, your sister or someone you’ve been with for a looong time.
What should he have suggested to get me interested? Here are a few ideas – erm, 40 to be exact – from the desk of the Little Red Fire Engine.
Fresh Air, Sunshine or Moonlight
Head to a quiet beach at night, lie on the sand, stare at the stars and invent stories about outer space, the future and aliens. Being really stoned helps, but I am not here to advocate drug use.
This date is preferably done in summer unless you bring a sleeping bag to crawl into together to keep warm. Which, incidentally, is a great idea if you are after a way to get up super close and cosy with your paramour.
Drive or hike up hills (or get up high somewhere) at night to see the city lights. It’s such an amazing sight to see all the sparkling lights stretching into the distance.
Climb onto your rooftop with piping hot fish & chips and a 6 pack of beer and watch the sun go down. It’s better still if you have a telescope. When the sun goes down, try to find the man on the moon and count the stars in the Milky Way.
Escape the city! Have a picnic somewhere where the air is clear and there are no other humans around. Or in winter, walking along the beach is divine when you’re all wrapped up in snugly woollens while the wind whips around you. Get some fish and chips on the way, and eat them sitting on the sand. PS Don’t feed the seagulls.
Indulge in some animal watching at a nature reserve or animal wildlife sanctuary. There’s not much to add on this one. Animals are cute, sometimes freaky and always amazing. If you can’t have conversations around that, you probably shouldn’t be seeing each other.
Get a Sweat Up
If you’re the outdoors type, get active! Just make sure your date is too, or things could go pear shaped. Take the entire day to go hiking or cycling. Bring a picnic lunch, sunscreen, plenty of water, a camera and get out into that fresh air.
Play with water! Do you live near a river, bay or lake? Hire a row boat, kayak or canoe and get out there on the water. If you don’t feel like doing all that rowing, take a gondola ride. Sit back and let the gondolier do all the hard work while you entertain your date with your witty repartee.
Driving Miss Daisy
This is kind of expensive but SO much fun to do. Hire a vintage convertible and go driving in the countryside. Dress the part in gloves, head scarf and huge round sunglasses for the ladies. Attire for the gents should involve dapper suits, a white scarf tied jauntily around the neck, a silk handkerchief in the front pocket and a panama hat. Saucy!
These ideas are expensive too, but they sound like too much fun to not include, especially if a sugar daddy pays: a joyflight in a vintage airplane, a balloon ride or a ride in a fighter jet. Hello, G-force! That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
Do you live near a wine region? Go wine tasting and spend lazy long hours at lunch, basking in the beautiful scenery. And some advice from someone who should know better: don’t drink too much. Hmmm….
Once you’ve emptied your bank account buying bottles of wine, its time to head home. After a long day like that, the best way to end it is to fill your bath to the brim, add some bubble bath or fizzy bath bombs, pour glasses of wine, get in that bath and enjoy! With or without your date. Salute!
Dust off the car and head out to the ‘burbs or countryside to explore op shops. The ones in the city have already been well and truly picked over, so you need to go far to discover the treasures. Yes, it’ll be a lot of driving, but hey, sitting together in a car all that time gives you the chance to do a lot of talking and really get to know them!
Fun and Silly
Sit in the window of a café, drinking coffee and eating pancakes, and invent stories about the people you see walking past. Or analyse them based on their bums. When you finish your coffee, tell each other your fortunes based on the froth shapes left behind.
Go to your nearest fairground (or amusement park) and ride on all the rides until you can’t take it any more! Eat fairy floss and hot dogs, take photos in photo booths, dress outrageously and don’t throw up.
Make sweet music together. Or… loud and crazy music. Create a mix tape of so many songs that you could play it all night long. And then do just that.
This one is perfect for winter. Find a cosy, quiet pub with a roaring fire in a huge fireplace. Bring a deck of cards or a board game and play games all night in front of the fire while drinking delectable red wine. A hearty counter meal wouldn’t go astray, either.
Head to Chinatown for a tasty, delicious bowl of dumplings. After dinner, wander into a Chinese candy store and fill a bag with all kinds of interesting delicacies, like dried sour plums. It’s always fun to dare your date to try something extra freaky. Then head into the Chinese cinema and watch whatever they’ve got showing.
A tragic tear jerking Chinese love story with a beautiful princess. A Hong Kong martial arts film with awesome kung fu sound effects and dudes that walk up walls. A South Korean indie with glorious cinematography, nudity and a bizarre storyline. Sure, you might not understand what you’re watching, but it’ll give you something to talk about later, as you try to decipher what you just saw!
Don’t let kids have all the fun. Go to a kids’ fun park for the day. You might have to take an actual kid along for cover, so beg, steal or borrow one for the day. Bribery (ice cream, fairy floss and hot dogs) is a perfect way to keep the kid happy and go along with your plans, not theirs. And don’t forget the camera; there will be loads of photo ops.
Have a progressive dinner – backwards. That means the night starts with a decadent dessert. Hello! Next stop: the main course. And finally, the entrée. By this time, it’ll be getting pretty late so for the last course, pick a late night supper club or wine bar that serves tapas so its easy to order tasty little tidbits.
Release Your Inner Geek
Visit an observatory (planetarium) and go star gazing. Learn about the moon, the sun, the planets and stars. Outer space is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. I’ve never been able to persuade anyone to do this with me, but you might have better luck.
Book yourselves a cosy video night at home with an 80’s movie classics theme. Try The Breakfast Club, Ghostbusters,Top Gun, the Karate Kid, Footloose, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Outsiders, Caddyshack, Pretty in Pink, Naked Gun, The Lost Boys, the Princess Bride, Gremlins, E.T. (have some tissues on hand!), Weird Science and Back to the Future.
Push back the living room furniture, spread out a comfy rug and fluff up a big pile of pillows. Order in some gourmet pizzas and open a bottle of wine. Dessert should totally involve a bowl of melted chocolate and a plate of strawberries. If things haven’t got saucy – and messy – by the end of this night, it means something ain’t quite right!
Activity Centre
Do something good for the world together. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, participate in a local Clean Up the World day or get involved in a tree planting day. At the end of the day, you’ll feel great and you’ll probably know your date a lot better than you would if you’d just gone and seen a movie.
Take a one-day class together in something neither of you have ever tried. Maybe an art class, a lesson in playing the harmonica, conversational French, cake decorating, Ikebana (if you’re a girl inviting a guy along, he has GOT to be into you to come along to either of these!) or a cooking class for the kind of cuisine that you have never cooked before (how about Bulgarian, Cambodian or Afghani).
After work one night, take a cocktail-making class. It’s a little more fun if you can find a bar that holds classes, because then you can have another drink when the class is over! Or, you may prefer to head straight home (after passing by the Bottle-o for some cocktail making ingredients) for some more cocktail making. Hopefully the night will progress from drinking the cocktails from glasses to licking them off body parts…. Oooh la la.
Participate in a Japanese tea ceremony. This will be a very quiet, tranquil experience, so all I can say is make sure you don’t mind sitting around with your date in silence.
Go to a pub trivia night or games night. This is perfect if you want to do something with him/her in a group, because you need your friends to come along to make up a team. Seeing someone with your friends (or their friends) is a great way to find out what they’re really like.
Arty Farty
Outdoor cinemas are perfect for a hot summer’s night, seeing as obviously it involves sitting outside under the open sky. Pack a picnic basket of strawberries, mascarpone triple cream cheese to dip them in, a bottle of bubbly, soft cheese, olives, a baguette and a thermos of chilled gazpacho. Lean back on a beanbag or fluffy pillow, toast each other and enjoy the movie while your tastebuds enjoy the treats. Good times!
Those little booths where you can score half price tickets for shows that night are one of the best inventions ever. Nab yourselves tickets for something you haven’t seen before. Maybe the ballet, a play, the opera, the symphony orchestra, a Chinese acrobatics troupe or a contemporary dance performance which may or may not involve nudity. It may be boring, it may be amazing, it may be totally weird. Just do it.
Are you both the arty type? Got a talent for painting, drawing, sketching? Collect your arty gear and go outdoors – perhaps the beach, a local park or the botanical gardens – for some plein air art creating. Pack a bag of fresh, delicious fruit, like strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, slices of pineapple and wedges of cantaloupe. Bring some brie or camembert, crusty bread and a bottle of red wine and pretend you’re poor yet brilliantly talented French artists. When you’re finished creating your masterpieces, give each other your artwork to do with what you will. Add a secret cute or saucy message on the back for them to discover when they get it home!
Get cultural wit’ it. Visit art galleries and museums. This tends to involve lots of walking and standing on hard floors, so wear comfy shoes. Trust me on this, the person who never wears comfy shoes when goes to galleries and always regrets it later. Afterwards, treat yourselves to a scrumptious afternoon tea. How does coffee and chocolate pudding, peach tea and coconut ice cream, peach Bellini’s and lemon tart or hot chocolate and hummingbird cake sound?
Go See Something
Go to an open mike night for spoken word, music or comedy. Enthusiastically cheer on all the acts, no matter how terrible they might be. After all, its pretty ballsy to get up on stage and sing your awful songs or read your terrible poetry out to a crowd (or sprinkling) of strangers. And you never know who they might become one day. Everyone has to start somewhere!
Spend a lazy day browsing a weekend flea market. Meet up super early; after all, you want to beat the crowds! Wake up with a coffee and a bagel (or a Spanish donut, chocolate croissant or hot jam donut). Pick out alarmingly awful outfits and household decor for each other. This kind of thing makes me laugh til I cry, so if my date didn’t find it funny, I would have to refuse to ever see him again.
Take a ferry ride to the last stop. Check out what’s there, rate it out of 10 and don’t miss the last ferry back!
Go to the circus! Acrobats, double jointed freaks, trapeze artists, clowns and jugglers are way cool.
Maybe there’s a fair in town. Go on rides, eat popcorn and fairy floss, get your fortune told and see if you can win a stuffed toy. Because everyone wants to walk home with a cheap, tacky stuffed toy under their arm that someone won for them.
Next time the comedy festival is on, see if you can score last minute free tickets. Usually there are giveaways and freebies for shows that haven’t sold out that night, or comedians will wander around the lines handing out free passes to their shows. You won’t know if it’ll be disastrously boring or side-splittingly hilarious, but hey, that’s life.
See a band that plays music you’re not normally into, to give your eardrums a fresh experience. You might be totally bored or discover something new and fabulous. If that sounds like too much work, just head down to your local pub or music venue for a beer and catch whoever is playing that night. If it’s a thrash metal band, you may have to run for it though. Unless that’s your thing?
Be tourists in your own city. Take your camera and wander around the streets and laneways, taking photos of yourselves with all the typical city icons that a tourist would visit. If there’s a free tourist bus, tram, ferry or trolley, catch that around to see the sights the relaxed way. See if you can discover things about your city you never noticed before, so check out hidden alleys, look around corners, sneak down stairs, look up high… you’ll be surprised at what you might find!
Explore a spooky haunted house, castle or forest. For example, a few hours drive from Melbourne is Hanging Rock where the mystery ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ was filmed. If you let your imagination run wild, it’s pretty eerie walking up the trail, through the gum trees and past the huge rocks while you wonder what really happened to those girls…
Close and Personal
I’d say you want to know your date pretty well for this one. At least have seen them nude. Take a massage class. Afterwards, head straight home, fill the bath, light candles and burn essentials oils – you know, for that romantic vibe. After the bath, practice your newly learned massage techniques on each other. You may have to play ‘paper, scissors, rock’ to decide who goes first if you both want to get massaged last.
Kidnap your date for some x rated action! This one is probably more for those who’ve known each other a little while, or at least are doing more than just pashing on the couch. Put your lover in your car and tie a scarf around their eyes so they can’t see where you’re taking them. Head to a sex shop – I’m thinking one of those huge warehouse-y ones – and take off their blindfold. Once you’re inside would be ideal, but if people staring oddly at you is not your thing, you might want to remove the blindfold while you’re still in the car.
Wander down every single aisle and tease your lover by whispering dirty things in their ear about what you’re going to do to them when you get them home. And of course, don’t leave without a bag of fun toys to use on each other later!
Oh, and the uninspiring potential date? I turned him down. I told him I didn’t think we had much in common. It was easy to say no, because he invited me by sending me a message on Facebook. The guy has my number! So next time you want to ask someone you fancy out on a date, please don’t text, instant message, tweet or Facebook them. CALL them. Better yet, ask them face to face.
Sugar and spice
Righter than right
Never had a feeling so nice, no, girl
I wanna tell the world
I found me a…. *
I found me a hair conditioner that is making my hair so soft and silky that I think I am in LOVE! It’s melted my jaded heart and I can already tell that Grown hair conditioner and I are going to be together forever.
It got me to thinking: what else rocks my boat so much that I’ll be using it forever? Oh, I may play the field a little, tease some other products, flirt in the cosmetics aisle, but there are always a few treasures that I’ll swear to love til death do us part.
So here are my top picks. There are so many, many products out there and yet how many actually work brilliantly and do exactly what they promise to? So I thought the ones that do work deserve this shout-out.
Hair Conditioner
Conditioner is a good a place to start as any. Grown (Damask Rose, Camomile & Lavendar Stem) is my new bestie. The only other that really stands out in the sea of hair products, adding shine, intense softness and bounce, is Sebastian evokative Full Volume Conditioner.
Shampoo
With a scalp that displays signs of a split personality (sometimes dry, sometimes oily – arrgh!), a good shampoo that meets its needs in every way is hard to find. These don’t dry my scalp out, and yet they leave my hair feeling so damn FRESH and CLEAN!
- Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo
- MOP Mixed Greens Shampoo
- Sebastian evokative Full Volume Shampoo
Face Cleanser
I’ve got a lot of requirements when it comes to cleansers. The perfect cleanser has to leave my face feeling super clean, but not stripped of its natural oils in any way. It must be gentle and yet work thoroughly! My skin must not feel dry and at the same time, I don’t want to feel any kind of leftover residue, as though the cleanser has yet to totally wash off. I don’t usually use a separate eye make up remover, so it must be kind to the delicate skin around my eyes. These cleansers have the Little Red Fire Engine Stamp of Approval:
- Korres White Tea Facial Gel Cleanser
- L’Occitane Olive Tree Organic Cleansing Foam
- Priori Gentle Facial Cleanser
Face Moisturiser
Glowing, dewy, soft, hydrated skin is GO with these moisturisers. No more dryness, nor the opposite – you know, where your skin is a little too oily or it feels clogged up. I like my skin to BREATHE! Moisturiser has to feel Just Right. Like these do!
- Aesop Mandarin Facial Hydrating Cream
- Aesop Camellia Nut Facial Hydrating Cream is a richer cream, so it’s great to use during winter (it’s also good as a night cream)
- Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturising Lotion, the tried and true moisturiser
- Korres Wild Rose 24 Hour Moisturising Cream
Body Lotion
- Aveda Rosemary Mint Body Lotion is reserved for those times I need a little bit of luxury in my life. It’s SO creamy and thick, and soaks deep into my skin. I feel totally moisturised with no moisturise-y residue. It truly works.
- L’Occitane Grape Beauty Milk. It smells divine and feels divine and yes, it works too.
- And for everyday use, there’s Redwin Sorbolene Moisturiser. You cannot go past this moisturiser for value and quality.
Sunscreen
A great face sunscreen must not feel heavy, gluggy, greasy or as though it’s blocking my skin from breathing. You don’t want any pimples. The sunscreen should be totally effective in blocking out those damaging UV rays while feeling light, fresh, nice smelling and pretty much unnoticeable. It’s difficult to find sunscreens that tick all the boxes but these two definitely do!
- Kit Cosmetics spf 30+ Face Sunscreen is a gem of a sunscreen. It’s perfect in every way, although it’s not water proof so you do need to reapply reguarly if swimming or sweating.
- Pevonia Botanica Hydrating Sunscreen spf30, at the other end of the price scale, is also brilliant although it’s not water proof either. This sunscreen can block the strongest of rays.
Lip Balm
Apart from hand cream, lip balm is the only other product I apply all day long and carry everywhere. Lucas’ Pawpaw Ointment is the biz-nass when it comes to lips. Anything else I’ve tried seems to leave my lips actually feeling drier! Weird but true. If you have any suggestions, let us all know!
Hand cream
My love affair with hand cream goes way back. I can remember, as a six year old, sitting in the front seat of the car next to Grandma, on our way to church. She’d be wearing a lovely floral number (possibly pleated and definitely in polyester), a hat, a hairnet and gloves. She would smell of talcum powder, which doubled as her perfume and deodorant (its called Being Frugal, folks!).
She’d take a little tube of hand cream out of her hand bag, and always offer some. We’d sit there in the front seat and rub hand cream into our hands. I would watch her and rub my hands the same way.
These hand creams are the ultimates:
- L’occitane Shea Butter Hand Cream Body
- Shop Hemp Hand Protector
- Vaseline Intensive Care Healthy Hands & Nail
* ‘Sugar and Spice’ – Luther Vandross
Bonjour, mon petit cherie! Pour the champagne, open the bonbons, bring a plate of pastel coloured macarons and check out the linky goodness here for your eyes only! There’s a bit of a French theme going on here. Ooh la la.
Watch: Every Little Step is now on at the cinemas! For your DVD requirements, get all Parisian with Amelie, Marie Antoinette, Before Sunset, The Triplets of Belleville, Betty Blue, Jules and Jim, 2 Days in Paris, L’appartement, A bout de souffle and Russian Dolls. Is that enough to start with?
Read: Sideways: Travels with Kafka, Hunter S. & Kerouac
Listen: So Frenchy, so chic! Berry sings Mademoiselle and Le Boneur. What a sensational voice.
France, the country that brought you champagne, feminism, existentialism (and a whole lot of other -isms), the art of mime, the guillotine, striped shirts and berets now brings you Nouvelle Vague, the sexiest, minxiest songstresses this side of a bottle of Moet. I just cannot pick one song so here are a few j’adore. Sweet fluffy candy for your ear drums!
- Dance With Me
- Blue Monday
- Ever Fallen in Love
- In a Manner of Speaking
- Too Drunk to Fuck
- Love Will Tear Us Apart
- Dancing with Myself
Visit: This weekend looks like its going to be jam-packed with preloved goodness!
- The Round She Goes market and the book market at Federation Square are both on this Sunday.
- The Round She Goes market is right across the road from the Camberwell market, so drop in to that too while you’re in flea market mode. Bargains to be had all round!
Give: Buy your frocks from Sustainable Fashion! Because 20% of all their profits go to Canteen, and that is a GOOD thing.
Do: Lots of fashion-y things to do.
- Make underpant toast for your loved one and impress the pants off him/her! You never know what might happen once their pants are off, but I’m sure it will be all good.
- Fascinated by fashion, dying to know what happens behind the catwalk, need some industry experience? Then volunteer at Melbourne Spring Fashion Week! Go to the News section on Arts Events and download the application form quick smart!
I wish: If I was in NYC, I’d be heading straight to the MoMA store for their new collection. That Shooting Star silver ring is to die for! And it’s magnetic!
See: Pictures and photography and films.
- Lots of juicy short films by very talented people. The next Tangerine film night is next Tuesday, July 7. It’s right up the road from me, and I never knew until now! I’m going to be watching short films every Tuesday night til my eyes pop out!
- Surreal and beautiful photography. Somewhat NSFW.
- A Flickr set full of amazing pix, all from San Fran’s Mission District. I was only in San Fran for 3 days and I have to go back one day very very soon.
Laugh: follow @SarahSilverman! Oh god she is too funny. Some of her latest, greatest (in my dirty little 10 year old boy’s mind) tweets include:
- “when my dog is dreaming he sounds like Atari. “Be-ew! Bee-ew!” How does he make this sound without lips? Should I kill him just in case?”
- “sometimes I like to hold in my pee a lot. then when I finally go I really appreciate it.”
- “I think it was Sir Francis Bacon that said, “You think you’re hot shit but you’re really cold diarrhea.”
Admire: I’m constantly discovering more amazing blogs out in that webisphere. There are a lot of talented, brilliant ladies who deserve our undying admiration! This week I’m <3′ing:
- The Glamourai: She is one dropdead gorgeous lady with amazing skillz to boot. Check out her jewellery at Etsy and Shrimpton Couture. Ever since the fabulous Agathe from StyleBytes disappeared from the interwebs, I haven’t been quite so struck by anyone’s sense of taste and style until now. I may turn into a blatant copycat.
- What I Wore: Jessica Schroeder is just so ADORABLE! I love her easy, breezy, feminine, colourful, simple, creative, thrifty style!
Learn: Love and creativity!
- Finding love and losing love. It can suck and it can illuminate your life. Three awesome articles on how to break up, how to get over a breakup and how to find true love.
- Unleash your creativity! Check out Walt Disney’s secrets on being creative, by Lateral Thinking.
Have a fabulous weekend, bella!
“I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . . to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
photo credit: Thomas Hawk
Photo credit: Thomas Hawk
- chocolate velvet cupcakes (as in Red Velvet, but minus the red food colouring; 2 bottles of colouring in one batch was freaking me out!) with cream cheese frosting
- writing letters on actual paper! There’s something so real about it, compared to the digital world of communicating…
- getting my new Cheap Mondays in the mail and they FIT! (But only just! I must stop eating those cupcakes…)
- plus, an awesome bag that looks like a beat box. It has actual speakers in it that i can plug my iPod into! Oh I LOOOVE it!!!!! So far it has just been hanging in my room, look all saucy and raunchy.
- @Sarah Silverman makes me laugh til I pee
- the weird people I see each morning on my beach walks who make me laugh on the inside: the guy who does loud (and I mean LOUD) belches every few steps, the total nerd with a new puppy that he is so happy about, his face almost splits in half with his cheshire cat grin (especially when you tell him his puppy is adorable); the overly energetic runner (I swear this guy must drop some speed before he runs) who says “morning!’ to all the girls he passes
- Magnum P.I.; I want to make love to Tom Selleck’s moustache. Grrrr…..
- Korres Wild Rose face moisturiser actually doing what it says. I’m sure my skin is positively glowing.
- lots of scrumptious home made meals, thanks to being single again with nothing to do at night except clean the house, bake desserts and cupcakes and cook dinner every single night: 7 hour roast, thick and creamy potato & leek soup, minestrone, celery-fennel-lemon soup, zucchini & tuna pasta and warm chicken salad with lots of greens. I am getting fat. But healthy!
- market heaven: farmer’s markets, flea markets and vintage markets all weekend long!
- chocolate rum balls, homemade peanut butter and delicious lattes
- EFT; I swear it works, which is actually freaking me out, but in a good way!
- compliments on the hair from Baby-Cheeks Barista (he makes the best coffee in the world – go to Batch!), which is good because it wasn’t meant to turn out black!
- red, red, red everywhere! Red berets, scarves, gumboots, nailpolish and raspberry candy
- French. Because everything sounds so much more sexy, baby, in French. Try lunettes instead of glasses, and chapeau instead of hat. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.
