holiday style #midiskirt

Well two weeks went fast! 

Seriously. Where did two whole weeks go?

I got back off my holiday from Tenerife on Tuesday night. Normally I'm really upset to leave but for once I felt okay about it. Not because I had an awful time, in fact I had a really lovely holiday. I enjoyed lots of sunshine (got a bit of a tan for me), spent some time swimming and best of all, I read some amazing books. Strangely, I just felt ready to come back  and get on with my life here. Besides this, I always love returning to my bed and eating English food again. Anyway, above is one of the outfits I wore during the beginning of my holiday. Even in the summer I can't resist layering. I bought this dusty pink skater skirt from Asos for around £20, I believe. I just thought it'd be really comfy and light in the heat but also quite versatile for wearing during the day as well as the evening.

Seen as though so many bizarre things happened while I was away, I thought I'd share a couple of stories alongside my holiday/outfit posts. The first is called...

The VERY Enthusiastic Spanish Salesman 

 Every evening after dinner, a jewellery stall with local jewellery and bags would be set up in the hotel foyer for the guest to look at, try on and buy (if they wanted). Being a girl who likes jewellery and bags, every evening, I'd always have a little look and occasionally I bought a couple of things. On this one particular evening I was greeted by a VERY enthusiastic Spanish salesman. 

My mum was looking at the jewellery and although I'd quickly decided that it wasn't really to my taste I continued to look with her. She had her eye on an owl necklace. To inspect it closer, I picked it up off the table but before I knew what was happening, the necklace had vanished from my hands. Stood behind me was the VERY enthusiastic Spanish salesman who was lifting up my hair and putting the giant owl necklace on me. Before it was even on, he told me I looked beautiful in it. 

Awkwardly, I stood there as he struggled to do the necklace up. Looking back, I think I only allowed him to do it up because I was just so surprised. To make things even more bizarre, I realised he was also removing my earrings (!?) and trying to put in a pair of matching owls. I stood in a weird daze as I felt him stabbing my ear with an earring and not successfully finding the hole. Feeling a little sick, I pushed his hands away and put the earrings in. Despite the irritated look on my face, he took this as encouragement and held up a table mirror and exclaimed, "You like them!"

"They're nice," I said, "but not really my style." 

He looked confused but continued to show me my reflection. 

"It's very chunky. I like my jewellery more...delicate," I said, removing the necklace and earrings. He held up a hand and told me he had the perfect necklace for me. To stay where I was. He returned a moment later with an even bigger necklace that was somehow more ugly than the giant owl. This time I refused to try it on.
How I find myself in these awkward positions, I have no idea...needless to say, I didn't buy anything from him and made sure to hide the following week when I saw his jewellery stand back in the foyer.

Kimono New Look

Vest top George

Midi skirt Asos Curve

Sandals Dorothy Perkins

Necklace Tatty Devine

Tassell bag Accessorize 

Happy Friday!

what's in my hand luggage?

Tomorrow I'm heading off on holiday to Tenerife for two weeks! I'm excited and a little bit nervous. Excited because I plan to soak up as much sun as is physically possible so I have something that resembles a tan (I believe for redheads it's usually just 'a healthy glow') and also to read until I've forgotten my name. I love books and the sun so it shouldn't be hard. 

I'm nervous because I haven't flown since my gap year trip to Australia which was back in 2011. So three years ago! You're probably thinking, if you can do a 24 hour flight on your own then surely a 4 hour flight with your family will be easy-peasy. Well firstly, you haven't met the stress that is my family (sorry if any of you are reading this) and secondly, I much prefer long haul flights. You somehow manage to forget you're on a plane because it just becomes normal. It's the thought of sitting on a cramped plane for 4 whole hours and feeling every second of it that really concerns me. I just pray I fall asleep and when I wake up, I'm there. Anyway! I decided to make my last post for two weeks a glimpse into what's in my hand luggage. I always like to have a good (virtual) nosey around bloggers bags/hand luggage so I thought you might too...

Black leather look rucksack from New Look

River Island purse to hold my lack of Euros

 

Keys on my worn out Cath Kidston lanyard 

Retro style reading glasses

Much needed Tictacs

Large Paperchase notepad

Essential and easy going book. Naturally has to be John Green.

Company magazine (I couldn't find a summer Cosmo)

Detangler brush 

Little perfume

Earphones (for my iPhone which I stupidly left in the pocket of my rucksack...oops)

Pocket tissues and wipes because I believe in hygiene

Summer Ted Baker make-up bag (see below for the contents!)

Stylefile in case I break a nail.

My Benefit eyebrow kit in case my eyebrows become uncontrollable...

A nice moisturiser for my face (cause flying really dries out your skin!)

Burt's Bees lip balm and nail cream (see reason above!)

Mascara in case I need a top up when I get to my destination!

Blotting tissues are just an essential anyway.

Hand gel should be taken everywhere. Especially when public toilets are involved.

My wonderful-can't-live-without colour correction cream (Benefit's lemon aid) just in case my eyes have dark circles or I wanna hide an out of nowhere spot!

I won't be posting on here over the next couple of weeks, but hopefully when I'm back (on the 26th) I'll have heaps of nice holiday outfits and pics to share.

HAPPY SUMMER! 

See you in two weeks :)

a (dark) tale of ebay

(excuse this TERRIBLE picture I made on paint. I am no artist, my friends)

I've written about eBay once before on here. It was a couple of years ago and when I first really got into it all. You could say I was a tiny bit obsessed. I was bidding on everything and trying to  learn pro eBay tactics to win auctions. I also sold pretty much my whole wardrobe. Anyway, this summer, I decided to start selling again. I was just feeling fed up with the bag full of old clothes under my bed. Also I've been dying to buy the contents of my online Asos basket. Yuuup.

So I took photos, wrote up the details, priced each item and after a couple of hours, I had around fifteen items listed. After a day my clothes were up to £30 and when I checked again the next morning it had risen to £60. An hour later it was at £80. I was surprised and confused and in all the excitement, I added another dress to my Asos basket. But in the back of my mind I thought it was strange how all of my listings, ranging from clothes (in a variety of sizes) to shoes to a purse, were all being so highly bid on after only a couple of days and all by one particular buyer called ange.bowd. I decided to click on this person's account and saw that they had never bought or sold anything before. To make matters more suspicious, they'd only been a member for ONE DAY. Something seemed a bit odd but I decided to ignore it. I was probably just being paranoid.

Skip five hours later and I'm sitting on the sofa with my laptop, checking to see how my eBay listings were progressing. The amount was still at £80 so I refreshed the page and suddenly the total dropped to £70. I refreshed again and it fell to £60, to £50, to £40, to £30 and then it just stopped. In the matter of seconds my total had gone from £80 to £30. I had no idea what had happened. I guessed that someone must've withdrawn their bids but I didn't know if that was even possible? I decided to check and see which items had changed in price and obviously, it was as I suspected. The same person, ange.bowd, had withdrawn their bid on every item. £50 pounds worth! When I clicked on to 'the buyer's reason', it said 'I could not contact the seller' which was rubbish. All day I'd had buyers messaging me for measurement and garment details but I'd received nothing from this person. Obviously I was angry but there wasn't much I could do about it so I decided to message this person. Instead of being angry, I decided to be delightfully passive aggressive. I thanked them for bidding on my items and apologised that they couldn't get hold of me, there must have been some strange issue with eBay today. There wasn't much more I could say but I refused to let them know I was upset.

(one of my trips to the post office...it took a while)

A couple of days later, when I was looking at ange.bowd's profile page, I saw that someone had left negative feedback saying how this buyer had bid on their items and then refused to pay. I decided to message the person who left feedback and the following day got a reply saying that this person had already been contacted by two other eBayers who had also been messed around by ange.bowd. Since we've messaged a couple of times and worked out ange.bowd has now changed their eBay name to paul.wright. Strangely, they now have positive feedback from a seller called angie and another called paul. Internet trolls tend to reuse names so my theory is that they've set up a few accounts and are using them to provide positive feedback for each other. In fact, it could be more than one person involved. Whatever this person/people are playing at, it was nice to know that it wasn't just me that'd be tricked. It was also reassuring to know that my assumption (that this person was purposely screwing people over) was actually right because for a second I wondered whether this person had tried to contact me. Anyway my next step is to report them.

The good news is that my listings all finished yesterday and, in total, I sold all fifteen items and earned £140. Even though I was messed around, my items still did well and I made more than before. So f*ck you ange.bowd. Every cloud.

Just wondering if anyone else has had a bad experience on eBay? I'd love to hear your story or even just your thoughts on mine :)

a cambridge satchel in oxford

I'm gonna let the pictures do most of the talking. All you need to know is that I went to Oxford for the day. Waking up at 6 am was pretty rough. I wore my new Cath Kidston skirt which I am IN LOVE WITH. And I wore my beautiful navy Cambridge Satchel. It was sunny and warm. We had a lovely Japanese lunch. I tried on a 70s fabulous dress. I took my DSLR but forgot my memory card. Thank god for iPhones.

Today was good but now I am SO tired. 

Skirt Cath Kidston

Vest & shoes New Look

Denim Jacket Joe Browns

Navy satchel Cambridge Satchel Company

all black

Well, I don't usually wear all black. In the past I've tried not to wear too much of it because I used to worry that people would think I was trying to wear a super flattering outfit that hid my body and made people think I was slim. No. I am not wearing black because it's supposedly flattering. The only thing that could make me look slim would be a diet so let's forget about that. I wear black cause I think it's cool and chic and it suits me. I wear it cause I love fashion and black is an effortless win. But putting why I wear black to one side, I used to avoid wearing black in the summer months because I thought it was strange to wear such a dark colour when the sun was out. Recently though, I've been feeling really inspired by Amy over at The Little Magpie. This girl has rekindled my love for black and white cause honestly, she has it down to an art.So yeah, I gave it a go.

As well as loving black, I've been really into the sport luxe trend that's been hanging around the fashion scene for a while. Two bloggers that manage to effortlessly bring a sporty vibe into their outfits are Gabi from GABIFRESH and Callie, the writer of From the Corners of the Curve. I've really liked just chucking on a pair of trainers with a pretty dress or a tee and giving my style a bit more of a laid back edge. I've liked it so much that I've decided to get more into this trend for A/W14 as it's supposed to be one of the key looks so, we shall see how that goes. 

 Anyway, today I found myself in Brighton again. Yes, again. I had such a lovely day walking around the lanes and taking photos and buying a beautiful skirt in Cath Kidston. Yeah. Oops. I really shouldn't've. Anyway I'll have to share it with you soon and I'm off to Oxford for the day on Monday so it may feature in that post.

Black kimono & trainers & rucksack Newlook

Midi dress ASOS Curve

Midi dress Dorothy Perkins

What're you thoughts on all black ensembles?

How do you feel about the sport luxe trend?

Happy Friday Guys!