goodbye summer

Summer has really gone. Despite the sunny weather it's suddenly got cold and I have no ideas as to how we are already nearly at the end of September?

I feel a little sad when I think back to my summer this year. Sad in an overly nostalgic kind of way. I think about my new summer dresses, the smell of sun cream in the streets, eating ice cream and drinking cocktails and going swimming. But all good things come to an end and I thought I'd quite like to look back at some of my favourite outfits from the last few months. I thought that'd be a nice little send off. Farewell summer! It's all autumn from here on...

holiday style #pinkswingdress

As I sit and write this post, I am sat beside a lamp all wrapped up in a blanket with my glasses on and listening to Birdy (as you can see in the pic above, I love her). I have a big mug of tea beside me and I've just finished watching a Harry Potter film (Half-Blood Prince). Outside the weather is damp and dark and the only thing worth doing with weather like this is hiding from it. But writing this just got me thinking of how different my day has been today, compared with the day captured above. It was hot and sunny. Just the occasional cloud. Probably in the late twenties, maybe approaching thirty degrees. We were exploring the island. I found and drunk pineapple Fanta. I paddled on the beach and applied sun cream every half an hour or so. Believe it or not, I did actually get a bit of colour. Not much by the standards of a non-pale person. Whenever I get back off holiday, someone will always say to me, "you haven't got much colour" or they will show me their amazing tan and then look at my skin and say nothing. The stupid thing is that these people are judging me by their colour. No, in comparison to you I don't have much colour but in comparison to how I was before I left!

(my outfit deets)

Dress Asos Curve

Sunglasses Dorothy Perkins

Bag New Look

Flipflops Havaianas 

Necklaces Fiorelli & Accessorize

Anyway, as mentioned in my last post, I thought I'd share another story of weird things that happened to me while I was away. This story is titled, Mr Stare on the Stairs.

Mr Stare on the Stairs 

You know how when you're on holiday, you end up noticing certain people. There isn't much of a reason as to why these people stand out to you but nevertheless, everywhere you go you seem to see them. Well there was a particular man on holiday that I saw everywhere. The difference with this man was that I had a great reason for noticing him. He liked to stare. Everywhere I went, there he was staring. Just staring at everything and everyone. And then, when he saw me, he would stare until I was no longer in sight. Quite appropriately, and rather quickly, I christened this old man as 'Mr Stare' and whenever I spotted him I would whisper to my family, "Misstterrr Stare!" It became a bit of an in joke between us.

Throughout the two weeks this happened a lot. Every time he stared I was tempted to go and confront him but, you can't just go shout at some old man. Especially one who doesn't speak English. And anyway, if I shouted at every person that stared at me on holiday, I'd spend a large portion of my day shouting. Still, it annoyed me but I just put up with it. Then, on the second to last night of my holiday, something very bizarre happened. (When you finish reading this story, you may wonder why the hell I'm sharing it with you. It's weird and maybe a bit embarrassing but if I'm honest, I just find it funny. Funny that I seem to attract these bizarre situations. So anyway...) As it was approaching midnight, we (my family and I) decided to head back to our room's for bed. Drinks had been drunk and cards had been played. My parents and my brother decided to take the lift but, as I always did, I took the stairs. They were a little dark and no one seemed to be around but I didn't have too many to go up so I took my time. When I got to the top I saw Mr Stare standing there. This time I decided that I would stare back. Give him a taste of his own awkward medicine. So there I was, climbing the stairs and holding his stare. When I walked past, he approached me and I thought he was going to speak so I stopped. He didn't speak but, instead he came closer and closer. All this time I was wondering what the hell he was doing. Eventually he got so close to my face that I thought he was going to kiss me. Yes, a seventy year old man. As a reflex (thank god for my reflexes!) I took a step back, horrified, disgusted and a little confused. To this, he gave me the biggest and strangest smile. I continued up the stairs and luckily, he seemed to head down in the opposite direction to me. 

I have no idea what he was thinking or doing. Maybe he was trying to freak me out, in which case it worked. I don't know if he was drunk or maybe senile but I most certainly hope he wasn't going to kiss me. Imagine that. A twenty-one year old and the nearest thing to a holiday romance was an old Spanish man named Mr Stare. God. 

For some strange reason, and a day or two after this all happened, I imagined myself pushing him away and him falling down the stairs. I don't mean that in a 'oh btw I'm a murderer' kind of way but more that I usually react to things quite strangely and impulsively. I rarely do the thing that is socially expected. I just act on instinct. When I spoke to my friend about it on the phone, he asked why I didn't just move and walk away. The thing is, I think I just froze. Lucky for me, I chose to leave. If I hadn't, this story may have ended up with a very different title and possibly may have been written from inside the walls of a Spanish prison.

(I did say it was a strange story)

Happy September 1st!

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!

dinner out in brighton

I love Brighton. It's definitely where I wanna live after I finish University. It's such a vibrant place with so much going on. I love all the restaurants and the buildings and the fact that it somehow makes grubby look good. It's not a polished city and not a particularly clean city either but there's just something special about it. Like there's a party everyday. It's a place you have to visit at least once cause it has the best of everything. The sea, lovely shops and bars, culture, countryside.
To be honest, it's only in the last few years that I've really fallen in love with it. I love wandering around the lanes, going for breakfast, finding little gems in random little shops and the laid back atmosphere of everyone. It's not a lie when they say anything goes in Brighton. Literally anything.

Anyway,  on Saturday night me and my family went out for an impromptu dinner in Brighton and ended up at one of our favourites Donatello's. It's a lovely and quite big Italian restaurant hidden away in the Lanes. The food is so good but also crazily cheap. Three courses for £10.95. So after feeling stuffed, we took a walk around in the lanes and I got the chance to take some photos (see all the amazing wonderful pro photos above...jokes). We decided to take a walk over to the famous Pavilion. It was such a lovely warm summer evening and there was such a great atmosphere that it just confirmed to me that I wanna make roots there after I graduate.

On a side note, I recent wrote a post on my blog schedule (see here) and you may or may not have noticed that my schedule hasn't exactly worked out. Posting three times a week is hard. When I have the time to post it usually means I haven't been up to much so I don't have anything to post and when I've been doing loads and have things to blog about I have no time. Talk about a catch 22! So from now on I will posting two times a week on Mondays and Fridays (and I'll be throwing in the occasional wishlist post on a Wednesday). I feel like this is more realistic for me and less pressure after all my blog is supposed to be fun. Hopefully this plan will work out better.

Dress ASOS CURVE

Kimono Newlook

Sandals & bag Dorothy Perkins
Necklace Unknown 

Happy Monday! 
Hope you had a lovely weekend!