£22

 

Favouritest thing ever? Finding sale stuff that you love when you’re not even looking.

Well actually it’s kind of annoying, especially when you’re trying to enforce a spending ban on yourself. But anyway, this is what I picked up for £22 from Dorothy Perkins!

Statement necklace. I had my eye on this when it was still £16.50 but I didn’t want to spend that much on it because I tend to wear different jewellery everyday, at £7 it was such a bargain.

This bag was £12 down from £22.Perfect for festivals, faux suede with lots of tassels!

And little spiked earrings, down from £6.50 (I think) to £3. Just very cute indeed!

Vintage Gloves

 

All of these gloves are pre 1950, the belonged to my Grandmother’s Great Aunt, who was an opera singer. Unfortunately the exact age of these gloves is unknown to me, my Mum believes that they are pre-1920 because that is the decade that she would have been active in the opera scene and therefore needed such beautiful gloves.

They have the most amazing stitching and attention to detail, but they are so tiny that they just won’t fit me or any other member of my family that would want them!

These lovely long gloves are from a brand called Neyret, a Parisian opera glove brand. They were well regarded during their hay-day, pre WW2.

For sale here

Pale pink, very soft leather, I love the detail around the wrist! For sale here

Pre-1950 Doe Skin gloves, so beautifully made! For sale here

Sunshine Yellow opera gloves!

For sale here

Brown, shower proof gloves. For sale here

These gloves are a pretty duck egg blue, double woven cotton, for sale here

More beautiful Neyret Frech opera gloves made from deep red velvet.

For sale here

Very soft cream leather. For sale here

These gloves are my favourites, if they fit me I would be keeping them! They were professionally handmade, pre-1940 in a thick, heavy weight material.

For sale here

Looks like scalloped edging has been cool for a lot longer than most people would expect! For sale here

These bridal/formal occasion style gloves are fabulous, the attention to detail in the stitching is stunning. For sale here

Long, ruched bridal/occasion gloves, amazing condition, you wouldn’t be able to guess that they’re so old!

For sale here

These are my favourite bridal gloves by far, I really wish that they fit me, the rose detail is so pretty, perfect for any big day!

For sale here

I’m selling all these on behalf of my Nan, and I am posting worldwide, so if anyone is interested then please do head over to my Ebay page to check out my products!

so. why pink?

So I’m pretty sure that on average I get asked this 100000X a day. Now I understand that pink hair isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I have actually been pretty shocked at how disgusted some people have been by my new adventure in hair colour. Some lovely people have even gone as far as to say ‘you used to be so pretty, why would you do it?’. Which in my opinion is excessively rude, I don’t ask everyone that thinks it’s cool to wear leggings as trousers why they thought that it was an ok life choice.
I obviously don’t go out in public with the sky high troll hair ^^^ that’s just to amuse you.
On the plus side. Children bloody love it. I’m pretty sure that they think a cartoon has come to life and started working in Debenhams.
And I’m glad that I had the balls to do it. I may be having a quarter life crisis, this is the hair that I wanted throughout high school but couldn’t have because school doesn’t allow it, so at 23 I have finally bitten that bullet and at least I can cross it off my bucket list before I get too old and responsible!
Has anyone else taken that chance, or are there other ‘crazy’ things that you would like to try before you feel like you have to grow up?

Alpine Macaroni!

 

One of the yummiest things ever that we tried In Switzerland was their Alpine Macaroni. It’s like standard macaroni cheese but stronger and with a few extra ingredients. Yes it’s full of carbs, but when you’re doing winter sports that you burn off so many calories anyway so I’m pretty sure that it’s fine :p

This picture and the following recipe come from http://www.food.com/recipe/swiss-alpine-macaroni-455096 although I have adapted it for my own taste in places.

Ingredients;

3 potatoes, scrubbed
12 ounces elbow macaroni, uncooked
2 tablespoons butter
2 large onions, peeled and sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup gruyere cheese, shredded – Here I would personally double the cheese, Gruyere is strong, but I love a really strong cheese favour. Also whilst we were out in Switzerland it was mentioned that they often use a few different types of Swiss cheese together when making this to create a strong flavour.
3/4 cup heavy cream – Double cream is what we used
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

How To Make;

• Place the potatoes in a large pot and fill with enough water to cover them.
  
• Bring to a boil and cook until tender.
  
• Drain and cool slightly, then remove the peels, and slice into 1/4 inch thick slices.
  
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and lightly grease a 9x9 inch baking pan.
  
• Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil and add the macaroni and cook until barely tender, about 6 minutes, then drain and set aside.
  
• Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat and add the onion and cook and stir until onion starts to turn translucent.
  
• Next stir in the garlic, and cook for a few more minutes then remove from the heat and set aside.
  
• Layer the macaroni, onions and potatoes into the prepared baking dish and season with salt and pepper.
  
• Sprinkle the shredded Gruyere cheese over the top, and drizzle cream evenly over the entire dish and bake in the preheated oven until the top is golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.

This is served with apple sauce in their restaurants, but other things that aren’t traditional that still taste good in this recipe are;

Bacon (according to the boyf – I’m veggie)

Leeks, cherry tomatoes, some mustard in with the cheese to enrich the flavour.

This easily one of our favourite recipes now, especially for one of those days when it’s cold outside or you really fancy some comfort food!

So let me know if you’ve given this a try or fancy making it and what you think!

Switzerland

 

A few months ago during a week off from work the boyf and I took a trip to Adelboden in Switzerland to visit some friends from uni who moved out there a while back.

It was February and there was loooads of snow! Luckily Mikey warned us about it beforehand so we bought a bunch of snow clothes and boots before we went out there.

This is the house that Mikey and Katie (who we were visiting) lived. The top floor was their apartment and it was surrounded by views of the mountains.

We travelled by cable car up the mountains a few times to go sledging down the local tracks.

The view of Adelboden from the cable car.

You can see here just how deep the snow was!

This is the view from the mountainside restaurant where we stopped for some food on one of the days when we were sledging.

One of the days we went to the woods in an area where there were picnic huts and grates for fires for BBQs, with a hoard of sausages and bread, unfortunately for us it was nearly dark by the time that we managed to get the fire lit!

One of the days when the sun finally came out!

Snow shoe hiking! Haha, this was sooo hard, I kept stepping on the back of them and tripping up.

We had such a great time, it went by all too fast!

Zombie RAF pilot…

So Halloween is always a tough one for me, you don’t want to end up buying an outfit that costs a bomb and is made from so little fabric that you wonder why you even bothered, and you don’t want to end up with something like this;

Thinking that you’re being really original. There’s a reason no one else at the party is there as a ‘sexy guitar’…
And every one remembers that scene in Mean Girls where Kady spends ages getting ready, turning up at the Halloween party like this;

When every other girl is dressed like this;

Although I’d personally rather be Lindsay in this situation than try and pull off any of those outfits.

Last year I felt like a bit of a cop-out (see post here) because my boyfriend and his friends all do the model making / special effects jobs in the film industry and their costumes are gooood. I only knew about that party last minute so my costume was pretty lame.

This year I decided to practice ahead. I’m trying to save as much money as possible at the moment so spending loads of dough on a costume would be silly, especially when I’m still not even sure if I can make it to a party this year. I moved house a few days ago and things are pretty mad!

People are going mad about the whole sugar skull thing this year, I like it but I didn’t have any white paint, so I decided to go for a standard skull, with my uber pale foundation you can hardly tell that it’s not white anyway!

I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to get it all symmetrical if I left it down to the night of the party that I needed this practice to set my mind at ease!

So from various different angles, here it is, my skull face!

This was a proper ‘make do with what you have’ kind of project as the face paint was actually a broken eye shadow mixed with water, so kind of shimmery but you can’t tell from these pictures.


Side view.

And yes I was wearing a top, you just can’t see it. No nuddy pictures :) I just wore a strapless because originally I was going to paint my neck and the top of my ribcage too, but it was too time consuming!
So what have you all got planned for Halloween this year? Are you on a budget or do you like to splash out?

Jewellery from Hong Kong

 

So any savvy Ebay shopper will have noticed by now that a lot of really awesome stuff seems to be stocked up in the Hong Kong online shops. The clothes I have to admit I will never buy, for the sole reason that they often state that their models are 5,2”/5,3” and therefore the clothes will never ever fit me. But the jewellery however has always intrigued me. The prices are always beyond cheap, for replicas of stuff that you would see in places like Topshop with a much higher price tag.

So a few months ago I decided to bite the bullet and order some pieces from an online shop Jewelry-gift. Their shop offers a saving on postage when you buy multiple items which is rather fabulous as some of their items have free postage anyway!

Unfortunately I didn’t note down exactly how much I paid for each item and postage overall, but I can provide you all with a link to each item in the shop that it is currently selling.

Colourful Howlite Cross bracelet. I love stuff like this. The quality of the stones is really nice, I’ve worn this loads since I bought it.

Red Howlite Skull bracelet.

Orange Howlite Skull bracelet. Some of these items I bid on instead of buying outright, which meant at least one of these bracelets was purchased for a mere 70p.

They no longer have this necklace in stock which is a shame, as spiked necklaces go I think this one is pretty awesome.

This Cinderella carriage style necklace is also no longer in stock. I actually can across this whilst searching for a ring I had seen that was an open able Barbie dream house, couldn’t find the ring but I did find this! It’s a sweater necklace so the chain is really long, the fact that you can open it just makes it more exciting!

And this awesome ring. I have an obsession with buying cool rings, and then forgetting how impractical they are to wear, so as much as I love it, it doesn’t get much wear.

Overall I remember my swag here costing me around £11 including P&P. It was for sure under £15 anyway even if my memory isn’t holding up so great! The items took around 10-12 days to arrive which I think is fairly fast considering the distance!

None of the jewellery has broken or dyed my skin which is always a bonus, I would say that the quality of the items is not much different from the high street shops. But the prices are much better if you can stand the wait!

Has anyone else used a Hong Kong company that they would recommend? It’s pretty nerve-wracking taking the leap with an unknown company!