Feeling Blue

Panic not. The title of this post isn't literal. I'm not gloomy or anything. I'm actually fairly hyper due to my usual high intake of coffee and the prospect of a day volunteering at the British Eventing competition at Kelsall Hill tomorrow. Yay, horses!

I just somehow ended up wearing many, many shades of blue. Cardi, coat, shoes, tights, jewellery..even my specs are blue! If you squint hard enough then the bag and skirt could be classed as grey-ish blue and greeny-blue. Right? Oh ok then, not really.  But considering I didn't even think I owned this many blue things, that's quite good! It's not generally a colour that appeals to me but I may be changing my mind on that point.

Did I mention yay, horses!  Cos look, they're on my top.  Yay, horses!  I bought this in Bath (tres appropriate given the Regency/carriage driving heritage) on a complete whim.  You know when you walk past a shop and your pattern radar locks in on something awesome?  It was one of those moments. I had to buy it. It's brilliant.

Top - Oasis
Cardi & skirt - H&M sales
Coat - Tu
Flat shoes - StylistClick
Bag - Accessorize, birthday present
Ring - Next Clearance
Necklace - Sunday Girl

Positivity

I don't usually do the whole giving-things-up-for-Lent thing. I'm not particularly religious so it doesn't seem vital to me and I already know full well that I'm capable of denying myself nice food. I did it for sodding ages when I was losing weight. The next 35 days or so won't see me giving up anything physical. Instead (and I'm trying not to sound too wanky and self-help guide here), I'm trying to give up being negative about myself.

It's hard.

For starters I'm English, therefore genetically incapable of being positive about myself without feeling immensely awkward. When it gets to annual PDR time at work I'm generally found gnashing my teeth and trying to think of inventive ways to describe what I've done over the course of the year without sounding like an egomaniac. And I am good at my job: I really am. If I was American I'd be whooping and "way to go Alex"-ing myself. But I'm not, so I don't. 

I'm quite horrible to myself a lot of the time, especially when it comes to my appearance. I take about 90 photos everytime I do an outfit post - thank goodness for the multishot setting. I am harsh when I go through them to select which ones to edit and use. I reckon if I bit the bullet and used most of the ones I discard for making me look too fat/treble-chinned/just plain weird, you probably wouldn't see what I see. You'd just see Alex wearing some clothes in front of a brick wall, looking much the same as normal . I would never read someone else's blog and think "god, she looks terrible in those photos", yet I do it to myself with 90% of the pictures I take.  

My default mode in outfit photos is always to stare at the floor and try and disguise the worst points about myself but this isn't possible when you rope in a family member to take photos and they're all "Look at the camera!" "Stop looking at the floor!" "Stop looking grumpy!" "Smile!" "Say sausages!"

So how do I word this without sounding negative? Um. I am not particularly fond of how I look in these photos.  But I do absolutely adore this new coat and it deserves to be shown off, so I shall show it off. It was quite a discovery. We used to have a Vero Moda in Liverpool but I think it's gone now.  I never shopped there much anyway so it's not a brand I tend to remember to look at online.  Equally I didn't expect to find it stocked at Spartoo: I associate them with shoes, not clothes! I came across it during an idle lunchtime browse and had to have it.

The Peter Pan collar is dead. Long live the Puritan collar!

It's such nice quality - lovely, warm material that makes it perfect for that spring weather when you don't want to bundle up in an ankle length winter coat but need something a bit more substantial than a summer jacket.  I like it when a piece of clothing makes you feel happier.

Coat - Vero Moda

Dress - New Look via New Life

Cardi - Gap sale

Shoes - Next clearance

Here's to positivity and smiling more.

The moral of this story is that a tripod can never make you laugh like your mum can.

Day Seven

The final day.  Thank goodness for that!  Not that it hasn't been fun to discover a few unworn things, but it's been much harder than I thought to put outfits together based around them.  My brain doesn't usually work that way.

The one thing I have noticed is that I'm more drawn to green than I realised.  Take a quick look back through the last week or so of posts and you'll see that I'm wearing something green in six out of the seven outfits.  You'd never guess it was my favourite colour, would you?

Today I positively revelled in the fact that it was warm enough for bare legs and bare toes.  I bought these shoes weeks and weeks ago and it just hasn't been hot enough for them yet.  Stupid weather.  Stupid non-existent summer.  I may have to investigate whether wearing them with tights looks stupid or not because they are amazingly comfy; far too much so to be relegated to the summer-only corner of my shoe rack.

Do you like how I've fetchingly accessorised them with a massive, blotchy insect bite on my leg?

Dress - Billie & Blossom, Dorothy Perkins sale

Cardi - Primark

Shoes - H&M

Rings - Next clearance

A (sort of) Thrifty Tale

The moral of this outfit is: be patient. It will save you money.

I have wanted a proper tweedy coat for years.  Years and years.  I'm positive I've talked about it on here before.  So last year I thought I'd bite the bullet and just buy one.  Yes, it would be expensive, probably very expensive, because lovely as they, they are definitely not cheap.  But there are certain things that I'm prepared to invest in and I know that a really well made coat will last for years and is worth paying the money for.  Off I went to Burghley - mostly to watch the cross country action but also to have a good rummage around the hundreds of shops there - where I discovered that a) even if Dubarry do give out glasses of fizz to browsing customers, you really need to be tall and thin to suit their clothes and b) the coat I really liked best from the hundreds of different ones in all the other shops cost £450.  Eep. I went home empty handed and decided that I'd try various options to find a cheaper one this year.

Then whilst chatting to one of my colleagues, he mentioned that his son knew a supplier somewhere in Lancashire that could get nice tweedy coats for a fraction of their RRP (don't worry, it's definitely all legit).  Bish, bash, bosh.  Mine for £80. It's probably even a little bit nicer than the £450 one. Hurrah!

Charity shop afficionados and thrifty types may throw their hands up in horror at spending £80 on anything.  I would probably have done the same in most situations but I really wanted this coat and it's lovely, so there.

As for the second moral of this outfit (well one would just be shabby), it is: if you see something you like in Dorothy Perkins, never pay full price for it.  They're always having sales and 30% off weekends.  The jumper was snapped up in the sale and was on a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer as well.  The shoes were just in the normal sale some months later but I was very pleased to find them - they're the same as the black heels that appear so often on here.

Posh coat - sourced with a little help from lovely Norman

Jumper & heels - Dorothy Perkins sale

Necklaces - H&M

Inappropriately short skirt - Next clearance

It looks a normal length on the hanger, honest it does.  Then I put it on and spend all day doing this:

Marilyn, I am not.

More Rain

Another rainy day, another brolly borrowed from Lost Property. Is this not the greatest brolly in the history of all brollydom? I do still hanker after the one described in Polo by Jilly Cooper which says "Shit, it's raining" but this is a tad more polite.

Autumnal colours make me happy. I haven't stopped wearing them all year round; I never do. Browns, greens, oranges, rusts... I love them, they quite like me.

Know what else makes me happy? Elbow patches. And corduroy. I think I'm secretly a middle aged male teacher in disguise. I just need a pipe now. But yeah, check out my new skirt!

Yesterday's shopping trip was RUBBISH. I wanted black shorts: there were no black shorts. I wanted coloured jeans: they were all hideous. So I bought a very short skirt for me and a pair of rather lovely shoes for my mum, cos I'm nice like that.

Jumper - H&M
Inappropriately short skirt - Next clearance
Tights - M&S
Boots - swapped
Ring - Dorothy Perkins sale
Brolly - temporary loan from Lost Property. It will be MINE if no-one claims it soon.

Clashtastic

This is what happens when you have 10 minutes to get dressed and ready in the morning. Skirt gets grabbed from the wardrobe, there's a frantic rummage through the ironing pile to find something that sort of goes in terms of colours, a quick press and away we go.

As as a result I think I am pattern clashing more than I have ever pattern clashed before. I blame the skirt. I love it, but it's quite lively isn't it? I've only ever worn it with block colours before but as you may already know from my witterings about The Great Top Shortage of 2011, I don't have a great selection in the wardrobe in the moment. Patterned top it had to be. I'm not particularly fussed, even if it has already drawn the odd weird look from people at work. So what if it clashes? I'm dressed - what more do you want?

Top - H&M via charity shop
Cardi - Tesco sale
Skirt - blog sale
Shoes - Next clearance
Ring & headband - Dorothy Perkins sale

(Do I buy anything full price? Not if I can help it!)

How are you feeling? Quite empowered, thanks for asking.

I'm very glad I live when I do. As fascinated as I am by history, there's no way I'd want to live there. I don't think I'd have functioned well in a world where the only expectations of me were to get married and have children. Life is pretty good, despite the current sadness.

Things that have rocked about being a modern woman over the past couple of days:

- Filling the car up with petrol. Yes, it's 132.7p a litre (ie fecking extortionate) but it's my car that I paid for myself with my wages.

- Going by myself to the cinema to watch a very blokey sort of film (Senna. Amazingly good). And crying.

- Walking through the city centre by myself at 11pm at night and feeling absolutely safe.

- Thoroughly confusing the man at the library by taking out one book called Goddess of Love (hilarious) and one about folklore and legend in London (très interesting). Who says a girl can't have mixed literary tastes?

- Baking a kick-ass lemon drizzle crunch cake as a present for a friend.

- Doing the sexy photoshoot, just for me, just cos I want to. Shall report back properly in another post when I have the pics back, but it was fantastic.

- Wearing whatever the hell I want. Yesterday was jeans and a cardi, today is:

Think I may take in the side seams on the shorts part - didn't realise how super flarey they were!

Coat - H&M sale
Cardi - Matalan
Playsuit - Next clearance
Shoes - Dorothy Perkins
Necklace - jewellery stall, Dubrovnik
Ring - Primark

And yes, I did regret wearing it about half an hour after I got dressed. Not because of the loo-related issues, but because today has been uber cold and rainy with very brief flashes of sunshine (ie when I got ready this morning). Brrrr!!

Alex Has Left The Building

I call this my Sailor Elvis outfit. Cos, you know, I have blue suede shoes on. Ho, ho, ho.

It is perhaps not as exciting as the red shorts outfit featured earlier in the week but woman cannot live by red shorts alone. I love my jeans and I shudder to think what would happen if I worked in a place that had a dress code that banned them. Black trousers are just so dull. I haven't bought a pair for years and they won't be on my shopping list any time soon.

Equally I don't feel as if I should shy away from posting my slightly more mundane outfits. I sometimes feel under this unspoken pressure to bust out a new item of clothing or something a bit daring in my outfit posts. Realistically though, I wear a variation of jeans and jumper/shirt at least twice a week so why not blog it occasionally?

I'm rather pleased with this shirt all of a sudden. It was a charity shop whim purchase - it's from Zara and looks practically brand new, plus it was only about £2 or so. I've never been quite happy with it though. I think it's cut for someone a bit taller than me as I tend to feel slightly swamped by the collar and the sleeves are definitely too long. Today it just sort of worked though. Maybe it's the extra button undone? I even like the way it looks under the jacket and I really wasn't convinced it would work with the short sleeves on that.

Shirt - Zara, via charity shop
Jeans - Dorothy Perkins
Shoes - Next clearance store (how cute are the heels please?)
Necklace - Sunday Girl Accessories
Jacket - H&M sale

Subtle As A Brick

My natural inclination was to put on a big black jumper or a baggy tshirt today. I still don't feel entirely comfortable with tucking tops in. But really, I've got bright red shorts on. What is the point of trying to tone them down? They're never going to look subtle so I might as well embrace it, shove on some red lippy and just let them stand out.


No-one has told me I look a show yet, despite the fact the top is quite sheer at the back and I have a bright red bra on. Told you I wasn't doing subtle today.


One of the blokes I work with came in the office and said "You look very red today. You're like something out of a video about..." He then got totally sidetracked by a greenhouses catalogue and never did finish his sentence. I'm intrigued to know what type of video he was thinking of. Answers on a postcard please.


Blouse & shoes - Dorothy Perkins
Shorts - H&M
Ring - Primark
Disc necklace - Next clearance
Oddsocks necklace - Tatty Devine, a present from a lovely pal