I am making a mental list of those who are snickering, and even as I speak I am preparing appropriate retribution.

It's time to announce the winner of my Fever dress giveaway. I couldn't decide between the ladies who entered, all of whom are lovely blogging and real-life friends... so Nic stepped to give me some help:





And the winner is


Zoe, if you email me I can arrange to give you the dress as soon as possible!

For those of you who didn't win, or didn't enter, don't worry. I'm going to give away another dress next week!

Today, I thought I'd mark another pair of Shoe Challenge shoes off my list:




Shoeper Shoe Challenge - shoes number 13. Kurt Geiger Camara shoes.
I wore these today with a dress from Laura Ashley via ebay, and my new favourite accessory - my skinny patent belt from Marks and Spencer. I love this dress but it was a wee bit small when I bought it, so I've only really started wearing it recently as it fits a bit better now. I suppose you can tell I've been watching Mad Men a bit recently!

That's all for now, I'm afraid. Tonight we're out to celebrate a dear friend's birthday, and the rest of the weekend looks nice and fun and relaxing. Happy Friday, everybody!

Only you, darling. Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.

So, getting my blogging mojo back isn't as easy as I thought it might be. That's partly because things my end still aren't great, and also partly because I am pretty lame - but that's just the cross I have to bear, I suppose!

Anyway, it's all quiet at Clackett Mansions. Nic is busy working away, and I'm pottering around trying to raise my spirits. I may do some more sewing this week - after my success at making the Colette Ceylon dress I'd like to give the Rooibos a go. It looks like it may be a simpler pattern from the envelope but I think I'd still like to take my time at it. It's got another new thing for me to try, which is inserting an invisible zip. Actually, this isn't strictly new as I've done it before by hand when mending a dress but I've never attempted it with my sewing machine. I'll see how I get on - I enjoyed making the Ceylon very much but I'm conscious of not rushing into projects and burning out.

I had a really lovely day yesterday. I had a fairly lazy morning of reading before doing a little bit of work around the house. Nic and I went out for a walk at lunch time and he bought some Doctor Who videos in one of the local charity shops. In the afternoon I went out for coffee with my dearest Sugar Plum and, as the sun had made a brief appearance, I thought I'd give one of my summer dresses a last gasp at the summer:


Fever Corbusier Atlantis dress and Irregular Choice Matronix shoes

It was thoroughly wonderful to see Sugar Plum yesterday. I've had to make a real effort recently to push myself out of bed, out of my pyjamas and out of the house to see people, and it's evident that it's good for me. We had such a good time that an hour long coffee turned into four hours of chatting (returning to Clackett Mansions for Cherry Bakewells partway through - four hours in the local Starbucks didn't sound like such a good idea!) After Sugar Plum took herself home, Nic and I had dinner and watched an episode of Inspector Morse. It was one of the first films, but the last one I had left to watch - Service of All The Dead. I love Morse, but this one was a bit lame. The direction was shocking (a ridiculous number of shots composed around someone's reflection, and the ones that weren't framed the action through a window. It was highly distracting, added nothing to the mystery, and had a negative effect on the acting) Still, it did have some good things about it - a couple of scenes where Lewis and Morse were drinking in The Turf Tavern, a scene featuring a very young Gina McKee, and a brilliant bit in which Lewis and Morse are on the roof of a church.

Today has been VERY quiet, but in a nice way. Also, although my birthday isn't for another five weeks, I got my first birthday present! I've had my eye on a beautiful bag from Joules for some time now, in fact I blogged about it here a while ago. I had seen it while browsing in our local Joules store, and initially thought it was £40. Actually, the necklace wound round it in the display was £40, the handbag was considerably more, so I resigned myself to the idea of just occasionally going into the shop to ogle it. The other day I saw that it had been reduced in the sale - still more than I could afford but I decided to be reckless and buy it anyway - and then saw sense and thought better of it. I was chatting about it to my dear long-suffering Nic today, and he gave in and admitted that he had been planning to buy it for me for my birthday but was worried I'd get it myself and spoil his plan. So he bought it for me today!


Beautiful Joules Duncombe bag

I'm not going to use it until my birthday but I admit it, I did put my things into it and parade around the living room a little bit this afternoon. Just to test it out, you understand. Then it's being wrapped up in its bag and being put away until the day itself. A bright yellow bag may not seem like the most obvious choice but I think that in the colder weather the bright colour will cheer me up. Mainly it's made me smile because it's pretty, and because I'm so lucky that my darling boyfriend is so kind and has such good taste!

Right, I really am running out of inspiration now so I'm off...have a lovely Thursday evening, everybody, and if you haven't already don't forget to comment to win a dress by Fever Designs.

Giveaway! Win a dress by Fever Designs!

Hello everyone! Just a quick one this evening because I don't have any news since yesterday, and I didn't manage to get an outfit shot before I got all rumpled. I just wanted to let you all know that I'm going to be giving away a dress this week.

Here's the dress:


And here is a picture of the dress on me:


I love this dress, it's one of my most worn dresses. I'm not actually giving away mine because I love it too much. However, I have ended up with a spare and thought this would be a good chance to share with my lovely readers!

The dress is a UK size 10 (although it would fit a 12) and it comes with a self matching fabric belt. All you need to do is to leave me a comment to tell me why you'd like this dress, or what you'd wear it with - whatever you want to say, basically! I'll close the contest at 5pm this Friday 20th August.

I'm looking forward to giving this lovely frock away, so let me know why you'd like it!

I'll fetch you a punch up the bracket, mush!

Hey you guys! There's been a bit of an unplanned break in transmission round here lately, I suppose some of you might have been thinking that I had slipped through a crack in the earth or something like that. But, you know, I'm still here - it's just been a tough week and I had no blogging mojo at all. I won't go into the specifics, and I'm still not feeling great but I think I can see how it's going to get better, and that's a good thing.

Anyway - despite some of the doom and gloom there have been some really excellent things about this past week and, you know, it's nice to think about them! Last Saturday (7th August) Nic and I headed over to Birmingham with Sugar Plum and Martha to do a bit of shopping and hang out with our friend Becky. Becky is off to America in a week or so to study, so it was good to have the chance to spend some time with her before she went. We had lunch in a vegetarian cafe in Digbeth before having a look in the vintage shops in the area. I don't often have much luck with vintage, it has to be said, but I was wearing one of my very favourite vintage dresses, and I think that gave me a bit of good luck:


In COW I found a lovely vintage dress made of a drapey flowy fabric that's possibly polyester. Anyway, it looked mediocre on the hanger but was beautiful on, so I bought it. In the Custard Factory's Saturday Flea Market I also stumbled across a pair of second hand Kurt Geiger shoes. Not vintage, but they had never been worn, and were only £10 and in my size:


Shoes number 30: KG Charlie shoes
This is good for Ruby Shoesdays because earlier in the week I had given one of my pairs of red shoes to the charity shop - so this helps to keep me in the game!

While Nic took himself off to buy some comics, we ladies had a look in Fancy Silk Stores. Both Sugar Plum and I had specific projects in mind, and got what we were after, and Becky found some amazing printed cotton with a fig print on it. We had a very jolly day, but I had rather forgotten just how exhausting I always find Birmingham. Nic and I just curled up on the sofa and dozed the rest of the evening away.

I had a very difficult day on Tuesday, but was cheered up immensely in the evening by a visit from Sugar Plum and N. Sugar Plum came bearing shoes - she was sale shopping in the Aspire sale and, knowing I had my beady eye on these, bought them on my behalf:


Shoes number 31: Irregular Choice Oz shoes
Now, these may well be the most impractical shoes I own because of the raffia uppers. I haven't yet worn them because the weather has been too dismal, but I'm sure I'll find a way to wear them soon. They're really high, even for me, but I just love the engraved perspex heel. I suppose perspex heels normally suggest stripper shoes, but I don't think that's really the case here!

On Wednesday Nic and I went to see Toy Story 3, which I loved. We saw it in 2D because I wasn't sure I could get on with having to put 3D glasses on over my proper glasses, but I loved the film so much that now I would like to go and see it in 3D. I was feeling a wee bit emotional anyway, but I was really moved by the film as well as being hugely amused by it. I can't remember the last time that I went to the cinema and felt completely transported by the film. In the evening I went along to the Sew Make Believe social, which was excellent as always.

On Thursday I wore the vintage dress I bought in Birmingham the previous weekend:

I'm afraid the photo doesn't really do the dress justice - the skirt is a lovely full skirt and the waist is nipped in at just the right place. I wore it with a skinny patent belt from Marks and Spencers and felt a bit like Betty Draper. I wore this round to Tom's house, he was cooking us dinner and we hoped to be able to see the meteor shower from his balcony. It was too cloudy to see anything (probably just as well, having read Day of the Triffids I was a little bit suspicious of this meteor shower!) but we had a really good evening just chatting and spending time together.

I passed Friday and Saturday very quietly, getting my head down to some sewing. At the start of the month, I bought some Colette patterns from Sewbox, so I decided this weekend was the time to try one out. I had bought this pattern, which is called Ceylon:


I was totally seduced by the shape of this dress. Also, the autodidact in me thought it would be a good learning opportunity as I'd have to learn how to make buttonholes and attach sleeves. I was very excited when the pattern arrived, because the pattern booklet is so pretty, and the instructions seemed really clear. The pattern was labelled 'intermediate' which is probably fair enough, but the instructions are so good that I sailed through this one relatively easily. It took me a bit of time to figure out how to insert the sleeves, and it took me slightly longer to figure out just how the bloody hell to get the automatic buttonhole bit of my sewing machine to work. This was frustrating actually because once I got it working it was really easy but the instructions that came with my machine missed a bit out, so I was only able to figure out where I was going wrong by looking it up on Google.




I made fabric covered buttons for this, which was a bit time consuming because there are 16 of them. However, I'm really glad I did because I love how it looks. I'll definitely make this dress again, I quite fancy making it in red with black buttons. It was a fairly intensive two days of sewing to get it done, but I have learned loads from it and I am so pleased with how professional it looks (even if I do say so myself!) I will make the bodice slightly smaller, I think, but that's about the only change I'd make the next time. I've lent Lysy the pattern and will be interested to see her take on it. My next sewing project will be another Colette pattern, this time the Roobois dress.

Today has been very relaxing as well. The sun came out, which was especially welcome after yesterday's monsoon-like downpour. Nic and I had lunch with Tom and our friend Dave, who was visiting for the weekend, before having drinks with Lauren, Lysy and The Scientist. I don't quite know how I've managed to exhaust myself this much, but I'm sure you can tell that my concentration is wavering. I think it's time for a cup of tea and a Basil Rathbone Sherlock before bed. Goodnight all!

Empathy, sympathy. Just like the Gestapo. Then whack! You're installing a stairlift.

Ahh, sweet Friday, you're here at last. This week has, for one reason or another, completely kicked my ass. Work has been hard, I've been having trouble eating and I have been spending far too much time asleep. I'm hoping that a good restful weekend will get me back into my groove for next week, you know?

So, enough moaning. While I haven't been blogging a good deal recently I have been thinking a lot. The recent media storm about Lynne Featherstone's comments about women's bodies and Christina Hendricks got me thinking about how we look at ourselves and at each other. I'm not going to go over this, but both Caroline and Amber wrote thoughtfully about the debate, and you should go and read what they have to say. Then Cat wrote a series of blog posts about how she feels about her body and about blogging, which chimed neatly with thoughts that had been going around my head for a while.

The other day I was in one of my favourite shops, as usual trying on about eleventy million dresses. Unusually for me, I was very restrained and only bought one...but that's not really what I'm here to talk about. I was in the dressing room, looking at myself in the mirror, and thinking to myself how very very chubby I looked. Then I stopped, and I swear that if I could have got away with it, I would have said to myself "Girl. PLEASE" Why was I thinking that?

It's true that if I were a celebrity and my picture was in Heat magazine, no doubt there would be a yellow circle around my arms highlighting my 'bingo wings' or an arrow pointing to my tummy to show the world my 'muffin top' and I'm sure there'd be some even nastier way of describing my round little moon face. Or, worse than that again, I'd be 'celebrated' for being 'curvy' or a 'real woman', terms which in these hateful magazines cover every body shape from Kelly Brook to obese. I stopped buying magazines like this a long time ago, but it's quite sinister really that their message is still speaking to me. Because, well, I'm not chubby, not really:


This is a photo taken of me today - wearing a dress from Dorothy Perkins and Irregular Choice shoes

I realised the other day how difficult it is to really see what you look like in the mirror. I feel fairly good about myself, but faced with the mirror my mind gives me a Heat style run down of my flaws. I'm sure it's a combination of things - bad lighting, the fact that trying on clothes makes me go all red and blotchy and wrecks my hair and goodness only knows what else.

I used to feel this way looking at photos of myself as well, but since I have been writing this blog that has changed. Since I have been posting pictures of what I have been wearing, I've been gradually getting a clearer picture of what I actually look like, and it's been good for me. To cynics, the concept of outfit-blogging may seem trivial, about celebrating seemingly insignificant achievements like managing to put together a matching outfit. To me it's been much more than that. Certainly, it's really nice when readers comment to compliment me, but what is really good is the fact that I am finally coming to a place where I can look at photos of myself and think that I look good, or well put together, or whatever.

It's not that all of a sudden I think I'm hot stuff, or anything like that. I'm sure that my body would make the photo editors of gossip magazines recoil in horror, but I like it. It's me, and it suits me. By looking at myself in photos, and at my clothes, I'm starting to see how to dress to look good and feel good, and for that reason keeping this blog has been invaluable. I've stopped thinking of my body as being the wrong shape, and instead I like to find clothes that celebrate the shape that I do have. The Dita dress that I wore recently is very clingy and shows off the fact that I have a little round tummy. At one point this would have made me feel self-conscious and had me reaching for the magic knickers, but not so much any more. I like that little tummy in a way I wouldn't have previously thought possible and, what's more, I look bloody good in that frock!


Inside my wardrobe...I took this photo just for fun

So, I'm going to carry on taking photos of what I've been wearing, and posting them on here. I can't say that I'm doing anything interesting with fashion, as some other wonderful bloggers are, but what I can say is that this is making me feel good about myself, and that's really important.

I'll just finish off by showing you what I bought in the Fever shop... photo to follow when I wear it again:

Fever Cezanne side lace dress

Being a store detective is like being the person who stands up at a wedding. No-one likes doing it, I didn't like doing it, not to my own brother!

I am so happy Monday is over, everyone! I mean the working day, that is. Right now I'm curled up on the sofa with some crisps while Nic watches Doctor Who. It's nice to have a restful evening, it's been a busy week!

It's actually all been rather lovely. I had a busy work week last week, and lots of nice social goings on as well. Wednesday night was the Sew Make Believe book group, so I took myself off to the pub after I'd had my tea. The book was Wild Swans by Jung Chang, which I had read a fair few years ago. I didn't reread it, but the book group was informal enough for that not to be a problem. It was a thoroughly lovely evening - Zoe was sporting her gorgeous hand-made dress, and Caroline had brought along some rather interesting cakes. Nic came along to meet me when we'd finished up, so he stayed for a drink as well. It was lovely!

I had a day-long meeting on Thursday and so had a fairly unexciting day, but Nic met me when I finished work and we had a wee browse around some of Coventry's shops before meeting my lovely Louise and her husband for drinks in Browns. Louise and I were both feeling a wee bit smug, as I was wearing my Simplicity 2591 and she was wearing her first hand-made dress. Nic and Peter had to endure a little bit of dress chat, but only a little! The time flew by very quickly and before we knew it, it was time for dinner. Louise and Peter went off home, and Nic and I went to Nando's (FTW) after a quick detour to see if Gosford Books was open. I love Gosford Books and was disappointed to find it closed, but really tickled to see the sign the owner had placed in the door:


It's not like Nic and I need any more books, but I always love visiting Gosford Books because the owner is so cool. Anyway, it was probably for the best. Off we went for dinner, which we followed with drinks in Inspire before catching the train home.

I worked from home on Friday which was excellent, because it gave me a little bit of extra time to get the house sorted out. Nic and I were expecting visitors, you see - our friend JP and his lovely lady Hannah. Nic had some happy daydreams of us meeting them off the train and taking them along to the Saxon Mill, but the horrible murky drizzly evening scuppered those plans. Instead we had dinner together before heading over to the Somerville to meet Viv and Tom. I couldn't find it in myself to be disappointed by the rain because the Somerville was wonderful as always - we took our drinks into the back room (no Go Johnny Go Go Go Go for us) and had a fine time and a late night.

I have to admit, I was feeling quite a bit worse for wear in the morning and I spent most of Saturday feeling quite ill! Nic made us breakfast and we took the bus over to Stratford to visit the Butterfly Farm. It's the third time Nic and I have been there (in fact, we had our first date there) but JP and Hannah had never been and we all really enjoyed ourselves. I like the butterflies very much but actually, I think my favourite thing about the butterfly farm is the pond full of enormous Koi and also the sections called Insect City and Arachnoland. Arachnoland is particularly cool...



We spent a little bit of time pottering around Stratford, which was good, but we were all preoccupied by trying to think up Shakespeare-pun-related names for shops, and wondering why this painting of Shakespeare looked so familiar:



We made the most of the sunshine by having a picnic in Charlecote Park, before catching the bus home. We were all pretty tired but as the weather was so nice we decided to walk along to the Saxon Mill for a few drinks. The wheat field smelled beautiful, and as we got closer to the river we spotted a crop circle!



I was too hung over to drink at the Saxon Mill but very much enjoyed sipping my tonic water as the sun set on the river. The Saxon Mill isn't my favourite pub, but I love the walk and the smell of the water. On the walk back through the moonlit field we tried to scare one another with ghost stories, and by the time we got home I was ready for bed.

Sunday was very very quiet - I'm not as young as I used to be and two late nights in a row did me in. We watched Sherlock, which was rather less than impressive...but don't just take my word for it, go over and read Nic's review at Squeezegut Alley. I do think that Cumberbatch and Freeman make an excellent Holmes and Watson, but I thought last night's episode was pretty dull.

And that brings me to today, which was completely unexciting. I was in meetings all morning and was catching up all afternoon. I did manage to mark another pair of shoes off my list for Shoeperwoman's Shoe Challenge, however:





Shoes Number 18: Solea Snap shoes
I'm wearing these with the vintage dress that I bought in Paris. Every other time I've worn this, I've gone with red shoes but as the Solea shoes are navy and yellow I thought I'd take the chance to go a bit matchy-matchy. I think that, on the whole, this dress looks better with a higher heel but it still worked. And don't you think I'm clever for managing to put together an outfit that matches? Make sure to congratulate me on my massive achievement in the comments box.

Okay, on that note I'm away for a cup of tea and a good old laze around. Hurrah!