Mulder? Why do we have to go to Dallas?!

Happy Sunday evening, all. I hope you've all had a good weekend. It's been unexpectedly summery around here, and that was nice. It was like summer's last hurrah, although I'm sure there are a few more good days left before it's all knee-boots and berets. I've had a great few days, made even better by the fact that the horrible cold/flu type thing that had been hanging around all week finally shoved off. In time for the weekend, too, which was lucky! On Friday afternoon I went for a mosey round the shops with Lauren and Hannah, which was just the thing to lift my spirits after a few days of sniffling, sleeping and generally being a bit of a hermit. Having just bought a new dress from the Aspire sale, I was restrained in terms of shopping but that's not really the point - it was fun, as was catching up over drinks and nachos in the pub garden afterwards. That evening we headed back to Hannah's house for a marathon of The X-Files in celebration of Nic's thesis submission. It was such a fun evening - Nic and I have been really getting into The X-Files again recently, and watching it with an audience made it about 450% more enjoyable - especially the Season 5 classic Bad Blood. I also finally watched the S4 episode Home, one which I've always been too scared to watch. It is really distressing, but I'm glad to have watched it - although I probably won't be watching it again, for any reason. Still though, it was a great evening - wine, Mulder, crisps, cheese, friends and two cups of tea - plus a beautiful walk home in the starlight.

Nic and I had been planning to go to London on Saturday but I didn't want to get tired out by a long day, so we opted instead to spend Saturday closer to home. I was awoken by our lovely cheery postman bearing a little something I'd bought myself from the A Wear sale, which I naturally enough put straight on:

Floral dress from Closet at A Wear and Swedish Hasbeen sandals from H&M - and it was time to get my Joules handbag into rotation again!

I have to say, I am very impressed with this dress. Amber and Gemma have been bigging up Closet as a brand and I was interested to try one for myself. It was reduced to £20 in the sale - £18 with the extra 10% discount A Wear were offering - and it is beautiful quality. It's made of a reasonably heavy twill with a tiny bit of stretch to it, it has pockets and a gorgeous sort-of-exposed zipper. You can see the zipper teeth, but not the tape - it looks really nice. Also, it's a metal zipper which is a nice vintage-y detail. I thought it'd be a bit longer - and I am really short- but, sure, you can't have everything. I wore it with my new blogger-cliche-wear, a pair of Swedish Hasbeens for H&M sandals:

Yeah, I know. But at least they're not Jeffrey Cambpell Litas, right?

I spotted these in the chaotic sale rack in my local branch of H&M and picked them up thinking I could put them on ebay, as they were only £17, but when I saw they were in my size curiosity led me to try them on, and I found myself liking them a lot. They're so not my usual style, but that's no bad thing, I think. I might still stick them on ebay at some point - I'm watching a few pairs at the moment to see what they go for, but for the time being I'm going to call these as shoes saved as per the Shoeper Shoe Challenge. I might not get another chance to wear them this year!

Saturday evening was the second part of our thesis submission celebrations - Nic and I had dinner in a local curry house with friends, before going to the pub and then out for some dancing. The curry was fab - and so was the curry house, they had amazingly cheap drinks. Like, £1.20 for a gin and tonic cheap. So that was good! We were all quite excited about the idea of dancing to some 90s pop and indie classics, but the DJ sucked so the night didn't live quite up to our expectations. Still, though - it was really fun to be out with friends and it's been an absolute age since I went out dancing, so I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. We ended up by taking some chips back to Lauren and Rick's house to watch Doctor Who. I fell asleep, but I think everyone else enjoyed it. That's how it came to be that Nic and I didn't get to bed until five in the morning. I'm a bit too old for these late nights now, I've been yawning all through today!

As I'm sure you can imagine, today has been correspondingly quiet, with the nice highlight of coffee with Lysy, The Scientist and Zoe. I've mostly been dozing on the sofa, drinking tea and watching The O.C. but I did manage to get in another shoe save. I need to get caught up!

Fever Daisy dress and purple ruffle heels from Faith

These shoes were a birthday present from my parents a few years ago - totally unexpected and picked out by my mum. I love the colour of them and they're really comfortable when worn with tights - the top of the t-bar rubs bare feet, even with anti-friction stuff, which is a shame. I'll probably wear them more in the autumn but it was good to photograph them.

Now to change the subject completely - I said in my last blog post that I had some exciting news. Well, it's exciting for me, anyway! I'm sure a fair few of you read Karen's brilliant blog Did You Make That? Well, she's signed up for Gertie's online bombshell dress course and in her concern about not having anywhere to wear a bombshell dress, the two of us cooked up a plan to give her an excuse to wear it. So, my thinking is this - I'm going to propose a blogging cocktail party, a chance for you to show off your finest handmade (for the sewists among you) or shop bought duds, drink some cocktails and have fun. I need some time to plan this but my initial thoughts are an afternoon/evening meetup at the end of October, and my proposed venue is the bar at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank. This is not limited to sewists - if you read my blog and you fancy coming along, the more the merrier! If it's just me and Karen dressed up to the nines, drinking cosmopolitans, that's fine too - but I'd love if you could join us. I haven't fixed a date yet and obviously the venue isn't fixed either - if you think you'd like to come along leave me a comment or email me (thestreak@gmail.com) I'd love to meet some of you folks.

On that note, I'm off to put my pyjamas on and watch some The X-Files. Goodnight all!