making pizzas in my ootd

If you saw my haul a couple of posts ago you'll understand the post title haha. This is the dress I bought from primark last week. Again, not a good photo sorry. I really want a good camera and a tripod but paying off my student overdraft is my first priority. 

   

Alex had his last exam for the semester today so we went into town afterwards and had a coffee date :) He's been so busy with revision lately it was nice to spend some time out and about together!

                       
Hope you're all having lovely weekends,

blondes have more fun...

This post is probably going to be rather boring and self-indulgent but I just thought I'd share how I got to having my hair like it is now. It's naturally a very dark brown, looking back at photos I actually think it looks unnatural even though I didn't dye it. My skin is quite pale and I think my dark hair made me look even paler. That look may have worked for my in my teenage goth days (no I'm not posting any photos of it back then!) but not so much now.

So here's how it was. For ages (literally years) I'd thought about having it dyed lighter but I was put off mostly by comments that I wouldn't suit blonde with me being naturally dark. I wasn't so sure about these comments as I have to dye my eyebrows darker as they are very fair naturally and also the fact that my brother has similar colouring to me but has long blonde hair (I've always been jealous!) but I didn't want to risk it. 

Anyway I finally felt brave enough and bought a box dye which was a caramel brown shade. It came out this colour which was basically red/auburn. I'm not saying it's a bad colour but it just wasn't what I wanted so I decided perhaps I was in need of a trip to the hairdressers. 

Off I popped and I had a full head of foil highlights. My hairdresser refused to use bleach but used the lightest colour she could and as you can see it really lightened it up. It was quite a gingery colour though and although it was nice it still just wasn't what I wanted. 

So a few weeks later (at the beginning of December), I had another full head of highlights done and I'm much closer to my desired colour. 

My dilemma (!) now is that my roots are really starting to show and I don't know whether to just have them done or whether to have another head of highlights done and go a shade lighter.. what do you think? Have you gone from brunette to blonde before? They say it's easier to go the other way which means atleast I won't have any difficult getting my natural colour back if I ever want it!

my little haul

After two evenings of babysitting (on top of full-time hours at work) I decided I deserved a little treat yesterday. I had one of those days where I find loads of things that are just so "me", I hate it when you just can't find anything that catches your eye, although admittedly it would've been better for my bank balance!

Top, Primark, £6 

You can see me wearing this in my outfit post yesterday.

It's a really strange shape and at a size 8 it's still huge but I really like it, especially the little lace sleeves.

Top, Primark, £4

I have another t-shirt with a tiger on which I love but you can't have too many.. I think this would look really cute with shorts in summer but for now I'll be wearing it with a skirt and tights or black skinny jeans. 

Dress, Primark, £10

 I saw this dress on it's own in Primark and had to try it, it's really figure hugging and looked great in the changing rooms with black tights. When I showed Alex he said "it'll be great for a cops and robbers fancy dress, oh and don't wear it to Pizza Express or they'll have you in the kitchen".... thanks Alex!

Top, Primark, £6

 They had this in lots of colours but I thought black & white was the nicest. Can't resist a contrast collar!

Dress, H&M, £14.99

I finally got my hands on the bird-print dress I had in my lust list last weekend.

It was literally the only one left and in a size 8 - it's a little tight on me but I'll slim into it :)

Makeup bag, Primark, £5   Socks, Primark, £1   Tights, M&S, £8

My makeup bags are never big enough to fit my daily makeup in (all the rest is in one big drawer) so hopefully this one will be!

I love these socks, they remind me of the ones I used to wear at school. 

wild horses

My second attempt at an outfit of the day, the lighting is rubbish, the background is pants and I can't pose for toffee but I LOVE this top I got from Primark yesterday - £6 bargain! I found loads of gorgeous stuff in Primark and H&M yesterday, I'm thinking of doing a haul post at some point. 
How are you spending your Sunday? I'm catching up with 90210, doing lots of sorting and tidying then making some muffins later. 

weekend lust list #1

I've decided to do a weekly post of the things I'm currently lusting after, I definitely spend too many hours gawping at beautiful things online and it's nice to share them with others. 

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 

1. I've been wanting this peterpan collar necklace for months now, it would really jazz up a lot of my tops, jumpers and dresses. 


2. I love this dress from river island, I notice my size is sold out on their website but asos still have it - could be a perfect valentines day outift?


3. I'm really loving everything birdy at the moment, I know birdprints have been around for a while now but they seem to be big in SS12 too. 


4. Another valentines dress option - can you tell I like peterpan collars? Just can't get enough of them!


5. Aah I just saw these trousers on milkteef's post and fell in love. A little pricey and I think I'd like to try them first as I'm not sure about sizing or whether they'd suit me. I'm planning a shopping trip to Birmingham sometime soon as I still haven't been to the forever 21 store since they came to the UK (I've been to the NYC one!) and they have an AA there too.


6. Bird-print dress - need I say more? Plus a 10% H&M code through my letterbox the other day :) I do love dresses but seem to even more so lately, I think it's because my work uniform has to be trousers - although these are a lifesaver. 


Happy browsing! :)

key to the door

Well it looks like I've finally got round to writing about my 21st birthday last weekend. I started full-time work on tuesday and this week has just been so mad. I've no idea how I'm going to fit running, blogging, baking and any other hobbies into my new schedule but I'll be doing my best.


Onto my birthday, I had the most ahmaaazing birthday ever and I'm not just showing off. My family along with my fiance's family spent the weekend in the Lake District in a gorgeous hotel (think lake view and roaring fire - perfect). It was jam-packed with walking, pottering round shops, swimming, eating and of course drinking.


I was spoilt with lots of presents too, the highlights being the Kenwood mixer from Alex's family, quilted navy coat from Alex (okay I helped him), this sewing box from my Godparents, money for driving lessons and one very special present from my parents still to come - this bangle, gold plated with a little message engraved on the inside - I can't wait for it to arrive!

Me, my Gran and my future Gran-in-law

Swimming in the hotel pool

Room 21 <3

Feeling like a princess

My lovely parents

Demonstrating new walking boots

All of us

There's only one thing I'd change if I could and that's for my brother and sister-in-law to have been there but I'll be seeing them for the first time in 14 months in 3 weeks - excited is not the word! :D

my little masterpiece

Just a quick post purely to show off my 21st Birthday Cake. As I mentioned in the last post I wanted to make my own two-tiered zebra print cake. It's probably one of the hardest things I've (ever) done haha and I estimated around 20 man hours went in to it! There was 26 eggs in the sponge and 5kg of fondant icing! That's a lot of cake! Luckily I had lots of friends and family around to give it away to and I'm taking 22 slices in for everyone at work tomorrow.

I'll post a proper post about my birthday soon, I'm currently gearing myself up for starting full-time work from tomorrow onwards. I think it's going to take a bit of getting used too after 6 weeks of doing basically nothing (well nothing important) and being a lazy student before that!

have your cake and eat it

Something I've always enjoyed doing is cake decorating. I'm not saying I'm any good at it but I do like to challenge myself every so often and build on my skills. Here's a few cakes I've made in the past:

This year's Christmas cakes

Last year's mini Christmas cakes

Alex's 21st Cake (he studies Maths)

So I'm making my own 21st Birthday cake this year to take to our family weekend in a Lake District Hotel on Saturday. I'm doing my first ever two-tiered cake as I thought that would be a good skill to learn. It's going to be zebra print and hot pink so pretty tacky haha :) I've taken inspiration from a few photos I found through google image's like this one but I'm using a few of my own ideas too. The cakes combined have 26 eggs in and are going to take ages to decorate etc so I've already baked them even though it's not til Saturday! I'll post again with a picture when it's completed!

Loads of exciting things are happening this week including going horse-riding (that's today eek), ice-skating with friends, birthday drinks, 3 family birthdays and a weekend in the Lakes. And then it'll be down with a bump and into full-time work from Tuesday but nevermind.

I do like having a birthday a week after New Year as it makes the festive period last even longer, hope you're all having a good week!

new years resolutions 2012

I always make new years resolutions and I love looking back to see whether I achieved them. Last year my main two were to lose weight and do well at university. Okay so I achieved one of them - I lost 2 1/2 stone! But I practically dropped out of uni oops.. although I'm going back in September to start my final year again :)


Here are the ones I've thought up for this year:

Get to my goal weight and maintain it 

Although I did really well last year I'd still like to lose another 2 stone and once I'm there I NEVER want to put weight on again haha. Within this resolution I'd like to improve my running, I only started 8 weeks ago but it's my new obsession.

Be more creative

I used to be really creative when I was younger but TV/internet seemed to take over. I've already decided I'm going to start a scrapbook of my year but I'd also like to do some knitting/sewing and maybe join a choir as I love singing - my ideal choir would be something like Glee!!

Be more sensible with money

Over the last two years I've taken my student overdraft for granted and I've lived a little out of my means really but until September I'm going to be working full-time so I'd like to get out of my overdraft and save up for big things that I really want like a holiday abroad with my lovely Alex.

Get my final year at Uni off to a good start

I need to get myself organised and prepare myself over the summer this year so I have a head-start on the modules and hopefully I won't fall behind as quickly as I did this year. 

So there we are, I really hope I achieve my goals this year. Without sounding sickenly positive, I feel like 2012 is going to be a good year. I love reading other peoples resolutions so comment with a link if you've done a similar post.. :)

happy new year and a little rant...

Happy New Year! I hope you all brought in the new year in style, I'd post an outfit post but I basically wore the same outfit I wore to my work christmas do the other week - you can see it here.
I don't want to use this blog to slag people or businesses off, it's not who I am at all but I felt I needed to vent my  frustration with the service I've received from a certain company recently. It's a real shame because from what I can tell the clothes look good quality and good value for money.. I'm not sure whether I've been completely put off using them again because the prices are really good (and I forgive way too easily) but anyway... the company in question is MissGuided. 


Last week - Thursday evening to be specific, I was browsing clothes online as I often find myself doing and I noticed I liked quite a few items on the missguided website so I put an order in and was delighted to see I could still get free next day delivery - Friday. The website seemed a bit slow and right at the last stage it crashed and never came to the page saying order complete. I checked my emails - no order confirmation. So I checked my bank... money left account. So I contacted them and it seemed the order had not gone through but I had still been charged - they promised a refund. 


So I decided to take the risk and order again as I did really like the clothes. This meant twice the money was out of my bank account as the refund hadn't come through (£200 in total which is a lot of money to me). At this point the free Friday delivery was no longer available so I paid for Saturday delivery (£5.50). Order went through - hurrah!
Saturday comes and my parcel arrives on time but the item I was most excited about (the Holly Cord Collar Quilted Jacket) is missing with no explanation on the invoice and I have been charged for it. I contacted them but realised I'd have to wait til Monday for a response what with New Year. No response today until I hounded them through twitter when I get an email saying "Sorry that item is out of stock, we will send you a refund", BUT the website is still saying it's instock!! Surely they could have more efficient stock checking methods?


So I'm now waiting for two refunds from them and in the mean time I can't have the jacket I wanted :( As I said, I'm not saying I'll NEVER use them again but maybe I'll leave it a while atleast. I understand they've probably grown quite a lot very recently what with sponsoring Pretty Little Liars etc and they might not have been prepared for Xmas/New Years/Sales but still it's no excuse really. I'll also say they did give me 10% off that second order as an apology so atleast that's something. 


On a more positive note I found this jacket on the Next website and am thinking of looking out for it when I go Birthday shopping on Thursday, I'll get my quilted jacket fix somehow haha!


Sorry for the rant, I'll be back with a more positive post soon,