My little friend Zara.

    I love Zara, I have quite an unhealthy obsession and am now rather excited to hear that they will at long last be selling online from the 2nd of september!!!! Yay!!
   They have some gorgeous new stock in and I can't wait for them to chuck out that dreay left over sale stock and get all the rest of the new lovely autumn/winter stuff out on the shop floor!!
    Here's a little peek at some of the A/W lookbook......

Comfy!

Love, love, love this leather skirt!

Nice!

Friday Night Fun.

Mmm good starting point!

   
  A little story of  2 ladies, too many drinks and some press ups.
   
     My friend L and I  are always ever so organised on the social diary front. We always make sure we have dates booked in in advance to make sure we get together as often as possible, we both enjoy a drop of good food and don't shy away from drink or two. So this friday night just gone started out the same as normal, dinner at a new riverside restaurant in our home town with plans to have a few drinks after. There were us plus our Mr's until my Mr found out he was meant to be on a stag do (men are so unorganised!!), so no probs we bought the dinner forward to 7oc so that the boys could bugger off early and join in the hijinks of the stag do.
    A lovely dinner was had by all, by 8.15 L and I had polished off the 1st bottle wine and as we were'nt rushing off decided we had better order another to keep us going. 9oc and the boys made their excuses and left us to it, it was around this point that L and I admitted we were already feeling a little squiffy!
    I should add at this point by this age I really should know when I've had enough but it never seems to happen!! Oh well.
    We left (or rather stumbled, probably) the restaurant and settled ourselves in a nice bar where we seemed to drink our body weight in, L- vodka, Moi -gin but, considering, I think we were holding up ok. It was lovely to have a good old chat just the two of us, and make the most of what time I have left with my friends before I leave in november.

What we shoulda had!!!

                                                  

    Around 12.30 we decide time for a change of scenery and obviously a few more beverages (like we needed it!!!), so off  we go to another bar which is almost always full of protentious arseholes but the decors nice and they do a mean cocktail so us girls always like it!! We headed off into the cocktail lounge where we ordered ourselves mojitos, as mentioned before the place does attract wankers and at the bar seemed to be the biggest of them all, what on earth makes these tossers think we are interested in one word they have got to say is beyond me, but hey ho.
     We were minding our own business, when the aformentioned tosspot kinda lunged himself at us and announced he was buying our drinks, wanker. We ignored him and turned back to the barman who was making our drinks, neither remotely resembled a mojito, I was told by the barman they were making us something else as they were out of mint, he seemed totally oblivious to the fact that I did'nt order something else and was handed a muddy looking concoction of drunk in a glass!!! (vodka, gin, tequila, bacardi, lime and coke) whilst I was having a one way conversation about the drink that not only I did not order but did not want, the knobhead that was pestering us had dropped to the floor to do press ups, WTF?????  Was that meant to impress us? Bloody hell, it was just embarassing but hugely amusing to see someone making such an ass of himself. What had we done to deserve such attention. We let him pay for the drinks as we did'nt want them (although by this drunken point we drank them anyway!! Oops), and then disapeared before he could annoy us any further. Where waiting for us was one more tosser, blimey. At this point we decided to call it a night and go home, I finally made it to bed just before sun rise. A good night was had by all.

Maybe this is where Mr Universe shoulda been doing his press ups!

                                                                                                                                  

Danni Minogue style queen.

   I have always been a fan of the gorgeous Minogue sisters. I was in the Kylie fan club, had the black and white braces dress from the 'I should be so lucky video' and generally loved all of the camp girliness of the antipodian pop princess.
   I always felt, as probably many do, that Danni was either in her big sisters shadow or trying to get in on the limelight. But nevertheless I always liked her too.
  Then there has always been the male debate, Kylie or Danni? Boys will be boys!!
   I am a sucker for celebrity reality tv shows but somehow missed Danni's show on ITV2 until last week. I loved it, and am now gutted that I have only caught the last two!! Bum.
    The thing is I read about Danni's new fashion line Project D  a while back on Mrs Fab's blog and I will admit I was a little sceptical, never really keen on celebrities thinking they are designers and cashing in on their popularity. But after watching her show, I am converted. She is a lovely person, gorgeous inside and out (a rareity) and seems to genuinely love all that she is doing. She clearly loves fashion (and it loves her back) and is caught up in the excitement of producing her own clothes with her friend Tabitha, many a girls dream come true. And the result is great, some really gorgeous dresses, very feminine and not too hideously expensive (around the £210-£390 mark).
   So I think that Danni truely deserves her style queen crown.

   Here's a few of my favourites,

And the count down begins.

  Time flies when you're having fun. Thats what we are all meant to believe, yes?  Well, no I think is the more appropriate answer at the moment. With the year just whizzing by at a million miles an hour my move to the french alps is coming round quicker than you can possibly imagine. It is a strange point to be at, I only have 10 weeks left at work and just 12 weeks to our official departure date.
    It's a bit like no mans land I suppose, the carrot dangling in front of you but just that bit too far out of reach. There's alot of things to sort out, the boring stuff like paperwork and the like, and there's the house situation, still unsold. Work is becoming more and more difficult to make it through the (very long) days and I really can honestly say I have had enough. But it will all be worth it I'm sure.
    I hang up my scissors on 28th october and say tally ho to many loyal and lovely clients that have become friends over the years. There are many lovely ladies (and great gents) that I have had the pleasure of knowing, some of which since I was a wee apprentice. The people I will miss, the responsibility (and the hours) of my position I will not!
    With leaving dates now looming in sight I am trying to coordinate leaving do's and get dates in the diary for catching up and seeing nearest and dearest as much I can before I embark on my new life. It is always such hard work getting friends all together now, our lives have changed and  there are little ones to take into consideration, so it makes it even more difficult. I am always the organiser (aghh!), I wonder what will happen when I'm no longer here making sure we all see one another.
    But on the upside I get to leave a job I've had enough of and start a new chapter with my Mr and live a life of adventure travelling the world living in amazing places!!
   I really should stop moaning!!

It was the best of times and the worst........

    

      A strange month or so it has been, it really has been the best and worst of times as I will now explain further. We have had three gorgeous little girls arrive, all cuddly teeny weeny visions of pink loveliness. As some of you know I am not a particularly maternal person, I have never had any desire to reproduce and can honsetly say I will never change my mind (regardless of how many people tell me that I will!!!!). But over the last few years my nearest and dearest have started their own families, so therefore I have become more accustomed to the little ones surrounding me. And they are all very lovely and I think the world of them. I do get the best bits really, I can visit them, play and cuddle and do all the nice bits but then I can leave and have a full nights sleep and not have play-dough trampled all over my house. So thats been some of the very best of times.

  

    And the very worst of times, our house is back on the market. Our house sale fell through 2 weeks ago, we were 3 weeks away from completing!!  The hugely frustrating thing is that the buyers still want the house!!! Aghhh. The situation is this, the buyers had been approved for a 90% mortgage by RBS (owned by us the taxpayer!) the survey and valuation was all done and came back perfect, then RBS decided that they would only lend 80% because the bloody surveyor suggested that the house be placed in the same bracket as a new build property due to the extensive renovation works!!!! WTF??? My house was built in 1860!! It is a terrace so how on earth can we be a new build?? So the poor buyers are 10% short which is waaayy too much money for us to drop, they did appeal to the underwriters who took 2 weeks to decide that they were not going to change their minds!! The buyers have since reported this incident to the FSA, and they are still shopping around to see if they can get another mortgage. So needless to say we are back on the market, we have wasted 8 weeks. So things are now pretty stressfull as we have exactly 13 weeks till we leave for France, bugger.
 

Loving Liz Earle.

      I have always been a sucker for lovely skincare, I am also completely paranoid about looking old! I know that it is enivitable but hey a girls gotta try eh?
      I have tried all sorts of premium lines and have liked alot but I always end up being won over by something new.
      A few years ago I found an amazing night oil recommended by Vogue that was just amazing, I though I had found the secret of eternal youth, I was happily slathering myself in this gorgeous stuff then one day I went online to place an order and 'pouff', gone, out of business!!!! OMG!!
      Well to cut a long story short I have now spent 2 years trying to find a replacement without success. Then a few months back whilst contemplating what to spend some John Lewis vouchers on I found myself being drawn to the lovely serene, pretty pastel bottled counter of Liz Earle.
       The very knowledgable and helpfull ladies (not orange scary chase you round the counter ladies!!!) advised me to give their starter kit (what a great purse friendly idea!!) a go and then she showed me the holy grail, Superskin Concentrate!!! I swear this is the same stuff as I was using 2 years back, it smells the same, looks the same colour and my skin has instantly cleared up, just fantastic stuff. I have been banging on about it to anyone that mentions the big 'W' word.
        I have just been onto their website and to my delight they are doing a fabulous summer offer where if you purchase your 3 skincare essentials you recieve a free Superskin Concentrate!! Saving £18! Bargain! What I was also pleased to see as a first time website visitor was that you can buy all products in sample sizes, how sensible, anyone got any half used jars and bottles knocking about??? I am also reliably informed that they are generous with their samples when ordering online.

             Ps, It must work I frequently get asked for ID!!!!!