Photo Friday 14

Happy Halloween my lovelies!

Did you trick or treat last night? Have any ghostly encounters?

Last night I went to Ham House in Richmond, London. Britains most haunted house for a night of fun including ghost tours, a private spooky seance and lots of treats and gory props with which to have fun.

The night was hosted by Amy Grimehouse a great company that have done many one off halloween events in and around London including one at the V&A last year. This year the theme was Hammer House of Horror who were behind some of the best horror films including Dracula.

 It was truly a different kind of Halloween, a far cry from the trick or treating when I was younger or the sex infused costumes of my uni years. Oh no this was the Best. Halloween. Ever!

I was a little girl again being amazed and yet terrified around every corner. We went on a late night tour of the house were we were shown the rooms and stairways that were most haunted by the Duchess who resided there.

I won't go too much into the history in case you decide to visit or research yourself. But it is said that the smell of her rose perfume still lingers the air when she haunts. Well I smelt it. Oh yes I did! But alas I didn't see the Duchess, although my Beau swears he saw her King Charles Spaniel, another frequent haunter!

A truly unique and thrilling experience. Even if you are not taken back by anything ghostly I promise this house will still thrill you, the eerie nature in which everything has still been kept and the cold dark empty feel as you walk through unlit corridors and tight stairways will make even the strongest a bit nervy.

Go check it out! You might even see a ghost..

Courtesy of  http://www.london-attractions.info/ham-house.htm

My Filofax Week (week 43)

Hello my beautiful bloggers! How are you? Here's my week from last week. Very very minimalistic with a few budgie stickers from a big box I bought from Paperchase. 

Have any of you in the UK been hit by the storms? Here in the shire we've had a few trees blown over and the trains never need much of an excuse to stall and delay but I'd say we were pretty lucky. The rain didn't half keep me up at night though!

This week I am looking forward to Halloween! Oh I'm so so excited, its the first Halloween I'm completely throwing myself and the Fiancé into with regard to costumes. With only a few days to go I still have to decide on an outfit though I know there will be lots of make up and artificial blood everywhere.

The weekend will see the gorgeous fireworks and celebrations of the Hindu festival of Diwali, which is always a beautiful colourful affair with delicious sweets! And I'm looking forward to an extra treat of more fireworks over guy fawkes.

But for now its all about sh*tting my pants googling horrifying pictures for inspiration, oh an shopping tommorrow for some Halloween make up cause of course its completely different to my normal make up ;)

Happy Halloweenies xx

My Filofax Week (Catch up)

Here are some pics from the last couple of weeks in my diary. The first one I've gone for a gothic dark theme with little girl stickers from paperchase a lovely lace sticker border from hobbycraft and those wonderful post it notes by Santoro's Gor Juss

The pics are a bit hazy, apologies.

The week following I decided to spruce it up a little with a hello kitt attack and some butterfly washi tape. 

I think I've realised I need a lot more washi tape so I'll fit that in with some online shopping this week ^_^

Mundane Monday 17

A new Monday, a new week, a new day. Is it really as simple as that? You know the aged old quote that everyday is a new day. Everyday is a day you can be that new person, the better person. 

Is it really that easy? I had a bit of a personal awakening this weekend. Realised that without any real guidance in my life my moral compass is so incredibly distorted that I can't live with myself being this way and hurting those I love so much. 

But with hurt already caused is it really that easy to wake up and decide to be a better person? The best solution is to never break a persons trust in the first place and its really not that hard, just requires a brain. But if its too late then you have to start from rock bottom and be prepared to work hard at whatever it is the other person needs to be able to trust you again. 

So let's take a moment this week to show those people we love that their trust in us is worth it and not misplaced. For those of you who are working on re-building trust be prepared to put aside your ego and pride, an injustice was done and the path to absolution is not without penance.

Mundane Monday 16

Have you ever been in a position where one of your close mates finds the girl/guy of their dreams and in being in the whole honeymoon phase turns into a complete jackass?

I like the quote below cause it reminds me that sometimes, just cause people have been in your life for a long time doesn’t mean they have to continue playing such an important part with your mental and emotional wellbeing if they are no long interested in your friendship.

But do you think the quote can stretch to people and relationships?

I’ve always thought it a bit selfish when I read quotes about dropping friends that aren’t good to you. However the older I get the more I realise that I can’t stand to be around them any longer, friends that once seemed so caring and always full of advice through older eyes seem selfish and controlling. Unfortunately I think the situation is worse when your friend becomes bad by marrying someone that's no good for them.

What are you supposed to do when you can't be a good friend to them? Hope that love continues to blind you I guess and ignore it which inevitably leads to the downfall of your friendship with them.

Hey Ho, here’s another great quote from an unknown author.

Courtesy of Google images

My Filofax Week (week 39)

This week my Lil Sis started uni! Oh its only a day or two since she left and the house is already a little quiet. We went up north to settle her in check out her room and halls. I’m a lil jealous as I know this week will see the stupidest fresher’s parties and fairs full of freebies, ah to be a perpetual student!

I also popped into Mrs Moores Vintage Fair in Rickmansworth on Sunday which was great. They hold a fair every few months and it was nice to see some new traders. The weekend was a bit of a vintage affair all round as I popped into a few vintage shops up north in between buying last minute forgottens for the Lil Sis.

I’ll have to have a separate post on my buys later in the week!

On Wednesday the cheeky Fiancé took the care to write in a little surprise for me. It was only a trip up to Manchester to see United play against Liverpool (and go on to knock them out the Carling Cup, go on my boys). Even better we were four rows from the front, the best seats I've ever had at the Theatre of Dreams, oh that Beau of mine he's a keeper! 

D.I.Y Engagement Party Invitations

Forgive me for the surge of all things wedding. I’m so surrounded by it, its all I think about! WARNING: picture heavy.

Today I’d like to show you a quick tutorial of how I made my own D.I.Y invites for my engagement. The theme of the party was all things peacock, but it was more a subtle colour scheme than everyone dress up your tail feathers. I wanted to incorporate that in the invites so as to spread the word while still being simple, timeless and elegant, a lot like me you see! *sighs*

Things I used:

1.       Tri – fold wardrobe blank cards and envelopes in ivory from Hobbycraft.
2.       Blue & Green ribbon
3.     Peacock feather stamp and clear stamp block from Hobbycraft
4.    Coloured ink pads 
5.      Computer/Printer
6.       Wax seal
7.      Postable wax (this is a flexible kind that is less likely to crumble in the post)
8.        Glue stick

The idea

There is a huge range of cardstock in hobbycraft but I fell in love with the tri-fold wardrobe ones. I had a lovely idea of turning them horizontal and opening them up much like a scroll which would fit in with the Fiancé and my love for all things historical ( I think we’ve been watching too many Game of Thrones episodes) while allowing me to fit the multiple jargon needed on the invite.

The beginning

Once I had the image in mind I set out to type up the invite on word. I decided to have my sister as the hostess which I thought better implied frivolity and a big emphasis on PARTY.

I then went on an internet search to find the perfect font. I love the whole Edwardian script style but knew half of my relatives wouldn’t be able to read it. Some great sites for downloading free fonts are:

1001 Free Fonts

Fontspace

Snippet and Ink (my favourite from which I used Champagne & Limousines)

I had toyed with the idea of printing them on card and sticking them to the tri fold but after some trial and error we found it best to just print straight onto the card.

Once you have your invite wording sorted, find a suitable font. I found having the address and R.S.V.P a different simple font from the invite helped create a more professional feel.

Make sure you go to Page layout – Size – A6 Card (or whatever your size is) so that you work from a realistic page, saving you trouble when printing.

Add a simple boarder from Word to create a finishing touch. I chose a double border from word’s list and changed the colour to a dark royal blue.

  

Sample of the finished font and invite inside

  

Hey presto you are ready to print!

Word of advice: Be sure to have a few packets extra when buying the tri-fold cards as the printer eats a few of them up, I had to feed each card manually and print them one at a time to ensure that the alignment was absolute perfect every time and did have a few lopsided unusable cards while figuring it all out.

Decorating

I began preparing the cards by sticking a length of dark green ribbon around them and cutting off the corners to create little arrows at the opening. The blue ribbon was purchased from Paperchase and was just the right size to sit perfectly in the middle of the green. I only stuck the ends of the ribbon on to the card so as to insure flexibility when the card was opened up. 

I then carefully stamped a green feather in the corner of each invite to give that subtle hint of the peacock theme. The clear stamps are dead cheap (around £1) from Hobbycraft and I recommend getting the clear stamp block (another £1) too as it'll help minimise the messy-ness and is easier to get the positioning correct every time plus speeds up the process like you won't believe. 

I decided in line with the image in my head, to have a custom seal designed from which I would stamp magnificent wax seals on each invite. Ah! Brilliance. So I went on another internet search and found a UK company that were able to produce a gorgeous wax seal for me in very little time.

Once arrived, I sat down with the Fiancé and we created little wax seals on foil paper to attach to the cards with glue later.

It was quite an easy method and I would recommend to anyone looking for a unique touch to their wedding invites to give it a go. The good thing is our custom seal can now be used to piss everyone off for the rest of our lives on wedding invites, thank you’s, birthday cards, Christmas cards.. ^_^

Once we created our little seals, we just pop them off the tin foil (it doesn’t matter which side you melt them on) and stuck them on to the invites over the ribbon and between the closing with a dab of paper pritt stick glue. The gooey kind if you know what I mean.

And that was it, all in all it was a 2-3 day job but could have been done in a day if we had worked solidly (not just evenings like we did). It was such an enjoyable experience and I felt so proud when I realised family and friends had no idea they were hand made by us!

Have you had a go at making any invites for your wedding or such? How did they turn out? Please share your stories and ideas as I’d love to hear from you!

Little Pocket Chameleon

I have a new filofax! My lovely little Pocket Chameleon. It’s now in full use although it still needs to be customised up.

I didn’t think, as mentioned previously that I’d ever enjoy using the pocket but I’ve got to say I love it! Every time I take it out to pay for something I feel the same sort of proudness and joy I felt when using my Ted Baker purse. I have yet to encounter a fellow planner “nod” which will just be the icing on the cake.

Not quite flat while open but can stay open itself

Pretty packed with hardly 'nowt in it but no where near as bulky as a personal

For me I realised that the lack of happenings in my life meant the Finsbury became too much of a burden to fill with nothing. So I’ve decided for the moment to use my Pocket as just a diary with odd bits here and there with the view that I’ll add to it the more busier I become.

The set up is:

Tab 1 – Diary

Tab 2 – Notes – mainly to do lists

Tab 3 – Info – currently unused but may use it to jot down any wedding venues/ideas I have to later transfer to my A5

Tab 4 – Finance – I really want to start making use of this as Student loans and the malarkey are rearing their heads + wedding rubbish will really help me keep focus.

Tab 5 – Addresses

The tabs are already labelled by Filofax and for now are working pretty well. The size is perfect about the size of my hand, and really a perfect fit to downside from the personal size.

I’d really recommend trying a downsize to anyone who like me thought they’d never really go for a pocket.

Along with indulging in new filofaxes I finally bought two Frixion pens in black and blue and came across this brilliant pocket I bought from Japan containing Hello Kitty stickers from 2006. Low and behold it fits PERFECTLY in the pocket! LOVE IT! I’ve added some of my other stickers to encourage me to decorate my pages as I go along rather than at the end of the week as I tend to do now.

The Fiance is amazed at how multi functional the little diary is with its 5 card slots that are not stiff or difficult to use in the slightest plus a little side pocket where I keep loyalty cards for nandos and M&S cards and a generous slit pocket across the top for cash and receipts.

My lovely kitties

I keep all my change in the back zip pocket and am finding that I am using it a lot more which was all I wanted from my little sweets!

The only problem I have is I have no idea what to call this one! Any ideas?

My Filofax Week (week 38)

After the engagement party I’m back on training contract searching and generally finding my purpose in life. I really enjoyed all the creative d.i.y’s I became involved in and was wondering if I can’t make some extra cash doing things I enjoy and using a bit of creativity. I’ve been researching a bit about starting up a little business from creativity but can’t really find any articles or so that will help explain what I’m looking for so perhaps once I get things finalised myself that could be a future post.

Here’s the week below, the highlight being visiting the Bluewater Wedding Fair in Kent. I received tickets for my birthday from my Sister – in Law to be and had a great time! We (the Fiancé and I )got a sneaky upgrade to V.I.P and received the lovely goody bags YAY! I had wondered before attending whether it is the right etiquette to be visiting with the Fiancé I was going with the Mum but she’s busy with my lil’ Sis who’s jetting off to uni next week. I was pleasantly surprised that there were in fact a fair few Mrs’ to be with their fella I mean it figures seeing as more couples do tend to finance the wedding themselves these days.

There were some lovely wedding ideas with the current craze of the photobooth guestbook and we received two complimentary glasses of champers which I chugged down including the Fiancé’s (oops) which gave the last 30mins of walking around stalls an extra kick, yeah I hadn’t eaten anything before. Oops again. But overall it was pretty great for an otherwise blasé week. 

Week 16th - 22nd September 2013

Photo Friday 13

Gosh it’s been a while since I’ve posted a photo Friday feature! I’ve recently been falling in love with all things vintage again and have found myself scrolling through the net oogling all the pictures of hair and makeup from the 1940s – 50s.

I hope to pop over to Oxford st today to check out the vintage store Absolutely Vintage and the vintage repro line Fever designs. With Autumn making its sudden appearance in the chilly crisp air I thought it the perfect opportunity to pop into some shops and see if i can bag myself some cosy yet figure hugging knits ^_^

One thing I found hard when keeping up vintage appearances was the lack of longer straighter hairstyles. I have hair down to just above my hips and its dead straight more chung li than veronica lake. Its an absolute pain curling my hair for it only to straighten out in a few hours.

It’s no secret that during the war years many girls didn’t have the time or means to regularly cut their hair and thus came the era of the beautiful pin curls. However, I have yet to master these styles with such ease and adapt them to my straight hair for an everyday glamorous look.

Anyway to the point, it was nice to come across this picture from the late 40s to see that there were women back then that had the lovely long locks unaffected by the 1920s-30s coiffure fashions. Its the actress Patricia Morison. I love it. It means there’s hope yet for these unruly locks and reminds me I just need to wake up earlier and put in more effort!

Taken in 1939 courtesy of Classic Cinema Gold

And here she is in all her victory roll glory from google images

Happy Friday lovelies xx

My Filofax Week (week 37)

Here's my filo week just gone. It was a busy one preparing last min things for the engagement party. It was only until the night before that I realised EEK! THE PLAYLIST! while my hands were covered in henna. But luckily the Handsome Fiancé and his Best Man A.K.A my Maid of Honour too were there to help out.

All in all the week was all about Saturday. As I've moved to the pocket I found that the good thing is I don't have to use as many accessories decorating my week. So I opted for the cutest little owl stickers from Paperchase that were appropriately wearing a little suit and wedding dress to represent my Beau and I.

On the day we were so lucky it didn't rain, all week I was constantly checking the forecast and trying to ignore the fact it kept showing pictures of thunder clouds and hailstorms.

The highlight of the day/week had to be the photo shoot we went to at Chorleywood Common afterwards, it was so much fun messing around pretending we were models, the photographers were fantastic and bought these gorgeous masquerade masks which I cannot wait to see how the pics turned out!

Now I'm on a bit of a party low as I don't quite know what to do this week.. perhaps start searching for this training contracts I conveniently forgot about!

My Filofax Week (Week 36)

A little late, but here is my week number 36. It was pretty busy towards the end as I started on last min shopping and prep for my engagement party.

I moved into my new pocket chameleon this week too and decided upon a jungle theme. After viewing some of your wonderfully themed decorating I decided to try and incorporate different themes from time to time into my daily planner.

Of course that means I have to go shopping for some new washi tape!

Out with the Old and in with the New

I’ve just given up on Little Miss Finsbury, the whole tweaking the set up thing is just not working and I couldn’t do it anymore.

It’s been a frantic week in the world of leather as my gorgeous beloved Ted Baker Wallet in bright orange with the delicious jewelled clasps is well.. about two years old and is starting to show.

Gorgeous

I got it as a birthday present from the Fiancé and have taken it everywhere with me  since, from handbag to suitcase, to carry all to being a clutch it holds my life and is my prized possession. Whenever I take her out to pay I just nod and smile to myself and the cashier like “oh yeah, I have the cow dressed up as a snake Ted Baker.”

Absolutely gorgeous! But a bit mucky now..

 But not no more! I am retiring her for a little while because I can’t bear to see her get ruined as she is already a little mucky and the leather cleaners from the Kiwi brand I’ve tried on her have quite frankly been sh*t so I’m a little upset and a lot annoyed.

Bye - Bye :(

Anyway, perhaps her retirement is at the result of receiving something else in the post this morning..

THE POCKET CHAMELEON?  What The..!

Yes I was a little naughty and bought one recently. I never in my filofax years thought I’d ever get a pocket, they seemed to small, too useless, too just pocket.

But after reading some posts and reviews and getting fed up with how my personal Finsbury can only really fit in one handbag of mine (and has helped turn my left arm into a Hercules arm with the weight on it). I decided to see the rest of the year out and perhaps even the next in a pocket and fingers cross it works for me.

Love the wallet design

If anything it solves the WPP dilemma as it comes with WO2P! I bought it in black as I didn’t like the Rasberry too much and I have too many reds. I am taken back by how SEXY she is! Yes SEXY! The scaly leather looks amazing in photos as in real life and the smell, oh I love new a filofax smell.

Lovely sexy leather scales

I’ll have to write a decent review on her once I decide on names and everything but for now I really must get back to filling her up! Excited!

My Filofax Week (Week 35)

I have completely lost count on my filofax weeks, but after checking on the gorgeous paperlovestory's blog I'll take a stab at Week 35 as I'm a little ahead!

From my last post you all know that Little Miss Finsbury is getting on my nerves and that’s pretty evident from my lack of posting and showing off stickys. So I decided to try something new to my WPP diary this week, something that although is new to me is not so new in the filofax scheme of things.

I’m dividing my days up. On one side I’ll treat it as a to do list with reoccurring boring things that need to be done during the day and on the other side I’ll write down all my social dates mainly cuddling up with the Fiancé. Any major meetings or things that need my attention will be written across the day as normal.

I’ve only just started this method that I’ve seen so many of you own and hope it works for me or at least keeps me engaged enough while I think hard about this re-jig.

The problem is, I’m one of those awkward people who buys a WPP diary and then half way through the year realises it doesn’t really suit her anymore, but kind of refuses to buy WO2P diary because she feels like it’s a waste on the WPP front? AM I MAD! This is the same person who thought buying a ridiculous WHSmith month on page diary will solve everything and used probably half a month of it. What a load of poppycock! 

Week 26th - 1st Sep 2013

 And here's a page from a few weeks back where my beloved whisked me away to Disneyland Paris for an early birthday treat! Aren't I a lucky lass!

Week 29th - 4th Aug 2013