Autum footwear

Leather Aztec ankle boots
Brown lace up brogues
Tan buckle strap
Tan cut out boots
Grey cross over strap

For some reason it seems to be a cold Autumn at the moment, in that I'm not even entertaining the idea of wearing pumps at the moment which i normally would at this time of year. I don't want to go straight into wearing full of winter boots so after a little browse around New Look's website I found these little gems.

I have previously posted the Aztec boots which they had in stock around April time but i never got and now I'm seriously contemplating it now that they have them again. I do love those cut out ones though...ah too much choice, what's a girl to do?

The only downside to all of these is that i haven't seen any of them in the shops and most of them seem to be the limited range, which i think i would have to buy online. As much as i love browsing online, i have only ever bought from there once and instantly regretted it with the item not being anything like what i thought it was and extremely small fitting. Since then i decided that i would only ever buy in person but i really do like these boots, I'm in a conundrum!

What's your online shopping experiences? Have you ever bought shoes from New Look online?

Chloe x

Relections on a weekend past

I am acutely aware that it is now Thursday, almost Friday which is then pretty much a new weekend so i may be a tad late talking about what i did LAST weekend but i enjoyed it so much that i wanted to give it a mention.

Last weekend myself and Adam went up to Leamington Spa for a food festival, thinking that it was nice to get away but that the festival itself may not be too great. OMG we were wrong. I literally ate enough free samples that i didn't feel hungry for lunch which if you ever heard my stomach growl during a 12:00 lecture you would realise how big that is.

It was pretty big with two big sections of tents along the perimeter and lots in the middle too. There was a variety of food based choices to make: watching cookery demos, eating free samples and talking to stall owners and buying their respective products, and then of course doing the rounds at all the mobile food units. There was a lot of them, in particular churros had a HUGE queue all day which unfortunately didn't mean that they were any good :(

My fav's of the day were definitely Snowdonia cheeses, we ate so many samples and bought two mini wheels too, and a really nice company called spicentice which had spice based (who would have guessed) products, including DELICIOUS chutneys. We bought a mango one and a sweet lime one, I can't wait to open those bad boys up and gobble them down!

The good thing about this particular food festival was that it was free entry, had a good choice of stalls and the products being sold were not astronomically expensive, in fact Adam worked it out that the cheese we buy in our supermarket works out that same price as what we bought at the festival but is in no way as tasty or satisfying to eat....win win for the food festival!!

The only bad thing is i never thought to take any pictures, i was having much too good a time eating!

This weekend is going to be less food based i feel although i do plan on a little baking day today/ tomorrow so maybe it will be a little foodie! Have a great weekend x

Debenhams Dream Bedroom

I haven't done a snazzy little collage like this before but there's a reason behind my new endeavour. 

Debenhams are hosting a competition at the moment to let bloggers create their dream bedroom with the hope of winning £500 worth of Debenhams vouchers. All you need to do it create your dream bedroom, choosing items from their home and furniture department, not exceeding £5000. The really good thing about this competition is that not only is the chance of winning vouchers exciting, creating the dream bedroom is really fun. If you want to give it a try why not pop over to Debenhams' blog to  find out all the details about this fun competition.

My dream bedroom is based on the idea of a big light bedroom that has lots of space and ideally maybe a nook or two to put the chest of drawers into.

So whats in my Dream Bedroom?

• Debenhams antique metal alice bed (king) - £342.00
• Accessorize home- Blue and pink fable folksy duvet cover set (king) - £52
• Butterfly by Matthew Williamson- Designer pink floral heart - £4.80
• Debenhams Dark rose 'Hoxton' chair - £594.00
• Butterfly by Matthew Williamson white bird and branch table lamp - £78.00
• Debenhams walnut lyon six drawer chest - £666.00
• Gisela Graham wooden four heart hooks - £16.00
• Debenhams blue 'Antoinette' two drawer wide chest - £378.00
• Butterfly by Matthew Williamson- Designer yellow bird candle holder - £4.80
• Debenhams wood pink oval mirror - £16.00

Total spend = £2,151.60

Wow, i really did think i would spend a lot more than that while i was collecting all my items, what a treat it is to shop without worrying about having to spend the money!If only real bedroom shopping was easy as this (sigh). 

What do you think of online window shopping? Do you think my dream bedroom is dreamy? 

Chloe x

First attempt at dress making

My blog following started because i needed an online tutorial to confirm my suspicions on how to make a plastic bag holder. I then found a lovely blog detailing every step and thus giving me a solid grounding on how to make it instead of guessing the whole way through stitching, that lovely blog was Make It and Love It.

Upon discovering this blog i then needed to find more, i found such lovely blogs that focused more on dressmaking, one of which is Tilly and the Buttons. Since then i have read posts and looked at pictures, even created a board on Pintrest to pin things that i thought i would like to sew. There's a problem however, I'm not really very good at sewing.......oops!!

I went back to Ireland for two weeks while I'm still on my summer holidays from uni and found a lot of things that were lying in the back of my wardrobe that i was never going to wear anymore. It felt such a waste to just throw them out though, especially as i had never worn some of them. I had in particular a summer dress, which in fairness was only from Pennys (Primark) but i really like the pattern it had on it, the only problem was that the top of it was very ill fitting.

I decided that while at home with the availability of a sewing machine and some advice from my mum that i could turn it into a skirt. Thus began a lot of deliberating on how to go about it, what width elastic to use and how to keep it in place. I inspected all the skirts i could find to see how they had their elastic encased and then decided....it was time to cut the dress!!

I just chopped the top part off and removed a band that gathered the skirt in. To be honest after pinning the waistband in place it was kind of easy, and weirdly relaxing whizzing the sewing machine along to line of pins. That was until i saw that i didn't thread my bobin in properly and it hadn't been sewing properly the whole time. Well, i had to put back in all the pins again, take out my tape measure AGAIN and make sure the waistband was the same thickness the whole way around. I'm not going to lie, it tried my patience at this part but i got through it and finally had sewn the waistband into place. I then pushed the elastic through, sewed that into place with four lines to stop it from moving and twisting inside 'it's house'.

The fabric was a little see through though so i thought while i had the sewing machine out i would make a slip to go underneath, because I'm not very proficient at this sewing game a decided to not try and line the skirt with it but make a separate slip altogether. I had a dress that no longer fitted but had a lovely white cotton lining that i needed and so ripped the stitches out and got my slip fabric from there. I then made the slip pretty much the same way as i did the skirt but with a much thinner elastic. I will admit i was pretty worried that i would make the whole thing too tight on my stomach having two elasticated waistbands around it but so far it's been ok.

What i liked the most was taking two garments that i was never going to wear again and turned them into something usable and pretty. It's weirdly satisfying, maybe that's why sewing your own clothing is starting to take off again! 

Have you ever tried to re-purpose a garment of clothing? Do you wish you had better sewing skills too?

P.S sorry for the lack of pictures of the sewing process, that's not really my kind of thing since i am a scarily messy worker and so none of the pictures would have been very pleasant to look at. Also the pictures here are dubious, since i live in a teeny flat that lacks natural light, but hopefully you can see the nice pattern on the skirt! 

Chloe x