A mid-week break: Krakow

A few weeks ago myself and Adam went on a little mid-week break to Krakow. We initially thought Munich and perhaps the Christmas markets there but timings didn't work out since we only had the week at the start of November to go......so much for studying during reading week!!

We left on the Monday with a very early start, needless to say all we were able to do at Gatwick was sit and stare at the planes, no perfume spraying for me! It was worth it though as we were able to be in Krakow before lunch. The usual check in time/ arrival to the hotel imbalance happened and so we decided to leave our bags at the hotel and have a little wander around to kill the 30 minutes before we were allowed to check in. We stayed in the Kazimierz district. Just a little walk down from our hotel was the river, and the whole way along it's banks are really wide footpaths and accompanying cycle paths....amazing. We had thought we could walk all along it until we reached Wawel castle but that was a little bit far. Instead we soaked in the surroundings and took pictures of some unusual things.

Once we managed to check in we left for lunch and then on into the old town. There we say Florian's gate, the Cloth hall among other places. The cloth hall is wonderful at night time all lit up. We were a little early for dinner but found an underground metal bar that was pretty suited to us, full of nooks and crannys for us to explore. Day one was pretty eventful to say the least.

Day two was a day trip to Auschwitz, which I'm not really going to go into but it was worth the trip and definitely somewhere where people should try to see at some stage.

Then sadly it was our last full day in Krakow but we made the most of it. We got up bright and early to try and get some sight seeing done before it rained again. We managed to make it as far as Wawel castle and cathedral before it started to rain. Along the way were some interesting sights. Krakow seems to love it's canal barges turned into restaurants. We decided to have a self guided audio tour of the cathedral. It's a pretty impressive place, and houses one huge bell...Sigismunds bell. As we left the cathedral it decided to once again start raining (but we're used to that nonsense) so we made the most of it and grabbed a pretzel and stood under the umbrella watching people climb up the hill to Wawel castle. Then hot chocolate was needed. One thing about Krakow....their hot chocolate is AMAZING.

We tried to fit in as much as we could so i think we manged to see pretty much most of the sights in the old town, we even managed to fit in some time to see the underground medieval town which is underneath the cloth hall. Sadly neither of us were really impressed with it but still, while in Krakow!!!

This was definitely one of the best little trips I've been on, Krakow has lots to do, see, eat, and drink. I think ill definitely go back. Have you ever been there? What was your favourite bit?

Chloe x

Winter nests

Red heart cushion, love cushion, cable knit cushion
Three hearts, 

As it steadily gets colder I am steadily getting more and more desperate to create a cosy nest that will be my bed. When i was in town getting some bits and bobs at the weekend i noticed that BHS has a sale on. So in i popped to have a peek around. I was not dissappointed. The sale is on nearly everything that is lovely. I nabbed a brushed cotton (or flannel as i would like to call it) red check duvet set and stared at all the lovely cushions and throws that they have to offer. This then started my spiral into winter heaven. Above are the four cushions that i like most that will now go with our new duvet set, maybe ill buy them one by one and eventually our bedroom will be a cosy paradise.....unlikely but one can wish!
Do you have a need to snap up cosy homewares the second you see them??
Chloe x

Casting on a new hobby

So my updates have gradually ground to a halt....can you tell uni has started back?

Luckily this term has started gently, no major stresses at the moment and i think i can say that i am fairly focused with regards to work load.....well kind of! Despite this autumn has come and as usual a cold has too, i don't know what it is but i can never avoid getting a cold no matter how hard i try. Luckily an unlimited broadband and lovely film streaming service has kept me happy when i get back in the evenings. I've also started a knitting project.

From my previous post on dress making you can kind of gather that i like making things for myself, i think it may be something that has diffused from my mum to me, as she generally says "i can make that for you" whenever we see a nice woolly jumper/ cardi in shops, although in the end she never does.....real life gets in the way! I do however like knitting, i don't enjoy it. I'm nowhere near the stage of skill where i can say i enjoy it. I have to focus VERY carefully on what I'm doing to be able to ensure that I'm doing the right stitches. I have however made a few things in my lifetime, snowmen, santas (all when i was in primary school when I'm pretty sure my mum knit most of it) and a scarf. The scarf i knitted two years ago and has it definitely been something I've been proud of. It took me three months (told you i was unskilled), and has some nice things about it. It's teal and mustard (nice autumnal colours) and has cool a cool cable pattern running through it.

Now however i want to up my game, i want to be able to knit more. BHS has such nice woollen blankets at the moment and all i can do to stop myself from buying them is be dragged away by Adam. So i have decided that i will slowly make my way to blanket making one step at a time. The first step was to knit something, from start to finish, all by myself. No help. at. all.

I decided i wanted to do this while i was at home and dragged out all the knitting paraphernalia that is there. Sadly there wasn't any patterns for knitted hats like i wanted but i did find a pattern book that has patterns for trivial things, like tea cosys, mobiles, etc. I decided to make a tea cosy and voila...here it is!

It seems to sit nicely in with the rest of my tea time shelf....it has to, there's nowhere else for the teapot to live!

I did a bit of a silly thing when i was making it though and on one of the sides i left out two rows which means that when i sewed it up together one side is longer than the other and it now sits in a funny way on the teapot....but who can tell? It does it's job well and i can say that i was able to knit something from start to finish completely by myself.....oh and a tiny bit of you tube to work out how to 'sew it off'!

Is anyone else knitting or is it just me?
Chloe x

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