One Direction... but not as you know it...

Well this is a bit embarrassing. But I'm putting it on here anyway. Aren't you lucky.

DISCLAIMER: If you are a fan of One Direction, I suggest you navigate away from this page right now as I may be about to shatter your dreams.

My work have this very silly little tradition, or rite of passage, or enforced humiliation, of new staff that is the Staff Pantomime. Lets just say it is written by teenagers and usually is designed to humiliate the noobs as much as possible. It is of course based on silly pop culture events like I'm a Celebrity and X-Factor and with it being a Pantomime, many of the men are expected to dress as women and vice versa. 

My role in the Pantomime was as one of One Direction. We had to dance on to the stage to 'Best Song Ever' and do a dance routine, right up my street to be honest, and then say a line or two to get the audience cheering. Easy right? Humiliating? Definitely.

Now I was supposed to be Liam, and after some googling I realised that this was not a look that I could pull off, what with the buzz cut etc. So I had a chat with the other members of the band and swapped with the person playing Louis, since his is more of a look I could get into.

He's the one in the red braces in case you didn't know.

Image credit: The Mirror

I figured shirt, trousers, braces, done deal right? Oh and a stupid hat to hide my hair and some kind of floppy thing done with my fringe.

Easier said than done...

I don't think it was a bad effort, but boy are boobs hard to hide. And as for dancing, turns out I only know how to dance LIKE A GIRL! How weird! Oh, then there's posing, so I can only pose if its a hand on hip maximise my assets kind of shot...

Here's a photo of me mid 'HOW DO BOYS POSE?!' panic.

I don't think I did a horrendous job, although when I spoke to some of the ladies in the audience they quickly told me that I had 'ruined their dreams of marrying Louis'... erm... yeah...

I'm not sure that I would consider this my best cosplay ever (see what I did there) but I did the best with what I had. I would totally be in the pantomime again, so it can't have been that bad.

Murder Mystery Dinner Party

A little departure from all the Christmas day posts floating around on the internet, with a post on a pre-christmas party.

When it came to deciding the theme for our work Christmas Party we ended up going with a Murder Mystery themed dinner at a local pub. I had never done one of these before and boy was it a lot of fun! Dressing up was of course mandatory and the whole thing was set in 1942 Casablanca. Right up my street.

Everyone going took turns drawing character names out of a bag and I was pleased to draw the character Ingrid Pith (I believe a play on the name of the actress Ingrid Pitt) who was a Danish art dealer specialising in works from occupied territories. Apparently my character was meant to be a complete flirt too... oh dear.

I was given advice on what to wear, it consisted of an evening dress, up do and supposedly a lot of cleavage. For the sake of dignity I skipped on the latter somewhat, but I did manage to pin up a blonde wig (it was the one one I got from Fancy Dress for Less that I reviewed here) into a somewhat vintagey style.

The dress is one I got from Monsoon in the sale two years ago (for £23!) that I have not yet wore, I thought it was sort of 30s ish inspired but these days almost everything is vintage inspired... its the only evening dress I have.

The pub had a table set out for each member of the group and we also got little booklets with portions of script and information to use to interrogate the other members of the table and answers to questions they may have. 

As the evening went on we got more and more information along with dinner and the detective (who was played very well by a CD) summed up the details we needed after each round. There was a huge number of nods to Agatha Christie style stories which was a lot of fun as I am a huge fan of Hercule Poirot.

Overall the atmosphere was fun, if a bit chaotic, with most people in the group ending up attempting very stereotypical french accents despite supposedly being from the USA, Germany, Ireland, Russia, Denmark and others... Can you do a Danish accent? Its hard!

It also turned out that my character was a bit of a slut... which was fun to play, and in a fantastic (if I do say so myself) piece of improv I ripped a faux moustache off a gentleman who was not all he seemed! Hehe! It was fun to be so rude!

My hair somehow managed to survive the night pretty well.

I suppose you're wondering if I was the murderer? Well I can't tell you that! But what I can tell you is that I manage to get one of the murders right, and for exactly the right reason, which I was pretty pleased with. All that Poirot training paid of... a bit.

Getting ready for Christmas in a vintage green dress and red cardigan

Well I have finally finished work for the holidays and I am now feeling pretty festive. I thought I could let these feelings show with a festive themed outfit.

This green dress was an impulse purchase from a vintage stall at Pickering this year, it looks hand made from a vintage pattern but I have to say it fits like a dream, and the print us gorgeous! It is often quite hard to find a versatile green dress, but the colours of the flowers on this one, and the black colour that runs through the background means that it is very versatile.

Being christmassy, I decided to do a colour clash and wore a red cardigan that came from M&S via a charity shop.

Close up of the print:

I was also pretty pleased with how my hair turned out today. I usually use bendy rollers to set my hair but have found that this can be a bit extreme for this shorter length of hair. I've never really known what to do with pin curls though so I was starting to feel at a bit of a loss.

However Masters of Sex to the rescue yet again, in the latest episode there was a scene where the character Virginia has pin curls in her hair to set it over night. I made an attempt to memorise the set and had a go that very night! I don't have enough pin curl clips to do it properly, but I think I am convinced enough to buy a few more.

Lastly this coat was my find of the year in a charity shop! It is vintage, and probably from the 1930s or 1940s and an absolute steal for £25! It has a crepe lining and is really heavy and warm thank goodness. Even better than that - IT FITS!

Check out the detail on the collar? Its beautiful in real life.

Dress: Vintage stall at Pickering

Cardigan: M&S via charity shop

Coat: Vintage via charity shop

Gloves: Accessorise

Glasses: Lensway

My husband and I couldn't really buy and christmas decorations this year, so I learned how to make origami christmas trees :) I thought I'd share my best ones.

Lastly, I picked up a package from home today. How cute is the tag on this? How well they know me...

Are you all ready for Christmas?

A trip to Canterbury

Just to warn you before we get started, this post has pictures from mid November. Just in case you were confused by how quickly my hair seemed to be growing!

Anywho, I forgot to post these pictures a little while ago, so I though I'd share them now. I took a trip to Canterbury with the in-laws, I've never been there before, but I felt it was probably worth a visit now I live in that neck of the woods.

I have to say I really like that old style architecture with tudor style cladding, white paint and beams. It is closer to the style of my home town that somewhere like Brighton is so I feel quite at home there. I think its probably why I like Tunbridge Wells so much too. 

Naturally, this post will have quite a few pictures:

Here is me and a wonky door...

I really liked the look of this bread shop, but I have to admit that I find the little robotic baker figure in the window a little bit scary.

HOW COOL ARE THESE LEGO MINIFIG NECKLACES!

Giant sweets...

My very best attempt at an arty shot...

Dare I say, that any town that has plastic Monks in the streets is asking for a little bit of horse play.

Of course in this city of great pilgrimage we couldn't not go to the cathedral. It was rather magnificent I must say. I've never seen such a big cathedral!

And here is what I decided to wear. It is a dress from M&S, late 80s/early 90s by my reckoning and it has a really cool tropical print to it which manages to brighten up a dull day. I wore it with my trusty black M&S coat and a vintage chunky knit cardigan, that you can't really see. This was the first day that it was cold enough to break out my Morlands boots too. I was told that they were from the 1960s, although it doesn't really matter to me, I was only really interested in the lovely fur lining and water proof suede. I've really struggled to find good warm boots for the winter, so hopefully these will be it!

Dress: M&S via eBay

Coat: M&S via eBay

Neck Scarf: Salvation Army

Boots: Morelands via eBay

Oh, we also went to Patisserie Valerie on the high street. I had an ice cream sunday - it was beautifully delicious!

One last picture of the lovely view of the cathedral all lit up.

M&S bunny rabbit christmas jumper

I have a confession to make. I am not a huge fan of the christmas jumper, favouring instead the fair isle/nordic style designs rather than the novelty designs available.

Therefore when a friend of mine had a christmas party that demanded Christmas attire I was sort of stuck. I do have one patterned jumper however, a cute little number from M&S with white bunnies all over it. To be honest, I don't really think rabbits have anything to do with Christmas (or hares either thank you very much John Lewis!) but this was the closest to a Christmas jumper as I could muster.

I decided to wear trousers with my jumper. They are a pair of chino style trousers from M&S and they have a little bit of stretch in them which makes them pretty comfortable and they are quite high waisted too without being jeans so I can get away with wearing them for work :D

I also recently acquired a parka from eBay, I never thought I would be the type of girl to get a parka but my husband swears by his in the cold weather so I decided to try and find one for my work commute. Gotta keep warm!

Parkas seem to be very in at the moment, every other person I see is wearing one and I'm not really sure when that happened... Anywho, this one is from Topshop, but it is second hand and I estimate from the late 1990s early 2000s based on the label, you can see it has been worn, but I got hold of it in good nick and for only £16 compared to to £50-100 price tag I see on new ones so I don't really mind. It is really warm and has lovely deep pockets to keep my rubbish in.

Dressing down did however mean that I had to do something fantastic with my hair! Since I had it cut short I haven't really found the perfect style up do, I think I almost had it with this one, I would make a couple of changes to it if I try again, but overall I was pretty pleased. The best part was that when I took it out it had a beautiful curl set that lasted for 3 days! I really ought to have taken a photo of that...

On a side note, please excuse the silly make up, I wore a bright green eyeshadow and red blusher and lipstick to keep with the christmas theme. In hindsight perhaps a little much but never mind.

What do you think of christmas jumpers? Do rabbits count?

Tonnes of great costumes from MCM London Comic Con October 2013

*This is a repost as I accidentally deleted the original :(

There won't be so many words in this post, but more of a gallery of my favourite cosplay costumes from the Expo.

I spent WAY too much time at the Nintendo Unleashed area. I got to pay on several new games and I definitely felt like a celebrity while visiting the booth.

There was also a booth featuring my favourite facepaint brand Snazaroo. You can bet that if face paint features on my blog it is made by snazaroo.

And without further ado... here are some of my favourite costumes:

This Iron Man was very nice

Another couples costume, Hawk Man and Hawk Girl. They were a pretty cool pair!

How cute is this giant Kirby plushy costume?!

Banjo Kazooie lady cosplay and Mario and Princess Daisy raccoon costumes

Zelda, Sheik and Link cosplay. This Princess Zelda costume may have been my favourite for the whole convention.

We got our photo taken with Pac Man!

A few costumes from the masquerade showcase. A chocobo from Final Fantasy, the Evil Queen Regina from Once Upon a Time and a pair of adorable Ice Climbers. 

In a world populated by 10th and 11th doctors, it was nice to see a Sylvester Mccoy 7th Doctor costume. Especially one as good as this!

One half of Daft Punk... Not sure which half though.

Disney Princesses dressing down.

You sure have to be committed to wear stilts ALL DAY! 

A few more costumes from the masquerade far left is Ariel, far right is Sailor Moon, but I'm not sure about the middle character.

Transformer!

Check out these Star Wars characters. I love a bit of Boba.

This last one isn't a costume it is what I decided to wear for the first day convention exploring. It is a 1970s blue St. Michael dress with a darker blue monsoon cardigan. I paired it with some thick woollen tights with a pair of brogues. I wonder if this dress would work well as part of an Alice costume...

Which one is your favourite?