Frills 'n' Spills

From one Christmas outfit to another! This was the outfit I wore for our third (!) day of Christmas festivities which we spent with Mark's family and I was really pleased with how it turned out. I spotted this French Connection dress in the ASOS sale (are you spotting a pattern here?!) and stashed it away to wear for either Christmas or New Year. This felt like a very sophisticated look for me, I think 2014 was the year that I first felt like a grown up and my wardrobe is finally starting to follow suit. You wouldn't imagine that a bodycon lace dress would be all that comfortable but actually the jersey is so soft and stretchy, you forget that the dress is squeezing you in, in all the right places ;) Although I wore this on Boxing Day, I imagine this dress could be be pulled out for nearly any party or whenever I want to feel sassy, it is definitely another one of my favourite things that I bought this year!

Although I'm more than happy to wear bright lipstick, I am wary of darker berry and purple colours as I worry that I look a bit too much like I am playing at dress up rather than looking sophisticated (a long term problem of mine!). This lipstick is a Max Factor one and although the name has rubbed off, I think it is this shade and I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to wear. Maybe I need to brave my Revlon 'Black Cherry' lipstick next?

 I'm not normally very good with sleeves but these ones are super light and fairly delicate (I was so paranoid about ripping them!) and Mark's parents house is fairly cold so I was able to get away with them. You can also (almost) see the beautiful L K Bennett charm bracelet I got from my parents too - it is absolutely beautiful and I am very lucky girl indeed! The draping at the waist is pretty unusual but it draws the eye to my waist rather than my hips which can only be a good thing!

How did your style change in 2014?

I have been waiting to post about these as we made them before Christmas but they were a present for my parents and I didn't want to spoil the surprise! Biscotti are one of those things that always seem 'posh' but these were surprisingly easy to make and will definitely be the recipe I use to impress people! ;) I used this vanilla biscotti recipe from Baking Mad but made a couple of changes to it...

I have been slightly AWOL over the past week as I have been catching up on some sleep and spending Christmas with my family and friends. As usual, Mark and I had 3 (!) Christmases; one for us and our friends, one with Mark's family and one with mine. As you can imagine, it was very busy and filled with lots of amazing food, drink and fun and we had the most amazing time. I will be sharing my festive outfits (sneak peek here!) but here are a few of my Christmas highlights in the meantime...

Our Christmas tree went up very late this year (only 5 days ago in fact!) thanks to the leak in our ceiling but it did shake me out of my Grinch-like slump when I saw it twinkling away in the corner!

A sparkly jumper dress, leggings and my lovely new slippers from Mark were my outfit of choice on Christmas Eve, cosiness and stretchiness is key to a good Christmas outfit in my opinion...

Especially when you have to eat a roast dinner three days in a row! ;)

We weren't sure what to get people this year for Christmas so we decided that Kilner jars filled with the ingredients for yummy oaty cookies are always a winning combination and  it was really fun choosing what extra ingredients to add to the jars- don't the layers look lovely! 

Of course we had to make a few for ourselves to do a quality test on the recipe and I can report that the cookies are lovely! 

We went out for a few drinks with our friends on Christmas Eve and so I swapped one sparkly dress for another! This gorgeous tinsel dress was from ASOS and I was so excited to wear it although I wish I had worn a slip underneath it, it was pretty itchy by the end of the evening! I just realised that this is an extremely 80s looking outfit with the leggings and pointy shoes (I'm pretty sure there's a photo of my Mum wearing something similar 25 years ago!) but I really loved it and itchiness excluded, it was a really comfy outfit and perfect for hiding my food baby ;)

Where did you spend Christmas? 

This outfit is almost so far out of my comfort zone that it's ridiculous. With Keds and a stonewashed denim jacket, you could be forgiven for thinking we had gone back to the 80s... I was given these Keds for Christmas and as I will be wearing them on holiday, I thought I had better break them in before I trek all around Italy in them...

Definitely the pièce de résistance of the whole outfit. The gorgeous Liberty print and incredibly comfy soles mean that these are lovely to wear, it literally feels like you are walking on clouds and these are the comfiest pair of shoes that I own. I'm not sure where my parents got this pair from but you can get THIS EXACT PAIR or some other lovely sneakers over at Spartoo who have some other rather lovely shoes that I have my eye on...

If you were going to sum me up in one outfit, it would probably look something like this. Cute dress? Check. Bright colours? Check? Matchy matchy? Check. A sense of fun? Check. It may not be particularly ground-breaking fashionwise but sometimes you just want to wear a nice dress and feel pretty AMIRITE? I have more or less given up on trying to keep this slip from poking out of the bottom of this dress and am treating it as an extra layer. I have an image of wearing a cropped white camisole with a white petticoat underneath instead but have no idea where I would find one...any ideas? 

The gorgeous pink bag was a recent treat from Mark to match my increasing number of hot pink items and I am in love. It is a soft buttery suede and surprisingly roomy (perfect for the girl who carries everything but the kitchen sink!)

Getting hold of this dress was darn near impossible,I first saw it at the New Look press day almost a year ago and fell in love but despite stalking the New Look website fr months I couldn't find it. I knew they had put it into production because it was featured in nearly every magazine I read and I WANTED IT. Luckily, Mark managed to get hold of it and I very happily unwrapped it on Christmas Day! 

The fitted shape ensure that this is extremely flattering, especially on a curvier figure...

I really loved this dress but I don't know if I have made it look too formal, would it look better a bit more scruffed up? If I was less precious about it?

How would you style this? How do you solve the problem of  making backless dresses wearable?

 

P.S. I received a comment which informed me that Oriental is in fact a racist term which I was TOTALLY unaware of when I wrote this so I have changed the title of the post. I am utterly mortified that I could have offended anyone and I apologise if I did.

As you may have noticed,things have been a-changing around here recently. The lovely Ashleigh did me a fab new blog design (you could win a redesign for your blog here!) and helped to make it look much sleeker and I love the new duck egg blue background. I got the biggest surprise the other day though when Mark surprised me with this gorgeous illustration from Sarah. I have always loved her drawings and this was the best email to open in the morning! I am super pleased with how the revamp worked out and I can't wait to see what this year brings blogwise, it feels like my little blog has been reborn and I am massively inspired at the moment!

What are your blogging hopes for this year? Do you like the revamp?