My First GIVEAWAY!

CSN Stores have kindly offered me the opportunity to pass on a £25 voucher to one of my readers* to spend in any six of their comprehensive online stores. They specialise in homeware and stock a wide variety of celebrated, not to mention vintage-inspired, brands including Le Creuset, Cornishware by T.G Green, DeLonghi and Anglepoise, to name but a few. Whether you're looking for wardrobes, bedding or merely something pretty to brighten your kitchen cupboards, you're sure to find something to fritter £25 away on. In fact, I found quite a few fabulous items to lust after...

Anglepoise Original 1227™ Table Lamp - £119.50

Cornishware Set of 4 Cappuccino Cups and Saucers - £49

Dualit Lite 2 Slot Toaster - £56.99

KitchenCraft Cookie Cutter in Large Elephant Shaped - £3.99

Sagaform Retro Storage Container in Blue - £10.99

To enter the draw all you have to do is be a follower of my blog and leave a comment underneath this post containing your email address and anything else you'd like to add. The winner will be selected with a random number generator at MIDNIGHT on SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3RD. Only one entry per person.

*Please note that the giveaway is ONLY available to readers living in the UK, US, Canada and Germany due to shipping restrictions. If the winner selected is a resident of the US, Canada or Germany, they will be directed to the online CSN stores available in that country.

Best of luck to all who enter!

Divine Shoe

Within minutes of starting back at Topshop on Friday I'd located this shoe and fanned it with a giant palm leaf. Every aspect of it is perfect, from the lustrous patent patina to the nude leather lining, from the chunky heel to the little gold buckle. I desperately need Mary Jane's shoes!

They're on sale for £60, so would be £45 with my staff discount, but I really just can't justify the purchase as I know they'd never get anywhere near enough wear. Alas...

Available at http://www.topshop.com/.

I start back at uni tomorrow. It's my final year and so I should really be preparing myself for my first seminar tomorrow instead of internet shopping and knuckle down to the serious business of reading literature and installing new printer softwear.

My bedroom in my new house is slowly starting to come together as well. I had a houseplant binge in ASDA the other day and bought myself an Oriental Lily, a begonia with pink flowers, a mad looking Celosia with violent violet coloured 'flowers' and a Peace Lily. I really want to get some more leafy green plants and possibly a Venus Fly Trap if I feel I can truly cater for its dietary requirements.

My room is painted entirely white so feels a bit like an empty gallery space at the moment.

I just don't get the iDea

I stumbled across this image from a fashion editorial printed in iD magazine in 2004. It seems staggering to me that any magazine could use the concept of thinly veiled domestic abuse as a theme for an image. No matter how subversive or edgy they wish to appear, this shot is appallingly distasteful. Violence against women should never be glamourised by the media or used to push sales. Shame on iD!

www.jianweilim.co.uk

My photographer/artist boyfriend Jian Wei launched his website today! He's a brilliantly gifted boy so if you have a spare moment trot over to jianweilim.co.uk and take a little look at some of his snaps. For the past two months he has been endlessly tinkering with the html and ceaselessly sifting through mounds of six-by-fours in order to create albums which best reflect his artistic intentions. He's particularly interested in capturing such themes as intimacy, post-colonial Britain, mixed-race heritage and identity, palm trees and... bottoms; all realised with the utmost of integrity and authenticity and I wish him every success in his fledgling online pursuit.

(Photograph by Jian Wei Lim)

Skirting Around The Subject

I hate to steal other peoples' images, (this was taken by Susie of Style Bubble fame), but this skirt is just the best thing I have seen this Fashion Week - actually, make that year.

I just adore the lampshade shaped structure with chandelier tassles and the print is just fantastic. It's impressively intricate without losing a David Hockneyesque simplicity. My boyfriend has relentlessly been bombarding me with palm tree iconography throughout the summer and my reverence for this skirt surely demonstrates the success of his campaign!

Anyway, this skirt is part of Mary Katrantzou's SS11 collection and the entire thing is magnificent and worth examining in every glorious detail.

Good Morning, Midnight

The curtains are thin, and when they are drawn the light comes through softly. There are flowers on the window-sill and I can see their shadows on the curtains. The child downstairs is screaming.

There is a wind, and the flowers on the window-sill, and their shadows on the curtains, are waving. Like swans dipping their beaks in water. Like the incalculable raising its head, uselessly and wildly, for one moment before it sinks down, beaten, into the darkness. Like skulls on long, thin necks. Plunging wildly when the wind blows, to the end of the curtain, which is their nothingness. Distorting themselves as they plunge.

The musty smell, the bugs, the loneliness, this room which is part of the street outside - this is all I want from life.

(Extract from Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
Photographs by Jian Wei Lim)

1. Stripy leotard: New Look
2. Chambray skirt: American Apparel
3. Ankle socks: Topshop

I've just moved into my new house in Manchester and despite the 'musty smell, the bugs, the loneliness' I can relate to in Rhys' prose, it's a fabulous Victorian terrace house with masses of potential. My room is on the ground floor and has high ceilings with original coving, a large chimney breast, and faux wooden floors and is painted entirely white - a feature my boyfriend favours above all else! For a student house it's beautifully done, so many period features have been maintained and restored whereas, in my previous student home, bannisters, fireplaces and doors had been ripped out and replaced with walls and grim fire doors and rooms had been cut up into as many potential lets as possible.

I've just returned from ASDA with four exotic looking houseplants, a bedside lamp and forty Smart Price hangers to jazz up my immediate living space and get my life in order before term begins. Freshers? What's that! Pictures to follow...

Etsy Update - Here Come The Coats

1970s Peter Pan Collar Cherry Red Dress - Medium

Ruby Tuesday Pure New Wool 1960s Swing Coat - Medium

Classic British Quilted Faux-Barbour Coat - Medium

Wool and Cashmere Blend Double Breasted Nautical Navy Coat - Medium

1970s Burnt Orange Leather Handbag with Chain Strap and ORIGINAL TAGS!

Navy Leather Deck Shoes - UK 4.5 US 7 EU 37.5

All available in the shop now! Go, go, go!

Oh hai, Dukie

ERROR!

Birthday Presents

On September 7th I turned twenty-two. Despite being even an affirmation of my sophistication and wisdom, my birthday also served as an excuse for my loved ones to shower me in gifts!

Weighing scales with brass bowl and weights from my parents.

Virginia Woolf mug from my Jian Wei, 1960s T.G Green bowl from my parents and teacup and saucer from my sister Cassandra.

Nigella Lawson cookbook from Jian Wei and Bon Maman apricot jam from my sister Liberty.

Vintage 1960s wicker magazine rack from Jian Wei.

Reproduction cake tin from my sister Megan.

Designer cupcakes from Lola's Bakery in Selfridges, delivered to me by my friend Joanna.

So all in all, I didn't do to badly and was really rather spoilt. Roll on my twenty-third!

Fifty Pence Dress

1. Cardigan: Charity Shop
2. Dress: Charity Shop
3. Tights: Hand-me-down from my Mother
4. Shoes: Marks and Spencers

Do you like my 50p dress? I snapped it up for 50p in the RSPCA charity shop before work on Friday. I instantly grabbed it as its 1960/70s heritage was blatant but I didn't realise its potential in my very own wardrobe until I got home and flung it on with these 1970s brown tights handed down to me by my mum. (I'm obsessed with brown tights at the moment and also mustard yellow, navy, cranberry, cream, duck egg blue and cinnamon - anything but black, please!) I was stunned that, albeit being very, very short, it actually spans my excessively long torso and covers my bum modestly and is totally wearable! The cardigan was a whopping £4.99 from another charity, a distastefully high price for an item that has been donated, but I realised that I would be saving at least thirty quid on what would be an inevitable Topshop purchase otherwise. It's handknitted and really chunky with brown plastic buttons and a cute collar and I'm sure will stead me well for the brutal Mancunion winter ahead.

I've finished my final shift at Dorothy Perkins and now have a week of tidying and packing before I move back to Manchester to commence my final year at University. I'll be starting back at Topshop too just in time to receive my student loans, or vice versa...

Car Booty

I've found some particularly good swag from car boot sales recently, or as I like to call it, 'car booty'. Ho ho...

A tomato ketchup dispenser in the shape of... a tomato! This makes me smile so much, it's almost impossibly kitsch and evokes the essence of Wimpy Bars and 1950s diners. Mine for 15p!

A stack of hand painted art deco bowls from the twenties or thirties. These are so lovely and bright, although a couple of the smaller dishes were 'baked' looking and cracked there are more than enough intact to console me, and for one pound, yes - one pound - how dare I complain? I think I shall use the larger one as a fruit bowl when I get a nice flat of my own. (I.e Absolutely NOT suitable for student houses.)

A humourous little Ladybird book on contemporaneously modern technology. Not sure if I'll eBay this one or keep for comedy value...

Enough of the so-so goodies, here's a real stunner. An absolutely mint, pristine, immaculate, unworn 1960s babydoll nightie and knicker set. Isn't it beautiful? The ribbons undo saucily and I can imagine a sixties' belle slipping into it on a special occasion. Only, I don't think she ever did as it's utterly pristine. Curious. The stall owner, clearly a house clearance man, looked utterly bemused and slightly disapproving as I rummaged through, what he perceived to be, an old ladies' underwear drawer. Oh, did I mention this cost me 25p? It's too beautiful to sell or even wear and I haven't come across a single complete pair of 60s lingerie on Etsy so I think this'll be my first vintage collector's piece: too synonymous with the sixties and too utterly divine to be stolen from me! Don't pretend you don't wish you'd found it first!

And the jewel in the crown: my gorgeous 1950s ottoman with floral upholstered lid! When the stall holder told me he wanted two pounds for it I almost squealed with glee. Maybe I did...

I so desperately need a place of my own now. I feel I have outgrown the squalor expected of students and now desire only to surround myself in a cave of potted plants, battered orange Penguin books, taxidermied butterflies (of which I have recently began my collection!), Darwinian-type botanical and zoo-ological illustrations, T.G Green crockery and modernist coffee tables and Lloyd Loom chairs and sixties wicker magazine racks and plastic tomato ketchup dispensers in the shape of tomatoes...

Happy Birthday, Chloe

It's my older sister's birthday today. She's thirty-six but you'd never be able to tell as she better ressembles an overgrown fifteen-year old. I took these pictures candidly on her wedding day which took place in the garden at Kimberley House, my parents' home, on August 29th last year. She's the mother of the delightful little goblin-child, Freya, who is always popping up in my photographs and of Jack, the very first nephew I had.

Many happy returns, Chloe!