2016

Weekly Wardrobe – embracing autumn colours

October 3, 2016

I do feel summer colours particularly suit me and I’m reluctant to let them go. In the spirit of #IwillwearwhatIlike, I will probably continue to wear pale blue and blush pink regardless of the season, but now we’re into October, I thought I would stop denying summer is over and pick something a little more autumnal. This is just a casual outfit I wore at the weekend for no particular occasion. We had crappy weather on Saturday, but wasn’t Sunday beautiful? These autumn style photos were taken in a nearby village just as it was getting cooler….

Welcome to Blogtober!

October 2, 2016

What is Blogtober?I have set myself a blogging challenge to upload a post every single day in October. I noticed several people doing Vlogtober on You Tube, but as I already have Vlogmas planned for December, I decided to stick to writing and photographs for this month. Yes, I know I’m starting a day late. That’s because Friday’s post was delayed by a day, so that’s pushed everything up a bit. This is also quite a brief one because this weekend has been all about my eldest daughter’s twenty-first birthday, which has kept me rather busy. So, the reasons I’m doing Blogtober are to see if I can keep it up because maybe I’ll try writing shorter posts, but add them daily even after October if it goes down well. Also, I love blogging, but it is encroaching on my Oshun business time because I am a slow writer. At the moment I spend about an hour and half writing a post; an hour taking, editing and adding photos and half an hour to three-quarters adding links into the it. My goal in daily blogging is to make the process much faster without compromising on the quality. I’m hoping the daily practice will help a lot, but if it doesn’t, at the end of the month I’ll probably go back to three times a week. We’ll just have to see how it goes! The last reason is that I have a notebook where I write all my ideas for blog posts, and I have so many, at the rate I’ve previously been going, I’ll never catch up with all of them, so I’m looking forward to writing all the things I’ve had in my head for a while. Wish me luck!

Monthly Memoir – September

October 1, 2016

September is mainly about birthdays in my family – particularly this year as it’s a special one. Jude was eighteen on the twelfth, and Rain is twenty-one tomorrow. So we took a trip over to Kent to celebrate with each of their grandparents; aunts, uncles, and cousins etc and of course eat birthday cake! Although it seems like we travel there quite often, I still miss them all since we moved, so I like a good reason to see them again. A week later, Jude celebrated with friends by having an afternoon tea party in the garden. They all really enjoyed themselves and the food, games and weather were all a success. I’ll be writing a blog post next week about the whole thing, if you’d like to come back and have a look. There are also some pretty pictures on my Instagram!….

What to do with your leftover rhubarb

September 28, 2016

Rhubarb is virtually indestructible and is about the only fruit or vegetable I can rely on in the garden! My rhubarb was inherited from previous owners of our old house and moved with us to this one, so is at least seventeen years old. It just keeps on and on growing from March until the first hard frost. If you’re the same and still have some left and are bored of rhubarb crumble and thinking, What shall I do with my rhubarb? then here’s a couple of suggestions: Rhubarb streusels and rhubarb muffins. Both these recipes have been adapted from magazines, and you’ll need plenty of paper cupcake cases. The streusels especially, are a hit in the family…..

How to style a simple grey t-shirt

September 26, 2016

You don’t need me to tell you how to style a grey t-shirt – it goes with everything: jeans or any style trousers; any length, colour or design of skirt; or under dungarees or pinafore dresses. However, I do want to suggest that’s it’s a much more flexible than the plain white t-shirt. White doesn’t really suit me anyway – I have fair skin with a cool tone, so white tends to wash me out, whereas grey basically somehow makes me look a bit better! Here’s a couple of outfits with the same t-shirt. They were taken a couple of months apart from each other, and when I picked out the purple skirt, I had totally forgotten the previous outfit also had purple bottoms. Never mind, second to dusky blush pink, purple is my next favourite colour to wear with grey…..

My strange relationship with fashion

September 23, 2016

You may have noticed that my blog has been gradually overhauled and updated in the last few months (and still is – new logo coming soon!), and yet I haven’t gone with the same fashionable layout as most top bloggers at the moment – you know the kind – the picture that doesn’t scroll with your mouse, and the blocks of pictures. There is no doubt that this style looks beautiful, but I personally find it confusing. I like a blog that has clear categories that are easy to find, as well as a way of reading everything in order with the most recent post first. I hope I’m doing the right thing (I have already been complimented on the clear layout), but I’ve decided to keep my blog unfashionable, but in a way that suits me. My fashion sense with clothes works in a similar way……

New and old items for our Living Room

September 21, 2016

Following on from my last home blog post about moving the living room around, we needed some things to fit the new configuration. Preferably I’d have some antique furniture that would not only be beautiful, but also serve as a handy prop for Oshun photoshoots. Unfortunately our budget doesn’t run to that, but we found some really good alternatives…..

Weekly Wardrobe – What to wear to an afternoon teaparty

September 19, 2016

This Saturday it was my daughter’s eighteenth birthday afternoon tea-party for her and her friends. Although the sun wasn’t exactly shining brightly – it was warm enough, and most importantly it was dry! I’ll be doing a full blog post and a You Tube video all about it soon, but for now, here’s my Weekly Wardrobe with the outfit I wore….

3 days in Oxford – Day 1. The story of the photographs

September 16, 2016

I was so excited about this little mini-break to Oxford. I love my family to bits, but sometimes it’s nice to be alone and have a little headspace all to yourself! I also find it difficult to relax at home because there’s always so much to do there. I don’t think it helps that I work from home either, so no matter if it’s the evening or weekend, I still always feel I should either be working or doing something towards fixing the house. I was also a little bit nervous because I’m not great at driving and get flustered easily, but the journey was good; I didn’t get lost once and made it to the park and ride with no problems following the sat nav!….

Jeremy Loops concert at Perranporth, Cornwall

September 14, 2016

The campervan couldn’t get into the main car park at Perranporth by about three inches, so we parked on the cliff-top, which gave us a beautiful view of the bay and sun beginning to set into the ocean. It isn’t often bands we like venture into the South-West and we were gutted when Jeremy Loops tickets for Bristol sold out before we had chance to buy some; however it was the perfect excuse to go to Cornwall when we saw he was playing there too. We’d never been to The Watering Hole before – it’s a cafe/restaurant/gig venue literally in the middle of the beach. It must’ve been a right pain in the bum to get all the band gear over there! The tickets said the doors opened at nine, so we got there about ten minutes early, sorted out our wrist-bands and bought a drink to sit outside with and watch the sun sink into the water….

Weekly Wardrobe – purple & teal

September 12, 2016

This month is pretty much all about my daughter’s eighteenth birthday. At the weekend, we travelled back to our home town of Tonbridge in Kent to stay with my parents and see all the family to celebrate. I dithered for ages about what to wear, but in the end, decided on this purple and teal outfit. Now I’ve put these colours together, I’m deliberately going to seek them out again as I think they look fabulous together, and quite nice for this transitioning time of year too….

Why I’ve decided to turn down work

September 7, 2016

This post is about my Oshun clothing business that you might have heard me mention one or two times, or have spotted the links on the right hand side there! I thought it might give food for thought or be useful for anyone else running a handmade craft business. I have recently turned down the opportunity to make a whole family different Clash of Clans costumes, and have since had two more requests for the Witch character’s costume for Halloween. This is why I said no….

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