Who doesn't love a compliment or three?

This is just a post to say; I love this dress. I put up a picture when I first bought it, but thought I'd do another one because it's lovely, and I'm wearing it today in work for the second time. Everyone likes it and I'm getting quite a lot of compliments! I think that people enjoy seeing clothes that aren't the norm, especially in a place where most people don't dress up at all.

It was from ebay for about £8.

My right hand looks really mannequin-esque in this picture!

Hope you're all having lovely days - how slowly is this week going?? Come on Friday! Or even tomorrow when I can do some sneaky late hours shopping before bootcamp...

Danni x

Purple Ribbon

Hello!

I wanted to blog yesterday but I was so tired I could hardly see straight! I had such a fabulous time at my Dad's wedding, it was an amazing weekend. And I actually ended up loving my bridesmaids dress! I don't know if it was the sun or the setting but it really worked. So that was nice.

Today I'm going to be doing a little review for the lovely Lucy at Hummingbird Vintage. She wants to create an underwear range that's sexy and that works for all girls however curvy they are, so sent she sent some samples out to the first people that replied to her on Twitter.

Here are some pics of the undies:

As you can see they're very pretty, the colour of the ribbon is gorgeous! I really liked the set, the knickers felt great with no digging in at all, just done up exactly where I felt comfortable. I liked the bra, it looked cute, but when I was doing up the front ribbon I managed to rip a bit of it almost completely off, and it was quite tricky to do up as well. I was trying to do it quite tight for maximum cleavage effect! I think if the sets were made professionally these things would be fine - the ribbon is a really great idea and if you could pull it quite tight when you needed it would work well. I'd have also preferred it if the bra had been lacy to match the knickers. Overall everything felt very comfy and I'd definitely recommend this to people if became an official range.

If you want to find out more go to Hummingbird Vintage or speak to Lucy on Twitter, she's lovely!

Quick outfit post for today:

Primark dress, vintage yellow cardi (charity shop), Primark cameo necklace (so many bloggers have this!) and a vintage rose brooch.

I'm still pretty knackered but I'm determined to do bootcamp tonight, I'm doing well with it at the moment. The only bad thing is that now it's getting lighter everyone can see us doing squats and other attractive poses...we do it between the pedestrian walkway for Brighton beach, and a main road and cycle lane, so there's quite a few people to laugh at us!!

Danni x

Buses, rushing, and not quite making it.

You know when you're trying to get somewhere really quickly and everything is against you? I had that last night and this morning. Last night I had to leave work early and get to the dry cleaners to pick up my bridesmaids dress for tomorrow (I'd told the bride-to-be that it was sorted a week ago...) and managed to get there five minutes after they closed. So I consoled myself by buying (yet another!) new dress. I'd already gotten a lovely one through from ebay that day too. Missing the dry-cleaners meant that I had to collect the dress this morning and be a bit late for work. Well, that was the plan. Instead I managed to get on a 'trainer' bus for the learner bus drivers and it took over an hour to get to work. Oops. I had to spread the dress over two seats to keep it smooth, and hold my hand up really high to carry it around because it's so long. If only I'd gotten there five minutes sooner and been able to put it in the Boyfriends car last night. I have a ten minute walk and an hour bus journey to go through now, with the dress.

But my Dad's wedding is tomorrow, he's marrying a lovely woman, and it's going to be a very crazy and alcohol filled few days! Fingers crossed for the sun lasting. IF (and this is a big if, because I don't like the dress at all) I manage to get a good picture of me at the wedding in my dress then I'll put it up next week. We'll see!

Here's the dress I got from ebay for £8:

And the dress I bought from H&M. If you follow me on twitter you will have seen me asking whether to buy a suedette dress from peacocks with a cut-out pattern. I'm really glad I found this one because the cut-out pattern is just the same but it's in a nice light cotton, and a lovely navy colour:

The only thing that isn't great is that the drawstring waistline makes it look a bit casual, so I think I'd wear a nice belt over that bit if I wanted to dress it up.

I hope you all have lovely weekends, I can't wait for the drinking to start! (And the meaningful act of matrimony of course...)

Danni x

Rock your body

My current need (of course I mean want) is a body. Or is it bodysuit? Who knows. Anyway, when I wear sheer dresses (or something like the crazy dress in my most recent clothing post) I have to wear leggings and a top underneath them. Now it's getting sunnier, I'm considering shorts and a top, but either way I still have the problem of having too much flesh visible in the gap between bottom and top. As I'm typing this I'm worrying that I'd read it and think 'Why don't you just get better fitting clothes??' which is a good point. But there's something about me that makes leggings constantly slide down. And tops slide up. That something is my massive hips. Leggings like to sit underneath them and not struggle to cling to such a curve which is fair enough really, I wouldn't like to have such a difficult job(!).

ANYWAY, the point of all this is that I am struggling to find a body that's suitable for my figure. Here's a few I've found:

I think that the two New Look ones are best for what I need, although they are a bit high-necked for me. The Topshop one I absolutely love and could imagine wearing as a top on its own. The problem is solved short-term by the fact that I have no money, but when payday comes I think I'll be off to New Look!

Here's a picture of the t-shirt I'm  wearing today, I'm feeling quite summery with it on especially as I don't have my usual body-cover-up cardigan on. This was given to me by a friend.

And my earrings are lovely and bright. I'm also wearing this skirt with the cute bow.

And lastly here's a picture of the weird little drawers that I forgot to take a picture of before, that I got for £4 in one of my local charity shops:

Excuse the mass of cheap jewellery next to it!

Danni x

Mexican lasagne recipe

Hi all,
I thought I'd put up the Mexican lasagne recipe that I had the weekend before last because everyone loved the sound of it. Here's the link to the Nigella website, I have just lifted it straight from there. And here's a picture, it actually comes out looking like this! (No pressure or anything...)

Mexican lasagne

 vegetarian

Less than 30 mins preparation time

30 mins to 1 hour cooking time

Serves 8

You will need 1 round ovenproof dish, approximately 26cm/10in diameter x 6cm/2in deep.

Ingredients

For the sauce

• 1 tbsp garlic oil
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 red pepper, de-seeded and chopped
• 2 green birds'-eye chillies, chopped, with seeds
• 1 tsp sea salt flakes or ½ tsp pouring salt
• 2 tbsp finely chopped coriander stalks
• 2 x 400g/14oz cans chopped tomatoes, plus 2 x 400ml/14fl oz water swilled the empty cans
• 1 tbsp tomato ketchup

For the filling

• 2 x 400g/14oz cans black beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 x 250g/9oz cans sweetcorn (225g/8oz drained weight each)
• 250g/9oz mature goats' cheddar, or goats' cheese of your choice, grated
• 8 soft flour tortillas

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
   
2. To make the sauce, heat the garlic oil in a pan on the stove and add the onion, pepper and chillies. Add the salt and cook gently for 15 minutes. Once soft, add the chopped coriander stalks.
   
3. Add the canned tomatoes, then swill the cans out with water and add this too. Spoon in the ketchup and let things come to a simmer for about 10 minutes, leaving the sauce to cook while you get on with preparing the filling.
   
4. To make the filling, mix the drained beans and sweetcorn in a bowl. Add most of the grated cheese, reserving some to sprinkle on the top of the lasagne at the end, and mix together.
   
5. Start to assemble the lasagne by spooning about a third of the sauce into the bottom of your ovenproof dish and smearing it about. Layer on two tortillas, overlapping them slightly, so that they cover the sauce.
   
6. Add one-third of the beans and cheese mixture, covering the tortillas, and then about one-quarter of the remaining sauce and cover with another two tortillas.
   
7. Repeat the process with another one-third of beans and cheese, and some more sauce, before layering on another two tortillas.
   
8. Finally, add the last layer of beans and cheese, nearly all of the remaining sauce and cover with the last two tortillas. Spread the very last bit of sauce over the tortillas and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.
   
9. Bake in the oven on a baking tray for 30 minutes, then let the lasagne rest for a good 10–15 minutes.
   
10. To serve, slice the lasagne like a pizza and eat with guacamole or avocado salsa.
    

Bloody Mary with extra Tomato Juice

Hi! I hope you all had lovely weekends. Mine was great. I managed to sneak out of work just early enough to go to the charity shops near my house before they closed. I got a good haul too!

Do not adjust your computer screen, this dress really is that scary tomato-red colour! I'm going to shorten this, I might keep the excess fabric to make a head wrap or something because it's just fantastic!

I also got a brown St Michael's skirt, which is quite versatile - pull down low for work, put up above the waist for the pub! And I'm wearing it with a lovely brown and white spot shirt that I bought.

The shirt is a bit over-sized so I'm more likely to wear it under a dress so it's a bit more flattering.

I got this crazy pink dress, it's really good quality thick material, but I'm not sure how much I like it. It wouldn't work being taken up and I just don't think the length is great...I'll give another try in a week or so and see how I feel. I think it would look better with flat shoes and bare legs, wearing my cowboy boots with it kind of clogged it up even more!

I also got a little set of drawers for £4, which for some reason I've deleted the picture of so I'll show you another time.

The Boyfriend and I went out for a meal on Saturday to celebrate our two year anniversary (wow!) and had a great time. Lots of drinking and good food including this bad boy:

I don't like any cheese except melted cheese and this was all warm and runny and good for bread-dipping, mmmm.....

I wore...

...a purple ASOS dress that is one of my fail-safe favourites, a bit boobylicious but that's good! I wore it with a fantastic kimono that I got from a site called Eat Me Vintage. I did say to them I'd do a nice mini-review but to be honest it's really hard to style it with things. I think that's been the case because I've been wearing things with sleeves because of winter, so hopefully I'll be able to style it with more strappy dresses, because it is rather lovely. Also a lovely locket the Boyfriend gave me a while ago and some Rimmel red lippy. I had my hair re-dyed too so I was feeling good!

Last picture now! I wanted to show you my crazy but cool dress that I always throw on when I pop to the shops on a sunny weekend:

I got it last summer from a Rocking Horse charity shop. It's actually quite thick and heavy and it can get weirdly hot to wear! But I think it's really nice and unusual.

I think that's it now! Just to say that I'm feeling very inspired to try to be healthier again after letting things slip the last couple of weeks, thanks to the lovely girls over at 'where are my knees?'

They're doing tips, guest posts, and sharing their goals to try and achieve them with everybody watching!!

Danni x

I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!

Oops, Wednesday already and I haven't blogged. Shame on me!

I had a great time in Worthing even though I didn't get much joy in the charity shops. I bought a New Look skirt for £4.30 which had such a nice floral pattern and is a good above-knee-but-not-too-short-for-work-length!

My friend Lucy's gorgeous daughter Daisy went on the carousel which was a lovely one...

And my friend Ben made the most amazing Mexican lasagne - tortillas instead of pasta and cheese, sweetcorn and black beans instead of mince - it was amazing! And pina colada ice cream with toasted coconut for pudding. I wish I lived at his house.

Then to a Mad Hatters tea party on Sunday, I wore the new blue dress from my last post along with my mini top hat - still no pictures of the hat to show you unfortunately! Instead here are some crazy-looking red scones...

Today I'm wearing this flamingo dress, along with this gorgeous bracelet that I picked up at the vintage fair the other weekend:

And my new spring coat, which was £20 down from £60 in the Dorothy Perkins sale.

It's such a nice bright colour, and it has a massive hood too, for when the weather is not so spring-like.

Lastly, I thought I'd show you what I wore last night because it's one of my favourite outfits, one of those things you can always fall back on. Apologies for me flashing my cleavage but it's very low-cut (and I flash my cleavage all the time anyway!) It's a sleeveless star dress from French Connection, some of their stuff is too small for me (and all of it is usually too expensive!) but I got this a few years ago in a sale and it's quite stretchy. I love it.

I also did quite heavy make-up, I don't usually do eyeliner under my eyelashes as well, but I think it looked ok, maybe it made me a bit stare-y but oh well! You can also see my pink fake pearl necklace which I got at the vintage fair too:

Danni x

Yippee!

I'm a very happy bunny today. This is because

• It's Friday
• I'm going charity shopping all day tomorrow in a small town outside Brighton
• I got the best dress ever from ebay yesterday

Oh the dress. It's amazing. My ebay purchases are good about 50% of the time; this one's definitely a winner. I don't think I've ever been so content after putting on a dress. No 'if I add a belt it'd look great' or 'when I lose some weight it will work', just instant loveliness!

I love it. I also got another dress which again doesn't need anything doing to it and is just rather lovely:

And then this shirt dress which does need adjusting. I was thinking of cutting the bottom half off and re-attaching it with elastic thread to make a stretchy waistline. I've never sewn with elastic thread but the tutorials make it seem fairly easy. We'll see...

Hopefully I'll have some fab finds to show you after the weekend!

Have a good one everyone,

Danni x

I Heart Sweaters

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a flippin' good Pancake Day yesterday (see what I did there?!) I had a lovely time, being made pancakes by my wonderful friend Jess.

Today I'm wearing the skirt I wore last week but with a very cute sweater, and I think it goes really well. I do love a good sweater, I think that they suit a curvy girls shape as they show off your figure whilst being thick enough to be flattering to your lady lumps! This one's from Primark and I recently bought a bright-pink-with-black-bunnies one from Next via Ebay which I'm hoping to wear soon. I've gone a bit mad on ebay recently but will hopefully have a lovely influx of fab dresses soon. The first one came yesterday and is gorgeous, but needs a wash as it just smells too musty to wear at the moment.
 

Here's a pic of the skirt and sweater:

Cute non?

Lastly here's a link to A Thrifty Mrs' blog for a giveaway she's running; you could win a dress from Hummingbird Vintage (and jewellery!) and they do some lovely stuff. I'll be jealous if any of you win!

Danni x

"You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!"

I love that Dolly Parton quote!

The reason I used it is because I went to a vintage fair on Sunday, and I just couldn't believe the prices. I've ranted about this before, how shops like Beyond Retro are taking advantage of the vintage obsession and charging extortionate prices for things. The fair itself was lovely, to look around at old furs, hats, jewellery, shoes...but although some people were doing bargain prices on jewellery and £10 sale rails, everything else seemed to start at £30 and go on up!

The charity shops in Brighton aren't as cheap as in smaller towns, and there are no jumble sales to get the dirt cheap prices (although I'm still working on trying to set one up) so if you want to just buy vintage it ends up being very expensive!

Here's the dress I wore to the fair, which I'd found on Friday in my local Oxfam for £7.99, along with a Bacardi cocktail set for £2.99 (that was a price I liked!)

This picture is telling me I need to clean my mirror, it's filthy!

*Random doughnut picture alert*

We bought Krispy Kreme doughnuts on Saturday, look how lovely this one was:

So pretty!

Danni x

Love it or Hate it?

Primark. Do you love it or hate it? Or like me - both! I've had an on/off relationship with Primark for the last year or so. It started when there was uproar about them being really unethical and not paying the workers that made the clothes enough, so I decided to stop shopping in there. Then more recently I did a little research and saw that they were trying to be better, and to be honest a lot of the high street shops are just the same, so I went back. And then there's the fact that - let's face it - it just isn't always great quality, and that can get really frustrating. Even if you're not paying a lot you still want both sides of the dress to be symmetrical and the zips not to break, it's not too much to ask!

Yesterday my friend sent me this article about women falling out of love with Primark. I do hate Liz Jones, she talks utter crap a lot of the time, a great example in this article being the fantastically weird quote: "I was open-mouthed when I asked Laura, 14, whether the playsuit she’d bought would still be in fashion come autumn. ‘Who cares? I might be dead by then,’ she said." I mean, WTF?!

As for the ethical bit, here is a statement from the Ethical Trade Initiative about Primark which shows that they're really trying to change their ways by hiring an Ethical Director.

From the slice of life I can see through blogging Primark doesn’t seem to be less popular, people acknowledge that it isn’t the highest quality but there also seems to be a noticeable improvement in the styles, that they are more similar to high fashion than they used to be. Primark isn’t really a place to be ashamed to shop any more although I do think that more women should be aware of the affects of “fast fashion” and genuinely buy things that they will wear often. Obviously I shop all the time but I’ve always only tried to buy things that I know I will wear, I’ve never bought things just because they’re fashionable. I’ve made a concerted effort lately to shop less, it can be annoying having constant guilt about not being green with your buying but to be honest I think everyone needs a bit of that guilt about things; buying clothes, recycling, dropping litter etc otherwise it doesn’t get better.

Speaking of dropping litter – I personally think that compared to when I was younger places are a lot cleaner, in my (completely un-informed) opinion this is because it was so drilled into our generation that dropping litter is bad that it’s just not done as much, and I can only hope that that is what will happen with our current over-consumption.

The bit of the article I really agreed with was the very last line "...adopt a new mantra for clothes shopping: buy less, love it more."

What do you think?

Danni x

Holey ripped tights Batman!

I know this is a problem for everyone, but aren't ripped tights bloody annoying?! I've had to walk around work all day with bare legs feeling a bit risqué because my tights ripped all the way down the back after a couple of hours. It looks like I got really excited about the sun and had to take my clothes off regardless of the cold. I am excited about the sun, and wouldn't think twice about wearing this skirt with bare legs in the summer, but my legs aren't ready to come out of hibernation yet! I want to just stick to leggings, lovely comfy leggings that don't run, that you don't have to think about at all, but tights just look that little bit nicer (to me). Also with leggings it isn't really a problem to show a bit of bum, whereas with tights you can end up showing too much!

Anyway, tight rant aside, just a quick outfit post today:

With and without my lovely yellow cardi from a charity shop. It creates really bad static electricity, I had to look up "cures" for it this morning; if you rub moisturiser on your body where the clothes touch, then with moisturiser still on your hands put the item back on again and wipe your hands on top of it (obviously don't do this with things that could stain!) then it goes. It actually worked!

You can't see this skirt very well but I got it from New Look recently, £22 down to £8 and it's gorgeous, it flares out a bit and has a cute bow on the pocket.

Accessorised with a wooden necklace (charity shop) and my amber ring.

Danni x