The Irony of Dying On Your Birthday.. AKA; Milly's 20, Let's go and drink until we can't talk....

As the title suggests, it was Milly's birthday this week!  Tuesday to be exact.  Soooooo, seeing as she's fricking awesome and one of the best chicks I've met, ever, I decided to brave Yorkshire and the 2 hour trip to go see her for this momentous occasion!  Pretty proud of myself for not managing to miss any of the trains or buses, AND managing to get there in one piece (even if my feet were about to give way after standing up for the whole of the second train).  Either way, I doubt anything would've made much of a difference, well not enough to detract from what a BLOODY AWESOME time that was had.


I never really go out with girls, and since I don't live at uni and commute even for nights out, the whole 'girly getting ready and doing makeup' ritual brought back memories of old nights out with the girls from 6th form... just with better company.  Unfortunately, none of the pictures really show my outfit, which I'm not too happy with. :(  I wore a short 'little black dress' with a mesh panel at the top, Wolford rip off 'bondage' printed tights which I managed to find for £10 on eBay, bottle green velvet Doc Marten Boots, and my trusty faux leather biker jacket.  Oh, and black sequined hotpants the lovely Milly gave me to wear under the dress 'just incase', which Will managed to amusingly nickname "the roller derby pants".  


Makeup wise, as far as I remember I just went for a thin line of black liquid liner with silver glitter in it, over the brown and grey eyeshadow I'd been wearing during the day, along with a classic red lip (which conveniently matched my hair perfectly) and light blush/highlight.  I always end up relying on this type of makeup, not that it's a negative.


Commence photo spam of drunken derps and epicness....

Milly hijacks my camera to myspace pose... STANDARD

Something tells me we probably should've opened a window

Me and the wonderful Milly, before the alcohol took control of our expressions.  Hmm....

...And after

Quite possibly the least Asian Japanese tourists, ever

We still have a slight suspicion that Toby may actually be 12

This is the end.. (my only friendddddddd the endddd).  Doors puns aside, end of the night.
Slightly worse for wear, but totally worth it!

So that concludes Tuesday night's carnage.  Absolutely LOVED IT.  Needless to say, as soon as I can afford it and know when to book tickets for, I am getting myself back to to Leeds sharpish!  I never normally bond with anyone that quickly, but I may even go as far as to say that the people I met in that one night for Milly's birthday are better than anyone I've met in Chester in my whole time of living here.  Strong words, but so true.     I'd appreciate if someone would invent a contraption to just stick the group from Leeds, right here in Chester (if anyone says "a train?" I will slap you with a brick), hmph.  I miss Leeds, and I miss the guys.

It may well be 3 days late, but if anyone wants to go and wish Milly an extra happy birthday, by all means go for it, she deserves it!  http://millydarling.blogspot.com

x

I'm back (from the dead?)

Hellooo helloo!

Really, I've no excuse for the lack of posting for all this time, well MONTHS I think.  I guess I just had a slight (see:major) lack of inspiration for new posts,  especially when anything I wanted to do had either been overdone to a point of "oh, another ________ post?!", or involved taking pictures myself in order to do swatch or review style posts.  Now since I live in Chester, England, the weather is grey at best this time of year, and what little light we do have, is gone by around 4pm.  This isn't helped much by the fact I'm a sketty student, and pretty much nocturnal, so wake up around that time!  Ha!

I'll try get my act together over the coming weeks, and should have a looooot of stuff coming up.  Thanks to Milly for inspiring me to get my arse into gear and get posting again!

IMPORTANT; LUSH WEBSITE HACKED. 20th Jan 2011.

Just a quick note of warning to say to anyone who's put in an order with the Lush Toiletries website since October, cancel your cards before it's too late!

According to what I've read on fellow beauty bloggers' pages, the Lush website has been hacked- compromising customers' card details, and information.  The website is down currently but card details may have already been hacked.  Better to be safe than sorry so I'd advise anyone who's recently ordered to contact your banks and cancel the card used to order from them.


Hopefully the matter will be sorted out soon!  Fingers crossed to Lush, I couldn't think of a company less deserving of something like this!

I thought it was a good idea to end the week (or start it depending on how you see it) with a short mix tape playlist of songs that've shaped my week and hardly been off my iPod.  Hence the birth of the "Sunday mix tape".  Fingers crossed for keeping up with this, though I can't guarantee these 100%.  Here's to the start of an eclectic mix of music for each week.

1- The Shins; Sealegs

2- Modest Mouse; Fire It Up

3- Sufjan Stevens; Casimir Pulaski Day

4- Port O'Brien; Stuck On A Boat

5- Bowerbirds; Bur Oak

6- Liam Frost; Your Hand In Mine

7- Belle & Sebastian; I Want The World To Stop

8- Two Door Cinema Club; I Can Talk

9- Cold War Kids; St. John

10- Plants & Animals; Tom Cruz

As is pretty apparent from this week's playlist, I've been listening to quite a bit of Indie stuff this week.  For me, this is pretty rare actually!  It's usually a once in a while occurrence that I've listened to predominantly indie , with a lot of folk or heavier stuff being on instead.  Either way it's good to have a musically cheery week, especially with Christmas coming closer and closer!

So England (well and the rest of the UK) has been hit by snow for the 2nd time in a few weeks.  It's a week early for a white Christmas!  C'mon weather get it right! Albeit in the North West it's nowhere near as bad as right up north, or Northern Ireland, with my friend being stranded in Belfast right now after catching the only plane over today but unable to get over to Enniskillen due to the weather and the roads!  Either way though, it's snow!

 Ran out at 2am to snap a few snowy pictures.

This time round the snow is thicker, and stuck pretty quickly.  It started on Thursday during the day (but didn't stick), making me look like an utter child upon running out of the piercing studio screaming at the top of my lungs "IT'S FUCKING SNOWING!".  Later on that night however, the snow fell again.  AND IT STUCK. 

It carried on slowly into Friday, adding to what was already sticking and frozen from the night before.  So far, so good!  Snow never tends to fall too heavily, or stick around here since we're close to the coast and between 2 rivers... which apparently means that it's less likely to snow, and warmer.  It sure doesn't feel it though. 

My street covered in snow

Imagine my sheer amazement now, at waking up to this today.  A winter wonderland in suburbia!  I especially loved how just on my small street of 7 or 8 houses, there was such a contrast in sky and weather conditions;  gloomy and grey at one end, and blue skies contrasting with the white snow mere metres away!  So good.

Snow undoubtedly turns me into an absolute child when I'm out already.  Only problem at home is that I live half an hour away from everyone I know, so snowball fights are impossible, and building a snowman/snow cat/snow r2d2 (google it if you've not seen it!) alone just means I look like an utter fruit among the rest of the middle aged residents.  Oh well!  

This snow is about the only thing that's making me feel festive eventually, even if it is a week early to be a white Christmas!

...And winter warmers

Since it's the season of freezing cold nights and icy mornings (well full days recently), I thought it'd be pretty apt to do a Winter boots post, or Dirty Boots as the sonic youth reference in the title suggests, and as they'll no doubt end up in this wet and snowy English weather.  I myself have been living in 3 pairs of socks combined with my trusty bottle green velvet Doc Martens, but am I need of some more watertight and studier boots after a year or so of wearing them no matter the weather.  The DMs are showing no sign of complete failure just yet, and I do own black combat style boots, but this year I have a massive craving for a pair of brown boots or brogues.  So the hunt begins!

Tan Rocketdog chomp boots 

(disc.)

Dark brown rocketdog chomp boots 

Office £65

These were the first pair that caught my eye- Rocket Dog 'Chomps' biker boots.  A modern twist on the classic boot, with the twice wrapped ankle strap combined with a brass buckle and toggle fastening.  Durable leather and a sturdy welted sole, they combine style with practicality and were an all round perfect boot for me and my current love for tan leather.  But typically, things aren't so simple as that!  It turns out that this tan shade is a discontinued variant of the boots.  They're available in office stores(well not my local Chester store after last week's search) in a darker brown with brass accents, or Black with silver/pewter metal in place of the brass.  Although still nice, for me the darker brown was no substitute for this beautiful tan pair.  Oh well!

Barbour brogue boots 

(RRP unknown)

These beauties right here, were the long lusted after Barbour Brogue boots.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to purchase these particular ones as I was outbid at the last minute, but that won't stop my search for a similar pair of boots.  I know they're by no means as warm as the previous higher leg boots, but for a pair of semi brogue style boots I was willing to sacrifice some warmth in favour of an extra pair of socks, and an amazing piece of footwear!  Still pretty gutted not to have gotten these, but I may even invest in a pair of similarly styled and a little more special Grenson boots which I'll no doubt be covering in the future.  Retailing at around £180 for a pair, they're more expensive but oh so worth it!

Anatomical gel 'Sofia' boots 

eBay £59

My final boot find was these dark tan/oxblood leather brogue front boots.  With a slight biker boot influence in the shape and buckled ankle strap, these are looking like the best bet for my winter boots now... well until I find something I like better before buying them of course.  A nice mix of the tough biker style and my greatly loved elegant wingtip brogue elements, they're just perfect!  Even better is their gel comfort soles and grippy welt, so if all goes to plan they should offer comfort as well as a stylish look, hopefully coming in handy on this years traditional walk around Chester city walls in the freezing cold.  Warm feet and legs AND no falling over on the ice; great!