My New Room

You may remember last year, I posted about decorating my room in university halls. Well, now I've moved out and into a house, into a room double the size and half the price! I've been busy decorating it since moving in, including pinning (yes, pinning) up a feature wall of Anagylpta paper, painted a rich green colour. I'm facing the same problem as last year in that I can't make any major changes to the room, but after a quick re-arrangement of the furniture, bluetacking some lace edging to my mismatched shelves, and of course, filling said shelves with all of my important junk, the place seems more like home.

I've taken a few snaps of my favourite areas of the room (again, as practise with my new lens). Please excuse the lack of sharpness in places - I'm a beginner!

Slightly wrinkled anaglypta! I got so much criticism for this from my parents, who can remember it the first time around, but I think its great! And I think I may have won my mum around...

A little retro hornsea honey pot and another little pot

Some rather dashing little 50s? 60s? 70s? Salt and Pepper pots and a highly flammable lightshade...

My retro sewing machine cover

Pretty little vintage makeup bag, picked up at Clothes Show Live last year

Although you can't see properly, this is a floor standing lamp, found in a local charity shop for £7.50!

I'll be back soon with a proper outfit post - a bit rushed off my feet at the moment with uni things. I'm trying to join more societies this year, and my diary is now full to bursting!

Sadie xxx

20

In the past week I've moved back to uni (along with at least 2 suitcases of clothes), and turned 20! I feel so old... no longer can I have a lie-in with the excuse that I'm a teenager!

I had a bit of an odd birthday, waking up in a completely empty house as none of my housemates had arrived, then going off to uni to help out at a societies fair all day, but it ended well when I met up with the boy and headed to a jazz club.

I've spent most of the week settling into my new house - no more noisy uni halls! - and running to and from campus. I've barely had a chance to use any of the gifts I received, but I thought I'd photograph them as they are all rather photogenic! And of course, it gave me a chance to practise with my new lens :).

In the photo above, I'm wearing a vintage 70s lace blouse, purchased on eBay as a birthday present to myself! It is quite rough to the touch, but I love it all the same and can't wait to style it properly.

Here are a few photos of my other gifts (can you tell I'm addicted to that 'narrow depth of field' look?!).

What a romantic boyfriend :)

Very very pretty dainty brown gloves from the 60s!

Posh eyeliner for my cat-eye flicks!

And finally, I can't wait to start reading this book, a gift from my boyfriend. Here is an extract from the blurb...

'In this impassioned book, Lucy Siegle champions sustainable solutions that will break the cycle of exploitative style with its heavy, secret price tag.'

It sounds like it will give me motivation to analyse my clothing consumption habits and make a few changes to how and where I buy clothes. I'll probably review it on here once I've finished reading it!

Sadie xxx

Sessun

After noticing that lots of other bloggers use a 50mm lens, I thought I'd quite like to jump on the bandwagon, so earlier this week I ordered one to go with my new camera. It arrived this morning, and I just couldn't resist testing it out straight away... even though it is supposed to be a birthday present for next week (eek, turning 20!). Since taking these photos way back in 2009, I've been itching to do some sort of similar shoot. The floaty white curtains in my room soften the light just perfectly for taking dreamy photos - and it was all wet and gloomy outside so it felt decidedly cosy indoors.

A few weeks ago I purchased this Sessun jumpsuit in the sale section of Urban Outfitters (NOT that I particularly like the idea of buying from UO; most of their stock is horrendously overpriced, and there was a big scandal recently which involved them stealing the ideas of an independent jewellery designer!). Anyway - I'm quite delighted with my purchase, which is a wonderfully high quality chambray jumpsuit with lots of nice details - pretty lined pockets and carefully covered seams, to name a few. Which is what you'd expect from a jumpsuit that originally cost £130(!!!). It seems I was in the right place at the right time - I bought it for a mere £20. Best purchase ever!

I've been waiting for the right occasion to really do it justice, and I'm quite proud of how these photos turned out, especially as I was working awkwardly with a tripod and self timer! Sorry if I come across as really vain - I promise I'm not!

What do you think of them?

Sadie xxx

Golden Hour

It sounds silly, but since buying myself a new camera, I feel so much more motivated to blog! You may have noticed that I've been rather absent from the blogosphere over the summer - working full time was probably to blame, but I'm glad I have got back into the swing of things.

Now, I know in my previous post I concluded that I simply couldn't buy any more coats... well, the very next day I bought another new coat. To be honest, it's more of a jacket than a coat, but it seems to be 'boyfriend fit' so kind of counts as a coat on someone as short as me. At £7, I did have to have a long think about it, but in the end I just couldn't put it back on the rail (which incidentally, is a wonderful vintage rail at my local Cancer Research shop).

It's quite a masculine coat, which lends itself perfectly to an outfit featuring my skinny leather tie, previously seen here. I'm also wearing my absolute favourite retro blouse, originally from Jaeger, but thrifted for £2 some time last year. Very 1940s-gentleman-goes-to-work, don't you think? Haha.

The boy and I made use of the incredibly flattering light at 'golden hour', just before sunset, to take the photos. Saved me from having to add a 'vintage glow' on photoshop!

Finally, my friend has just re-launched his photography website at stewartgiles.com - please do have a little look! He does some great fashion related shoots :).

Sadie xxx

P.S. I've just been added to MyStreetChic.com - you can find my photo here!

You can never have too many coats...

... or at least, thats what I try to tell myself every time I fall in love with a new coat and 'just have to have it'! Luckily my coat buying habit mostly takes place in charity shops, so I can feel a little less guilty - and that is the case with my newest wardrobe recruit!

I picked it up for just £10 in one of my local charity shops (I'm going to miss my town and its rather high charity-shop-per-capita score so much when I return to university). There is no label inside, so I'm guessing that it was once handmade by a fashionable little seamstress back in the 60s - I adore its peterpan collar and gentle A-line shape.

I donned my beret, bought in a vintage shop in Paris no less, and braved the extremely windy conditions outside to take a few snaps of it with my new camera. Most of the shots turned out to just be of me holding my hair out of my face, but a few of the photos were vaguely successful (thanks dad).

Unfortunately for me (and fortunately for my bulging wardrobe), I'm actually going to re-sell the coat :( boo. After my impulse buy, I realised I really do need the funds - after all, I did splash out on a new camera last week. But I couldn't resist posing in it before putting it up on eBay!

Sadie xxx

P.S. I'm off to a salsa night tonight. This is going to be very difficult seeing as I am completely incapable of copying dances or even dancing to any sort of rhythm... wish me luck.

Monochrome

I had a very exciting delivery this morning - a new Canon digital SLR camera! I've been wanting to buy one for ages, but was always worried about how much use it would get (they are rather heavy and seem rather bulky to carry around!). But after working full time for most of the summer, I really wanted to reward myself with something special, and a new camera fitted the bill. I bought it second hand, a snip at £240, on eBay. I've been fiddling around with my new gadget all day looking at all the interesting features - who'd have thought there could be such a thing as a self cleaning sensor?

Anyway, I ventured off into the countryside and dragged the boyfriend out with me to take a few outfit photos. I think they came out quite well for a first attempt, admittedly with the camera set on 'Auto'. (Handy tip: never give a male a shiny gadget with lots of buttons. You will not get it back for ages).

I'm wearing my absolute favourite new dress, bought in the French Connection sale for around £40, reduced from £90 (another work 'reward'). It is made from a luxurious boiled-wool style fabric, clearly built to last, and in my favourite shade of grey. And yes you can have a favourite shade of grey! The blouse underneath was thrifted for around £2 and is about 10x too big for me but it has a pretty little collar. The tights are from Miss Selfridge and the shoes from Clarks.

My boyfriend's family have befriended this stray kitten - he(she?)'s so tiny and cute but wasn't too keen on having his photo taken. This photo is a bit blurry but I couldn't not include it - and after all, we match!

Sadie xxx

People Tree

After my recent blog post entitled 'Green Guilt', I have been trying my best to look out for ethical and sustainable clothing companies when shopping for clothes. I first heard of People Tree as a result of Emma Watson's involvement with the company, and realising that they were an ethical brand, I decided to head to their website for a bit of online window shopping.

I could easily have bought anything on the website - all items are beautifully handmade (not only the garment, but the fabric itself!), dyed using natural dyes, hand embroidered or screenprinted, and everything is Fairtrade. Local people are employed to make the clothes and they are paid a fair wage, helping them to send their children to schools and to enjoy a better life. The prices are extremely reasonable for such well made items, whose provenance you can trace right back through the supply chain!

After much umming-and-ahhing I decided to buy this beautiful white peplum blouse with a small rounded collar, which was a mere £18 in the sale! It is hand woven (and according to the label, this means that 1 ton of CO2 is saved per year, per handloom!) and has a really nice texture and quality. I'm glad I decided to invest in it as it will be a real wardrobe staple - even good for wearing under jumpers in the winter!

I added a little green velvet bow and wore it with my favourite thrifted Jaeger cardigan and skirt - although unfortunately, my outfit choice doesn't show off the peplum detail very well!

I highly recommend having a look on the website - the prices are really competitive and the quality greatly outstrips that of your usual highstreet brand. They even have collections from Orla Kiely and Vivienne Westwood! Here are some of my favourites...

Sadie xxx