Links of the week!

So, I thought I'd just let you all know what I've been enjoying this week in terms of blogs etc.  So, here goes:

• I found a blog called Bikinis and Passports very recently, and I've been loving going through all the past posts she has, hearing about her travels, her studying, her life and I really like her style, she manages to make all her high street clothes look really individual.
• Also I read recently divergent musing's post about the cost of blogging...I think these reasons were definitely behind some of why I stopped blogging a while ago.  I also think that it's worth remembering that everything is fine in moderation and that time management is key.  At the moment I have quite a lot of free time, but come the autumn I will be much busier again, however I hope to keep blogging, even if it's not as regular.  The community and friends you meet are worth it!
• I stumbled across this post about French women's attitudes to beauty and definitely thought it was an interesting read.  As someone who loves France and French culture (I think, anyway) it makes an interesting perspective on this topic.
• Finally, Liberty London Girl's blog is one of my favourites.  She kind of leads the life I wish I could, being a PR consultant for loads of brands that take her all over the world.  Obviously travelling so much has its downsides, but she's become amazing at packing and this week she blogged about how to pack for a 3 day city break in just a carry-on case.  Genius, eh? I wish I knew this when I went to italy, would've been very useful.

Sorry it's quite short, I have not yet re-gotten into the habit to bookmark my links of the week, and so it's pretty much what's been open on my browser for a while that's been show.  Next week will be better, promise ;-)

Anyway, hope you've all had a lovely weekend, and speak to you all soon!

Currently listening to: Get a move on - Mr Scruff (well worth the listen for the memories this one, it's an instantly recognisable tune, but it took me ages to place where I'd heard it! Do you remember?)

Finally, a video!

So, it has taken me forever and a day to put up this video...I've recorded 4 different videos (over 3 days, I don't always want to put on and take off my makeup 5 times in a day!), and this is the only one that has worked!  BUT, now I know how to do this, hopefully it'll be a much quicker process!  So, because I've become very interested in make up tutorials while I wasn't blogging, so I thought that as part of my 'return' I'd give it a go!  If you like it, please let me know, if not, then I'll just carry on looking at the videos, without telling you guys about them, that's ok by me! If I seem a bit weird, I think I seem really unanimated, but it's difficult to be all animated when there's nothing to react to, if that makes sense?? Anyway... sorry it's taken so long, and I hope you've all had a good week!  Behold my un-madeup face!

Updates! (picture heavy)

So, after being absent for so long, I'm going to give everyone a little update on what's been going on in my life!  Obviously, this is just the happy, breezy stuff, there's been a lot of hard work too!  As you can tell, I haven't really gone out very much since November! Here we go:

 Dress: Next outlet; Shoes: Primark; Belt: don't remember; all jewellery & my bag (not pictured): Accessorize

This night in March was our annual music ball.  Last year was one of the best nights of the year, and this year's was also magnificent!  My best friend and I started getting ready in the afternoon, a friend came over and we did her hair, we drank champagne, it was amazing! Already looking forward to next year!

Dress: TK Maxx; Belt: Sainsbury's; Necklace: Accessorize; Random black cardi

This was the night when I dressed up as the green fairy.  I didn't manage to get a closeup of the make up that I did, but it was big on the green eyeshadow!

Dresses in both pictures: Primark (they're actually the same dress in 2 different colours!)

I also did a tango show with my dancing friends in various places along the south coast (Portsmouth, Bracknell, Guildford & Winchester) through April and May, and had a ball! The first picture above was our poster and we did a little posing session after!  The second picture is me with my godfather Dino (who introduced me to tango 7 years ago) and one of my closest friends Shen.  We all still had some of our stage makeup on, so we look a bit scary!

Dress: Primark (honestly, I don't own as much Primark as it seems!); Jacket: H&M; Shoes: M&S; Bag: New Look

This was the day the my best friend and I did a tourists' guide to London...she'd never been before so I showed her the sights: Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the various museums, Oxford St, Notting Hill etc etc!

Dress: Patricia Field for M&S; Belt: Came with a dress from H&M; Shoes: Primark

Again, my best friend and I went out for a little Thursday night r&r...turns out Thursdays are rubbish in Guildford...anyway, I find that most of the time the dressing up for a night out is half the fun!

For the music geeks amongst us...this is me with pianist Nikolai Demidenko (a hero of mine) and the first violinist of the Borodin Quartet, when they came to perform at Surrey recently.  I was managing the concert, so got to have a few chats with them all about their musicianship etc.  It was amazing!

This weekend has also been pretty busy!  But I've finished uni now for the summer, so it's ok to not do too much work... yesterday my friends abseiled down the Spinnaker tower in Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, so we went to support them.  It was a lovely sunny day after the horrid rainy week we've been having, so it was a welcome change.  In the first picture you can just see the little 'diving board' they had to start at...350 feet! I think they were very brave, and they did it for charity - the Stroke Association.  Lovely they did such things in a good cause!  And finally, I went to London today, but didn't want to not take any photos, so here's a pretty one from Covent Garden...I just liked the way the fire escape looked on the side of the building...random, sorry!

Hope you're all ok, and I'm really looking forward to catching up with all your blogs properly soon :)

Currently: watching the Popstar to Operastar final...I know. Guilty pleasure, but anything that gets opera to the masses gets my approval!

I'm back!

Hi everyone,

So, that was a huge hiatus from blogging, eh?  I never quite intended for it to be that long a break, and there have been a few times when I thought that I would have time to continue up again, but then a few weeks later, life got hectic again, so I thought it was better to take a longer break than to come back half-heartedly.  Now, I'm back, ready to post, and excited and inspired once again!

Uni work, concerts, unsociable hours and whatnot definitely got in the way, but I'm much better at managing my time now, so it's a good time to start again.

So, summer has begun (although not that you'd know it with the weather we're having) and inspiration has hit!  And because I didn't want this post to be without a picture, here's a picture that sums up British summer to me:

Tell me, what's new in your lives?

Absense

Hi everyone,

Really sorry for such a hiatus in posting.  Basically, the long and short of it is that life has well and truly got in the way.  I even set aside a whole afternoon this week to do a new post in order to explain myself properly, but even that afternoon became horrendously busy.  So, basically I think I don't really have the time at the moment to write anything of any substance, and I'd always rather write something substantial and worthwhile for you all to read than write something all rubbishy and not even worth you reading.  I'm saddened that I don't have the time to write something nice for you guys, because I have more followers now than I ever did when I wrote regularly!!  But that's just the way that things go I guess. Anyway, this explains my hiatus slightly.  I don't really know when I'm ever going to have time to post again, so I'm not really sure if I should even keep this blog, but I will, because you never know when I might actually have more time again!

Thank you all for being patient with me, and I hope you understand x

Finally, an outfit post!

Hello blog world!

As I mentioned in the previous post, sorry I haven't been posting as much, life has gotten in the way, because this is only a hobby for me, it has tended to take a bit of a backseat while I'm busy.  Lectures start again tomorrow, so Lord knows how sporadic this will become once they start again!!  I will endeavor to make time though, there's no excuse!  Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@Notoshtosh) will know that I recently started my job at Monsoon, and this means discount on their clothes!  I also have to wear the clothes that are on the shop floor, so this will mean a regular rotation of clothes, because once it's off the shop floor, I can no longer wear it to work.  So, as long as I pick things that I like, then I'm set because once I can no longer wear it to work, I can still wear it normally.  Yay!!
So, here's one of the pieces of uniform.  It's soon to be removed from the shop floor, but I liked it too much to not buy it, isn't it lovely?!  The photos don't really do it justice (still figuring out the best place to put my camera at home here!), but it's lovely and warm and very flattering!

Please excuse my crazy hair and tired looking-ness. I'd just gotten back from work, and it was raining outside (as seems to be the norm at the moment). So, here we are:

Those of you who follow me on twitter (I'm not plugging, just saying!) will know that the other night I went on a pub crawl.  I know, I know.  I'm not normally one for pub crawls, but I generally make an exception for the ones organised for the music dept. at uni, because it's a great way to meet people and have a fab time with the ones you already know.  And generally speaking, musos are all lovely friendly people, so you never know who you might bump into!  Below is a picture of myself and my lovely housemate Chloe, just before we went out:

In other news, I'm absolutely adoring my tango dancing at the moment.  I'm not really sure why, I guess like many things that you do over a long period of time, you plateau, you get a little bit uninspired, you love it, whatever, it's quite cyclical.  Currently, I'm loving it!  Last night I went to a milonga (an evening dedicated to dancing tango socially) and saw all of my friends from my class at home in Portsmouth and had some fabulous dances.  I also bought some new tango shoes! Red suede and sexy as hell, just what the tango doctor ordered ;)  One day I'll post a video or pictures or something from my tango life, I haven't gotten round to 'coming out' with my blog to anyone, really, so I'll try and do it on the sly!

Currently listening to: La Yumba by Otros Aires.  If you have spotify, look it up.  Otros Aires are probably my favourite tango band.  They take traditional songs and jazz 'em up with fancy computer productions and remixes. It combines 2 of my favourite kinds of tango - brilliant!!

Hope you've all had a lovely weekend!

Friend Friday: Showcasing Negativity

So, first of all a big apology!  My life is so busy right now, uni has started again in full swing (even though it's only been Fresher's Week this week, lectures don't start until Monday!) and my days have been full of meeting new freshers, catching up with friends, getting fresher's flu and singing through my flu to promote the Gospel Choir that I'm on the committee for, among other things.  So, I really appreciate you guys sticking through this with me, I will try and find a routine for things soon!


So, this week, Katy from Modly Chic set up a google group and the topic for this week's questions came from a discussion started on there!  I love that now there's even more interaction between bloggers, and we can spark discussions which pique all of our interests!  Visit Katy's blog for more info and Friend Friday and the google group if you want to join!

1)  Do you post pictures on your blog, or would you, if the opportunity came along, of people with poor fashion/beauty sense?
Absolutely not!  For the most part for me, blogging is like a jolly little escape from day to day life, and I like to just view and talk about positive things or non-heavy things.  So, following on from that, I would never use my blog as a tool for any negativity, that's not why I blog.  Sure, on the street I might look again at someone wearing something I find particularly odd, but for the most part, I don't really mind what people look like. And I would never take a photo of them to then slate them online. It's rude.

2) Do you read any blogs that highlight the bad? Why?
I do dip into CocoPerez every so often, but celebrity culture and celebrity bashing is a completely different topic, which I could talk about at length, but it's not relevant at the moment.  So I guess that's the only 'negative' blog I read on any semi-regular basis.  I have looked at Fashion Bloggers, Why? once because it's been mentioned so many times on different blogs, I decided to have a look.  I found it, for the most part, distasteful, disrespectful, badly written, badly thought-out and immature.

3) Should these bloggers get permission to post the pictures from the subject in the same way the street-style blogs do?
I'm undecided on this one.  On one hand, I say yes, because I wouldn't want my pictures plastered all over someone's blog without my permission or at least crediting me, whether they're being negative or not.  However, if we're talking street style, then I don't think there's any point.  If you see someone in the street and decide you want to take their photo for you blog to showcase how not to dress and you go and ask that person their permission to use the photo for the above, it's obvious (to me, anyway) that they're going to be offended and say no.  So what do you do, then? Post it anyway, or not, in which case the whole thing was a waste of time.

4) As human beings we are fascinated with disasters of all sorts, why do you think that is?  How do the blogs/websites that highlight the negative thrive?
Taking the example of FBW, a lot of it seems to stem from some form of jealousy.  Some of the comments written by the author and by the readers just seem like the words of a slightly more grown up (as in older, not mature) but still petulant child.  You know, "she has so much stuff and clothes, but don't you think she looks like she has downs syndrome in that picture"? (the reference to downs syndrome was actually there when I read it.  I was shocked, first at the lack of respect towards the condition and use of the term and also how horrible a thing to say about someone!)  I think these blogs are just a hive for negative, bitter, jealous people to come together and moan about how someone else has more shoes than them.  In terms of the human fascination with disasters, I think we're just a generally nosy species. We sneak peeks at weddings when they leave the church with the confetti flying, we also rubberneck on motorways when someone gets pulled over. It's just part of the human condition I think - nosiness!

5) For many, fashion is subjective.  Do you think there can be anything that is objectively bad in the fashion world?
In a word: no.  Everyone has different tastes, and as much as many people might agree on something, just as many people will disagree. In the same way most things are down to personal opinions or beliefs, fashion is too.

Hope you enjoyed this week's Friend Friday, as always, any suggestions or comments, please leave them below, I will be back soon (I promise) with an outfit post and a general update!