Our 'bank holiday'...

Scotland didn't actually have a bank holiday yesterday, but Sean and I both happened to be off, a rare occurrence during the week!  So we took advantage and went off to the new Transport Museum - we did try to go when it just opened but accidently picked the first day of the school holidays, where we made it was far as the turn off and gave up due to crowds! (I'm not a fan of busy places, ruins my enjoyment I find...)

A couple of my friends had been during the summer and both complained it wasn't on par with the old site, but we had a great time - previously it was really just actual transport it focussed on (hence the name!) but now it has a wider variety of historical memorabilia, including a 'cinema' room, where they show a movie on a loop of local people talking about their memories of cinema from the war years and beyond, I was in my element!  May have made Sean sit through the whole 13 minutes... :)

 Got a bit excited when I spotted this, although I'm thinking it must be kind of awkward to use - anyone tried one?

Old cinema seats

If I'd been an usher 50 years ago I would have been very well dressed!

The best thing is you're now allowed to climb onto some of the old buses and trams, so of course posing was done ;P

According to the sign, most people in Glasgow wouldn't have been able to afford these afternoon tea dresses - I like to think I'd have owned one... In my dreams!

This brought back memories - my gran used to drive an identical ambulance in the 80s/90s and sometimes picked me up from school in it, which I loved.

The mum and children sat in the sidecar apparently - it was all lovingly kitted out with leather seats and sheepskin throws!

Inside the entrance

Another beautiful dress...  This one was a stunning floral lace up close, I fell hard!

Sean found this hilarious...  Boys!

Can you tell I liked the costumes best?!

Hope everyone else had a fab day off (or at work!)

:)

A Faff Sunday...

Well, for yesterday being Sunday I was actually rather productive!

I got up around 8am and got dressed for the gym - I put on new deodorant and was quickly aware I smelled of something resembling cat pee.  So overcompensated with some No5 and all was well again.  Except now I have to remember to buy MORE deodorant...

 Got my gym essentials together and off I went - managed 5 miles on treadmill, my personal best.  I now have 2 leg injuries though so was doing a bit of pain distraction...

 My oven hasn't worked since I moved into my flat 2 months ago so the landlord installed a new one for me, v exciting for somehow who barely even turns on the hob...

 In case anyone's interested, this is partly why I don't cook very much - see the worktop space?  Nah me neither... ;)  I've also learned open plan kitchens mean I can't watch tv at the same time as using the washing machine, useful!

 Then it was time to pack a bag for staying at Sean's place.  I actually hate this part, I'm no good at advance outfit planning! 

 I got there in the end though, and even managed to dress myself - result!

Vintage M&S shirt - charity shop
Vest - H&M
Jeans - Dorothy Perkins Tall
Vintage Hobbs shoes - charity shop

 It's turned more cold here lately so I finally get to wear my birthday cardigan made for me by Mother, I'm rather madly in love with it, so cosy!

I also went a detour into work, ate bagels and grapes, went to see Cowboys and Aliens (tragic. Very. And loooong) and had an awesome B&J's waffle sundae.  Excellent day!

How was everyone's weekend?

:)

Book vs Movie - One Day

I have a new series!  When asked for suggestions on features for my blog, one anonymous reader asked for more movie reviews - this had also entered my head, since I watch a lot of movies - you know, being a projectionist and all... (although contrary to VERY popular belief, no I don't watch every show of every movie every day... How is it people think that's possible?!) Although lately, I've also been reading a lot - ok I always read a lot, but thanks to everyone buying me books for my birthday and my laptop being on the blink, a good book and a nice cup of tea has been the way to go during downtime at work.  

With One Day however, a 'good' book may be an overstatement...  Funny story here, since I'm sure you've noticed I seem to have 2 copies of the same book.  Sean bought the copy on the right forever ago when we were doing our 'wandering in Waterstones' routine, and through some eh, gentle prodding, managed to finish it in time for me to read it before the movie release.  Well the next day I went into work, only to find my friend Foof (yes, the one and only!) had in fact bought me it for Christmas!  Yes, I'm aware it's August...  We don't see each other very often!  So I'm calling it a birthday present.  What's that saying about buses again...  Sigh.  

Anyway, Sean finished it in a matter of days, loved it, and apparently my pal thought it was a 'me' book, so I dived right in.  And swiftly sunk.  Eh, I'm really not sure why this book is a big deal.  Have I missed something?  Why is everyone raving about it?!  It's nothing I've not read before, if only in a slightly different format - yeah, the 'one day' thing?  Irritating.  I won't post any spoilers, but it turns out exactly how I thought it would (and thought it shouldn't).  Bright side, I liked the end.  Which was then marred by the faffing giant epilogue.  By which time I was huffing in disgust.  Fun.

Basically the story follows a boy (Dexter) and a girl (Emma) through 20 years of their lives, from graduation in 1988 to the present day, in this case 2008 obviously.  Along the way there's the usual jobs/relationships/general growing up themes, and of the course, since it's a story about a male and female, a will-they-wont-they angle.  I'll leave you to guess what happens...  If this helps, I threw out a few suggestions when Sean was reading it - they were all right.  This coming from someone who almost never spots a movie twist.

 So as we all know, in the movie the completely unlikeable main characters are played by Anne Hathaway (being reasonably well Yorkshire - although this coming from a Scot!) and Jim Sturgess (being a weird English/Australian hybrid).  Now I won't repeat my review of telling everyone at work it was a load of soppy nonsense, but seriously, if the book was bad, the movie was worse.  Luckily the author of the book wrote the screenplay, so there wasn't too many changes (a fave pastime of mine is raging about how faff movie adaptations usually are!), except for some reason it was made longer than 20 years and finished in 2011.  Eh, why?  Can find no reason for this.  

Since it goes through a time period of over 20 years however, there's a 'lovely', surprisingly authentic array of costumes - my fave thing about any movie!  Also when the years change, there's a different song playing each time - presumably from that year?  My favourite part was when Dexter was in a club dancing to Rhythm of the Night, good times!  Feel like it says a lot for a movie when the best part was a 10 second dance scene...

So, some good points about the movie:

Romola Garai was in it (first time I've seen her in a non period film!)

Matt Berry also popped up in one scene

eh....

The music...?

Oh, when it finally ended, by which time I was sprawled across the front row in despair (there are other plus points to seeing movies alone and before anyone else!)

Bad points:

Need I go on?

Ok, now it's your turn, tell me what you thought!  Or have I just put you all off?  Oops...

:)

Out and about...

...well for a brief moment anyway!  Around lunchtime I realised I had no food in the flat, so I did that thing where you just grab clothing you think goes together and ran out to M&S - the reasoning behind this was that I had to return something for Mother, plus Morrisons was like a whole 15 minute walk, pfft too far...

Vintage coat - charity shop
Skirt - charity shop
Shoes - Topshop
Scarf - charity shop

Pretty sure I've worn all these outfit components recently, so feel free to just enjoy them all mixed together differently, and pretend like I meant to have some kind of 'look' going on ;)

Hairband - H&M

Just realised how weirdly vein-y looking my feet are...must be all the running! (ha, yeah....)

Don't forget to leave me some feedback on the post below, there could be a whole new (well...) Foof and Faff coming your way soon!

:)

Tell me!

I was thinking about having a mini blog revamp and maybe introducing some other fun stuff into the works,  and I thought I'd ask all you lovely people out there if you had any thoughts on what you'd like me to cover?  After all, you're the ones who read all the rambling!  (I'm just practising my typing and photography... ;) )

So get your thinking caps on and please leave me some notes, then hold your breath and wait to see what appears!  

:)

Tights and productive procrastination....

Well, I'm back in tights!  Or rather I was yesterday.  Actually by the time I was having dinner they had a ladder in them - me and non opaque tights are not a good team...

Cardi - M&S mens
Next dress - charity shop
Converse - gift

One's hair does not co-operate with the wind...

 So as I may have mentioned, I'm a champion procrastinator - I came to Mother's with the intention of catching up on some sewing but am really not feeling it at the moment.  Instead I thought I'd do something nice and sort out her under-stairs cupboard, which is choc full of wool, as it turned out...

Yup, we're both champion knitters!  And Mother loves buying wool.... Not ideal...  Some of it had clearly been around for a while though - found a Littlewoods receipt from 1997!  The year I left primary school, ahhh...  Anyway, an hour or so later it was all nicely stashed and ordered back in the cupboard - categorised into white wool, Aran, textured, boring colours and fun colours.  Yeah my system maybe needs work...  All in all, a productive day, if not exactly according to the plan.  Also downloaded some new tunes, so had a bath-dance-along to 'Moves like Jagger' and 'The Edge of Glory', good times!

:)

Update and the entry of Autumn...

Ok I've been MIA a bit... I was going through a phase where I just couldn't be fussed with the whole turn on laptop/wait to see if it decides to work/spending an hour editing and uploading pictures/go through freezing and crashing process at least once/a few hours later you may have something worth blogging about/then again, you may not, so ignore Lappy in favour of reading many books and drinking much tea to try and get rid of the cold that's now been hanging around for 3 weeks...  Ah its a hard life round my way!

In actual fact I've not really been up to much anyway - reading books and working really has taken priority in the past week!  Sean and I did manage to get to the Fringe Festival on Sunday though - saw a few free shows and generally wandered about Edinburgh pretending we knew what we were doing.  Oh and in a fit of motivation/confidence/stupidity, I entered the Great Scottish Run (10K version only!).  Its happening in just over 2 weeks, and I've been running with a cold and damaged knee.  Yeah gonna go with 'stupidity'...

I'm gonna just do a wee outfit post here and hopefully get some more interesting post sorted out for next week.  It's officially Autumn now according to one of my friends - cue me breathing a sigh of relief that it's now acceptable for me to wear at least thin tights again!  Didn't stop me buying a rather cute and versatile summer blouse in the M&S sale the other day...

Down to £5 tho, couldn't say no to a white blouse that actually fits AND is within my price range!

Cardigan - M&S mens
Blouse - M&S
Belt - charity shop
Skirt - charity shop
Shoes - New Look

Mother asked why I had my Fall wardrobe out already.  I pointed out that I'm actually tightless and wearing a summer blouse, so I'm not really THAT pessimistic!

Pearl necklace - inherited from Mother

Had a couple of New Look credit vouchers to spend, so on Saturday Sean went to the football and I went into town.  Here I learned an important lesson - don't go shopping in Glasgow on a Saturday afternoon unless you want to end up only visiting about 3 shops and going home in the huff over how bloody busy everywhere is.  Been years since I went shopping on a Saturday, I was not prepared!  Did manage to snag these shoes before I lost it though!

Here's one of my latest bargains, an M&S wrap found for £2.50 in a poky little charity shop in the scummy town I have to drive through to get to Mothers.  Also found a MaxMara wool suit for......wait for it.....£4!!!  It's currently in my to-alter pile, too short sleeves and legs is not a good look...

Anyone else delighted to kiss summer goodbye?

:)

Date night! And an experiment...

Another night, another trip to the movies.  Last night was Horrible Bosses, which turned out to be better than expected, although if anyone's heading to the cinema on this Orange (rainy) Wednesday I'd definitely recommend Super 8 - what a movie!  The retroness, Spielbergness, monsterness and the EPIC TRAIN CRASH (!!!!!) make for a possible new candidate at the top of my Movie of the Year list.  This morning I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes - what a contrast, incredibly slow and plodding, but watching Tom Felton's character get his comeuppance was rather satisfying... ;)

Anyway, back to last night.  I wore my date (only) trousers - not cause I forgot to epilate my legs of course, just cause I love my date trousers.  Totally...

M&S sweater - charity shop
Trousers - Topshop Tall
Vintage M&S shoes - charity shop

Coat - charity shop

Earrings - inherited from mum/gran

Can you see a pattern emerging here?  Feeling like all I write is charity shop, M&S or Topshop Tall for my clothing!  I totally do shop elsewhere, I just know where to go for clothing that fits!

:)

Madly in love...

...with these shoes!  I had some vouchers to spend so went a wee wander down town, and spotted these beauties in the window of one of my favourite charity shops.  Brand new M&S shoes in my size for a grand total of...£5!  Needless to say they were in my bag sharpish - after a quick glance at the £1 rail of course ;)

Now, I partly blame this book...

It was also found in a charity shop (funnily enough!), and after finishing it the other day I just wanted to raid my closet and start dressing elegantly!  Unfortunately, little things like work and weather seem to get in the way of my 'immaculate' grooming - plus the fact that it's no longer the 60s and therefore I'm allowed to wear trousers and go outside without a hat and gloves.  But I'm definitely in a state of longing for a quality, ladylike wardrobe at the mo, sigh....

Anyone else read this and had the same reaction as yours truly?!

:)