Cherry Blossom Skirt

I’ve been a bit lacking on the outfit photo front recently, sorry! It’s mostly due to the fact that, as I mentioned, my portrait lens had a bit of an incident with the wind and the focus turny bit (I swear I should know the proper name for that!) got jammed in when I’d only managed to take about 4 photos, all of which were testing the lighting etc. Fortunately, Ben managed to find me a new lens for a relatively good price, plus his boss let me borrow his for the week too, so I finally managed to get a set of photos done – and it was a good thing, because I wasn’t going to let this outfit go by without photographing it!

A couple of items here are new, oops! I managed to sell a good amount of old and mostly unworn clothes and underwear recently, so I do have a little more wardrobe space and a little bit of spending money too, but it’s mostly being saved for the new house at the moment. I did however realise I had some credits left over at Romwe from my last order, so I managed to get a good amount off this already cheap skirt – it was originally only £12, but I think I got it for about £6, amazing! I did order another skirt at the same time (this one) but weirdly, even though I ordered that in a Large (weird Chinese sizing, and it was the only size available) and the one I’m wearing here in a Medium, the Large skirt will barely go over my hips, let alone do up, whereas the Medium one is a perfect fit! That’s what you get with ordering from places like this though – you can never quite know with the sizing! I thought if I ordered the Large, I’d at least be able to take it in if it was too big, but there definitely isn’t enough of a seam to let it out unfortunately. Never mind, I might try and make use of the fabric from it for something else – the amount of fabric it’s made of would be more expensive to buy here than the skirt itself!

The belt’s also new – I’ve been wanting a good wide belt for a while but can never quite find the right one, but I think this one might be just right. It did cause me to make a strange discovery about myself though: I’ve recently been getting a lot of bloating which I’ve been putting down to my newly discovered IBS – I don’t suffer badly with it, just stomach cramps every now and then mostly, but I think the bloating is a part of that now. Anyway, I tried on this belt the evening it arrived and could only just do it up on the first hole, then put it on the next morning and could easily do it up on the 4th hole, and could just reach the 5th too! It turns out that my stomach (and waist) can bloat up to about 4 or 5 inches during the course of the day, crazy!! I’m doing a bit more experimenting with food now to try and figure what exactly might be causing it, but luckily it’s not painful or anything, just not very nice to look a bit pregnant sometimes!

So what else is going on in my life recently? I’ve had a busy month at work, but fortunately got some good results out of it so that’s always good! And we’ve had a couple of new people join at work too, one in our team, so that’s going to be a bit of pressure taken off me too, so that’s good. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time for choir recently, which is really sad 🙁 I’ve been getting busier with Brownies though and am starting on my leadership qualification now. I think they’re wanting me to become a full leader for the unit, but with work and all my blogs, I definitely don’t have enough time to run the unit alone at the moment, so I’m hoping we’ll be getting another leader (as my current one is planning to leave soon), and I can be assistant leader, but we’ll see how it goes. It does mean some of my weekends are disappearing soon for meetings, training and first aid, but it’s fun to do. We’ve had a couple of fun meetings recently including a Harry Potter evening and a Pamper night with nail painting and hand scrubs. And finally, we’ve exchanged contracts on the house and have a moving date!! We should be in the house and almost everything moved over Easter, so that’s very lucky as we won’t need to take any days off thanks to the Bank Holiday. We sent over a big chunk of money the other day, and the final part of the deposit will be going soon, which is quite scary, but we’d planned for it, so hopefully won’t make too much of an impact on our day to day spendings. Still scary though! I just can’t wait to be in now – I’m starting to plan how all the rooms will be set out, especially my sewing room which I have lots of plans for including painting, shelving and lots of storage (who would have thought I’d be excited over storage?!).

Anyway, hope you’re all doing well at the moment, I’m hoping to be back soon with more outfits, but that means taking the photos first, oops!