Teal Floral Dress: Simplicity 4070

Oh, hey, how are you doing? So, even after 5 years of blogging, I still find it impossible to write the opening paragraph and title of blog posts – one day I will perfect the art, I promise! Let’s dive right in talking about the outfit to start with, then we’ll jump onto the crazy (or not so crazy) life of Sian.
I featured this dress on the blog back in November when it was pretty unseasonal to be honest, so I thought it was only fair to give it an outing during the Spring months too, even if it was waaaay overdressed for a trip to the supermarket – does anyone else do this?! This was one of my earlier handmade dresses, made from , a pattern which I won from a giveaway at Char’s blog. Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to make another dress out of it yet, but when I do I think I might give the hemline a little bit of a chop (only by an inch probably, just to make it slightly more modern) and try out a full bust adjustment – while this one doesn’t fit terribly or look too bad on the bust, it does have a slight gape around the arms, so I think the FBA would help out with that. I do love this fabric though and the pleated skirt – also note my first ever attempt at bias binding! It’s kind of on back to front and sewn with white thread since that’s all I had, but it’s not obvious unless you look too closely ;D
Okay, yes, I’m wearing – so shoot me! I seriously don’t know where my life would be without them – okay, so maybe it would just be slightly chillier armed, but considering the fact that I am wearing my green one (worn here) today too…yep, obsessed. So let’s talk about jewellery instead to distract you from that fact! The hand harness thingy (I’m going to call it that because I’m not sure what else to call it…) was from Accessorize – I’d had a gift card for AGES for there that I just couldn’t manage to spend, so when my sister and I went to London for a weekend, I took it out my bag and left it at home. You know what’s coming now…of course I managed to find something I just HAD to buy when I didn’t have the gift card! The story’s actually longer and involves us checking out of the hotel, lugging our bags over to Oxford Street, eating breakfast then heading to Liberty’s only to remember it was Sunday and therefore Sunday opening hours, so it didn’t open for another hour! The only shops open were a couple of small ones including Accessorize, so we spent a good long while in there. So long story short, fortunately my sister had a gift card too (which she had of course brought with her), so we did a swapsies and she got my card when we arrived home. I decided to make the harness part of my daily jewellery routine in attempt to look cool and on trend and all that, but failed when it turns out that hand harnesses don’t agree with computer keyboards, ie. 95% of my waking hours, thus part of my daily jewellery no more.

The other ring on the other hand (haha…) is now part of my daily jewellery routine, or at least it gets swapped in with my usual Disney ring. It’s the ridiculously beautiful Magnus and Bella Peridot ring from Jewel Street (unfortunately no longer available on the Jewel Street website, but see their full collection here and the Peridot Ring on their own site here). I’ve always loved the idea of little magnifying glasses being used in jewellery (perhaps mostly due to the fact that my grandma has a necklace she wears a lot of the time that has a hidden magnifying glass that swings down – I made her promise when I was about 5 that she would leave it to me in her will – nice child, wasn’t I?!). But this is not only a magnifying glass, it also has a tiny peridot stone in it. I was tempted to go for my birthstone, sapphire, but liked the peridot a lot better as it was pretty and understated. I also love the ring setting itself – it looks very antique and old fashioned, which I personally like. As I’ve said before, I personally tend to stick to the same jewellery over and over again,but I’d love to get one of these personalised engraved gifts for someone else – I think they’re something slightly more special than just plain old jewellery. It’s a big birthday for my dad this year and my mum next year, so maybe something like that would work a treat!

Cardigan:  via Tiger Milly | Dress: Handmade (using ) | Heels:  | Hand Harness: | Magnus and Bella Peridot Ring: c/o Jewel Street

Sooo, life! How’s it going for you? It’s been pretty busy over here, as you can probably tell by the lack of posting recently. We’ve only just finished emptying out the last few bits and pieces from the old house and finally have everything in the new one, or at least in the garage of it! We’re now planning to just to take one or two boxes at a time to empty and sort through, being ruthless about things we need to get rid of – to be fair, I haven’t been too bad about this recently as I expected. In fact, Ben’s possibly even worse as he won’t get rid of his wires – seriously, he has a suitcase and an IKEA bag full of wires, what are they all for?!
We do have our two new sofas now though and a tripod lamp. My sewing room is set up and the kitchen is full of stuff (although there is a lot still in boxes in the garage, again, to get sorted). We’re working on the bathrooms, but we’ve got toilet roll holders up and shelves in the family bathroom, just need towel rails screwed onto the walls now and a mirror/cabinet for our en suite. And we also need a wardrobe thanks to my cheap old IKEA one collapsing on us a couple of weeks ago – we currently have a cheap rail housing all my and Ben’s hanging clothes, but my others are all in boxes, sad! Our evenings and weekends recently have been spent either moving stuff from one house to another, emptying boxes and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning! I’ve now vowed not to move house for at least another 10 years – it’s hard work!
We visited my sister this weekend at home as my parents are away in Vienna (jealous!) for my mum’s birthday, and had a takeaway with her. Last weekend, my mum and I did a spot of shopping too – mostly for her may I add, I only used a voucher for a vintage shop plus a little money! Not that I can really afford clothes shopping with the house at the moment, I’m saving my monies for furniture! That hasn’t exactly stopped me looking though, and a few things have caught my eye, especially at Esprit – most likely because of all their breezy summer stuff which I’m craving a holiday for so that I can wear right now!
I have managed to squeeze in 20 minutes here and there for sewing, so I’m underway with a new skirt and a new dress at the moment, both of which I’m super excited to show you. I’ve also managed to continue pretty well with my gym membership, which I’m really surprised about! I knew I wouldn’t fit in as much as I’d like during the main moving week, but now it’s calmed down a bit, I’ve got a routine planned. I managed to do a couple of mornings before work swimming for a couple of weeks, and now Laura from work is coming swimming with me, so we’re planning on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for that, and I’m hoping to be able to fit in 15-20 minutes in the gym before that occasionally. I did manage that today, arrived at the gym at 7.30am, played on some machines for 15 mins (still figuring out what I can and can’t do!), then had about half an hour swimming afterwards, so feeling super healthy today. There was a minor disaster afterwards though when the showers stopped working when Laura and I were both covered in soap, then Laura’s car broke down so I had to turn around to come get her, but hopefully it’ll go a lot more smoothly than that in future!