Well, I know we’re all talking about the weather at the moment but I just can’t believe the weather we’ve had recently! Seriously, we haven’t had a proper heatwave summer in Yorkshire for a while (and whenever we normally do, I seem to be on holiday – typical!) but the last week has been so warm that I’ve been struggling with clothes to wear. I’ve got to a point where a lot of my holiday and hot weather clothes are several years old (some of them more than 10 years old), so they’re no longer “in fashion” (not that that really matters to me, but they were “trendy” when I was a teenager and trying to be so, so I don’t really want to wear a lot of them now!) but because they only get a few days’ wear every year, they’re not in any condition to be got rid of. I’m also not really feeling my dressed up pin up and retro style at the moment – it feels a little bit over the top and twee for work – so I’ve been digging into the depths of my wardrobe to pull together outfits that mix up old clothes with newer ones. I feel like I’ve got “nothing to wear” but I know I have plenty – it’s very frustrating! I need to get rid of some of the old pieces again I think and condense my wardrobe a bit more.
I’m not so into cheap throwaway clothes any more – and I know I’m not good at throwing away! – so I’m hoping to start investing more in better quality items. I’ve said this before and have started to do so occasionally, but I think I need to try stopping buying “on trend” pieces and buy more classics like these from Dunedin Cashmere. I spend a lot more money on lingerie than I do on clothes and will happily part with my money for much higher priced items (I think my most expensive items of clothing are lingerie!), so I want to make the leap to do that and start filling my wardrobe with better quality clothing that will last me longer than the season it’s designed for.
So this is an outfit that resulted from that thinking – a mix of an old skirt (featured here in 2012) and a new basic top. Yes, that’s something cheap, but it’s a basic! I wore it to work and did feel ever so slightly overdressed (but not in a twee kind of way!) but it definitely kept me cool as it was one of the hottest days last week!
We spent this past weekend with family again and I’ve got some awesome photos to show off to you 🙂 On the Saturday, we went over to my parents’ house for a BBQ with some family friends and found a surprise waiting there for us – this:
Our very own BBQ!! This was an early joint birthday present for me and Ben from my family. We’d had a small charcoal BBQ at our old house but left it because it had got a bit rusty and was quite small – it was only really useful for quick cooking for two of us. So my mum and dad decided to get us our own proper gas one and give it to us early so that we could use it in time for summer. This is a Fireplus 4+1 model. We’ve got the gas on order for it at the moment and we’re hoping it’ll arrive soon so that we can get started barbequing! It’s got really good reviews so I’ll be sure to come back and update the blog on how it worked for us.
Outfit Details
Necklace: Primark (old) | Grey T Shirt: H&M | Maxi Skirt: Funky Divaa | Sandals: ASOS | Bracelet: Vintage | Saddle Bag: ASOS
Just a couple more notes on the outfit: I’ve had to start wearing different necklaces again as my usual one broke *sob*! It was a replacement for my dragonfly one that Ben gave me for my 18th that got lost, but this one broke within a few months. I wore this necklace on holiday a lot then pulled it out again when I got home.
The bag is new and was bought for a trip to London, more on that soon! It’s really handy and was really cheap on ASOS as I got a voucher through their new points system!
And finally, I’m wearing a bracelet – something I never do! It was from Ben’s great aunt who has a jewellery addiction so keeps giving pieces away to us! I’ve been wearing it a lot recently – apparently classic bangles are my thing, I’ve just never worn them before. I wasn’t sure if it was gold but noticed a mark inside that said Excalibur Rolled Gold – I looked it up and discovered it’s a 1950s original piece worth around £100 – crazy!
On Sunday, we went out to celebrate Ben’s grandma’s 80th birthday which was a lot of fun. Considering his grandma is 80 and his grandad is older, they’re doing really well for their ages – they are considering moving house at some point as their only bathroom is upstairs. We’ve recommended Premier Bathrooms for the time being as they offer modifications to your usual bathroom to make it easier for those with limited mobility (apparently limited mobility was the reason Ben’s grandma gave up smoking – because she wasn’t allowed to smoke inside and was confined to a bed with illness once!), so we spent some time looking at some options for that.
But that morning, Ben’s sister Beth (very confusing that we both have sisters called Beth!) and I spent a long time working on something a little bit crafty! We’d got some photos of the family over the years printed off and created a scrapbook photo album as a gift for their grandma. They’d recently celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary, so we had lots of lovely pictures from that to include luckily as well as some older ones too. Beth had found some lovely stickers too that we used to decorate the book, and we were really impressed with how it turned out – here are a few pages:
And then Ben’s grandad produced some of his own pictures in the afternoon, which was really awesome as they were dating back to the 1910s! And very strangely I managed to find my own great grandad (who had died even before my mum was born, so we never knew him) in a photo from 1934 that he had with Ben’s family included – I mean, our area of North Yorkshire is very small!
