Mad hatter's tea party and a DIY hat

Saturday night a few friends of mine put on a 'Mad Hatter's Teaparty' at a local bar in honour of Alice in Wonderland's 150th birthday. They had been planning it quite a while, with fancy dress, teapot cocktails and a teapot decorating competition, it was -excuse the pun- JUST  my cup of tea. Down to the very blend and spoons of sugar. Just perfect. So as you can probably tell, I was very excited and had planned my outfit and hat weeks ago.

Yum yum and yum, cakes made and decorated by the lovely hosts. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to take any proper outfit photos, but honestly although perhaps I looked "in costume" I was wearing my normal clothes... (Spin Doctor skirt with chinese style silky blouse from a charity shop, on top of a corset from ebay.)

This was the skirt I was wearing.

Please excuse my rediculously excited expression. As you can see, I also wore a teeny top hat fascinator (made by me, DIY post coming soon) a key and pocket watch on a necklace, and drank my g&t from a Hello Kitty teacup. There was an agreement from the manager of the bar that party goers could bring their own teapots to drink from, and would charge accordingly as to how much liquid each could hold. I also had a teapot full of cocktail for £8, which was delicious and very reasonable.

 

As you can see there were some wonderful and dedicated costumes, I always have time for good fancy dress, so I rather felt as if I was cheating by wearing my normal clothes! 

Did anybody else celebrate the birthday of Alice In Wonderland?? 

Anniversary engagement

I certainly had an exciting time this past weekend,  because it was both mine and Rob's 3rd anniversary, and he asked me to marry him! It was funny and confusing because he has been talking to friends about planning it for a while now, and before we had Reegan we were planning a trip to Iceland and I think thats where he was intending to propose. He was also planning to ask me on Sunday when we went out for our anniversary dinner (more on that in a moment) but he thought one of our friends had let the cat out of the bag, so he proposed on Saturday to still surprise me, but I didn't even realise he was going to in the first place! So all a surprise really. Saturday afternoon we took Reegan and Inca (our dog) for a walk to Blaise Castle estate and walked up the big hill to the castle.

The spot where Rob proposed

As you can see, it's tiny, and you can't go inside it because it's a grade two listed building, except on the special open days, which don't happen often. At the estate museum there are pictures of what it looked like when in was completed in 1798 as a sort of summer house that the owner at the time used for entertaining guests. It was beatufully decorated in the gothic revival style and even had a kitchen in the cellar for dinner parties.

Anyway. We got up there and Rob suggested we sit down as if he was tired, so I said sure why not, and bent down to get Reegan something to eat from the pushchair basket, and turned around to see him on his knees holding out the ring.

It's currently being resized. ALL I want to do is wear it!!

I couldn't quite believe he was really asking me and I just stared at him for a minute and I think I asked if he was joking. My heart stopped and I felt all fluttery and dizzy and I just couldn't process what was happening. How dramatic! But of course I eventually said yes, and off we went to the pub where our friends were waiting with a bottle of Prosecco.

Then on Sunday we went out for dinner at a place called Steak of the Art, which is a steakhouse/art gallery, it was super cool and the food was lush! (Imagine me saying that in my West Country accent.)

Those blue lights over the bar were colour-changing

Alice in Wonderland booth carved by chainsaw

The style of decor was very modern and industrial looking, so not entirely my cup of tea but it was still very fascinating to be surrounded by so much art.

Sorry for the overload of smug couple selfies. The last two are mainly so that you can see my makeup in more detail, which was a grey cut crease shadow with a feline flick and my trusty red lippy. I'll  be off to work tonight so happy Monday everybody! :)

Gothic Wedding guest attire (at a "normal" wedding)

Saturday evening my family and I had the pleasure  of attending the wedding of a close family friend. Well, not just the bride specifically as both of our families have been friends for a very long time indeed. Both my granny and hers have lived in the same street for more that forty years I think, and have been very close until she sadly passed away last year. Everyone in my family would call her auntie just as everyone in hers would call my gran auntie. So we knew a lot of people at the wedding, and as they have all known me since childhood they are quite used to my eccentricies, and do infact embrace them. I got a lot of compliments on my green hair and outfit (and of course plenty of fuss over the baby, which she loved). The wedding also had a running theme of Alice in Wonderland because of the 150th anniversary on it's publication, which of course I enjoyed very much. So heres my outfit:

As you can see it was a relatively conservative dress from Hell Bunny, with the skirt hanging just above the knee with a sweetheart neckline and net panel on the chest. I love the collar and the green anatomical print because it's my style, whilst still looking respectable, and not too attention grabbing either because the last thing you want to be doing at a wedding is stealing attention from the happy couple. I also tried to get a close up of my makeup but unfortunately before my mum arrived and took my outfit photos Reegan was being a little clingy, so I took the opportunity to just take some selfies with her. But I think you can see fairly well that I just went with a simple fawn coloured eyeshadow and black eyeliner, with wispy-natural looking lashes and my current obsession- the Pretty Zombie Vamp lipstick. You can't see from the photos but I wore my Iron Fist Timmy Chew ballet pumps, mostly because they are my go to summer shoes and also because I rarely wear heels. I get self concious because I'm quite tall anyway and heels make me feel like some sort of freakish giant. I was also planning to straighten my hair (something I don't do often to avoid damaging my bleached hair, which is in a remarkably good state at the moment) but I ran out of time so I just left it to dry naturally and do its thing, and just added the skeleton hand clip to keep my hair from my eyes.

A friend of ours (who by the way is male if this makes any difference to the opinion) told me the first time I wore this dress that it wasn't wedding appropriate, because  I was 'test driving' it and wanted to know what he thought. He told me that "anything to do with skulls or death should not have any place at a wedding." I didn't really know what to make of that, seeing as both Rob and I are a bit obsessed with skulls so naturally if ever we do get married they will probably be featured in the wedding somewhere or other. But then I do think that sometimes we kind of forget that we aren't all that normal so it's kind of hard to judge how other people will react to our tastes, and a lot of the time I forget that people would react in the first place. Using skeletal body parts (or bats or lace or studs or horns) to decorate my brightly coloured hair is something I do on a daily basis so when someone notices and says something as if it's out of the ordinary I don't always know what to say. (Every day is halloween?!)

Do you think my outfit was wedding appropriate? What would you wear to a "normal" wedding - would you tone it down a tad or just be yourself?