Happy New Year!

This is what I embroidered for my mum's 61st birthday. Because Jarvis Cocker is obviously awesome & this song is wonderful, beautiful, depressing, honest & most of all a celebration against the opressive elite classes! Woo! Just like my one & only mother (apart from the depressing). Anyway, yes, love you mum. Happy Birthday!

Blogging will be resumed next week, promise.

Whilst waiting to meet Heidi for Christmas Gingerbread Lattes the other day I found myself in WH Smith. AKA the only place left in Bristol that stocks vaguely interesting or unusual magazines. So sad. Anyway, after the obligatory Dazed, Vogue, Harpers, I-D etc. I drifted over to W with Carey Mulligan on the cover. I hated An Education but I quite like her so I started flicking through, only to find a very lovely "New Season" spread shot by Emma Summerton which was lovely & had lots of weird twin shots (ok, I featured none of them here, but you can view high res shots here) plus a rather lovingly cinematic shoot with Mulligan by Michael Thompson. Anyway, in short, nice images W! Might have to re think them because they've never wholly captured by heart or attention...

Admittedly this is a bit of a cop out as far as posts go. But basically, it's almost the end of the year so I was trying to discuss with my Benny, Cat, Max & Seb the other day - over mulledness & mince pies - about what songs had really hit them this year. It came about after reading a list in G2 that only featured songs from like the last  two months or something. Which surely isn't the point. So here it is! There's only one oldie in there (at the beginning) but it stands for Arctic Monkeys new album as well as the B-Side compilation Jesus made for my birthday. It's also probably the one that pops up in my head unexpectedly the most. & I'm sorry but the last two... I've obviously softened towards the end of the year. What's your opinion on Lena Del Rey? Against my better judgement I've had her youtube mix on repeat & am so close to pressing the itunes pre order button. Do you love or hate?

What were your highlights?

Last week I was feeling a little like I'd peaked too soon Christmas wise. I'd got all my gifts, finished making them, been to Pairs & sort of had a mini Christmas already. Then I came back to miserable weather & work. Boo. So after getting over my horrible illness (pretty much) yesterday I put my Christmas "glad-rags" on to try & get in the spirit. Awesome green & red nail varnish (Barry M Emerald Green & Rimmel Celebrity Bash (THE best red varnish I've ever found)) & my trusty reindeer necklace.

After taking some family friends Christmas shopping, as a sort of tradition I splurged a little on some shiny sparkly awesome nail stuff. (let to right: 17 glitter top coat & strengthening base coat, Barry M mushroom, red glitter & hologram) One of my few female friends Cat informed me that it was horrific to be painting straight onto my nails, as I've always done. So I pronto got on some base coat hunting. I'm not very good at taking care of stuff like that. The mushroom is because I have no like "nude" nail varnish, anyone have any tips? I just like Barry M. Plus, who doesn't want to have Dorothy nails? New Year's Eve pairing with my shoes I think. I don't know if the Dorothy's have ever been on the blog.... ohh teaser. & I was pretty disappointed with hologram. Does anyone have any tips on how the fuck to apply it? I was thinking a cocktail stick to pick out the sequin things so my nail doesn't become like double the thickness with the clear nail varnish that coats it. It'd like a mirror ball though, which is pretty awesome.

Anyway yes so basically the takeaway is that because I have finished buying stuff for other people I'm now buying stuff for myself, very christmassy! Happy almost Christmas though innit.

Ok I know, I'm sorry, I didn't do any of the things I promised too in the last post. Mainly make some timed posts & read blogs & reply to comments. So basically I suck. But in my defence I've been working & really ill (food poisoning ew) since, interspersed with Paris! So yeah... I hope the fact that I managed to actually take some pictures of Paris makes up for it a little. Maybe? Anywho...top to bottom.

View from the top of Galeries Lafayette after we'd negotiated our way through the canteen & shoe horned ourselves into a window seat. The Christmas Tree plus the whole floor of underwear was totally worth the longish metro journey. 

My favorite stuffed to the brim vintage shop in Paris. I tried on lots of amazing underwear type slip dresses & dressing gowns & teddies. As well as, dresses & uhr... a vintage versace knock off gambling emblem printed skin tight body suit that had the weirdest proportions ever. The body was soooo long. But yes. I only bought a couple of things (one for my mum) but scooped up some less exciting vintage from the cheaper stores that are aplenty in Paris.

We sort of made the mistake of going to Le Bon Marche after the 3 hour Eurostar & a night of no sleep. Which led to me having a little bit of a breakdown in the food section. But... anyway. Some food & a sit down later I was fine. To swan around the clothing section, gawping over Givenchy & Celine, pretending we were genuine customers, not just sneakily on our way to the toy department.

Cute graffiti dotted around everywhere. This particular one in the 4th Arrondissement just around the corner from Cos. I know it's a bit of a cop out, but we don't have one in Bristol so it didn't feel too bad. Roughly translated I'm informed it says, "Who do you follow?/What do you follow?" Something along those lines...

Les Arts Decrotifs in the Lourve is my favorite gallery in Paris. It always has the most amazing exhibits. & has a special place in my heart as the place I finally got to see a Hussein Chalayan exhibition. This time round it was Jean-Paul Goude & Stefan Sagmeister. A total contradiction really. The Goude one was overwhelmingly indulgent & at one point I got stuck in the dark on my own with two motorised Grace Jones heads, one of which unexpectedly opened it's eyes & lit up. The Sagmeister exhibition was much more up my street, having studied him in GCSE art (oh, good times) with little snippits about his experiences of different places. Like how he had to ask a Japanese lady on a train to remove a broken Q-Tip from his ear. What an amazing man.

And finally the lights on the Champs Elysee, pretty much why we wanted to go, to feel all Christmassy & such like. They were a tad disappointing. But the Louis Vuitton windows with a circus theme were fun although the thought, "Why would you want to show your suitcases as being heavier than elephants?" came up... A little pissed to have missed the Karl window though. But we made our way to the Christmas market that was hectic to say the least. But full of vin chaud & uhr...churros. Very French.

Image overload. Word overload. Welcome back!