My Berry Hearts 💕

Hello my sweet people!  How great is your week going so far?

I'm hoping to have a night free of firework displays pounding away at the first glimpse of dusk.  It's been quite a year for Guy Fawkes firework displays - they've been set off relentlessly from Friday through to last night.  They seem to be bigger, better and more amazing than ever before.  Certainly noisier!
My house is near to many big organised fund-raising displays and I get 360° views from the windows.  Fortunately, Bertie the cat is pretty cool with pyrotechnics.


But let's talk about another firecracker.  My hearted 💕 berry blouse!
Here's how I've been putting it though it's paces.

The sparks have been flying off my hearted 😍 blouse from Primark, so much have I been wearing it.

A bum-covering shirt in an easy care fabric is proving to be the ideal top when wanting something for my upper end of smart casual.  

Especially this time of year.  This type of shirt is perfect for wearing with jeans, and this berry hearts 😘  shirt has already found its bestest friend for the winter, these berry coated leggings from Next.  I cannot sing their praises enough!

My third piece here was a berry cardi, bought last winter - good call, Pout, as the restaurant on this night was a little on the chilly side, and we're not talking AC!

The white hearts 💟 design just about saves me from being one gigantic walking talking berry!

Taupe boots (Jones) claw back some of the berriness too.

On a slightly warmer day,  a jumper and court shoes can be worn.

A daytime smart casual look is achieved with this uber cosy jumper from Primark as the shirt collar and tail pop out from inside the jumper.

The blouse has its edgy moments.

Worn loose.

Or tucked in to black jeans.  This is what I chose for my evening meet up, I think it worked better.

Black biker and chunky heel boots finish my granny-edgy look.

Hopefully I've given you a few ways to put together shirty outfits  for this time of year.  I've also found a way to use up a lot of emojees, by using one every time I mentioned 💗, which is often because that's what this blouse is all about - me wearing my 💖 on my sleeves and on my bodice too!

Do you have a recent autumn purchase that's pulling at your heart 💝 strings right now?

A  la perchoine,

Mary.

So A Woman Presses Her Next Button ...

... and in the post arrives a beautiful cream camisole. Plus a black one.  And they are the best camisoles ever and she feels a million quid in them.  The End.

Yes, truly this tale has got everything bar the hilariousness included in a similar-titled story posted by my bloggy sista  KELLYANN HERE.  It's got romance, for it was love a first opening of the package.  And it's got a happy ending, for I have kept both of them.  No second thoughts.  No hmmming and haaaing, which is unsual for Indecisive Pout. 

So a pretty perfect tale, but without the LOLing and the ROTFLing  you'll find in Kellyann's So A Woman Walks Into Old Navy ...

So, this woman's been button pressing at Next.  And here's my haul, and these camis are WINNERS, IMHO.

Made of a nice silky jersey, with a pretty lace trim.  £12.  Tell me, dear reader, what is not to love?

I have more button activity to share with you.

I have a fave Windsmoor cardi.  I've had an extremely deep and long-lasting love affair with it.

Realising the style and the shade worked for me, I've been hunting for a replacement.

Not to kick this one out, you understand, for it's A Keeper, but to find one that I would be happy to wear out of the house (though it is still in good condition), but you know how it is, ladies, I've worn it for some years, most days at home in the office, or when I've been feeling poorly, for it is super warm and snuggly.  So now it feels a bit, well, a bit personal to wear out.  Like I was going out in my Birthday Suit, it feels that much a part of me!

So during my frenzied button pushing a few weeks ago I pressed on what I thought was the perfect replacement for the Windsmoor.

It's not.

I planned to wear it with the ordered cami, but it is absolutely huge.  It's a coatigan.  It didn't look like that on the site, it looked like your regular sort of cardi length.  Love the colour, love the style, don't love the length. 

Still wearing my Next berry coated jeggings, I tried it with my big hit of winter, this Peacocks berry cardi.  Just to see how it worked.  

Works OK, but what wouldn't work with this combo, I ask you?

So I told you I'd multi-buttoned on this cami, and here it is in black.  Just as gorgeous as the cream.

Here you can see that after a few weeks from your screens, The Photographer and I are out of practise, out of sync, a bit rusty.  We didn't co-ordinate the smile with the click.  So he caught me doing an impression of a Oooohhh emoji. 

Here's the cami.  It has a deep lace trim which follows through down to the armpit.  I like that touch.

What I don't like is the blob the camera is leaving on shots, here seen by my left hand's fingertips.   This has been going on for weeks now but today I finally checked the camera and yes, there a tinsey little crack on the lens.  Oh bloomin 'angey, I wonder if Nikon does replacements  .... ? 

As well as the delicate cami meets chunky cardi look, another intention for this black cami is to wear it under open shirts, so I threw on this Zara trapeze shirt.  I say shirt, Zara calls it a dress.  Now, even on my hobbit legs this would make a quite short dress, so imagine what a 5'10"er would look like.  Oooh err!

So, semantics aside, I think this shirt would enjoy hanging out with my new bestie, the Next black lace cami.

The taupe boots are a sales buy from Jones last year, BTW.

And taadaahhh!

There you have it, button pressed on two fabuloso "silk" lace camis.  These are instant hits, welcome additions to my wardrobe.  And at just £12, this has got to be a buy I recommend you start pressing buttons on too.

A la perchoine.

 

Wine-coated Crookedness

And welcome to 2018, peeps.  I hope it's going to be a good year for you.  But good years are to a small degree of our own making and I plan to make the year a little better than 2017 with my approach of late, small tweaks.  I'll share some of my tweaks in the weeks to come.

So today is another year and I could have started it better than with a crush.  Well, it's more like a head over heels love affair, if I'm going to be honest. 

Kellyann had been tempting me with some faux leather leggings from Nordstrom.  I held out and didn't buy them, for reasons that will become obvious further on in this post.

But I suddenly threw good sense to the wind and bought myself some coated biker jeans (see licensed to thrill), and thrill me they have done.  They look a lot like leather and are so soft.

Things can sometimes take control of one's life by stealth and the stealth is my love affair with wine, berry, aubergine, call it what you will - actually berry sounds pretty seasonal and doesn't lead to any misunderstandings, as perhaps the title of this post may?!

And although the colour red was supposed to be the colour of the season, I'm seeing lots of berry and it's calling me, big time.

It started with my Big Bardot Sweater/Dress from Dotty P.  The shop had it in berry in my size and grey in not my size.  So I bought both. I'm so pleased I did - they've both become staples and the discount offered made that possible as I practically got a 2fer with my pennies.

As I settled into the colour, I began drifting towards all things berry.  I drifted on to the Next site looking for jeggings and found coated jeggings in berry.  Having been already surprised by the delights of the coated fabric with my black bikers, I was brave and ordered these berry babes as I could visualise them in oh so many combos.

Like this obvious combo here.



My coated berries arrived just after Christmas.  And I have to say the attraction was instant.

In the following days, we were inseparable.  Well, to clarify, we weren't 24/7 inseparable, they were routinely substituted with PJs (but also with a berry-type hue in the pattern - a Christmas pressie).

On this day I wore Jones taupe boots, as a break from the absolute berriness of the outfit, and did my trick with the brooch to anchor down the neckline to a soft cowl as I felt outright bardot wouldn't work for the day I had planned.

Now back to the coated jeans.  They are super comfy AND they hold their shape.  What's not to like?

I hoiked the sweater/dress up on the side to avoid it tumbling down into dress mode when I moved.  Yes, I do move.  Only occasionally, and then not very much (as Liz Hurley once said about eating).

Looking at these pics, my hoiking could have been done better, but it felt right at the time.

And this is the usual part in the post when it starts to get a bit messy, both outfitwise and between me & TP.

It was cold.  It was windy.  I found that my old Monsoon velvet hat had just the right amount of berriness in it to be the perfect partner for this duo.  But I wanted extra cose from a woolly scarf.

The Photographer With Fashion Views said, "No, that's just messy and bundled up", just as he usually does of late when I pull out any woolly scarf.

We reached a compromise.  I could dangle it for the purpose of this photo shoot, then snuggle up in it outside when the going got really cold and windy.

It goes without saying that the blanket scarf didn't even reach compromise stage.  I am not having any luck at all with this and may just have to take the scissors to it, as Kellyann suggested, and give it's twin away.

This little outfit got taken on a few errands, one being to visit my only surviving uncle (90 years old).  No photos of that, but I do have photos of the other two activities..

1. The one where I went to the headland to hold my hat.

Well, actually I'd gone there for a walk.

We've been having gales for days and on this day the wind was so strong that I had to open the car door in baby steps as I struggled to push it open against the 70 mph gusts.  So no walking was to be had but I thought I wouldn't waste the journey so turned it into a photo shoot.  A 20 seconds shoot.

2. The one where I went grocery shopping for NYE party food for me and TP.

One of the downsides of living on an island is being subject to deliveries by sea.  The prolonged gales of late had prevented our shelves from being re-stocked after Christmas.

The vultures had made their way through the fresh veg.

But phew!, the party food shelves were stocked up nicely and that was where I was headed, buying in tasty nibbles to soak up the bubbles on NYE.



Back home and the thick woolly just had to be exchanged for something thinner for indoors.  This berry long sleeved T shirt. Yes I also found myself some column-layering berriness for about £4.

What I also found was this.  My crooked left leg.  Yes, when I was fighting off Keyllyann and the Nordstrom faux leather, my defence was that the shiny leggings, which look so gorgeous on her, would bring attention to my less than perfect legs.  Well, I hadn't realised how imperfect they are until I saw these shots.  My leg is growing in all directions but straight.  I am an old crooked lady! 

I mentioned this to The Photographer whilst we drank our bubbles last night.  His reply was "Well, the neighbour didn't seem to notice".

You see, there is something about these coated jeans.  I feel edgy and sassy when wearing them.  And I think that comes across on others too.  Men specifically.  TP is absolutely drawn to them and is having his own little crush on me when I'm wearing them!  Which is mostly daily.

I wore my coated bikers to our Christmas neighbours' party.  One neighbour (male) couldn't stop himself from mentioning them throughout the evening.  He was convinced they were leather and seemed intrigued by them.  It seemed the more he coated his gizzard with wine, the more he came back to my coated legs and my bikers became the hot topic of the party at one stage.

TP and I deduced that the neighbour rather liked them.  And I think TP is right, I don't think for one minute that he noticed my crooked leg!

So, do head to Next and buy yourself some of these coated jeggings. 

You can get away with murder when wearing these sassy bottoms. 

Well, maybe not murder, but definitely crooked old legs!

A la perchoine.

2017 Flashback, #3 - It's All About The Shoe

What a busy time of year this is.  I've only just caught up with replying to comments this morning, and some were embarrassingly old.  I have resolved to do Christmas better next year.  So whilst I create my Master Plan for an Organised Christmas, and clear up from yesterday's Christmas family party, I leave you with more reflection from the year.

Who would have thought that a simple shoe tweak is all an outfit needs?  Or maybe the pic of a yummy savoury croissant was the lure of this post (here)...!!!

8 August 2017

It was a day that started well.

A savoury croissant and coffee under the pergola.

PJs.  Warm sunny weather.  No rush.  So peaceful.

Plenty time to check out how the wisteria is winding itself around the dead grape vine.

No sign of grape clusters inside this corner of the pergola.  Don't know why.

Plenty time to take a sneaky shot of the teddy I've had since I was 18.

Allow me to introduce you to Mr Tipper Truck, sitting in his chair.

Then with nothing more pressing on the agenda than to meet up with a girl friend later, I had time to put together a steal - they are such fun, I love the challenge.

I had a plan and I showed The Photographer a pic of something I'd found on Pinterest which I thought would be just perfect for my date.

 A smile appeared on TPs face when he saw the pic.  I think he liked the outfit.  A lot!

The outfit was basically a summer LBD.  I do like an LBD.  I like to have LBDs for all seasons.

I like wearing this dress with a chunky two tone metal necklace.

I used to pair this Next linen LBD with black shoes.  Always.

But for me the twist was nude shoes with the LBD so I paired the dress with nudes, just like my Pinterest lady.
It made me realise that there are times when all an outfit needs is a nude shoe, allowing the dress to remain the main event.

I have to say the Jones nudes do lengthen my legs - and I need lots of that!  But sadly mine weren't lengthened as long as the model's. I think TP was a tad disappointed.

So let's move on - the Tula bag was as close as I could get to the model's clutch.  And I thought I looked just fine.  

But I really must stop showing TP these Pinterest steal pics.  I feel his disappointment when he realises that the IRL body doesn't quite match up to the model's ... so perhaps the day didn't quite end according to plan!

So ladies, do you like pairing a black outfit with nudes?

A la perchoine.

Linking up with

Is It Me Or Is It Them?

Just what is going on?!

Is it me or is it Gabor?

Well, I have no idea to be honest, but I'm on the case.  I realise you need some back story before I tell you just where my case is right now.

You see, I happen to have a bit of a thing about Gabor boots.  Some of you have noticed this. 
I have two pairs of knee boots, brown and black, which I have had for 15 years and which have never been repaired and which still look amazingly good and which still feel beautifully comfortable.  That's how good Gabor boots are.

The knee boots were my intro to Gabor, my foot in the door, so to speak (pun totally intended and even it it weren't, I'd still take credit for it!).

I have a pair of black nubuck Gabor heeled ankle boots, which you see a lot on my blog in winter.  They look good with everything, jeans and trousers, skirts and dresses.  And I can tramp around cities' hard pavements for whole days in these and not feel a thing.   But they are quite old now and aren't cleaning up so well any more. 
Apropos cleaning nubuck, do any of you lovely ladies (and gentlemen, of course) have any magical tricks for cleaning nubuck that you can share?

So, magic aside, I am on the hunt for some replacement black ankle boots.  Leather, so's I can polish them up ... or get someone to do that for me :-).  Some low-heel grey ankle boots would be nice too!

I started my search back here in life-less-tailored, lusting after boots that don't fit my now-lifestyle but resigning myself to the more practical boot choice.
Then the lovely Laurie of Vanity and Me only went and taunted me with these Amien beauties below, reminding me that I'd been "stalking" them online for some weeks.

So what's a girl to do?  Yup, I got on to my fave shoe site, Charles Clinkard and moments later I awoke from my reverie with not just these lusted-after Amien boots but several other pairs.  Well, a girl wants to get value for her postage, eh?

So, Amiens are the boots that got my boot buying ball rolling. 

Then wanting some mid heels greys, Soleros joined my order.

Then reminding myself that the nubucks need a newer mate,  v. similar Polyannas joined the gang.

And Enfield made this a gang of four.

I ordered all four in my regular size, same as my other Gabor boots. Charles Clinkard delivered them quickly and smartly, as they always do.  Such a good service.

So what happened at try on?  You tell me.

Amien just about managed to get on my foot but was unwearably tight.

Solero failed to get on my foot, despite me using a shoe horn.

I so wanted the leather Polyanna to fit. Managed to squeeze myself in but soooo tight.

Good old Enfield fitted perfectly and my feet just slide into them.

NB: when I struggle or am plain unsuccessful getting into the boot, it's always with the left shoe though I've compared my two feet and they look the same.  The back inner heel seems to collapse inward.

So, should I be thinking that 1 out of 4 ain't bad?

Has this happened to you?  Your favoured brand suddenly not fitting?

I'd love to hear from you on this as I'm starting to think something awful has happened to my feet.

So has Gabor really changed their sizing or style of boot opening?

Or is it me?   Does shoe size increase with age?

Well, I do love Gabor boots and this lady is not for turning any time soon, so I'm going to size up.  That's where my case is right now.

But I'm just a bit confused from this whole trying on session. 

You see,  I had no trouble sliding into these Jones taupe coloured boots in my regular size (from a recently Jones sale).

Same thing with these grey higher heeled, picked up for a song in a Debenhams sale.

So, I just seem to be struggling with the style or sizing of Gabors. 

And finally, I'd sure like to be fraternising with these babes by Carvela, but at £150 that is not going to happen. Well, perhaps I should qualify that with "... any time soon". 

For, There's Always Tomorrow.  Or the January sales!

A la perchoine.