Sometime in the last year, Anthropologie launched their European website. This was *ridiculously* exciting for me; I have been in love with Anthropologie since I found the US site in my teens and have been endlessly frustrated in my mission to buy pretty much everything they sell.

When I was at uni, I fell so deeply in love with a skirt that I enrolled on a ridiculous medical trial for mouthwash to fund it. I had to endure ridiculous early starts and complete humiliation, but in the end I walked out with the money to make my first Anthropologie order. Hurrah! Except, when I went ahead and ordered, they didn’t accept billing addresses outside of the US. They wanted proof of ID that my credit card company refused to provide, and by the time it was all sorted, my skirt had sold out and I was ridiculously disappointed.

Then they launched easy international billing and shipping. Again, I was thrilled, until I realised it worked out at around £40 shipping for a small order. Plus import duty. Disappointed again.

Since I was about 19, anthropologie.co.uk has said ‘coming soon’ and I have checked back periodically. The day it redirected to their site, I pretty much peed my pants!
All of which is *very* long-winded way of me telling you this dress is from my first ever successful anthropologie order, and I love it a lot!

More pics on my Chictopia.

I wanna marry a lighthouse keeper
and keep him company
I wanna marry a lighthouse keeper
and live by the side of the sea

I wanna marry a lighthouse keeper
won’t that be ok
we’ll take walks along the moonlit bay
maybe find a treasure or two

My dress is from Topshop & my hat, also modeled by the lovely H above, is Mulberry, of gorgeous-handbag-fame! It was a total steal from a second hand shop, who obviously didn’t realise what they had! £20 for a Mulberry cloche? Yes please!

I’m oh so glad I got to enjoy the last of the sunshine with my wonderful friends! Goodbye summer, hello autumn!

Quite a few people contacted me asking for a bit of a guide to the places I visited in Paris, so here it is. I’m not claiming to have any expertise on the City of Light – this is just a little walk through the bits of Paris I saw and loved.

Hotels
I stayed in Hotel International, near Goncourt on the brown Metro line. It cost around 70 Euros a night for a twin room with en-suite bathroom, which is amazingly cheap for a Paris hotel. The room was clean and cute, with a very Parisian balcony and a bright bathroom with shower and bath. The hotel staff were incredibly friendly and there was a little lift to take our suitcases up to the top floor, plus cheap wireless internet too!
Outside, there were some really good restaurants and cafes within easy walking distance, and the larger Metro station at Republique was only a ten minute wander away.
I definitely plan to stay there again next time!

Shopping
I’d gone to Paris with a to-do list of stores to visit, expecting to find all sorts of wonders. It didn’t really work out that way – the vintage stores like FREE’P'STAR were packed with crowds and seemed to stock more retro than lacy romance. The Champs Elysees is, or course, a must, but with big branches of obvious names like Zara and H&M it was really just a beautiful version of any European high street.

The shops in Les Marais, the old Jewish Quarter, were more my cup of tea. Head there for quirky independent gifts, books and stationery, and jewellery. Clothes there were on the expensive side, but good for window shopping. Don’t miss ‘Heaven‘ boutique, for pretty one-off dresses and gorgeous handmade jewellery. 16 rue du Pont Louis-Philippe, near Metro St Paul.
I also couldn’t possibly have visited Paris without visiting my spiritual home; the Repetto boutique on Rue Notre Dame des Victoires (Metro Opera). It was like Olivander’s in Harry Potter, except with pink satin shoes instead of wands. & tutus!

My absolute favourite shopping experience in Paris, however, was at the ‘Puces des Vanves‘ flea markets (Metro Portes de Vanves). Open weekends 7am-1pm, it’s a proper old-fashioned flea market with stalls selling everything from old books to ancient theatre costumes, and everything in between! I found two insanely gorgeous vintage nightdresses (to wear as day dresses, of course) for around 3Euros each. Cheap and beautiful!

Part 2 later this week, with my favourite places to eat, secret gardens and all the big tourist attractions! x

Some pictures from a little drive we took in a brief spell of sunshine, up into the pretty pretty Yorkshire Dales. It’s seriously like fairytale-country, up there.

It’s been a busy, funny, exciting week.
The highlight was definitely at work; the most inspirational kid I work with flew through an assessment for a speaking valve for his trachy. He’s going to be able to laugh out loud again, after two years of silence! I have a big puffy-heart just full of pride for him. He has me fully convinced that absolutely anything is possible.

We’re so stupidly, wastefully lucky, us walkers & talkers, to be able to laugh and shout and cry, & run around in fields full of purple heather. Make the most of it while it’s yours x

I’ve fallen in love! I have a new favourite place… or, well, top 5 at least!

N & I found ‘Lover’s Island’ pretty much by accident. Summer’s been slipping away without any real acknowledgement, so we packed up the car and drove a couple of hours to the coast. We headed to the pastel-pretty seaside towns of Anglesey, picturing dangling our feet off the pier & eating chips while the seagulls cried overhead.
Except, it wasn’t as I remembered it. The recent recession has obviously hit those little seaside towns hard, and now there are strings of vacant shops and a distinctly depressed feeling on the wind. I have something bordering on a phobia of nasty seaside resorts; a couple of kiss-me-quick hats and a noisy arcade and I start to look for cliffs to jump off. Instead, I jumped on Google via my iphone: “best beaches in Anglesey”. And that’s how we found it!

First you drive through acres of pine woodland, which stretches right up to the beach. Then there’s silky golden sand and blue blue sea, and then, out on its own, there’s Lover’s Island. It got its name from the Welsh saint of love, St Dywnn. She fled there after having her heart broken and never returned to the real world. There’s still the ruins of a 16th Century church there, where people worshipped St Dwynn and asked for her help in matters of the heart. How gorgeously romantic is that?!

It’s the most perfect spot. As well as being the only place with blue skies and sunshine on the day of our visit, there’s tiny little sandy coves, old lighthouses, amazing views of the Welsh mountains and wild unicorns!

I’m already planning when we can next go back; I want to take a picnic, and a novel, and a 1940′s swimsuit. Who’s coming with me?

Last weekend N & I attended his cousin’s wedding in the Durham countryside. The stupid British weather made it rain all day, all over the Bride’s plans for Pimms on the lawn and photos by the river, but it didn’t spoil the super-prettiness.

By some strange coincidence, I ended up matching the wedding colours! I’ve had this dress hiding in my wardrobe for months, because there just aren’t enough reasons to get really dressed up any more. Weddings and Christmas parties are pretty much the only excuses in modern life. We need to bring back balls at the assembly rooms à la Jane Austen, if you ask me.

Dress: Rodarte for Target
Shoes: Topshop

Big thanks an massive congratulations to D & L! I’m sure they’ll live happily ever after <3

Paris was a dream come true. I’d been half afraid that it couldn’t possibly live up to my daydreams; all those endless armchair travel guides, novels, biographies and movies. Paris in my mind was all tall stone buildings, hidden gardens, wrought iron balconies and pavement-side cafes. And in real life, it’s exactly like that!

Breakfast at the boulangerie on a red gingham tablecloth. Shopping for ancient lace dresses at a flea market on the outskirts of town. Cobbled side streets, balconies with their doors thrown open to the sun, antique book sellers on the banks of the Seine. All those cliches about Paris and the French, it turns out, are not really cliches at all. It took me a couple of days to realise I didn’t need to take a photo everytime I saw something wonderfully Parisienne – because Paris really was all around!

We tried hard to find a balance between tourism and ‘real’ city life. My sister speaks fluent French which was a massive asset, and we’d researched restaurants and bistros beforehand to avoid falling into any tourist traps. I downloaded french dictionaries, maps and Metro planners to my iPhone to avoid getting completely lost and confused.

Still, we encountered our share of rudeness; that quintessentially Parisian mix of ridiculously obnoxious old men and insanely helpful, delightful strangers. One woman stopped to direct us to a hidden garden in Le Marais district. A Frenchman introduced himself to explain the origins of a statue in a teensy-tiny square. A couple I bought vintage nightwear off at a fleamarket chatted at length about little things, and threw in some antique lace for free. Parisians were friendly in the best sort of ways.

I could blog about Paris for the rest of my life! Next time I’ll tell you about the day I met the Eiffel Tower…

I’m still recovering from the most magical, perfect week away in the City of Light. I have big plans for blog posts to share my adventures, but for now, here are just a few shots to give you a feel… It’s not hard to see why I’m blue to be home!

I’m daydreaming of leaving everything behind and disappearing into a fairytale land. I’ll live in a hollow tree and sit on toadstools and drink tea with the wood nymphs by moonlight.

Birds will weave twigs and feathers into my hair while I sleep. I’ll lose my language and become wild-eyed & silent, and children will see me and wonder if I’m a long lost princess or a Narnian witch.

Except, I’d miss my friends and my job an awful lot, and I couldn’t possibly go more than a week without visiting my gorgeous A. & last time I checked, the Enchanted Forest didn’t have a branch of Topshop, and I’m not sure how I’d cope.
Maybe one day I’ll figure out a way to scoop up all the precious, glittering people in this world and take them with me. You’re all invited.
By the time the Grumps and the Nasties have realised how quiet it is, we’ll have already gone.

I’m just back from the loveliest weekend with N’s lovely family in Durham, filled with the all of my favourite things;
Old dresses in aged chiffon. Ancient gypsy caravans that rattle along country roads. A huge stately home filled with historic china and furniture and an enchanting 200-year-old silver singing swan. Lovely lovely old things.

The lovely H took me to the most amazing vintage clothes shop, Lillyrose. Its really no exaggeration to say it’s the greatest shop I have *ever* been to – it was a vintage shoppers paradise! If you’re ever even remotely close, you have got to pay it a visit.

I kept my Paris-fund in mind and exercised crazy restraint, leaving the adorable dress above behind, and coming away with just one 50s day dress. Below’s a sneak peak at the fabric; I can’t wait to take some photos to show the full dress to you all!

There was a gypsy festival in a nearby village and from time to time, we passed the most beautiful old caravans being pulled by huge old horses. Caravans like these feature in so many of my daydreams; rainy days are always spend looking at holiday lets, so to see them up close in their true culture had me giddy!

Modern things just cannot compare! x