Smelly Cat

The Smeaters household is without a shower.  I don't know exactly what's wrong with it but I do know that it's going to take at least 2 weeks to fix.  We do have a bath, so I'm not actually a smelly cat but today I forced myself down to the gym just so I could shower and wash my hair afterwards!  I was tempted to just go in, shower and leave, but I didn't.  I happily made it in just in time for an episode of CSI Miami starting (the Gorbals Gym cardio machines have wee TVs built into them) so I did a punishing 45 minutes whilst watching that.  The time passed so much faster than when I'm just listening to my iPod!  I think I'll start going to that gym more often, even though there's one closer to my house.

I also handed in my job form for the guitar store, so that was good - fingers crossed!  I heard about a lipgloss that I wanted from Collection 2000, which is pretty cheap (it was my brand of choice when I was about 14 for just that reason!) but they didn't have the colour I wanted!  Very peeving, but never mind.

I think my mum wants to go to Silverburn tonight to have a look at TVs (still haven't decided which one to get: size, brand, LCD/LED...?) and there's a Boots there so I might pop in and see if I can get it.

Not much chat today, really!  It's a lovely sunny day and pretty warm, so it was quite nice wandering about town - and much more of an effort to force myself into the gym!  If it's nice again tomorrow I'll see if I can finally corral ED in and we can go and feed ducks in the park.  Lovely way to pass the day!

I was at LW's flat party the other night, and that was pretty good fun!  Lots of drinks and chat to be had - and wigs!  MM brought a couple along for me to borrow and LW had a few of her own so we all wigged-up and pranced about like those weird kids' dolls.  (Bratz? Is that what they're called, and do they have funny coloured hair?)

Anyway, here we are; I actually really like myself as a platinum blonde - who'd've thought it?!



Flower Power

In my wee hair-oriented post earlier I forgot to include pics of the thing that kicked off my accessory joy in the first place.

 

This 'hair stick' (I don't know why they're called sticks, but they are) is something I bought when I was still living in Valencia.  There was a big 'medieval' market in the bull ring and they had loads of lovely jewellery, as well as these hair flowers, soaps, clothes, and tonnes of food.

When I was looking at the hair sticks, the woman on the stall showed me how to use it and talked me into buying one.  What she didn't mention until the last minute was that it would be 15€!  I kind of felt like I'd been ripped off at the time, but now I'm glad I bought it.

You can either put your hair in a bun and then use the stick to keep it in, or - and this is how I do it, cause my hair's still a bit short for a real bun - you can put your hair in a chignon and secure it with the stick. 

From this picture here it doesn't look all that secure because my hair's kind of falling out at the bottom, but that's cause I missed some of my hair when I put it in for the picture, and in actual fact, if you use it right it stays in place for hours and keeps your hair really secure.

A very nice alternative to boring bobbles and hairbands, I think you'll agree!

Hair!

No, not the mad '70s musical - I'm talking about my hair!  For the first time in ages my hair is long enough to do things with...  For the past few years it's been really short in a kind of pixie cut and whenever it started to get a bit longer it would drive me mad and I'd get it cut short again. 

But for the last week while I've been growing it, and apart from getting my fringe cut in, I've left it alone.  The result is that *ta-DAH* it's long enough to do things with and I've rediscovered some hair accessories, which I very kindly thought I'd share with y'all...  

First up, we have this lovely black lacy corsage, complete with tiny black sequins for added sparkle.  This is one of those nifty corsages that has a hair clip on the back, and a safety pin so you can wear it on your clothes too,  Very handy.  (Just don't mix them up or you could find that corsage permanently pinned to your head!) 

Someone gave me this for my last birthday and I'm ashamed to say I can't remember who it was!  I got three black hair accessories on the same night, and I can't remember who gave me which one!  Sorry, guys!

Next in line is the Grecian headband, with 'pearls' and 'diamonds'.  The woman in River Island told me they were real, and I believe her... Ha.  Anyway, I bought this to replace my beautiful gold sparkly ASOS one which broke a while ago.  Gutted.  This new one is very nice, but the ASOS one will always hold a special place in my heart, if not on my head.  I blogged about this before, but here's a wee pic of it in action.

 This wee sparkler will set you back £7 at a River Island near you!

Third on the list are a pair of hand-made clips that I won from my friend Kerry's blog.  For all things crafty, cakey and homey, I highly recommend her blog and her Etsy shop!  She sent me these hair clips and a lovely candle-in-a-teacup. 

The clips are navy blue and are covered in tiny multi-coloured glass beads. Very pretty, and great for keeping my hair out my eyes on a Bad Fringe Day!

 

Up next, and bringing in a touch of Flapper glamour, is this beautiful black feather clip (another of the birthday presents, again sorry for not knowing who this one was from!).  It's a lovely shiny feather with a large rhinestone in the middle, and it is really very suave.   Admire if you will: 

Last but not least, my ever-growing scarf obsession/collection is coming into it's own with these warm days and longer hair!  They do as hairbands and turbans, they can be tied around buns, bunches or ponies, and best of all they cover a multitude of hair sins.  People will be so busy admiring the beauty of your lovely colourful scarf that they won't even notice your greasy roots/split ends/dodgy dye job or frizz extravaganza!  This is the style I've been favouring most recently: 





Part housewife, part rockabilly. I love it

A long overdue post...

It has been a wee while, hasn't it!  Not sure what happened, to be honest, I just got out of the way of doing my blog posts, even though there were things I really wanted to write about!  Anyway, I'm back again now, so it's all going to be OK...

First things first, thanks to all of you who contributed knitting to the Sit And Knit A Bit event - when I took in all our collective pieces we had about 20 squares between us, which is quite an achievement!  There were sacks and sacks of knitting in the Tramway when I went so I don't envy the people who're stitching it all together!  I am very much looking forward to seeing it all put together, and I propose a wee trip to the Tramway hidden gardens where it'll be on display.  Even if you didn't do any knitting you're more than welcome to come along and check it out, and I'm sure we can squeeze in some tea or coffee while we're there!  Here are some of knitted squares before I handed them in:

In other news, as I'm sure many of you are aware, I got my hair cut and went for a chunk fringe.  I must admit, at first I was a bit unsure if I liked it but I've totally warmed to it and now I'm really pleased with how it turned out, even though it does take substantially more effort than I'm used to.  I've also discovered that it's hard to get away with not washing your hair because the fringe will always give you away.  I did come up with a solution last night though, which was to stick on an elasticated hair band and let that hold the fringe in place. Genius.

Yesterday was International Women's Day (such a big event I think it deserves it own post), and in the evening I went along to an introductory talk about The Key To Wealth Health And Happiness.  Now, I'm not a big self-help fan, but I really connected with this idea, which is to use positive energy to influence your life, which will in turn attract positive things to you - the Law of Attraction, it's called.  Anyway, the full course is £165 so not sure I can afford that but even the wee talk last night was very interesting, so I'm glad I went along. 

Afterwards, I went to Yo! Sushi with Keira for some Japo-tastic delights.  We had many cups of Miso soup (free refills, innit), firecracker rice, duck gyoza (by go-to sushi dish, I can't get enough) and some Californian rolls.  Awesome; love it.  The staff are always very friendly in there too, perfect place to go for a delicious, nutritious, chilled-out dinner.  Even though Hot Sushi Man is no longer there.

Now I'd better go, because I've to go up to work for an hour of 'staff training' - I'm sure you can all guess how much I'm looking forward to that.  Is this kind of thing worth it for a 6-hours-a-week job?  I'm starting to think not.  Especially seeing as the money I make gets taken off my job-seekers allowance so I'm not actually gaining any money.  On the other hand, I've still to get paid for a shift I did a couple of days ago so I suppose going up for that alone will be worth it. Snore.

More later peeps!

My wonderful friend KH

...just got a new job, so hearty congrats going her way.  Sounds like a much better job plus a humongous (how do you spell that?  Is it possible to mis-spell a word that doesn't actually exist?) pay-rise and more holidays.  KH always provides a couch for me to crash on when I go to London, and she also does a great line in tanking bottles of red wine and then marching (drunkenly) out without paying for them.  What more can you ask for in a best friend, than someone who also loses to track of what you've paid for already and what you haven't?

Anyway, I'm very chuffed for her, and whenever I hear success stories like this I start thinking again about post-grads, masters, second degrees etc etc etc.  Can't say the current climate really does much fr the confidence but even so.  Case in point is Glasgow Uni who are currently in the process of savagely obliterating their language departments in order to spend millions on new computer systems and encourage higher-fee-paying oversees students to do business courses.  On the cut list are:  Russian, Polish, Czech, Portuguese and Catalan.  These are all the kind of more unusual languages which are taught in very few unis across the UK so they actually attract students, and cutting them makes no sense at all.  It's all just going down the tubes.

Day off tomorrow, and I'm meeting my Auntie C for a coffee and then I think I'll go to the west end and buy the dress from the shop (not hanging about though!) and then see if I can get an appointment to get my hair cut.  I think I'm going to leave the length but get a chunky fringe cut in.  I had one a couple of years ago in Valencia and I saw a pic of myself recently and remembered that I quite liked it!

I have a voucher to get £10 off a haircut, plus another fiver if you book online, so it'll come out at about £18, which is pretty good.

Oh, for anyone who's interested, Waterstone's have a deal on modern day Penguin Classics at the moment.  Books of short stories are £3 each and 3 for the price of 2.  They had Virginia Woolf, Camus, Kipling, Hans Fallada, and loads more so worth popping in if you're looking for something to read! 

I also got an amazing voucher deal for the Body Shop last night - buying the £12 voucher gets you £30 to spend in store.  Think I'll stock up on some moisturisers and things that are normally too pricey for me!  The wondrous Beauty blogger RJ hooked me up with this one.  I'd highly recommend her blog for all sorts of barginous make-up stuffs!

Oh yeah, I also have to make some cake and biscuits for the Glasgow Feminist Network meeting on Saturday.  There's an awesome blogger called The Caked Crusader, and it was her Bakewell tart recipe that I found, and it's always a big hit, so I think I'll make that again and maybe one other cake, I'll have a look on her  page and see what else she can recommend that looks easy and doesn't need any weird ingredients!

Aahhh, cake.  There's something very satisfying about baking.  When it goes well.  When it looks like it's going wrong it's quite stressful, but I've loads of time to do it tomorrow so I'm sure they'll turn out fine and tasty!

Hair

No, not the crazy '70s musical... my hair.

It's getting quite long (well, by 'long' I mean I can tie it up now) and, true to form, I'm starting to get sick of it.  I always go through the same pattern when it comes to my hair:  I have it cropped short for ages, and I really like it.  Then, one time I leave it longer between hair-cuts and I start to think that maybe I should just let it grow.  So I wait and wait, I get through the really annoying stage where it's long enough to hang in my face but not long enough to tie back and then one day *huzzah* I realise that it's finally long enough to put in a pony-tail, or a mini-bun, or a hair clip... the happy day has arrived!  But then... it starts to annoy me.  It's always tied back, really (so what's the point in having it longer?), it takes more effort when you wash it, I spend a fortune in bobbles cause I always loose them... and then, the final nail in the hair coffin is seeing pics of other people with lovely short hair. 



Victoria Beckham



 Last time (in Valencia) it was Victoria Beckham...

This time, it's Emma Watson.



Emma Watson



(Please note, I'm only looking at the hair here, I am aware that Emma Watson is a good 5 years younger than me!)

Anyway, don't know what to do with my hair yet, I'll see how it goes...

Cast Not Your Pearls Before Swine

I recently read a magazine article about women who had friends much older or younger than themselves.  One of the younger women said that the only thing that annoyed her about her older friend was the fact that she always wore a classic pearl necklace when they went out.  According to the younger woman, pearls are dated and old-fashioned. 

It was at this point that I decided the younger woman was a fool.

I love pearls, and I have about 4 strands that I wear all the time.  Some of them are real and some are plastic, but I mix them up and wear them together.  So, imagine my delight when, as I mentioned before, I found a stall in the Tenerife Sunday market selling lovely sets of fresh-water pearls.  They had pink, and white-ish ones, and they came in different lengths of necklace, as well as earrings and bracelets.  I zoned in on the medium length necklaces and came away with a lovely pink strand. 

I think pearls, like diamonds maybe, are classic and go with anything.  They don't look old-fashioned unless the rest of your outfit looks old-fashioned, and they go with pretty much anything and anyone.

Here are a couple of pics of my new strand, Thanks Mr Oyster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you sharp enough to spot it, I'm also wearing the new Lancome Colour Fever Shine lipstick.

 

 

 

I also picked up a cool thing that you can probably buy over here too, but which I've only ever seen in Spain.  It's just a hair clip, but it's so handy and is great if you've got mid-length/short hair like me.  Only in the last couple of weeks has my hair been long enough to tie back, and without the use of hairbands and kirby grips I always got big strands coming loose at the bottom. 

 

 Well, not any more! This thing (according to Google, it's called a 'banana clip') gets all my hair at once, gives me a januty pony-tail at the back, and a slight bit of height at the front, as if I'd done my hair in a chignon.

AND, it only cost about £2. Genius!