Oh la la!

I've been watching way too many films that are set in Paris. In fact, 'Don't rent anymore films about Paris' were the last words my guy uttered as he left for work this morning.

Amelie, oh, it's my all time favourite. I don't care if it's sappy and 'feel good', it can only be miserable sods who don't want to feel good when it comes to Amelie. I love the story, I love the colours, the green and red theme- you'd think it'd look ugly but it doesn't! It looks divine!
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset- again, such beautiful films. If you haven't seen them then do. Both star Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy who meet in the first film and fall in love during a sublime day spent in Paris. The film finishes with them promising to meet again in six months. There's not much plot, just walking and talking but it's fab. Watch it. Watch both.

We've also just watched Paris J'Taime, a film made up of 18 short films by 18 directors. It was watchable, but not mind-blowing. Cute poster though.
And lastly Two Days in Paris. An enjoyable enough way to spend an evening as long as you have wine or chocolate, or wine and chocolate.

My favourite things to do in Paris
Eat macaroons.
Sit on Pont Neuf in the sun and eat cheese and baguette and drink wine.
Sit outside cafes in sunglasses and people watch.
Browse the thrift shops and spend some euros.
J'adore.

Miu Miu at TK Maxx Thrill

I think this bargain is the best I've ever had. Miu Miu trousers in the clearance from £349 to £23. How beautiful is that?
Otherwise eating ice-cream with maple syrup and drinking ginger cordial with fizzy water. And I started 'training' for the Race For Life. Which entails me putting my trainers on instead of my wellies when I take Lola for a walk and every so often breaking into a trot.

Nesting

Doing up my house has been a long and drawn out saga with a lot of procrastination, a little hard graft and a few tears (due to a traumatic carpet experience that occurred last week- according to the carpet guy I bring a whole new dimension to carpet fitting). But it's slowly taking shape now and I've been inspired by the blogs of stylish homely types to take on a few projects.
This is something I've been wanting to do for, oooo, around three years now.
Turn this-

Into something resembling this- image taken from Famille Summerbelle
Now I've posted about it I might, just might, get around to doing it in the dim and distant future.
Love Anna X

I love specs

I love Tatty Devine's jewelery and my current fancy is their glasses necklaces, particularly the Jarv Specs Necklace below which are HUGE. The size of actual glasses in fact. Jarv Specs Glasses £35


These are adorable too if you'd rather something a little more subtle.

Then there's these nerd-tastic 3-D specs.

And these bubblicous heart shape glasses.
Let's be honest, I want them all.
Love Anna X

Hand drawn text is miles better than Times New Roman

Here's some new work produced by my husband for Goldlion. It's a hand-drawn piece containing the titles of all the tracks on the Velvet Underground album The Velvet Underground and Nico. We've both been hung up on hand-drawn font for ages now. I love creating beautiful, unique text that's so different to formal text.
Plus, my winning badges have arrived from Stereohype and I'm very much pleased with them! I'll take pics asap. We've just ordered a badge making machine for Goldlion so we can experiment with a load of new designs when it arrives.
Love Anna X

Julie Verhoeven- so inspiring...

Once again I've turned to my beautiful Julie Verhoeven books for inspiration. She creates the most beautiful images. Julie studied Art and Design on a Fashion Diploma course and began her career by working for Galliano before setting out as a fashion illustrator and textile/accessories designer.




I have two of her books, Fat Bottomed Girls and Julie Verhoeven. These books are beautiful, beautiful and her images manage to be both lovely and dark at the same time. I think her stuff is so unique, don't you?
Love Anna X

Burgers and a new dress

Wednesday night has been turning into date night recently as last week we went to see The Long Blondes play in Cardiff (which I've been meaning to post about and might still yet) and last night we went down to the Bay and had ourselves a Gourmet Burger and a Corona at this place (which was nearly as empty as it is in the pic).
City Bar and Canteen, Cardiff Bay

I wore the dress I bought at the last Blind Lemon vintage fashion fair in Bristol. To be honest I only bought it cos I felt I had to buy something to justify the trip up there (I wasn't really in shopping mode as I hadn't got in the night previous till around 5 and I'm much too old to handle those kind of dumb drunken shenanigans AND get up first thing) but now I'm glad I did. It's a nice winter/spring crossover dress, good with thick woolly tights but moving away from the black, black and more black that I've been drawn to this winter. It was cold down the Bay though so I thanked my lucky stars I hadn't ditched the thick tights and winter coat just yet.
The burger was fantastic (veggie and camembert, no beef for veggie me, no way) and by the time we'd got to the City Bar I had to undo my belt in order to fit my Corona in (bloke's fault- he insisted we needed two side orders of fries- have you seen the size of the burgers at GBK? They're the high rises of the burger world.) And then I woke up at 2.15 am shaking my bloke's arm and saying there were rats on our bedroom ceiling, I blame the garlic mayonnaise.

Love Anna X